In 2023, Estelle Ohanian began a round-the-world journey aboard Woody, a 1957 Swiss military truck with a top speed of 50 kmh, on her FBW Project. Her goals for the FBW (For a Better World) Project included:
- slowly travel and venture into the open water while swimming around the world
- conduct 14 humanitarian and volunteer missions in the countries she visited
- write 3 books about her fascinating experiences in the open water and on dryland: Le Tour du Monde à 50 km/h, tome 1: De l’Europe à la find du Monde in French, The Slow Road: 30 mph Around the World: Volume 1: From Europe to the End of the World in English, and La Vuelta al Mundo a 50 km/h in Spanish
Traveling with Woody
As can be expected with a nearly 70-year-old vehicle, Ohanian had to deal with mechanical breakdowns, unexpected setbacks, extreme weather, and numerous moments of asking herself: Why?, Where?, When?, and How?
Her chosen lifestyle was to slow down, choose her own path, and turn her dreams into a lived global journey. Ohanian uses open water swimming as a way to explore and experience the places she travels through and in, from the perspective of the water.
Purpose
Ohanian writes, “What if the road was actually meant to slow you down? In 2023, I left France with a slightly crazy idea: to travel around the world in Woody, a 1957 truck at a maximum speed of 50 km/h. Along the way, fourteen humanitarian and eco-volunteering missions took me to remote villages, deep jungles, scorching deserts, and, more than anything, to the people who are changing the world in their own way.
At that pace, things shift. You start to notice more. You listen differently. You take your time.
There are unexpected moments, challenges, doubts, and quiet stretches where you start looking inward… and then there are the people we meet, the kind that stay with you longer than the places do.
This is an invitation to climb into Woody, to slow down, to look at things a little differently. You’re not just reading. You’re in the passenger seat.
This first volume took me from Europe to Ushuaia, at the end of the world, where the road comes to an end… and the dream quietly keeps going.“
Ohanian uses swimming as a way to explore and experience the places she travels through, seeing the world from the water. Along the expedition she has swum in a branch of the Amazon near Alter do Chão and in the rainwater lagoons of the Lençóis Maranhenses desert in Brazil, the Seven Lakes region of Patagonia, the waters of the Galápagos Islands alongside sea lions, and the brackish, low-salinity sea in Sweden, and more. Her expedition, including her swimming and her marathon swim, has been widely covered in the French regional press.
For more information on For A Better World, visit FBW Project.
© 2026 Daily News of Open Water Swimming
“to educate, enthuse, and entertain all those who venture beyond the shoreline“
World Open Water Swimming Federation, a human-powered project