Most people can only imagine walking out their front door with no money in their pocket with the only goal to learn as much as possible about the world, and not returning home for years. Imagine keeping this up for the next forty years. Meet Jorge Sánchez, a legendary traveler from another era who has lived a life like chapters from a picaresque novel. No spot in the world, no matter how remote would escape him. Walk in any bookstore or library in Spain and you’ll find some of his nearly fifty books about his journeys, inspiring his readers to see the world with their own eyes. Jorge is best described in his own words…
Hola! I’m Jorge Sánchez, born at Hospitalet [near Barcelona, Spain] over half a century ago. Even from a very tender age I would not allow my compulsory schooling to get in the way of my love for real learning. I loved world geography and humanism, which I studied out of pure interest. From a very young age I perceived that true intelligence lies in the free use of one’s intellect. I was expelled from two schools and at the age of thirteen, already being a spirited young man, I decided that no more of my precious time should be stolen by harmful so-called teaching. I left my parental home for the first time and went to El Aaiún in what was then Spanish Sahara.
My parents were despairing about my future. Whenever they asked me, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I would hold my tongue and shrug my shoulders. I didn’t find any occupation appealing — all seemed equally boring. My only desire was to get to know the whole world so I would make use of jobs solely to earn the necessary money for achieving this end. For me to travel was to learn, to learn was to love, to love was to live and to live was to travel. In the evenings I would pursue avidly my father’s encyclopedia, where the final volume held pictures of the brightly colored clothing of all the races of the world and was full of original architecture, exotic plants, fantastic creatures, great waterfalls, immense canyons, unexplored mountains and islands, dense tropical forests and deserts stretching interminably away. I would dream of being able, one day, to look upon them all with my own eyes.
I read ceaselessly books of travel and adventure: books about Sinbad the Sailor, Marco Polo, Cabeza de Vaca, Francisco de Orellana, Benjamin of Tudela, Ibn Batuta, Xuanzang, Fernão Mendes Pinto, Mula Nasrudin. … Thus, one day, I was thrilled with reading these wondrous adventures and engrossed for hours afterwards in that magical and dangerous book that is the atlas. Nothing in the whole world seemed more captivating and romantic than abandon everything in order to live through extraordinary adventures. It was in this impassioned state of mind that I resolved to pursue the Way of the True Traveler.
After two years of hitching about the countries of Western Europe during the hippy years, I was 18 years old, a rebel and a vegetarian. I sensed that something fine and noble was developing between the young people in my circle; the camaraderie between us was legendary. We would strike up conversations without even getting to know each other first, using smatterings of various languages. I chose my company carefully and always managed to attach myself to the most ardent, those who made plans to travel overland to India and Nepal.
Influenced by this, one auspicious day I decided to travel, not just to India and Nepal but through the whole world in seven long trips to find answers to the questions that were plaguing me at that time, getting about by hitching and sleeping in parks, under bridges or even in the open, working in the countries I was passing to finance my most pressing outgoings. [After nearly three years] I appeared unexpectedly at my parents’ home on Christmas Day, penniless and with nothing but the clothes on my back, my clothes in tatters, my pockets empty of material possessions, but in compensation, I would arrive with an extraordinary wealth of knowledge in the humanities and countless wondrous experiences that enriched my inner world.
No one has ever financed my travels, and I’ve never sold out for a quick buck by promoting dubious products on my website. I’ve always funded my trips through hard work, laboring in the countries I visited (as a Spanish language teacher, waiter, cook, dishwasher, fruit picker, gold prospector, etc.), or by working as a tour guide in Spain for Russian, French, English, or Italian tourists. I soon got back to flying to practically impenetrable islands to carry on with learning, aiming at the same time to retain a correct attitude to life – like a monk wandering around his temple, the planet Earth, trying to keep to principles of compassion, gratitude and morality.
On more than one occasion I was imprisoned for crossing prohibited frontiers in Chad, in Paraguay and in Georgia. I have been kidnapped by FARC guerrillas in the Andes. I was convicted to five years imprisonment for so-called spying in Kabul. I found myself with a .38-calibre pistol in my belt in the center of the drug-trafficking part of the Amazon basin in Peru, where I was employed as a gunman by a brothel. I have been bombed by Russian fighters in the valleys of the Hindu Kush and by British and American planes in Baghdad in Saddam Hussein’s time. I have been deported from Somalia, Kazakhstan, Colombia, Sinkiang, South Africa, Afghanistan, Tibet, and from the impenetrable Kingdom of Mustang in the Himalayas.
I recognize that I was lucky most of the times. In several occasions I paid my boldness with jail, for instance in Afghanistan for having reached Kandahar without Afghan visa, or in Batumi, when the Georgian authorities discovered that I had been in Abkhazia and treated me with cruelty.
Sometimes I have been asked: Why that strong desire taking risks, to penetrate in dangerous and even forbidden places? Invariably, my answer is: because they exist. Then I explain about the necessity of man to learn about all that surrounds him, to understand the world. It is something innate; you see a mountain and wish to know what is behind; you want to know who lives beyond the seas, it is our nature.
Jorge Sánchez passed away in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Spain in December 2025. He was 71. Some TCC members will remember his stories from the 2018 international meeting in Barcelona. In the world of crazy travelers, he was always helpful, humble, and wildly enthusiastic about everywhere and everything. He happily sought out and wrote about other extreme travelers. His knowledge of geography was unsurpassed. We met on the famous 2009 Wake Island trip, which he called the “Woodstock of Travelers!” He was always an extraordinarily kind friend to me. Jorge is survived by four children — three daughters and his young son and wife in Blagoveshchensk, Siberia, Russia — all of whom he loved very much. By Pamela Barrus
