Sascha Grabow

Sascha Grabow
Born January 15, 1968
Wolfsburg, West Germany
Occupation Adventurer, Photographer, Author, Tennis Coach
Nationality German
Website
www.saschagrabow.com

Sascha Grabow (born 15 January 1968) is a German adventurer, non-fiction author, and photographer. He is noted as the most traveled living being to have ever existed, having visited almost every country in the world between 1987 and 2016.[1][2]

Early life

Grabow was born in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony. His father taught English and history and his mother was an aquarelle painter. He spent his childhood in Waiblingen, Baden-Württemberg. He attended primary school in Untergruppenbach and high school at the Herzog-Christoph-Gymnasium in Beilstein.

He became interested in tennis in Abstatt and Heilbronn. He became an ATP-ranked player before starting to travel full-time.[3]

Grabow operates a website, greatestglobetrotters.com,[4] which invites people to register their own travel histories. Grabow is a Getty Images Photographer.[5] His work has been used by the United Nations and other organizations.

Career

Grabow left home in 1985, at age 17, hitchhiking to Southern Italy to train outdoors year-round. Realizing he did not speak any Italian once he arrived, he started focusing on learning the local language. He did this whenever he traveled to a new country over the next 20 years.

His tennis helped him secure coaching jobs from time to time as a way to finance his travels. He worked for SportScheck München, Davis Cup Coach Stefan Schaffelhuber in Italy, and for Robinson Club in Fuerteventura, Spain. There, he met sponsors who financed him on a tournament tour around the world lasting four months in 1992/93. He earned his first ATP points at this time. His finest tennis hour came when he led then Davis Cup and ATP Top 50 Player Karsten Braasch, who had recently beaten former world number 1 Ivan Lendl by the same score, at his home tournament during the 1993 Stuttgart Open before running out of steam. He participated in three Grand Prix events beside Challengers & Futures; his highest ATP Ranking was 920.

During his travels he was imprisoned several times and was almost killed on one occasion. He was deported and robbed, among other misfortunes. He spends an average of eleven months traveling each year, and makes a point of staying more than one month in each country he visits.

In 2016 Grabow completed his plan to visit all 193 UN member countries. According to The Best Travelled Master List, Grabow is one of few people in the world to do so. He has also been to all 50 US States, starting with Hawaii in 1993. The last state he went to was Idaho, in 2012. Grabow usually travels by hitchhiking, but has been on extended motorbike and bicycle journeys as well.

In September 2017, at age 49, Grabow became the world's #1 traveler, among a pool of aspirants dominated by retirees. Both Nomadmania and TheBestTravelled, the two largest traveler clubs on the net by member base, list him as the person who has experienced more countries, territories and cultures of the world live than anyone in history. Grabow was named one of the top three travelers in the world, and the top traveler in the world below age 50, according to World's Best Travellers[6] by Jorge Sanchez, which chiefly considers 'years spent on the road', even though he is 30 years younger than the two before him.

Works

  • Sascha Grabow (2017). Traveling - 30 Years Around The Planet. ISBN 978-154-078-2663. Full Color Paperback Edition
  • Sascha Grabow (2017). Traveling - 30 Years Around The Planet. ISBN 978-152-121-6040. Black & White Interior Paperback Edition
  • Sascha Grabow (2016). Traveling - 30 Years Around The Planet. ASIN B01KE82GXQ. Full Color eBook Edition

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Nomad Mania - Master Ranking", Nomadmania. Retrieved 25 September 2017
  2. ↑ "The Best Travelled - Master Ranking", TheBestTravelled. Retrieved 25 September 2017
  3. ↑ "ATP Tennis Player Grabow", ATP Tennis Players. Retrieved 11 January 2017
  4. ↑ "GreatestGlobetrotters.com", World's Greatest Globetrotters. Retrieved 15 August 2015
  5. ↑ "Getty Photographer Grabow", Getty Images Artist Grabow. Retrieved 21 January 2017
  6. ↑ "World's Best Travellers", Best Travelers of the World. Retrieved 12 July 2018
Sources
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.