Full transcript of American author and traveler Cassie De Pecol’s TEDx Talk: The Real Reason I Traveled to 196 Countries at TEDxMileHigh conference. This event occurred on July 8, 2017.
Notable quote from the talk:
“At first I refused, but then sheepishly agreed. I didn’t know what his wife would think of him bringing home a young, blond American girl at midnight. But when we arrived to their little concrete home, she greeted me with a kiss on the cheek and made the bed for me. It wasn’t until the next morning when I saw her sleeping on a one-inch thick foam pad on the kitchen floor with a floral sheet draped over her. She had given me her own bed to sleep in.”
Cassie De Pecol – American author and traveler
Who in their right mind would travel alone to 196 countries?
When someone finds out I’ve done something that no other woman on this planet has done, and broken two Guinness World Records, they usually have a few questions for me, They want to know how I pulled it off, what my experience was like, and why I even did it in the first place?
Today, I’m excited to share with you how it took me three years to plan and raise money for the 18-month trip, what my experience was like traveling alone as a woman, and I’m going to talk about something I’ve never talked about publicly before: the real reason why I did this expedition.
So how did I do it?
196 countries sounds easy enough, right? I knew this expedition was going to be a huge endeavor. And the first step was figuring out all the rules for breaking a Guinness World Record.
There are so many rules, both big and small, like how I was only allowed to take scheduled public transportation to and from each country. I wasn’t allowed to drive a car while in the Guinness clock and there were limitations as to how far I could travel in a taxi.
I also had to prove that I’d been in each country, which is harder than you think. Many countries throughout Europe and Central America don’t stamp passports, so I had to find different ways to document everything.
I collected photos, videos, countless tickets, GPS coordinates, signed witness statements, credit card bills, and even phone logs.
Next time you go to North Korea, you can forget about bringing your phone. They don’t stamp passports, you can’t use your credit card, and Kim Jong Un is not going to give you an autograph. You can, however, send the pre-approved propaganda postcard showing a fist crushing the pentagon.
And then there was the most challenging rule of all: I wasn’t allowed to spend more than 14 days in the country.
This didn’t seem like a big deal at first, but I wasn’t always able to predict when I’d receive my visas. This rule almost ended my expedition in country number 196: Yemen.
First, the U.S. Embassy wouldn’t let me in due to high terrorist activity in Yemen, and then the Oman authorities wouldn’t let me out due to the situation in Yemen.
I faced a major risk of being stuck on the mainland of Yemen. But after two attempts of trying to cross the border, I watched in the night as the rusted steel gates pushed back. And I was finally let back into Oman.
But then the challenge came: How do I pay for this expedition?
Most people think that I must be rich or that I’m just this young blond American girl, leisurely traveling the world, not having to do a single day of work. But they couldn’t be more wrong.
I didn’t grow up in a family with a lot of money. In fact, I had to put myself through college, and I wasn’t able to finish my degree, because I couldn’t afford it.
So I knew that with this expedition I’d have to find creative ways with having to figure out how to fund it. I spent countless hours developing business plans, finding financial backers, vlogging, filming an educational documentary so that I could pay for it all on my own.
Remember the time and effort it took you to plan your last vacation? Now imagine doing it 196 times and all on your own. What I thought would take me six months to plan actually took me three years.
So what was it like?
In four words: It was exhilarating, it was exhausting, it was scary, and it was eye-opening. Whether you’ve been to five countries or 150, you probably have your own personal, unique experience related to each place. We all have our own way of traveling and discovering a culture, and it doesn’t matter what you see or where you go; what matters is your own experience while you’re there.
Some people think that only spending a week or an hour in a country doesn’t allow you enough time to see it, but if there is one thing I know to be true, it’s that just one brief experience can shape your whole life.
It was 11 pm on a Saturday night when I arrived in Cuba. After traveling 12 miles in a taxi, I realized I only had 20 dollars cash on me. Cuba didn’t accept U.S. debit or credit cards, so when I got to the hotel, I was unable to pay the hotel or the taxi driver.
I was so ashamed of the mistake that I’d made. I rarely cry, but that night I just sat on the side of the road and completely broke down. The taxi driver came over to me and said something like, (Spanish) “Yo tengo tres hijas. Yo entiendo Ven.”
And with my broken Spanish, I understood that to be something like: “I have three daughters. I’d hate for them to be in your position. You can come stay with my family for the night.”
At first I refused, but then sheepishly agreed.
I didn’t know what his wife would think of him bringing home a young, blond American girl at midnight.
But when we arrived to their little concrete home, she greeted me with a kiss on the cheek and made the bed for me. It wasn’t until the next morning when I saw her sleeping on a one-inch thick foam pad on the kitchen floor with a floral sheet draped over her. She had given me her own bed to sleep in.
I had experiences like this over 196 times. I had just a taste of what every country in the world is like, which for most people is unimaginable. I know that non-Muslim women can enter Saudi Arabia alone and without covering their heads.
I know that you can swim with whales in Tonga, and that you can cross the Drake Passage to Antarctica in 60-mph winds and 30-foot waves only to find tranquility and penguins on the other side. These experiences will forever shape my view of the world.
But while this expedition was exhilarating, it was also quite exhausting. I spoke to over 16,000 students on countless issues. I collected water samples and planted trees to offset my carbon footprint. I met with mayors and ministers and filmed an educational documentary.
And I used social media as a means to showcase the beauty of countries around the world, and encourage others to travel in ways that they never had before.
But what you don’t see on Instagram is the constant exhaustion of working 15-hour days or the raw fear that I felt. I was a woman traveling alone. And many countries that I traveled to were either inaccessible or dangerous or both.
Imagine arriving to border control at 2:00 in the morning in Mogadishu, Somalia, and then getting into an armed vehicle surrounded by pick-up trucks filled with men with machine guns.
Then imagine passing through four security gates just to get to the compound, and then them showing you to your room and then nonchalantly pointing out the safe room where you go in case you hear an explosion.
I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to tell my family if I’d be coming home or when, and we all knew that it was a possibility that I wouldn’t make it back safely.
But I wouldn’t trade these experiences for the world. They were hard and scary, yes. But I discovered the goodness in people all around the world. Because of my expedition, I’ve been featured in tons of news channels around the world, and hundreds of thousands of newspapers, magazines and articles.
And when I only have 30 seconds to answer the “Why?” question, this is what I tell them: I saw the opportunity to make history by breaking a speed record.
I wanted to break down misconceptions about women, and as a triathlete, I wanted to test my physical and mental endurance while also experiencing as much of the world as possible.
I wanted to inspire others and enhance the world we live in, and leave a positive legacy behind. And while all of that is true, this expedition actually started from a much darker place.
At the age of 13, I started feeling like something was off, but I was never able to pinpoint it. I didn’t know why I was having these negative thoughts or these feelings of unexplained sadness, so I just ignored them as though they didn’t exist.
And at the age of 21, I traveled with my brother for a month and he began to notice this unusual pattern of melancholy. He blatantly asked me: “Cassie, are you depressed?” I became so defensive. I completely diverted from him and again just shoved these feelings aside. I spent the next two years running away from my own truth.
But those thoughts never seemed to go away. And in 2014, I was casted for a reality TV show called “Naked and Afraid.” The show pairs two strangers together to survive naked in the wilderness for 21 days. I’d never been on TV before, and I saw this as an exciting opportunity to pull myself up.
But I was not prepared for what came next. The editing made me look like a useless villain and worse, viewers agreed. I received hundreds of thousands of hate messages and death threats and still do to this very day. I didn’t know why so many people hated me or what I’d done wrong when I just tried to do my very best.
I didn’t know what to do next. So I moved out to Los Angeles and picked up two babysitting jobs working 85 hours a week just to make ends meet.
Eventually, I hit rock bottom, and I felt like I had nothing else in me. I sat on the cliffside in Malibu and wondered if me being alive had any positive impact on society.
But then I asked myself the question: If I could do anything, what would it be? Travel! I still had feelings of melancholy and unexplained sadness throughout the expedition, but at least I had a reason to learn how to manage it or attempt to overcome it.
But about a quarter of the way through the expedition, I ran out of money, and I considered quitting. And I realized I could not leave my commitments behind. My commitments to my sponsors, to my family, to my supporters, to everyone.
And I had to finish what I started. When you’re at that very last moment, and everything around you is caving in, what’s that one thing that’ll pull you out? For me, that thing was travel, and it ended up being a beautiful and life-changing experience.
We are given this magnificent minds and these powerful bodies and it doesn’t matter where you come from, your monetary status, your religion, your age, how others judge you, what your friends and family say you can or can’t do. It doesn’t even matter what your dreams are. None of that matters.
What matters is your truth. You’re either here on this earth for one more hour or you’re here for 100 more years, but the beauty is you’ll never know.
So like female record-breaker Amelia Earhart said:
“The most effective way to do it is to do it.”
Nothing else matters but the next step you take and the respect and growth that you owe to yourself.
So find that one thing that brings you just a little bit of excitement and devote yourself to it 150%. In my experience, you won’t regret it.
