17 things I learned hitchhiking around the world: From the emotional confessions of lorry drivers to the dark secrets of the Sicilian Mafia
In the era of Uber, cheap flights and other easily accessible modern luxuries, hitchhiking has become something of a lost art.
But one man has been flying the flag for the dying practice for 13 years, thumbing it across more than 90 countries to date – fuelled by an enduring faith in the gospel of hospitality which he believes exists in every corner of the world.
Juan Villarino left his home country of Argentina in around 2004 to work and study in Belfast. But just one year in, he decided he’d rather be on the road than at university. So the former student of psychology embarked on the first leg of his hitchhiking adventures, travelling to the Middle East, through Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan.
“I hitched my first ever ride in 1998 and it gradually became my strategy as a writer for exploring any given society. A way to take the pulse of its social tissue and interact with a random sample of its inhabitants," the travel writer and modern-day nomad told Telegraph Travel.
“I do not travel to tick places off a bucket list or to save money. I would still hitchhike in places like India, where I could easily travel 400 miles with just a fiver. But I hitchhike around the world to document hospitality and everyday life in the most remote regions,” he said.
So 2,350 rides and nearly 100,000 miles later, what are some of the greatest lessons he has learned from the side of the road?
1. Syrians are the friendliest people in the world
“In places like Iraq or Syria I wouldn’t wait longer than anywhere between seven and 10 minutes before hitching a ride, which was a revelation to me as I expected those countries to be more suspicious of Westerners because of the ongoing tensions,” Mr Villarino recalls.
“Instead, in Syria people would give me a ride – even on motorcycles that were already full with two people on. Once in a village near Aleppo, two locals had argued over who had seen me first and had the right to put me up. Street vendors would run behind me mumbling phrases in Arabic and present me with an orange, attempting to say something to me in the very little English they knew: ‘Welcome to Syria’.
“One Ismaili family (a liberal sect of Islam) insisted that I was already part of their family only after having shared one lunch with them, even though they would never see me again.”
2 . And Tibetans?...not so much
“My longest wait ever was 13 hours 45 minutes (excluding sleep time) in Western Tibet, along road 216 – one of the most isolated roads on Earth. I waited an entire afternoon, went to bed and tried again the next morning. I slept in a nearby guesthouse for which I paid the equivalent of two pounds.
“In terms of my clothes, I am indeed prepared for all weather conditions, but my coldest wait was Patagonia – minus 10°C.”
At a glance | Average wait times for hitching a ride around the world
3. It’s possible to bag a ride in Taliban territory
“Back around 2005, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were in the headlines, so I decided to go there by thumb to see in my own terms how ‘evil’ the locals of the so-called ‘Axis of Evil’ were. This formed the premise of my first book.”
Just before reaching the Afghan capital of Kabul, he faced a hairy moment while catching a ride with the police.
“I was told I had chosen to travel through a valley under attack by the Taliban that week. A few days ago a police jeep had been blown away with a rocket propelled grenade. The police were happy to give me a lift to Kabul, but warned they were the target. I decided to get in the jeep and we went across the valley, stopping for one last picnic and a prayer before reaching the Hajigak Pass, and we all crossed our fingers. I was no longer merely a passenger, I had to stay alert. Everybody in the car was firmly holding an AK47 gun and we made it to Kabul safely in the end.”
“Was there ever anyone in Afghanistan more exposed than me – alone, walking by the roadside for a month with no guns, no bodyguards, no vehicle, no credit cards and barely able to speak the local language? Probably not.
“But if I could traverse these countries without suffering any harm, I felt it would cast doubt on the assumption that the people there were just bewildered men wearing turbans, ready to burn American flags and preach to you with the Koran in one hand and an AK47 in the other.”
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4. It’s all in the eyes
Securing a ride is a whole body experience, and when it comes down to it, it's all about eye contact. “When you have to traverse tremendous distances, you need to do more than just stick your thumb out,” he said.
It's the moment that you manage to look the driver directly in the eye as the car approaches that will give you a hint of the likelihood of them stopping, he explains.
“When a car doesn’t stop, I always have a gut feeling it will. So I turn around and keep looking at the car even as it’s passed. The driver’s almost always still thinking about it and probably looking at me through the rear view mirror. And a decent percentage of the time, they stop.”
5. Drivers take three seconds to decide whether they’ll stop
...according to several studies, Mr Villarino claims. And this decision is influenced by the non-verbal communication between the driver and the hitchhiker.
“There are a lot of things you can do to let your driver know you are not a threat: dress tidy, avoid wearing sunglasses and make eye contact. Hold up a sign describing the kind of trip you are doing and where you’re heading, like ‘Touring Scotland, from Argentina’ ”, he suggests.
“Basically, your entire body is involved: you don’t stop cars with your thumb. You stop them with your smile.”
6. Two are better than one
Back in 2010, Mr Villarino met fellow Argentinian (and now romantic partner) Laura Lazzarino who contacted him after coming across his book. They were brought together by their shared wanderlust.
“After emailing each other for four months, we met in Northern Argentina and decided right away we wanted to travel together. I completed my South American journey with her.”
“Everything made sense. Not only was she disenchanted by a nine-to-five office life, but she had a huge wanderlust, like me, so it felt like the stars aligned us together.”
While the couple often break off (with Mr Villarino hitchhiking alone) before coming together at a different leg of the journey, the times they’re together make hitching a ride a lot easier.
“A couple subliminally makes a more trustworthy impression than a man alone,” he notes.
But travelling as a couple also allowed them to have a more enriched “cross-gender perspective of the people we meet along the way” and “piece together portraits of everyday life worldwide.”
“In the Nubian villages along the Sudanese stretch of the Nile, every night we were hosted by local families. I stayed with the men of the family while Laura would spend time in the women’s area. They were so curious about our culture, asking questions that were as personal as you can imagine, such as about how she managed not to have a least three kids by the age of 30,” he recalls.
7. Strangers love sharing their darkest secrets
“I call it the ‘taxi cab effect’. People find it easier to confess things to someone they will never see again. I have had many drivers confessing they were homosexual or that they had just committed adultery.
“Once in Colombia a truck driver invited us to his home where we had lunch, and several hours later, he invited us again to his other home, for dinner – he had two families and told me not so say anything to his wife.
“A truck driver in Spain started crying when we left after a long two-day ride with him. During the journey, he confessed he had never been able to adjust back into society after serving in the Foreign Legion. Another time, a woman who just got divorced a day earlier was crying over the wheel when she stopped the car for me.
“In Italy, somewhere in Salento, a 40-year-old driver and owner of a restaurant offered us lodging. His uncle was a chef and prepared a delicious dinner, accompanied by opera music on a terrace. We sat drinking wine and he confessed he had been in jail for trafficking cocaine from Naples to Milan. He said he had joined the Cosa Nostra [the Sicilian Mafia] and done ‘bad things’, but he was a new man now and wanted to get rid of that past. He said he wanted to give me something from his past that he needed to let go – it was a fisherman’s knife. I didn’t dare ask him what he had done with it, but I felt I couldn’t reject the souvenir from this highly emotionally-disturbed man.”
8. Hitchhiking will make you a ‘people person’
...which is about developing empathy, he explains. “While hitchhiking around the world I have received help and interacted with locals beyond any gender, nationality or ethnic barrier. Mankind has a lot to learn from its amazing capacity to live together.”
“You can’t be afraid of people. Hitchhiking forces you to mix with different people and to challenge your views against theirs.”
His drivers have been: “European, Latin American, Chinese, African, Maori, vegan, Muslim, Catholic, Protestant, Zoroastrian, Menonite, Buddhist monks, heterosexual, transexual, polygamous, teachers, architects, opera singers, pet hairdressers, robot designers, fashion designers, football players, millionaires with palaces and helicopters, and farmers with a pleiad of children and debts.”
9. There is great beauty in uncertainty
“I love uncertainty – the thrill of guessing which dot on the map I will rest in each night. I’ve gotten lifts in Porsches and donkey-drawn carts and never had to make a hotel booking. I’ve always managed to make friends among locals, sleeping everywhere from monasteries and castles to luxury apartments and farms.
“I have camped in the gardens of Versailles and shared the carpet of a Bedouin tent in the Syrian desert. In subways and parliaments I have shared meals and ideas with beggars and vice presidents alike. I was invited to weddings in Transylvania and ayahuasca ceremonies in the Amazon rainforest. I have laughed with hashish smugglers and street vendors.”
Juan Villarino's hitchhiking trail around the world
10. There’s no place like Antarctica
...in terms of incredible landscapes. “Here your existence become a fragile anomaly in a glacial world surrounded by ever-cracking walls of ice, no scents, no sounds or traces of human activity, apart from random research facilities", Mr Villarino explains.
He and his partner spent 10 days in Antarctica hitching a ride on board a cruise ship. Departing Ushuaia (the closest city to Antarctica), they crossed the Drake Passage, where the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Antarctic oceans meet.
“We proceeded to the Antarctic Peninsula, where our ship drifted in the mirror-like frozen waters, visiting several scientific research bases such as Almirante Brown (Argentina), Port Lockroy (UK) and Vernadsky (Ukraine) as well as abandoned whaling stations in the South Shetland Islands. We also passed by some stunning settings such as Le Maire Strait and Paradise Bay.
“Other scenic landscapes we came across included the Tibetan plateau, where I spent one month hitchhiking, boarding trucks full of Lhasa-bound pilgrims and sleeping in monasteries, and the Tanzanian coastline – a brilliant strip of powdery beaches hundreds of kilometres long,” he decsribed.
11. Italy has the most exquisite food in the world
“Travelling through the rural areas of Europe, I have been offered the best food, from French cheeses in France to Italy – my God, Italy. Sitting on the roadside in Tuscany with a litre of Chianti offered by a driver and a piece of pecorino cheese bought at a local market, that was next to heaven,” he recalls.
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12. Albanians love a morning booze up
“I fell in love with Albania and Romania. In Albania, we were received as honorary guests by farmers who would bring a tray of Turkish coffee and a local spirit drink to toast with, even in the mornings. It felt like the collapse of communism had allowed the inhabitants of a country formerly so isolated to relate freely with strangers passing through,” he said.
13. Romanians are incredibly generous
In the Maramures region of northern Romania, Mr Villarino recalls getting a lift by a bus full of locals attending a wedding, which they invited him to join. “The three-day celebration saw the groom parading around the bride with a procession of violins and accordions. In Romania drivers would go as far as offering me money, which I’d reject explaining that I’m hitchhiking to meet people, not for the lack of economic resources.”
14. Egyptians are very curious
“In Egypt, a shepherd once asked me if there were stars in the skies of Argentina, thinking they only existed in Egypt. They had heard Syrians had them as well. Another Bedouin there wanted to know if there was rain and Arabs in Argentina.”
15. Humans are intrinsically good
“Hitchhiking became the cornerstone of my broader premise that human beings are intrinsically good, regardless of their cultural background. For me, hitchhiking is much less a means of transportation, and much more a way to shed light on the potential of this intrinsic, neverending, cross-cultural kindness.”
16. The answer to world peace?
“Being on the road I learned that if people would treat their neighbours as they treat strangers, there would be world peace. Realizing how hospitable we can be towards strangers from a different culture on a one-to-one basis should shed light on how we can develop harmony and empathy among the many conflicting communities on our planet.”
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17. Life begins at 40
“I know they say the era of explorers is long gone, but I disagree. While there is no island left to chart in the globe, and satellites can spot a rabbit in a field from thousands of miles away, there seems to still be a point for a traveller to go out and explore the unsung depths of human kindness.
“I have just turned 40, but I feel this is only the beginning.”
Juan Villarino is the author of Hitchhiking in the Axis of Evil - by thumb in Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. For more information about his work and travels, see www.acrobatadelcamino.com.