Now Andrew Mullinder, a Briton living and working in Moscow, prepares to conquer the Moscow Metro Challenge: on December 10, 2016 he’ll attempt to “set the official World Record for the fastest time to visit every single station.” The goal of this endeavor however is not just to attain fame for the participants, but also to raise money to help protect endangered Amur tigers.
Mullinder told Sputnik Radio that planning the most efficient route across a system as complicated as the Moscow Metro was an extremely difficult but not impossible task.
As he confided, he and his partner will start their journey at Kotelniki station on Moscow’s southeastern outskirts and finish it at the Ploschad Revolyutsii (Revolution Square) station right next to the Moscow Kremlin.
"We had to sit ourselves down and write notes, go through various options, try to eliminate some bad choices, find routes that we should definitely take because there are over 70 interchange stations where you can travel from one line to the other so the number of variations is immense. If there were ten destinations, there would be 185,000 different route options; if there were fifteen, there would be 4.5 billion. Now in Moscow Metro System there are 203 stations and 70 interchange stations, so to find a perfect route is extremely difficult," Mullinder explained.
He also appeared to be unconcerned by the possibility of subway train delays interfering with the challenge, praising the efficiency and reliability of the Moscow Metro.
"The Moscow Metro is great: it always runs on time, it’s tremendously efficient. I’ve lived in Moscow for about 8 to 9 years now, and I’ve had two delays when I’ve been using the Moscow Metro. It’s an amazing system. Everybody knows how beautiful the stations are, but the efficiency of the system itself is remarkable," Mullinder said.
According to Mullinder, there are two ways people could help him complete the Moscow Metro Challenge. First method is to donate to the charity he’s promoting; the second method appears to be a bit more time consuming but nonetheless important.
"To qualify as an official world record, we will need independent witnesses… We would love to have people who could meet us at various points on our route and independently verify that we were at a specific station at a specific time so that when we submit our details to the Guinness World Records they have independent verification that we did actually complete the challenge," he said.
