María Perles, the Alicante native who travelled around the world in two and a half years without taking a plane

With boots priced in pesetas and a PhD in environmental sciences in hand, Alicante native María Perles set off two and a half years ago on a journey around the world. Remarkably, she accomplished this without taking a single flight, relying instead on hitchhiking, walking, public transport, and boats.

"I was determined to travel around the world. Initially, I thought I would be away for about eight months, but it got out of hand," explains the 35-year-old from Muchamiel, who just returned to Spain this week. Her return allows her to participate in the 12th edition of the IATI Great Journeys Conference, with the main event taking place this Saturday, May 24, in Madrid. There, she will have the opportunity to share her adventure, which took her to an astounding 50 countries.

The first steps of this ambitious journey were taken in her grandmother's boots, a biologist like her mother. "Whenever I sent photos to my grandmother, I showed her that I was wearing the boots she gave me. I think they are well-worn; they accompanied me throughout the journey. I plan to go to León, where she lives, to return them."

Before embarking on the journey that took her across Europe, America, Asia, Oceania, and the Pacific islands, María completed a PhD in Germany on a subtropical forest in China. With the savings she accumulated after five years of work in Bavaria, she packed her bags and took a train from her home in Leipzig to Spain, where her adventure began. It was one of the many trains she would take during this time.

During this odyssey, she was not alone. Many of her friends planned their holidays to visit María in one of the fifty countries she visited. "My mother came to see me in China, where we spent a few days in a hotel," explains the Alicante native, emphasising the comfort of such accommodation, as she had previously relied on hostels and accommodations through the crowdsurfing platform.

In one of those hostels, she met a group of people with whom she shared the most memorable experience of this journey. "Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are separated by a 20-kilometre stretch of no man's land. We rented a car to move around the area, but we had to leave it at the border. Our plan was to hitchhike across this border region, but we didn't find any cars along the way, so we walked the 20 kilometres with all our belongings. After the walk, I almost lost half a toe to frostbite."

María's journey began in the Canary Islands, from where she crossed the Atlantic by sailboat with her friend María. They passed through Cape Verde and Brazil, travelled by bus to Argentina, and explored Patagonia together. In Chile, she met Antoine, with whom she travelled through the Carretera Austral, Bolivia, and Peru, where they parted ways.

In Colombia, she reunited with friends and stayed there until she could vote in the Spanish elections. She then crossed Central America and Mexico by bus to take a cruise from San Francisco that took her through Hawaii, Tahiti, and Samoa. In New Zealand, with another friend, she took a new cruise to Australia, where she experienced a cyclone and worked in a café in Townsville before setting sail for Indonesia on the sailboat Taloa.

For three months, she explored remote islands, pearl farms, and jungles until she reached Singapore. From there, she travelled through Malaysia, Hong Kong, and China, where she reunited with her mother. Together, they travelled the country by train before María continued alone to Mongolia, where she lived with nomadic shepherds and crossed into Russia on the Trans-Siberian Railway. In Central Asia, she travelled with her friend Jaime through Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, walking over 20 km through the snow to cross a border.

She continued through Georgia, Armenia, Turkey, Iran, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq, where she witnessed the impact of war firsthand. Back in Europe, she reunited with several travel companions in Greece and travelled through the Balkans and Italy by van. María's travel story, as told by herself, can be heard this Saturday via streaming on the IATI Great Journeys Conference website.