The title of both his film and his first book, La Terre n'est qu'un seul pays (literally: "The Earth is but one country", published in English as One People, One Planet), is the conclusion to which his first journey around the world brought him, a journey which lasted 18 years before he returned home (1955 to 1973), and during which he hitchhiked 400000 kilometers , hitchhiking through 135 countries on every continent.