At the lakes of Ounianga, Chad
Travel Author | Extreme Traveler | Photographer | Senior Purser
Boris Kester is one of approximately 500 people in the world to have visited all 193 UN-recognized countries — a journey spanning more than 35 years across every continent, conflict zone, and remote corner of the planet. A Political Scientist, Senior Purser on intercontinental flights, travel author, and photographer based in Leiden, the Netherlands.
Boris Kester was five months old when his parents took him on his first international trip — a 50-hour train journey to Greece. That restlessness never left him. Growing up in a household filled with visitors from around the world, he discovered early that the planet was far larger, richer, and more interesting than any single corner of it could suggest.
After nine Interrail tours of Europe, stints as a computer consultant in Africa and a student of Spanish in Spain, he traded office life for a University degree in Political Science, and then a career in aviation. For over 33 years he has worked as a Senior Purser on intercontinental flights — and every arrival has been the starting point for a new exploration. Each holiday, each layover, each gap between flights became an opportunity to push further.
On June 3, 2017, Boris crossed into Ireland — his 193rd and final UN-recognized country — completing a lifelong goal shared by fewer than 400 people on Earth. He is consistently ranked among the world's most traveled people by NomadMania.
Boris began writing his travel experiences long before publishing was on the horizon — first as personal diaries, then as the stories that grew into traveladventures.org, one of the world's largest personal travel archives with over 2,200 stories and 29,000 photographs. The pandemic finally gave him the uninterrupted time to shape decades of field notes into a book.
His debut, The Long Road to Cullaville, was published in Dutch and English and won the 2023 NomadMania Best Travel Book Award. Sixteen stories from sixteen countries — Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, Nauru, Congo and more — told with honesty, dark humour, and a deep respect for the places and people encountered along the way.
His second book, Zwerfhart (Dutch, 2025) / Wanderheart (English, 2026), is the book where the journey inward begins. While the first book asked what the world looks like from the edges, the second asks what all those years of moving have done to a person — and what it means to finally stay.
Boris has been shooting since the early 1990s, building an archive that now spans all 193 countries and more than 29,000 published images. His photography runs alongside his writing as a parallel document of the same journeys — the same eye for the ordinary and the overlooked that shapes his prose shapes his framing, too.
His work has appeared in Condé Nast Traveller Italia, National Geographic Traveler, Happinez, and KLM Holland Herald, among others. All images on traveladventures.org are his own. He currently shoots with a Canon R6.
Available for podcast interviews, print & online features, speaking engagements, book readings, and expert commentary on extreme travel, aviation, and sustainable tourism. Fluent in English, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, German, and French.
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