TOKYO — Japan is seeing a record boom in tourism, but one recent visitor travelled more than the circumference of the earth to get there using boats, trains, camels and even hitchhiking.
Modern-day adventurer Omar Nok became a social media celebrity, attracting more than 750,000 Instagram followers, as he documented his circuitous 46,239km route from Egypt across a dozen countries without once boarding a plane.
"From when I was a little kid, before realising what travel is, I already wanted to come to Japan," Cairo native Nok, 30, said in an interview in Tokyo. "But for me, I don't want to miss anything in between... so that's the motivation to just go without flying to see as much as I can."
The sharp weakening of the yen has made Japan a bargain travel destination, attracting nearly 27 million visitors in the nine months to September. It has been an economic boon as well, with tourists spending 5.86 trillion yen (S$50.5 billion) so far, a record.
For Nok, the country represented the furthest he could travel in Asia without getting on a plane. He arrived by ferry in the south-western city of Fukuoka in October and then meandered his way to Tokyo on Nov 7, 274 days after leaving home. By comparison, a direct flight from Cairo to Tokyo takes about 12 hours.
The veteran traveller previously logged lengthy trips through Europe and the Americas, but nothing like this. The first day was the hardest, Nok said, when his father dropped him off at the Red Sea port of Safaga to board a cargo boat for Saudi Arabia.
He was nervous about stepping into the unknown, venturing into central Asian countries where he did not speak the language and where few tourists tread. But armed with words of encouragement from his father, he stepped onto the ship and his nerves melted away.
On his trek, he hitchhiked to Islam's holy city of Mecca, sandboarded the dunes of Iran, broke down in the Tajikistan mountains in a purple Dodge Challenger driven by another adventurer and crossed parts of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan riding horses and camels.
Previously a financial analyst for Amazon in Germany and Luxembourg, Nok funded his journey through savings and extremely frugal spending. His daily expenses came to about US$25 (S$34), although his entire two-week run through Afghanistan cost just US$88, he said.
Through it all, Nok said he never felt in danger because generous strangers looked out for him wherever he found himself. That message resounded among his online fans as a welcome spark of hope at a time of war and political strife in much of the world.
"I'm always just moving around like locals would and being in situations where locals would step in to help," he said.
"I think people wanted to see that positive side to all the countries that they only hear negative things about."
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