Man Circles World the Long Way

Phileas Fogg went around the world. So did Magellan. But that wasn't good enough for Vladimir Lysenko, who not only went around, but up, down and across when he traveled the world.


In the surprisingly crowded world of wandering record breakers, Lysenko, 44, prides himself on dreaming up new twists to an old challenge.


"I'm the first in the world to do the most extreme points that you can reach on the continents," he said, showing off his passport, crammed full of stamps from trips which, as he tells it, saw him get robbed, contract malaria, narrowly escape death by both Islamic terrorists and American warplanes, raft through the Grand Canyon, starve in Patagonia and freeze in Yakutia.


Arriving in Alaska two years ago with $2,500 to buy a car, Lysenko began his journeys by driving from Dead Horse, the most northerly point in North America, to Tierra del Fuego, the most southerly point in South America.


After the Americas came Africa (south to north), then Eurasia (lengthwise), Australia (circular) and the bottom bit of Asia. All he needs now is to drive the length from the middle of Asia to the top of Europe - a trip he hopes to make soon - and Lysenko can claim a full set.


In his two years of travel, Lysenko has covered more than 96,000 kilometers - and spent less than $20,000, making his the cheapest round-the-world trips ever, he claims.


But even before he set off from Alaska in his Volvo 240, Lysenko had already seen more of the world than most of his globetrotting peers. An underpaid physics professor from Novosibirsk, Lysenko has also won fame in the Guinness Book of World Records for his whitewater-rafting exploits, as the only man ever to raft rivers on all 14 of the 8,000-meter-plus mountains in the world, including two different runs on Mount Everest.


Nine years ago, as Soviet borders loosened, Lysenko, a lifetime rafter who had long since ticked off all the major rivers of the Soviet Union, seized his opportunity to ride foreign waters and shelling out a month and a half's wages for a flight to Nepal.


Just a few months later, air tickets cost nearly a year's salary. But Lysenko has always managed to find a steady stream of sponsors, including his latest source of income - New Russians. Through newspaper ads or television appearances, Lysenko has convinced a number of wealthy Russians to pay traveling expenses in return for sharing the trip.


Accompanying a record-breaking traveler, particularly one used to a frugal budget, can prove a less than luxurious trip. While traveling from Alaska to Argentina, Lysenko and his paying companion Boris Ivanov nearly starved - after paying for gas they had no money left for food.


Two wealthy Novosibirsk citizens, meanwhile, paid for Lysenko's Australia trip. With only three weeks of vacation to spare, the sponsors' time restraints had them driving a mind-numbing 1,000-plus kilometers a day in order to finish on deadline.


Sometimes travels have led Lysenko into conditions even more perilous than hunger or utter boredom. Travelling from Novosibirsk to Russia's Far East, Lysenko could only travel in March - when temperatures were low enough to keep the unpaved ground frozen solid, but still warmer than Yakutia's wintertime lows of minus 70 degrees Celsius. Temperatures hovered at minus 35 C, with villages spread out as much as 400 kilometers apart.


"If you break down, that's it," Lysenko said.


The most frightening time, he said, was when he missed by minutes the Aug. 7, 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya, an incident that left nearly 100 dead. A few weeks later Lysenko had a similar near-miss, passing through Sudan as U.S. warplanes bombed that country in retaliation for its alleged part in the embassy bombing.


"My wife really doesn't approve," Lysenko said, shaking his head disconsolately.