Walk into Rodney Ritchie's Hanford home and it's clear that he's done some traveling -- but you'd never guess to what extent.

He is more than likely the most well-traveled man in Kings County and has been to 240 countries and territories (some more than once) and has a story to tell about each.

Not only has the 84-year-old circled the globe twice, he can recite tidbits about the culture and geography of every area as if he took each trip yesterday.

"Well there's lots of stories when you live long enough and go enough places," Ritchie said.

Now his home is filled with the rugs, paintings, sculptures and furniture that he's brought or sent back from his travels and as he walks through his home it's like a journey back to the foreign countries where he purchased them.

First he'll point out a painting of his favorite mountain, Mt. Kangchenjunga, the third highest peak in the world that he's seen on several trips to Darjeeling in West Bengal.

Next Ritchie will tell you that the patterned rug you're walking on in his parlor was purchased during a trip to Kashmir, India in 1951 and the painting on the wall of the Taj Mahal is "the most beautiful building in the world" -- and he would know.

His mahogany dining room table is covered with slides in individual boxes that are labeled with information on where they are from -- Antigua, Jamaica and England to name a few.

The slides are out because Ritchie is in the process of printing and organizing all of his photographs into albums so he can add them to the closet-full of albums that he already has. He also has shelves full of videos from his travels and he said he will watch them when he can no longer travel.

"If I live long enough I know that I'm gonna be in a (wheelchair) so any place I want to go I can watch the disc or look at the books with all the photographs," Ritchie said.

As he walks upstairs he'll say his study is his favorite room because a rug that covers the floor is Fraser plaid, which is the tartan that represents his Scottish heritage.

"When I come in here I can hear bagpipes play," Ritchie said.

Two of the walls are lined with books about different countries, including India, where he lived for six years when he worked as a sales executive for an oil company in Calcutta.

"I have marched to the beat of a different drummer," Ritchie said.

Ritchie grew up in Hanford and after graduating from Hanford Joint Union High School he joined the United States Army Air Corps, which took him on his first trip abroad to Japan.

He was hit by a train while he was in Japan and it took him three years to recover from the injuries he sustained.

Once he recovered he returned to Hanford and attended the College of Sequoias before transferring to University of California, Santa Barbara and acquiring his degree in business administration in 1951.

After graduating he accepted the job in India where he stayed for six years until returning home after his contract was up when he was 35.

He got married soon after in 1962 to his late wife, Lucille. She died in 1982 but they raised four children together and he now has 10 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.

Ritchie tried a few careers before settling on real estate, which he's worked in for more than 50 years. He still has rental properties that have provided him with enough income to continue his travels.

The last trip he took was to the Pacific Islands on a cruise a few years ago with his friend, Gloria Baldrick, who said she enjoys traveling with Ritchie."He's a lot of fun and he doesn't know what a stranger is," Baldrick said.

When they were at the island of Rabaul they saw a volcano erupt right next to the ship before continuing on to Guam.

Ritchie said his favorite trip was a journey he took in 1986 along the Silk Road which began in Istanbul, Turkey and snaked through Armenia, Georgia, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan before ending in Western China.

There are a few places he hasn't been that he would like to go including Cyprus, Albania and Cuba.

"That's the only place in the Western Hemisphere that I haven't been to is Cuba," Ritchia said. "The only place in Europe that I haven't been to are two islands."

This reporter can be reached at 583-2427.

(June 15, 2009)