Arizona woman says she left home at 14, raised herself with $17.4k. Now, she narrates adventures – from visiting 90+ countries to being chased by a hippo

Jacky Karwáthová, a 26-year-old Arizona resident and solo traveler, has spent the last 11 years proving that her unconventional life choices were anything but a failure. She recently shared her journey on TikTok and YouTube, where the story of how she left home at 14 with 15,000 euros she raised herself has racked up over 7 million views on both platforms.

Jacky explains in her post, “So apparently, if you grow up in Europe so poor you never know where your next meal is coming from, you do what any normal 14-year-old would do. You decide the only way out is to leave the country.” She managed to secure scholarships and donations to move to the United States alone to finish high school, despite the language barrier. 

Once she graduated, she began to travel. She spent time learning Spanish in Mexico, hitchhiked across Eastern Europe, and eventually made it to Australia to work as an au pair. However, she notes that her journey wasn’t always glamorous or easy. 

For Jacky, every journey has come with risk and reward

She stated that when the pandemic hit, she found herself stuck in Ireland after losing her savings because her home country closed its borders. On another trip, she moved to Iceland to work in a remote village, and later headed back to Mexico to hitchhike all the way to Panama. 

“You get your scuba license in Honduras because it’s the cheapest place on Earth to do it and also happens to be the world’s murder capital,” she narrated, as she summarized the various countries she has visited. She tells us that she even volunteered at an orphanage in Peru, traveled through North Africa and the Middle East on a tiny budget, and visited India three times.

Jacky shared some of the physical difficulties she faced, “You sleep in airports, you sleep in cars, you couch surf in over 50 countries. You get malaria, you get bed bugs 12 times. You get your whole backpack stolen, which contains everything you own. You get chased by a hippo.” To keep her dream of traveling alive, when she returned to the United States, she opted to sleep in the truck of a Camry rather than rent an apartment to save money.

While many of her followers are in awe of her lifestyle, others have concerns. User @Herzensbrecher1 on YouTube remarked, “You must have plot armor because traveling by yourself as a young woman, and HITCHHIKING is so risky and dangerous.” Another commenter, @dannykuang9433, noted, “It’s all fun and games until your luck runs out. You’re extremely lucky as a solo woman to have lived this long traveling this way.”

While Jacky’s determination is clearly the driving force behind her 90-plus country count, her ability to travel with limited preparation and funds comes down to a concept known as Passport Privilege. According to Adventure, passport privilege describes the ease of movement available to those with passports that allow visa-free travel or visas-on-arrival to most of the globe. 

According to the Henley Passport Index, this year, the Singaporean passport remains the strongest, providing access to 192 nations visa-free, which isn’t the experience of travelers from the Global South. The U.S. had dropped out of the top 10, but this year is in the 10th position. Travel editor Akanksha Singh wrote in Adventure that the modern passport-visa system is increasingly difficult for citizens of emerging economies like India or most African countries. 

For these travelers, the process involves a mountain of paperwork, including employment letters, tax returns, and officially certified bank statements. Embassies can hold passports for up to a month, and applicants often face in-person interviews that she states can feel like a humiliation ritual. 

Thus, while a traveler with a strong passport might decide on a whim to visit a new destination, Adventure notes that those from the Global South often face rejection rates significantly higher than the global average. Additionally, some countries run checks at the border, with the US now inspecting tourists’ social media, which can result in denied entry even after traveling. 

As Singh describes it, “Spontaneity is impossible; escapism is limited.” This “passportism,” she notes, means that travel remains a politically charged activity rather than a universal right.

Jacky has visited 43 states and over 90 countries, and she has no plans to stop, saying, “I’m 26, and I’m still figuring out how far this goes.” As she told her followers, “This is the short version of a REALLY long story. There’s SO MUCH more to it; the people who helped me along the way, the countries that challenged me, the ones I kept going back to.”