Today’s Los Angeles Times has a terrific story about a small group of hard-core American travelers, including one Californian claiming to be the world’s most traveled person, who were recently awarded visas to visit North Korea and made the highly unusual trip. Times reporter Bruce Wallace put the visit into perspective this way: “Opportunities for American tourists to visit the secretive state that makes no secret of its loathing for the U.S. are mighty tough to come by. A North Korean visa for an American is like round-the-clock electricity here in the North Korean capital: not impossible, but rare enough to be appreciated when it unexpectedly arrives.”

The story is loaded with quote-worthy passages about the journey and the travelers themselves. Among them is the lead:

Monty Anderson got word that the trip was on two weeks after rushing home to California from Ukraine for emergency open-heart surgery. He didn’t ask his doctor if it was OK to take another trip so soon. He told him he was going.

Eighty-year-old Joan Youmans heard about it when she picked up her phone messages after a trip to Indonesia. She canceled a few doctors’ appointments and booked immediately.

When Joe Walker learned the trip was a go, he said he “just gave them my credit card number and told them to fill in the amount.” Cost him seven grand, he figures.

Such is the allure of North Korea to the “extreme traveler.”

For more on 62-year-old Bill Altaffer, the Californian in the story who claims to be the world’s most traveled person, visit mosttraveledman.com, but be warned, especially if you’re at work, that music plays automatically on the site.