Camels, sailboats and poultry trucks: Inside one man’s no-fly journey around the world
By Salma Arafa
(CNN) — As the rare sight of land appeared on the horizon, Egyptian traveler Omar Nok jumped from his narrow bunk and climbed up to the deck of the 49-foot sailboat he’d been traveling on.
After weeks of being surrounded by nothing but the ocean, the sight of the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, home to the UNESCO-listed Piton mountains, left him frozen with awe.
It was the tenth stop in an ambitious quest for the 31-year-old traveler, who is attempting to circle the globe without flying.
The sailboat served as another vehicle to add to his unconventional list of modes of transportation.
Since setting off in October, Nok has been hopping on ships, riding camels and relying on strangers’ generosity as he continues his no-fly journey in a bid to experience the world more deeply.
“The no-flying part makes it easier to see more of the world,” Nok told CNN. “There’s also a special kind of pride in arriving somewhere far, because the distance reminds you of everything it took to get there.”
No-fly rule
This philosophy has taken him across deserts, land borders, and oceans — and into places few outsiders ever see.
Nok says his appetite for exploration began in childhood but accelerated during a 2018 trip to the Balkans, when he booked a one-way flight to Romania from Egypt and a return from Montenegro two weeks later, leaving the rest of the route “unknown.”
He later left a finance job at Amazon in 2022 to travel full-time, living off his savings while spending frugally. Since then, Nok’s adventures have only grown bolder, with trips overland from Egypt to East Asia.
Nok, who holds both an Egyptian passport and one from a European Union country, came up with the idea of traveling around the world without flying during a seven-month trip to Japan in 2024.
While staying in the Japanese town of Shinshushinmachi, Nok was introduced to “Ikigai,” a Japanese philosophy about living a joyful life. He realized that his own Ikigai was to undertake a long-term, no-flying journey around the globe.
Just months later, Nok was en route. He left Cairo in October 2025, making his way across Egypt to Libya.
Nok has been documenting his journey on social media, building an audience of nearly one million across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, and his movements are being live-tracked via the travel app Polarsteps.
His online supporters have already proved useful. The visa for his first border crossing, into Libya, required an invitation letter, which one of his Instagram fans helped organize.
Faith in humanity
He hopes his adventures will inspire those keeping track of him.
“Some people told me that their faith in humanity was restored by watching my journey. And that’s the best part,” Nok said. “That’s the biggest win.”
Another early challenge was traversing northern Libya between Benghazi and Tripoli — a journey fraught with risk that most travelers would opt to make by air.
Nok found himself in a shared van on an overnight journey that was cramped and tense. Checkpoints dotted the highway and at one point, his paperwork was rejected, stalling his progress.
“I’m not easily stressed, but at this point I was super stressed,” he recalls.
Luckily, a local friend came to his aid, and he was able to make it to his next destination, Medenine in Tunisia
He then traveled to France and Spain, making it to the Canary Islands, located off northwest Africa, on a 30-hour ferry ride, before sailing to the Caribbean.
Buses, trains and automobiles
His various modes of transportation along the way have ranged from buses, trains, vans, hitchhiking, horses, motorbikes, slow boats, sea barges, bicycles and even a poultry truck.
After making landfall on St. Lucia, he’s since started to island-hop northwest, reaching the Dominican Republic.
From here, he had originally planned to reach the East Coast of the US, but says problems with visa logistics mean this is now unlikely. Instead, he’s aiming for Latin America.
With the world currently facing heightened instability, it’s unclear if or how the current Middle East crisis will impact his journey further down the line. Nok remains hopeful, preferring not to give much weight to politics. What matters to him most, he says, are places, food, and people.
“It can be a polarized world, but honestly, it’s more government-related than everyday-people-related. And most of the world is made up of people, not governments,” he explained.
Boarding that sailboat to St. Lucia in December wasn’t an easy task — Nok spent three weeks trying to connect with sailors in the Las Palmas marina in Gran Canaria, the third-largest of the Canary Islands, in search of a boat to cross the Atlantic Ocean.
He faces the same challenges trying to cross the Caribbean Sea but says he’s confident there’s always a way forward — as long as it doesn’t involve planes.
The-CNN-Wire
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