A very interesting guy I met while travelling Europe!

It's difficult to categorise people in order of most to least interesting: you don't want to appear dismissive of someone because they didn't come out with some incredible story or demostrate an incredible ability.

On my trips around South East Asia and Europe I did encounter a bunch of people that I would unlikely have met had I stayed in New Zealand.

One guy in particular did stick out though.. our meeting was brief, just six hours. And even though he's done some incredible stuff in his life, you've probably never heard of him: he's been to nearly every country in the world, by running!

Jamel Bahli
So it was quite a weird little encounter with Jamel. I was going from Paris to Lyon and used a French car sharing website to organise the ride. He collected me in a humble white station wagon and appeared to be a rather typical French man.
He was wearing a beret, dressed in a black and white striped shirt, was smoking and had several loaves of french bread beneat one arm.. His accent was nearly incomprehensible (oh no wait, that's a my French stereotype).

In truth, he had short curly hair, wore glasses and was a rather terrifying driver. His gear changes were clumsy (I suspect he usually drove automatic) and a few times when we were on the highway going 130kmph he was looking at his cellphone and driving with his knees.. I asked him to please concentrate on the road and he said that New Zealand (one of the few countries in the world he hasn't visited) must be a strict place.

It was only about an hour into our six hour drive that we started talking about travel.
Turns out this guy is the most worldy fellow I've ever met. He has travelled to all but about 30 countries on earth. And what's more: he ran across them.
America, Australia, China, Africa.. you pretty much name it and he's been there. Just him, a small backpack and his running shoes.
I asked the very obvious question: "So you're a bit like Forrest Gump?" He sighed - "No, Forrest Gump is not real and in the movie he ran for no reason and for five minutes. I run in real life, I run for a reason."

These days Jamel gives talks to audiences around France and other places about his travels.. A bit of an inspirational speaker type thing.. He also works as a photographer and journalist and spends about 9 days a month in a new country. He had just returned from Egypt where he had photographed the revolution but said it was already difficult to find buyers for the photos.."News moves fast", he said.
He told me that he could still have a lot of time for travel despite his young family because his wife knew that it was part of his life when they met. "Family doesn't have to be a prison", he said.

He spends at least half of every month in his home town in  Northern France with his wife and children.

Although Jamel is now used to being behind the lens of a camera, when I tried to snap a pic of him for posterity, he wouldn't allow it.
He said that people had a perception of him as a runner and it wasn't in keeping with his image to have an imagine of him driving a small car, wearing glasses (heaven forbid!) when people were more used to seeing his figure eloping across a desert or atop the great wall of China..

 Running was initially an answer to Jamel's question of how to escape society (something I can certainly relate to). He continued running because he found it was a great way to discover different countries.

His favourite running surface is tarmac and on his journeys he would usually run next to highways  (he's got free running shoes from Nike for the rest of his life) highways. Although he sometimes runs 120 km in a single day and he spent about 20 years on his treks, he's never been injured.

He said his least favourite country where he travelled was China (because people were very unfriendly to him) and his most favourite place in the whole world was Istanbul.. He awoke a deep craving for me to visit Turkey and it's now at the top of my list for my next trip to Europe in 2013.

Surprisingly this guy isn't very famous but that's because he says he's never really sought fame. He has had an Audience with the last pope and is known in the Ultra Marathon Running scene and in France.

For a guy now in his early fourties he's in incredible shape. We stopped at a supermarket to pick up some snacks (cheese and coffee) and he bounded up and down the aisles. He speaks with passion and was quite inspiring in general. He dropped me off in Lyon and that was that.

I was a bit awestruck afterwards because he's already been to so many places I wanna go and he did it in an original way.  I hope I can find a way of incorporating my travels into my job or even better, making money from travelling.

I did met some other very interesting people on the road, not to leave them out. Jamel just happened to stick out in my mind.

Who is an interesting person you've met while travelling?