Around the World in 20 Days

By NADYA LABI

In the novel Around the World in Eighty Days, Phileas Fogg employed all manner of transport--steamers, railways, yachts, carriages, trading vessels, sledges and even elephants. But no balloon. It was Hollywood, not Jules Verne, that sent the intrepid Brit off in that aircraft. Trivia, you say? But there was nothing trivial about the real-life fulfillment of what seemed to be quixotic fantasy last week in Northern Africa. In a 180-ft.-high balloon, a silvery dare in the air, two adventurers--Swiss psychiatrist Bertrand Piccard, 41, and British balloon instructor Brian Jones, 51--completed their tour of the world in 20 days. The stakes were different (a purse of $1 million, courtesy of Anheuser-Busch, as opposed to 20,000[pounds] in Verne), but their intent was the same. They sought to prove a point--to themselves and the world.

The Breitling Orbiter 3 crossed the finish line (9.27[degrees] west longitude) over Mauritania last Saturday. Piccard was ecstatic: "I am with the angels and just completely happy," he said over satellite relay. Jones, for his part, said calmly, "I am going to have a cup of tea, like any good Englishman." They had sailed into history. And they decided to sail on a little more. "We do not land. We go to Egypt," Piccard radioed air-traffic control in Senegal. "We are a balloon flying around the world." "I will be tearing their eyes out when I see them," their erstwhile rival Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Atlantic, told TIME. "But apart from that, I think a hug and a bottle of champagne will be appropriate."

Since 1981 there have been nearly 20 attempts to circumnavigate the globe in a balloon. Steve Fossett, a Chicago millionaire who attempted the feat five times, plunged into the Coral Sea after traveling 14,236 miles last August. And on Christmas Day he went down again near the coast of Hawaii, taking along his partners, Per Lindstrand of Sweden and Branson. The U.S. Coast Guard fished them out at a cost--to taxpayers--of about $130,000. Setting the elusive record was worth the trouble to Fossett. "I can't tell you how it ranks with the others, like climbing Mount Everest or making the first transatlantic airplane flight," said Fossett. "But it's one of the great explorations."

It's tough for pioneers to make a name for themselves these days. Both poles have been reached, the Atlantic has been crossed and recrossed, and the eagle has landed. So why not do it in a balloon? Well, what can you say about a pastime whose first passengers were, in an experiment by the French Montgolfier brothers in 1783, a duck, a rooster and a sheep? No wonder Piccard has a complex. "The way the public sees it is this," he explained before lift-off. "If we don't leave, we are idiots. If we do leave but don't succeed in our mission, we are incompetent. But if we do succeed, it's because it was easy and anyone could have done it."

But you see, the psychiatrist has a legacy to uphold: his grandfather Auguste was the first to reach the stratosphere in a balloon, and his father Jacques dove to the deepest point of the ocean in a bathyscaphe. "Bertrand believes it is his destiny to fly a balloon around the world," said his rival Andy Elson, as the Orbiter 3 pushed the world record further and further.

Brian Jones was the Mr. Fix-It of the expedition. He was quietly overseeing the construction of the gondola for Cameron Balloons when he was nominated to be a reserve pilot in the Breitling attempt. "Of course, reserves in any activity assume they will always remain reserves," he says. But he found himself, as he puts it, "in the hot seat" when Piccard had a falling out with his first co-pilot, Tony Brown. "He's not an adventurer," says Joanna Jones of her husband. "He's a professional pilot who approaches things in a judged manner." Jones quickly fell into a comfortable rhythm with his copilot. Brian "made me a cup of tea while I was preparing his bed," said Piccard.

As pioneering craft go, the Breitling Orbiter 3 outclasses the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria--and the Spirit of St. Louis, for that matter. It is a high-tech combination of hot air and gas, equipped not only with simple necessities like a bunk, toilet and desks but also with a fax machine and satellite telephones. The journey began on March 1, Piccard's birthday, in the snowcapped mountains of Chateau-d'Oex, Switzerland. Piccard and Jones cruised toward Italy at an altitude of 21,000 ft., crossed over the Mediterranean at night and enjoyed a meal of emu. On a satellite phone, Jones chatted with his wife, who spent most of her time at mission control at Geneva's Cointrin Airport, which was manned around the clock by a meteorologist and an air-traffic controller. Piccard's wife Michele preferred to stay at home with their three daughters.

The pilots headed toward Morocco, over Mauritania and then turned northeast to catch a jet stream blowing toward India. In theory, balloons can't be steered, but pilots improvise by dropping up and down between different altitudes in search of the right wind pattern. Like surfers trying to catch a wave, balloonists try to ride jet streams, high-altitude currents that usually move from west to east. "It's magical what pilots can achieve," says balloonmaker Don Cameron. "In competitions with hot-air balloons, they'll set a target 10 miles away and ask pilots to drop a marker on it, and the pilots will get within a meter of it." The Orbiter 3 crew hit its target on the fourth day of the journey and sped along in a jet stream at 60 m.p.h. They ventured outside the cabin once, when the balloon descended to 10,000 ft., so that Piccard could chip away at ice that had formed on the cables and the capsule. There were few surprises, and the only irritant was a mysterious buzzing in the cabin. On Day 5, Piccard located--and dispatched--its source: a stowaway mosquito.

On March 7 Piccard and Jones heard of a misfortune--and it was good news for their quest. On that day their competitors, the British team of Andy Elson and Colin Prescot, ditched over the Pacific Ocean. After setting an endurance record of 17 days, 18 hrs., 25 min. aloft, the duo, in the Cable & Wireless balloon, was knocked out by what amounted to a one-two punch. First, peeved that Branson's December flight had infringed upon its airspace, China denied entry to his countrymen, forcing them to follow a more convoluted route. And then, while traveling over Thailand, Elson and Prescot were hit by a thunderstorm that shredded their balloon's envelope. They survived, after a harrowing dunking in the Pacific.

Piccard and Jones had better luck with China. On March 10 the Beijing government allowed the Swiss-licensed Breitling access to its skies, so long as the craft stayed south of the 26th parallel. Nevertheless, morale on the Orbiter 3 started to flag soon after, as Piccard and Jones flew over the endless expanse of the Pacific Ocean. Progress toward Hawaii was slow, and they lost contact with mission control for four days. "I realized that the worst desert wasn't made of sand but of water," Piccard said when communications were re-established. Then the balloon popped out of its jet stream over Mexico and drifted in the wrong direction. They were using up precious fuel without making much headway. Even worse, a heater faltered, and temperatures on board plummeted to 46[degrees]F. Both pilots were exhausted, and Piccard had to resort to self-hypnosis to calm himself. But the duo pulled it together in the homestretch. Catching a 100-m.p.h. jet stream over the Atlantic all but assured victory.

At its end, Verne's novel asks of Fogg: "What had he brought back from this long and weary journey? Nothing, say you?" The names Piccard and Jones may not strike the same chords as Columbus or Magellan or Lindbergh or Armstrong. Indeed, last weekend's achievement is literally lighter than air. But Piccard and Jones have won the last world-spanning contest of our era. And now they are history.

--Reported by Kate Noble/London and Helena Bachmann/Geneva

With reporting by Kate Noble/London and Helena Bachmann/Geneva