Turk sets two Guinness records by traveling worldwide

ISTANBUL

A Turkish man, who has earlier broken a Guinness record by traveling 13 countries in 24 hours, has set another record by touring around the world in 46 hours with scheduled flights.

Ümit Sabancı, 41, and one of his friends shook the record book with the groundbreaking record of visiting 13 countries in just 24 hours in 2017.

The thrill-seeker duo departed from Poland, and the list of the countries they traveled to, in no particular order, includes Denmark, Czech Republic, Hungary, Switzerland, Sweden, Austria, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany and Slovakia.

Taking his hobby to another level, as he loves planning trips, travel enthusiast Sabancı decided to break a record in this regard.

Sabancı, who took account of all the difficulties he would face, calculated all the details one by one for two months to break his first record. Every second was crucial both for him and his friend.

“I had to plan all the public transportation we would use throughout the record,” Sabancı said. “In Bratislava, we had to take the bus to get to our destination when we got off the train, and we only had three minutes for that. If we had missed it, we might not have broken the record.”

Sabancı, who used public transportation to set foot in 13 countries in a day and continued on his way by running at some points, managed to break the record without any problems. During this period, Sabancı, supporting and willing to raise awareness toward a charity that funds hundreds of different projects, launched a donation campaign.

Sabancı started preparations again shortly after the first record, but this time he was aiming to tour the world in 46 hours with scheduled flights.

He flew from London to Los Angeles three days before the 46-hour record attempt.

“My first flight was from Los Angeles to Qatar’s Hamad International Airport at 6:30 p.m. on Aug. 9,” Sabancı said, adding that he flew from Qatar to Australia’s Brisbane Airport at 9:15 p.m. on Aug. 10. “My last travel was from Brisbane to Los Angeles on Aug. 11 at 8:30 p.m..”

Employees of the airline, who were aware of the situation when two world-renowned aviation magazines made news about him months before his departure, enthusiastically welcomed Sabancı at the door.

The airline, which worked extraordinarily for Sabancı’s record attempt, hosted him in a business-class seat.

Noting that the cabin crew and other passengers were very sympathetic to the record attempt, Sabancı said, “Those who got that I was in a record attempt from the t-shirt I was wearing were very curious about what I was trying to do.”

“When I got back to the starting point, all the passengers on the Los Angeles flight, with whom I was calculating the flight times together, applauded me,” he added.

Stating that his plans to set records are always specific to a single day, meaning that it cannot stretch to another day or month, Sabancı is open to making new record attempts. He is now aiming for a record attempt in China, where he will try to travel 5,500 kilometers (3,417 miles) in 24 hours with high-speed trains.