Timotei Rad is a young Romanian who always wanted to see the world and managed to make his dream come true in a different way: by hitchhiking.

It all started in 2012 when he was a student at the Geography Faculty within Babes-Bolyai Univeristy in Cluj-Napoca. He was preparing a school paper and needed information about the first map produced by a Romanian. He has found copies of the map in London and Vienna and, as it was too expensive for him to order one of the copies, he decided to go there himself.

The training for the trip around the world started with the first journey to Paris in May 4, 2012, when he decided to hitchhike and spend no money on transport.

“I got to Paris in eight days via Vienna, Prague, and Leipzig. I was exhausted and I realized that I couldn’t make it to London, so I returned home to Cluj-Napoca. I was planning to get a Ph.D. in Romanian mapping history, but I discovered the adventure and the possibility to travel as I was doing in my mind during childhood when I was reading Tom Sawyer or books about pirates, and I realized that this was possible,” Rad said, cited by local Mediafax.

This is how he decided to hitchhike around the world. His journey started in June 2013 when he headed towards Russia's Siberia with only EUR 70 in his pockets. His adventure wasn’t easy, however, and he even had to return home a few times. He first had to return from Kazakhstan to get a visa for China. Then he was sent back from Afghanistan, after hitchhiking to Kabul and being caught by the police and sent to a refugee camp.

In the summer of 2014, he started traveling through Europe, but then again, he encountered some problems in Italy as he ran out of money and couldn't use his debit card anymore, and had to return to Romania. That didn’t stop him, though, and, between end-2014 and March 2015, he traveled through several countries in South America.

His hitchhiking adventure had included several means of transportation: a huge truck of the Russian army, a three-wheel tractor, police cars in Colombia and Chile, a car of the French Gendarmerie, and even an ambulance in Ukraine. However, things haven’t always been kind, and he even got attacked and robbed in some of the countries he’s visited.

After a long trip of almost 230,000 km on four continents, Timotei Rad gave up hitchhiking, saying that this way of traveling “was both childhood and army.”

“These trips formed me. I’ve forced my limits. In a society that becomes more technologized and more virtualized, human interaction with all kind of people from many countries is an experience that no one can ever offer you,” he said.

The Romanian is now planning to write a book about his adventure. He also made a video in which he tells his story (in Romanian).

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com

(Photo source: Timotei Rad on Facebook)