Guy Tattoos World Map on His Back, Colors Every Country He Visits

By Sumitra on March 3rd, 2014 Category: Pics

You need to have a map at hand when you’re making travel plans. Most people prefer packing one in their backpacks, but this one guy chose to put it some place he can never lose it – his back. Of course, he’d probably have to crane his neck to look at it in the mirror, but at least it isn’t going anywhere, right?

59-year-old Bill Passman is a travel nut. So far, he has been to at least half the countries in the world, and to keep track of every place he visits, he had the world map tattooed on his back, and very time he visits a new country, he has it colored by a tattoo artist. So far 60 different countries are colored on his back, and the rest are waiting to be filled.

Surprisingly, the lawyer from Louisiana only began travelling recently – at age 51, when he got his new passport. His first trip out of the country was to Tanzania and he has never looked back since. In 2010, he quit his job in order to travel full time. That was the year he got the tattoo as well. He travels most of the year, only returning home for about three months. While his adventures have taken him to all the seven continents (yes, even Antarctica), his favorite place is Guatemala.

Photo: Bill Passman

“I got the tattoo as a way to show my passion for travel,” he said. “It’s a permanent reminder of all the amazing places I’ve visited.” Passman is an active blogger too. On his website, he wrote that his inspiration for the tattoo was a girl, Jules, whom he met in Antigua. He noticed her having an outline-of-the-world tattoo on her back. She told him that she planned to put a red dot on the places she has travelled.

Photo: Bill Passman

“She told me that she had gotten the tattoo from Mike at Tattoo Antigua in Antigua, Guatemala. I realized that if I was going to do that it would have to be a tattoo of the entire world including specific countries. I also knew that I would like to color in each of the countries that I have traveled to. I went back to Antigua and got the outline of the world done by Mike and then got the countries colored in by Jake of Natural Mystic Tattoo in Pineville, Louisiana,” he wrote.

Photo: Bill Passman

He also described himself on the blog: “I am a bohemian nomad, someone who acts and lives free of regard for conventional rules and practices, but also one who moves according to the seasons.”