Man returns home from a four-year round-the-world trip he embarked on with just £45 in his pocket
Christopher Schacht, 23, will return to his hometown in Germany on Sunday after travelling through 45 countries
A young man is on the verge of returning home from an epic 1,511-day world trip he embarked on with just €50 (£46) in his pocket.
Christopher Schacht, 23, will return to his small hometown of Sahms in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein on Sunday after travelling through 45 countries.
Christopher’s adventure began on July 1, 2013 when with €50 in his pocket, he hitched a lift on the A1 to Amsterdam.
More than 62,000 miles of travelling around the world followed, including crossing both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans by boat.
The whole trip was funded by working in menial jobs, ranging from deckhand on a sailing yacht to working among drug junkies in the gold mines of British Guyana.
Christopher said: "I used almost every means of transport except the aeroplane; on foot, on two-wheelers, canoes or hitchhiking with cars, lorries or on the oceans with sailing yachts."
The young German man said that one of the most unique adventures during his trip was on the pacific island nation of Vanuatu.
He said: "During a pitch black night we climbed with the crew of our yacht on an active volcano and when we reached the top, a gigantic shock wave hit us."
He continued: "The earth trembled, and with a colossal crash the mountain hurled monstrous fireballs over our heads.
“One of our companions was only a hair's breadth away of being hit and managed to save himself.”
Christopher met some dodgy characters on his travels, like the man who tried to drag him into a house in Guyana, but it hasn’t made him think less of human nature.
He said: “Such people are rather the exception than the rule.
"In the four years I have spent hundreds of times sleeping outdoors in total, including in ports, on the streets and in poor areas of town.
“I was among drug traffickers and murderers and I hitched rides in practically every country, but not once was I robbed, directly threatened or injured.
"That is more than just luck or common sense, I think."
Cristopher's most unusual sleeping location was in British Guyana between drug junkies.
He said: "Shortly after my arrival I made friends with two black women in their early twenties, who offered me to stay with them, but they warned in advance that they lived in the middle of the ghetto.
"The houses around us were becoming more and more derelict and dilapidated and the trenches on the edge of the path smelled enormously of waste water.
"We finally turned into a small side street leading to a sandy backyard with a gloomy wooden house on two-metre-high stilts.
“Between the pillars, there were mouldy sofas where people were sat rattling on metal tubes. Crack pipes."
Christopher said that the woman turned out to be the little sister of one of the biggest drug lords of British Guyana.
Besides the gold mining job in Guyana, Christopher worked in 20 different professions during his travels.
He worked as a petrol station attendant in Peru, on the Panama Canal, and even as an actor in a Samsung commercial in South Korea.
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He explained that with transport, accommodation and eating usually being the biggest expenses while travelling, these were the areas where he saved the most.
Christopher said: "It is not important how much you earn, but how you spend - whoever is not picky can even live in Paris on less than £2 a day."
During his travels he met a women called Michal, who started to write to him after she read a story about his travels in German media, later joining him for part of his travels in India where they became a couple.
When he returns, Christopher wants to finish his theology studies, spend time with his girlfriend and write a book about his travels.
But it is mostly the more menial things in life that Christopher looks forward to upon his return to Germany.
He said: "I am looking forward most to German bread, beer and cereal."
