Photographer Kien Lam traveled to 17 countries in 343 days — and documented his entire journey.
He took over 6,000 gorgeous photographs, which he transformed into an incredible time-lapsed video that captures his journey around the world.
Before he took this nearly year-long trip, he worked as a strategist at a financial firm in San Francisco. Instead of coming up with a detailed itinerary, he had a loose idea of where he wanted to go and a goal to stay in warm weather whenever possible.
"I had a direction I wanted to head and a goal of following the sun to get in as many warm days as possible,"Lam wrote on his website. "I would usually figure out my next destination when I was ready to leave my current one. Sometimes it was a particular dish, sight or story that brought to the next city and sometimes it was the company I kept and our desire to travel together for just a bit longer."
Lam traveled to Istanbul, Turkey:
And to Machu Picchu in Peru:
Of course Paris is a requisite part of any round-the-world trip:
Lam had some close encounters with elephants in Chiang Mai, Thailand: 
And he took some gorgeous shots in Casablanca, Morocco:
The full video is below:
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