Gunther Holtorf and his wife Christine have travelled 800,000 km (500,000 miles) – all in the same car, and without any serious breakdowns. Their journey has taken them the equivalent of 20 times around the world.
Gunther, who’s 74 years old, has done the journey under the radar – he has no blog, Facebook page or phone, and travelled simply for his own enjoyment.
‘Sponsorship was offered, but sponsorship is never free of charge,’ he says. ‘The sponsor wants something in return and this would be to plaster the car like a formula one vehicle which I don’t like for security reasons.
‘The main cost for a traveller is restaurant and hotel – and we skip both of them, sleeping in the car and we do our own food, we buy ingredients in local markets.’
He was joined by Canadian-born photographer David Lemke recently in Vietnam. ‘This is a man that has to be one of human history’s greatest individual travellers,’ says Lemke. A montage of Lemke’s photos of Holtorf on his travels can be seen on the BBC website
‘The more you travel the more you realise how little you have seen,’ says Gunther. The car is a Mercedes Benz G Wagen, which he’s nicknamed Otto.
