“We were like fishes out of water": inside the first non‑stop hot-air balloon flight around the world

On 1 March 1999, Breitling Orbiter 3 – piloted by Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones – took off from Châteaux d’Oex in Switzerland. After more than 19 days aloft, circumnavigating the world, the hot-air balloon landed in Egypt. Piccard, one of the subjects of a new documentary, The Balloonists, tells Jonathan Wright why he braved a journey so dangerous many had begun to doubt it could be made at all