The mythic history of man and dog has a new chapter.
After seven years, Tom Turcich and his rescue dog Savannah finished their walk around the world on May 21, 2022. He started from his home in New Jersey on April 2, 2015 and spent the next seven years walking across six continents and 38 countries.
He’s the 10th person to complete a circumnavigation of the globe on foot — while his faithful pup is now the first canine.
Long walks and deep thoughts
Throughout his epic journey, Turcich wrote frequent blog posts about his trek, which he named The World Walk. He brought a poetic and reflective voice to his writing, which often included conversations with the people he met along the way.
In his Instagram post celebrating the end of this journey, Turcich said “the walk was a dream”.
“There are places out there bursting with wonder; shores lapped with crystalline water, deserts where stars burn the sky, jungles where leaves glow blue, and cities which are worlds upon themselves,” he wrote.
However, the prolonged isolation he had to endure to complete his circumnavigation had taken a toll. He was glad to finally put his ambitious goal behind him, he wrote.
“After seven years of traveling, even those wondrous places began to lose their luster. By the end, I longed not for discovery, but familiarity. The homecoming, though overwhelming, was the flood of friends and family I ached for,” he wrote.
Hiker’s best friend?
Turcich didn’t start the trip with a dog. He sensed the absence of an adventure companion sharply.
For the first few months of traveling from New Jersey to Texas, he had trouble sleeping at night. He would hear a noise and wake up feeling anxious. To address that problem, he rescued Savannah — just four months old at the time — from an animal shelter in Austin, Texas.
She watched out for him every night of the trek that followed.
The walk ended with Turcich surrounded by friends and family.
With his journey now behind him, Turcich said that he and Savannah can now transition into the next stage of their life together.
“I have no doubt there will still be traveling, but the next seven years will be far less solitary than the previous seven,” he wrote. “It’s important to leave, but it’s just as important to return. Love, growth and life are all meant to be shared.”
