The world is his oyster...

Many of this Liverpudlian’s journeys were 
back-breakingly uncomfortable. Buses, trains, shared taxis, cargo ships, ferries and (especially) the Senegalese fishing boat hardly constitute deluxe travel. So what on Earth possessed him to embark on his odyssey, and then pursue it to the bitter end?

“Obviously because I’m bonkers,” he admits. “But I wanted to show that the outside world isn’t such a scary place, have some great stories to tell the grandkids, and prove it was possible to have some fun, dammit!” (He also raised money for the charity WaterAid.)

Quiz Hughes on the benefits of global travel, and he becomes especially animated. “Travel is such an education. When I was younger I studied history and politics at Manchester University. But I can tell you I learnt more about history and politics travelling for four years than I ever did studying it. It makes more sense if it all fits together.”

Budget travel ensured he met locals wherever he roamed. A website called Couchsurfing.com allowed him to stay in foreign countries for free, while long bus journeys fostered meetings with random strangers. One of his most uplifting moments of all was during an overnight bus journey across Iran.

Out of the blue, a little old lady sitting 
on the seat in front of him passed him 
her mobile phone. On the other end 
was her grandson, an English speaker. 
It turns out this Persian grandmother was concerned that Hughes would arrive at their destination early the next morning with nowhere to eat. She was offering to take him home and make him breakfast.

“Whenever I get down about Donald Trump, or Brexit, or all the other s**t that’s going on in the world, I just remember that little old lady in Iran,” Hughes says. “It was a fantastic breakfast, by the way.”

Six years on from his odyssey, Hughes still looks back fondly on the camaraderie he experienced wherever he went. “It’s a cliché but we really are all just the same,” he stresses. “People want the best for their family, they want to be happy, feel safe, be healthy.”

Nowadays he lives back in the north of England where he still works in the media. “It’s a bit like [the Paulo Coelho novel] The Alchemist: I travel around the world but what I’m actually looking for is back where I started,” he says.

After more than 120,000 miles (200,000kms), his wanderlust has by no means abated, though. Destinations still on his wish list include Antarctica, Hawaii, French Polynesia and the Cook Islands. Top priority is Easter Island, in the Pacific.

And if a new independent nation was to be born, he says he’d be there in a shot. There’s a region in Papua New Guinea, for example, called Bougainville, which is seeking independence. Hughes’ journey there would be overland; an airline journey would of course be out of the question.

Given his whistle-stop tour of the planet, he might be accused of doing nothing more than dipping his toe in many of the nations he visited. A box-ticking exercise is how critics might describe it. “Some places, like the Vatican City, I literally went over the border and said: ‘Yay! I’m in Vatican City.’ And then left. But other places I immersed myself. In Tuvalu I got drunk with the prime minister Willy Telavi. In East Timor I met the president José Ramos-Horta, Nobel Peace Prize winner.”

Hughes admits he failed to see enough of 
many of the nations he visited. “But my philosophy is that these places aren’t going anywhere. I can always go back to them. And this time take my partner with me.”

And after all he has achieved, is he really the most travelled human being in history? “No, actually I’m not,” he reveals. “There’s this guy I met a few years ago who is the Guinness World Record-holder for the most travelled person. But he’s 65 years old and has travelled every day of his life, and he flew everywhere.”

None of which dampens Hughes’s pride for his own surface travel achievement. “I like to say I’m the most travelled Scouser [Liverpudlian] in the world. I’m pretty sure of that.”