The Global Scavenger Hunt is an annual international travel adventure competition in which teams of two people travel around the world in competition with other teams to win The World’s Greatest Travelers title and trophy.
History
The first event was scheduled for 2001 but postponed due to the events of 9/11. The inaugural event took place in the spring of 2002. A spring 2003 event was cancelled due to the SARS epidemic and the onset of the Iraq War. The event has been held annually since 2008. The Global Scavenger Hunt originally called GreatEscape, was created in 1999 and launched in 2000. Inspired by his 1989 participation in an around-the-world race called the HumanRace, Chalmers, and his travel companion, Andy J. Valvur, won the one-off event collecting the $20,000 first place prize money in 17-days. Chalmers later wrote a book chronicling their exploits entitled A Blind Date with the World in 2000 and was later dubbed the "world's greatest traveler" in National Geographic Traveler magazine.
The event
The Global Scavenger Hunt is a series of rallies around the world. Competitors participating in attempt to complete a series of culturally-oriented scavenges from a scavenger hunt book created for each leg of the rally-like event. Scavenges are assigned points based on completion difficulty. During each event, competitors travel to and within at least ten countries, across four continents during each event, but never know in advance which countries they are going to be visiting. The event is designed to test the participants collective 'travel IQ' requiring them to overcome language and communications barriers, cultural nuances, logistics, jet lag, team dynamics and 23-days of traveling across 24 time zones through ten countries. Teams are also prohibited from using any technology to assist them and are limited to using only local modes of public transportation as they attempt to complete the scavenges in the goal of fostering the "trusting of strangers in strange lands." The scavenges, based on a risk-reward points system, include food scavenges, participatory site-doing scavenges, karma-building scavenges, assigned urban, rural and nature-oriented photo safaris, playing Bartender Roulette, polling locals on issues of the day, performing blind taste tests, figuring out how to crash major cultural happenings. Each leg is tallied and the eventual winners of the event are crowned The World's Greatest Travelers and given that title for that year. The event is considered to be the annual "world travel championship" and called the "Super Bowl of travel adventure competitions". Winning teams earn the right to defend their The World's Greatest Travelers title in the next event with all entry fees waived. The event, is both open to all international travel adventure competitors, and has no set course as it is changed each year. As of 2019, the annual around the world travel adventure event has visited over 85 countries across 6 continents.
