NEW YORK - Fifty-two countries, 88 flights, 45 train trips, and 48 boat rides and Sebastian Modak managed to miss only one plane and lose just two items: a pair of sunglasses and swim trunks. Pretty impressive.
Even more impressive? Modak, 31, just wrapped up his gig as “The 52 Places Traveler,” for which he visited all 52 places on The New York Times’ annual “52 Places to Travel” list in the span of a year. That’s a new place every single week.
Modak has been back home in New York City for just a few weeks, but when the 2020 list dropped the day of our interview he told Insider “there are definitely a few places that I wish I could get to. I mean, I might still get to this year.”
Despite having flown 119,772 miles over the last year, Modak has still got the travel bug He has been traveling since he was a child, after all, though on a less intense schedule.
Born in New Jersey to a Colombian mother and Indian father, he moved from one country to the next every few years as a result of his father’s work in telecommunications, and previously told Insider that he always viewed his childhood homes as temporary.
As an adult, he’s lived in Australia, India, Indonesia, and Botswana, to name a few, and has worked as a traveling musician, an MTV producer, and an editor and writer at Condé Nast Traveler, thus making him a natural fit for the role of The New York Times’ 52 Places Traveler.
