WATCH: Man Uses 100 Helium Balloons To Fly 8,000 Feet Above South Africa

A British man took to the skies on a helium balloon-powered apparatus that reached heights of 8,000 feet as he traveled more than 15 miles across South Africa this week.

Tom Morgan used 100 colorful balloons for the stunt, which he reportedly spent months planning with his team.

The 38-year-old, who founded the U.K.-based thrill-seeking company The Adventurists, was running tests for what he hopes will eventually lead to a forthcoming helium balloon race — the first of its kind. Morgan chose Botswana, Africa, for his initial trial grounds for a number of reasons.

“[Botswana has] lots of open space — in the middle of a continent — so when the wind blows, we won’t land in the sea and die,” he said in a Facebook video from The Adventurists that showed the early stages of the team’s trial runs.

But several failed runs and inclement weather led the team to relocate late last week to Johannesburg, South Africa, where Morgan spent two days inflating the massive helium balloons ahead of Monday’s event. Morgan’s trip through the African nation’s skies lasted two hours — he’d drifted toward the inversion layer of the atmosphere, where temperatures drop — before he slowly began cutting the balloons to lower himself back to earth.

Describing his feeling about the experience to the BBC as “somewhere between terrified and elated,” Morgan said he “had to keep my cool and start gradually cutting the balloons.”

“We weren’t even sure Tom would come back alive. We didn’t think he was going to manage it,” the event manager for The Adventurists, Matthew Dickens, told CBS News. “But yeah, he got there in the end.”

As for Morgan, he said he’s now “convinced” of the team’s potential to execute their hatched balloon race plan.

“It was a fairly indescribable feeling, wafting across Africa on a cheap camping chair dangling from a load of balloons,” he told the Daily Telegraph. “I came here to see if we could organise the world's most ridiculous air race and after that flight, I'm more convinced than ever that we can.”