Tom Turcich's had an existential crisis at 17. The death of his amazing friend, Ann Marie (16) turned his life on its head. It was then he decided to walk the world.
On April 2, 2015, Tom Turcich walked out of Haddon Township in Camden County in the US State of New Jersey. On May 21, 2022, seven years and 49 days after setting off with his four-legged companion Savannah, Turcich arrived back in Haddon Township.
Turcich had left a callow 25-year-old and returned a worldly-wise 32-year-old. It turned out to be seven years of "meditation," for him.
Today he's a speaker, photographer, writer, and adventurer, according to his website tomturcich.com
Turcich walked 21-24 miles a day for roughly half of the seven years he was away. In total, he walked 28,000 miles (and Savannah 25,000 miles), travelled through 38 countries and crossed every continent except Australia, which he couldn’t do because of lockdown restrictions. He is the 10th person to have walked the world, and he assumes Savannah is the first dog to have done so, according to The Guardian.
“He’s a man now. He sees the world so differently. He’s been to places where people with zero money work all week to add a cinder block to their house, and they would share all they had with him. To see that is a life-changer,” The Guardian interview of him says.
Over the years, he picked up 121,000 followers on Instagram as he documented his travels under the handle @theworldwalk.
According to The Guardian, Turcich had always been taught that those who work hard will be rewarded; that if you are capable and determined there is nothing to stop you achieving. But the more he saw of the world, the more he realised this was not true.
“You end up realising so little is down to willpower, because there are much smarter, much kinder people than me all over the world who don’t have my opportunities.” He tells me about a man he met in Peru selling petrol to passing trucks from his roadside hut. “He was a great guy, and very bright; definitely smarter than me, and probably a harder worker. But he’s never going to leave Peru because of the geography or history he’s born into. You see over and over again that what really affects people is the systems in place.”