Aurimas Valujavičius, 28, has made history when he became the first Lithuanian and only the third person in the world to cross the Atlantic in a single rowing boat. Who is he, and how did he make travelling his job?
Valujavičius set off from Spain on December 26 last year and rowed alone across the Atlantic for 120 days to reach the shores of Florida in the United States.
“For me, a journey is an adventure where there is only you. A lonely journey is a test of one’s physical and psychological capabilities, a search for limits. Travelling with friends is a holiday, but going out alone is a real journey,” Valujavičius told LRT.lt last summer when he was still preparing for the Atlantic challenge.
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He spent his childhood in nature by the Kaunas reservoir where he grew up.
“I was a total nature kid who loved all kinds of outdoor survival things. I remember my uncle making me a bow and me running around in the Lithuanian forests pretending to be a young hunter,” he recalled.
“That is where my love for nature and adventures in nature came from. Now, I don’t know what I am – a city or a nature person. Either way, I spend more nights in my tent than in my bed at home. I guess I’m still a child of nature,” he added.
Valujavičius said that as a teenager, he used to switch off his computer every summer. Even his grandparents had a hard time understanding this decision.
“Instead of playing on the computer, I spent every day exercising outdoors,” he smiled.
After trying many sports in his childhood, he finally settled on karate. In 2014, Valujavičius became the first Lithuanian to win the title of the European Shotokan Karate Champion. However, by that time he had already made up his mind to retire from professional sport.
“A few months before the competition, I told myself that no matter how I would do, it would be my last competition. It just so happened that I became the champion. Everyone said that I could go further and teach others, but I decided that I needed to move on to another stage,” Valujavičius told LRT RADIO, adding that karate taught him the discipline needed in both sport and life.
The young man started a new chapter in 2015 when he decided to cycle from Lithuania to Norway to visit a friend. The journey took him 19 days.
“I was a student, so I didn't have a lot of money. But I wanted a challenge, so I thought, why not test myself and cycle to Norway?” he recalled his first major journey.
Valujavičius is also a qualified architect, but his diploma is just sitting in a drawer, he says: “I enjoyed my studies, but I only worked for a few months as an architect. I simply wanted to do something closer to my heart.”
He now has over 200,000 followers on Instagram but says he does not want to treat it as a business.
"People see and feel very quickly if you are in it for the money. Even though travel is now my main source of income, the passion isn’t gone,” he shared.
“After my first trip, I said that I was going to make a living from creating content on YouTube. It took me four years to achieve this. What matters is whether you are determined to go all the way, and I always go all the way,” the traveller added.
Valujavičius has completed many challenging journeys – he cycled around Scandinavia, Namibia, and Indonesia, crossed the Nemunas and Danube rivers in a kayak, and climbed 16 of the world’s most active volcanoes.
According to the man, he is not planning to rest even after his historic journey across the Atlantic: “I already know where I will be travelling for the next five years. This was definitely not my last journey.”
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