Around the World in Eighty Days · Jules Verne, 1872
Is there a balloon in Around the World in Eighty Days?
Noballoon
Not in Verne's novel. Fogg travels by rail, steamer, elephant, pilot boat and a sledge with a sail. The balloon was added by the 1956 film.
The hot-air balloon is the picture everyone has of this story, and it isn't in the book. In Verne's novel Fogg never leaves the ground or the sea. A balloon comes up once, crossing the Atlantic, and is dismissed as too risky and not possible anyway.
What he does use is stranger. Where the Indian railway turns out not to be finished, he buys an elephant called Kiouni for two thousand pounds. In China he hires the Tankadère, a little pilot boat, and runs her through a typhoon. In Nebraska a sledge with a sail carries him over the frozen prairie to Omaha. And in the Atlantic he buys the Henrietta and burns her decks and masts to keep the engines going.
The balloon comes from the 1956 film with David Niven, and it stuck: posters, cartoons and later versions kept it. On this map every leg is the one Verne wrote.
See where the elephant comes in