By Leow Ju-Len

FOR NIGH UNTO 20 years, Gunther Holtorf has explored pretty much every corner of the world, not as you or I might have done it, but from behind the wheel of ‘Otto’, his faithful 1988 Mercedes-Benz 300GD. That’s some 686,000km and counting - about 200,000km of it off-road, by his reckoning.

The intrepid traveler passed through here recently as part of a Southeast Asian tour that took him through Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and then Cambodia, skirting the Burmese and Chinese borders along the way. Otto will then be shipped to Taiwan and then Japan, after which the trusty Merc heads overland back to Europe along the trans-Siberian railway.

Holtorf, looking sprightly for his 72 years, decided to explore the world by road after his career in the aviation business made him curious about what he was missing. “I’ve seen the world from overhead,” he says. “I always said to myself, ‘One day I will be at flight level zero and see what’s down there.’”

So together with his wife Christine, he packed it all in and retired, then did as Nike’s slogan suggested and headed to Africa from his native Germany. “I was very happy and yet, looking back, was very happy having dropped all that to be independent and free and able to this,” he says in perfect English.

Holtorf’s travels, it’s worth mentioning, have been completely self-funded, so there are neither sponsors to please nor corporate messages to spread.

“The intention was very simple, to travel Africa north-south, nothing else,” he says of that first trip 20 years ago. “Somehow… you know, we got our tongues wet, let’s put it that way. So we stayed a little longer, and finally we stayed five years in Africa.” Five years then became 20, and Africa became, well, the rest of the world.

Otto serves as both hotel and restaurant. Holtorf picks up local produce wherever he is, and cooks meals off a gas-fired stove rigged up to the back of the Merc. That might sound a touch unglamorous, but mobility has its benefits. “With this car the advantage is that we could stay in interesting places,” he says. One time, Holtorf decided to spend a week with a pride of lions, and simply followed them around in the safety of Otto.

Naturally, there have been harrowing moments along the way. Holtorf has talked his way out of a confrontation with gun-wielding extortionists in Ethiopia, come face to face with a spotted hyena in the middle of the night, and taken it all in his stride.

So, too, has Otto. “We had an elephant scratching his back against the car,” chuckles Holtorf.

Despite that sort of thing, the old Merc is in remarkably rude health. The 300GD is still running on its original engine, gearbox and transfer cases.

Fittingly, then, Otto is destined to become a museum piece. Once he completes a tour of China next year, Holtorf will make a final journey into Stuttgart, hand Otto over to the Mercedes-Benz museum curators and simply call it a day. “We’ll just close the lid and that will be the end of the tour,” he says casually.

Holtorf says he might write a book about his journey, but I reckon he should open a workshop. Sure, the 300GD is legendary for robustness, but any man who can keep a car running perfectly for that sort of distance would get my business right away.

Words of wisdom

STARTING TO FEEL a bit of wanderlust yourself? You’d do well to heed the advice of a man who’s done it all…

ON IMPROVISING

“We had these lions all around us, and the problem is you can’t open the doors, you can’t even lower the windows. At some point you need to get relief, you know, so you have to do it in the car. We cut open a plastic bottle and used that. You have to find solutions, right?”

HOW TO DEAL WITH GUN NUTS

“We had a gunpoint situation in Northern Ethiopia. In the real dry bush, everybody is running with a Kalashnikov. They saw us, a group of guys with guns. We were packing to leave and they came over. These people, they only want to get money. The important point to avoid is a build up of tension, so you keep smiling.”

WHY MOBILE PHONES ARE A PEST

“This email and Internet situation gives you the obligation to do something. For that reason we don’t carry a cellular phone. We don’t carry a satellite phone. We don’t carry a laptop. We try to take it easy. When there is a chance we phone Europe, or we’ll use an Internet café, just to give a positional report.”

WHY THE INTERNET IS A PEST

“We don’t operate a website or homepage. I always say it doesn’t make sense to tell the world that our house is empty for the time being. To be quite honest, it is a burden to contact or to get into an Internet café every day to keep the world up to date on our progress. Everybody has a different view on it, but our view is that we are not that important that we need to tell the world what we are doing. The important point is to do it.”

ON HOW TO KEEP GOING

“Whatever happens, never happens in front of the workshop. It happens when you’re close to the shit in the bush. It’s like that, you know. We carry about 400, 450 different spare parts on board, so whatever you may need, we have it on board. The biggest parts are a set of shock absorbers. The smallest one may be a small o-ring for the clutch actuator piston, but that may be a lifesaver. We never got stuck.”

ON THE NECESSARY MINDSET

“You must be prepared to forget your civilised life. That’s the most important point. You must be happy even with the very, very basics. It doesn’t work when you try to transfer your civlised life into the wilderness. In the wilderness, you need to live a type of wilderness.”

WHAT TO BRING

“We are down to nuts and bolts, and that is a good philosophy. I know of a number of people who follow the same philosophy, and they don’t have any major difficulties. Those people who travel in luxury, carry their fridge and all the modern electronic equipment… they always have difficulties.”