Traveling with little more than a rough direction, one man circled the globe and discovered strangers were kinder than he expected.
Ben Hatke was scared before he left home.
Not just anxious. Actually scared.
The Eisner Award-winning cartoonist had spent years thinking about traveling around the world, heading east from his Starsburg, Virginia, area home and continuing until he found his way back. But in the days before leaving, he found himself waking up at night sweating and wondering whether the whole thing was a terrible idea.
“I probably understated the amount of times that I would wake up at night just unable to sleep, sweating and thinking like, is this is this is like a stupid idea? Am I being crazy?” Hatke told USA TODAY.
Then he walked out the door.
“It really was sort of like the… that sort of like Bilbo Baggins (from ‘The Hobbit’ by J.R.R. Tolkien) feeling of like the road can sweep you up, and you’re just going,” he said.
That journey became “Home/World,” Hatke’s graphic memoir about circumnavigating the globe, told through ink, watercolor and gripping encounters with strangers along the way.
With the support of his wife and five children (2, 13, 16, 19 and 21 at the time), Hatke was able to drop everything and circumvent the world in 55 days. His 2024 journey has, in some ways, preceded the trend brought on by remote work, where 27% of Gen Z and 25% of millennials are able to take more spontaneous trips.
Around the world without an itinerary
Dismissing conventional travel wisdom, Hatke avoided locking himself into an itinerary. Beyond his initial Atlantic crossing on the Queen Mary 2, he did not book the entire trip in advance, leaving himself to figure out trains, ferries, buses and border crossings as he went.
That freedom could be exhilarating. It could also be stressful.
He described the overall journey as a mix of peace and high anxiety.
Once he figured out the next leg, though, the movement itself became almost meditative. Long stretches on trains, buses and boats from Southampton, England, to Osaka, Japan, gave him something his normally crowded life rarely did: stillness.
About 59% of travelers are choosing remote destinations that force them to unplug, according to an Aug. 18 to Sept. 5 Priceline survey of 3,006 adults.
“There were moments that were truly unbelievably magical,” Hatke said.
Some of the most memorable moments came in places where he didn’t know what to expect.
In Kazakhstan, Hatke found himself traveling on a train with no other foreign travelers around him. Instead of isolation, he encountered curiosity. Fellow passengers throughout his journey offered him food, sat with him and wanted to understand what he was doing. Many of those he met along the way marveled at the privilege of seeing the world. One child along the way even tried to have him stay on a train so they could keep drawing together.
“People were just like really, really kind,” Hatke said. “And that seemed to be fairly universal.”
When crossing into China, the customs agent stamped his passport and told him, “I admire your life. It looks like freedom.”
That lesson feels especially relevant now, as geopolitical turmoil prevents many travelers from entering different countries around the world.
Can the same journey be replicated?
Hatke believes making the same journey today would be harder. Some transportation options had already disappeared after the COVID-19 pandemic, he said, and today’s geopolitical tensions could make slow, overland international travel even more complicated.
“I don’t know that, like … presenting as an American would be as well received by all the regular, everyday people,” he said.
Still, what stayed with Hatke wasn’t fear – although there was plenty to choose from – it was people.
“It was just beautiful, but at the same time, it makes me more sad, and makes me more worried for people,” he said. “Because then you’ve crossed paths with them, you know, and then even if it was just for a moment, you had this connection and (then you part).”
His family welcomed him home with a celebratory dinner.
And after physically feeling so many miles pass beneath him, Hatke came home with another realization: The world isn’t as small as modern travel can make it seem.
“Probably bigger, oddly enough,” he said.
Josh Rivera is a senior editor at USA TODAY. You can follow him on Threads or Substack.