Meet the man on a 23-year road trip in a Mercedes-Benz G-Wagon

Wanderlust: It alternately makes life worth living, yet discourages living life in a conventional fashion. Or on a more practical level, not a day goes by that those of us given to rambling do not battle conflicted desires to slip behind the wheel and slip out of town.

To we lovers of the open road, Gunther Holtorf must represent the Platonic ideal: A man on a never-ending road-trip, one that has now lasted 23 years. Even more amazing than Holtorf's decades spent traveling the world in his Mercedes-Benz Geländewagen, however, is that he has done it entirely under the radar, with nary a press clipping until the BBC posted this video.

Holtorf set out on what was to be a tour of Africa with his wife in 1989, and somewhere along the way the couple decided to just keep going. He's put over 500,000 miles on his G-Wagen since, and, thankfully, the 74-year-old man has documented his trip rather extensively with two Leica film cameras.

Hit the jump to watch a narrated slideshow of Gunther's life on the road.