Arjun Malaviya stands on a sandbank in Papua New Guinea. He instructed NPR that he is the youngest solo traveler to go to 100 international locations. “I used to be 17 years and 228 days outdated after I reached my one centesimal nation,” he mentioned.
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Arjun Malaviya is an overachiever and a planner. So, when he instructed his dad and mom that he needed to avoid wasting up for a solo hole yr to journey the world, they weren’t all that shocked.
Now, at 19 years outdated, he is received 5 fully full passports and a slew of outstanding life experiences underneath his belt. Malaviya instructed NPR that he is the youngest solo traveler to go to 100 international locations.
“I used to be 17 years and 228 days outdated after I reached my one centesimal nation,” he mentioned, including that he celebrated the milestone in Nadi, Fiji, by visiting the colourful Sri Siva Subramaniya, one of many largest Hindu temples within the Southern Hemisphere. One other superlative: Malaviya mentioned, primarily based on his analysis, he is additionally “the youngest particular person to go to each nation in Oceania.” (NPR has not independently verified these claims.)
Arjun Malaviya having fun with the milky means limestone mud tub within the rock islands of Palau.
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The intrepid teen mentioned he is scorching on the heels of Lexie Alford, who holds the Guinness World File for being the youngest particular person to go to each sovereign nation on the planet. By the age of 18, Alford had solely visited about 70 nations.
Malaviya set out on his expedition on his seventeenth birthday in July 2023. Over 13 months, with occasional journeys again dwelling — Westlake Village in Southern California — he sojourned by a number of the world’s most populated cities and its most distant islands. He hung out in Bali’s rice paddies, sipped tea with a Taliban guard in Afghanistan and bathed underneath the inexperienced skies of the aurora borealis in Norway.
All of the whereas, Malaviya mentioned he had one objective: to fulfill the locals and make a real connection. He most popular visiting small villages somewhat than glitzy locales, eager to see how folks really reside.
“The massive factor that I took away is that persons are extra related than completely different,” he mentioned.
Arjun Malaviya befriended a gaggle of Taliban members in Kabul, Afghanistan. “Everybody handled me with a lot kindness,” he instructed NPR.
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“Even when it is in Afghanistan and also you’re sitting down and speaking to a religiously religious Muslim goat herder, you will see that he nonetheless has lots of the identical wishes and life that somebody right here might need; A greater life for his youngsters, a constant job, and training for his youngsters, and the flexibility to discover inside his personal nation and simply take holidays.”
Build up confidence and life abilities, from Seoul to Kabul
Malaviya launched his grand tour in Seoul, South Korea: From all he’d learn, the nation can be a secure and tourist-friendly launching pad with excellent public transportation programs. He moved on to different Asian international locations together with Japan, Myanmar and India.
His lodgings included a mixture of Airbnbs, hostels, accommodations and household associates’ houses. He traveled mild, outfitted with an iPhone, a small health club bag and a standard-sized backpack. And although Malaviya is fluent in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and has studied Japanese, Malaviya mentioned Google Translate proved to be certainly one of his most dear instruments. Utilizing the app on his cellphone, he mentioned he was capable of interact in deep conversations with strangers. It particularly got here in helpful in locations like Afghanistan, Venezuela and Syria, the place folks opened as much as him about what on a regular basis life regarded like underneath authoritarian regimes.
He mentioned they impressed upon him the concept that, whereas information protection could dwell on the financial and humanitarian hardships of a spot, there’s nonetheless lots of magnificence and cultural richness that may be taken in by guests if they provide it an opportunity.
Arjun Malaviya instructed NPR he spent hours talking about what it was like residing underneath Bashar al-Assad’s ruling authorities, with locals in Damascus, Syria.
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“As a vacationer if you go to lots of these locations you do not really feel all the negatives that the federal government imposes on the individuals who reside there,” he mentioned. ” So, simply because we are saying {that a} authorities is dangerous, that does not must dissuade you from visiting that nation as a vacationer.”
In Damascus, Syria, which was nonetheless underneath Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship when Malaviya visited, he mentioned he met with an impassioned bed-and-breakfast proprietor who spoke overtly about his want for Assad to be overthrown so extra folks like him may take within the wonders of his nation.
Different highlights included a free Madonna live performance on the seashores of Rio de Janeiro, the place Malaviya mentioned he fortunately misplaced himself amid the enormous crowd of fans who showed up. On the Korean peninsula, he fulfilled “a lifelong dream” of visiting the DMZ, the demilitarized zone that separates South Korea from North Korea. He additionally received to wash within the milky mud baths in Palau, an island in Micronesia.
Arjun Malaviya visited a number of of the preferred sights throughout his cease in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, together with Christ the Redeemer.
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The islands of Oceania as entire, Malaviya mentioned, contained a number of the most breathtaking and pristine landscapes he is ever seen. Nevertheless, he mentioned his journey to the island nation of Nauru — the third-smallest nation on the planet and one of many least-visited international locations on Earth – was barely miserable. “It was unhappy for me to see how a lot the nation is struggling,” he mentioned, referring to the small republic’s reliance on foreign aid to maintain its economic system.
Arjun Malaviya travelled to Odessa, Ukraine in November 2023. He instructed NPR the town was attacked by Russian bombs shortly after arriving, forcing him to run to in a close-by bomb shelter.
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Essentially the most harrowing cease got here in November 2023 because the struggle between Ukraine and Russia raged.
“I used to be in Moldova and somebody instructed me Odessa was simply 4 hours away. I assumed that will make an ideal day journey since, from what I would learn, many of the preventing was going down in Kyiv and Lviv. However I get there and we begin getting bombarded with [Russian] bombs,” he mentioned.
He scrambled to seek out cowl in a close-by bomb shelter earlier than fleeing again to Moldova, however not earlier than taking a selfie.
The ultimate area he toured was the Center East, together with Iraq and Iran, “which I truly cherished,” he mentioned. Malaviya defined he’d waited to go to this a part of the world “as a result of I felt prefer it was a construct up the place I had to make use of all my abilities that I had gained within the first ten months of journey.”
Arjun Malaviya pictured with an Iraqi guard. Iraq was one of many final international locations visited by Malaviya throughout his 13-month lengthy odyssey.
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The other of helicopter parenting
So how does a teen persuade his dad and mom to embark on such a frightening journey? Analysis – heaps and many analysis, Malaviya’s mom, Anita Venkataraman, instructed NPR.
Arjun Malaviya instructed NPR he was blown away by the great thing about the Bolivia’s salt flats. “The moisture on the floor of the salt flats causes a phenomenal reflection to point out,” he defined.
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“When he began chatting with us about what he deliberate to do and the way we deliberate to execute it, it grew to become fairly clear that he had put extra thought into it than the informal tidbits we had heard from him,” Venkataraman recalled.
The pitch was simple: He’d begin off in simply navigated counties the place communication dwelling can be most dependable. He’d examine in each two days. He would not keep out previous 10 p.m. if he may assist it. And he’d finance your complete journey on his personal.
Malaviya was simply 15 years outdated when he initially proposed the concept in 2022, And regardless of some trepidation, each of his dad and mom agreed to the odyssey inside a few weeks. It took him two years of working a sequence of strange jobs — tennis classes, a minimum-wage administrative assistant job and dealing at his dad and mom’ software program firm — to boost the funds to set off on his journey, he mentioned.
“That was one of many issues I made clear to my dad and mom; That I needed to pay for your complete factor alone. I did not wish to ask them for any cash,” he mentioned. (All in all, Malaviya mentioned he spent $22,500 on your complete voyage.)
Venkataraman mentioned the isolation of the COVID pandemic is what actually ignited her son’s wanderlust. In her view, Malaviya has all the time been an intuitively curious and impartial one that craved social interplay. Being cooped up for a lot of his adolescence was irritating for him, she mentioned. However he took benefit of the state of affairs, graduating a yr early from highschool in 2023 and getting a two-year head begin on college by finishing all of his normal training coursework at a local people faculty.
Arjun Malaviya, pictured inside Saddam Hussein’s Babylon Palace in Iraq.
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“I believe as dad and mom, lots of instances we do not need our youngsters to even fail. We simply need them to achieve success,” she mentioned. “However I do assume there’s loads that children study from failing at issues. Doing issues, taking an opportunity after which failing, however then choosing themselves up and going for it.”
Venkataraman described her son as accountable and educated concerning the varied visa and documentation necessities for various international locations. That is why it was straightforward for her to be his “cheerleader, providing “help with a bit little bit of warning.”
That help didn’t waiver, even when Malaviya referred to as to inform his dad and mom that he’d been “kind of kidnapped” in Myanmar. A stranger had supplied to point out the boy across the city and supplied him a home-cooked meal, however then refused to let him go away his home till Malaviya forked over $100.
“It was scary after all,” his mom mentioned, however she and Malaviya put the incident in a extra complete context. “I perceive that there are folks with so little, that they resort to issues that maybe if that they had some, they would not, usually resort to,” she mentioned. Plus, she added, the expertise made Malaviya much more cautious and conscious of his environment.
Arjun Malaviya on a ship experience with native youngsters in Papua New Guinea.
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Encouraging different younger folks to take up journey
Malaviya is at present a junior at College of California in Santa Barbara, finding out engineering. Though he is not touring in the mean time, he is nonetheless dedicated to assembly folks from backgrounds completely different from his personal— on and off campus. And he is planning future journeys to squeeze in throughout holidays. He is now as much as 118 international locations.
He hopes to be an inspiration to different curious younger individuals who could also be apprehensive or fearful about being on their very own in a brand new place the place they could not communicate the language. Malaviya has a mantra for that: “Get snug with being uncomfortable.”
