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Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Visit Every Country

Many readers know that one of my goals is to visit every country and travel everywhere. My reason why is, I guess, like most travellers - I want to see and experience all the world has to offer. Different people have different perspectives on life and information & attitudes to share. I love it.

Many other people have the same goal and indeed there are various clubs and websites with lists and where you can share tips and information to achieve the "travel everywhere" goal. These have varying degrees of usefulness, but for the most part I use the nifty maps to reinforce just how much more I have yet to see and experience. Here are just three examples:

World66


Passport Stamp


(map includes some of my future destinations)

Trip Advisor


Unlike Chris Guillebeau I haven't set myself a time limit to achieve this goal (his goal is April 7, 2013), but every year I aim to visit at least 10 new places and usually manage to visit at least 20.

I use a lot of different tools to work out how to get to and from various places. Some are simple to get to and have easy low-cost travel options. Other places are more difficult and/or more expensive. A desire to share this information and encourage others to travel far and widely has lead me to start the "how to get to" series of posts. Since I am planning on ultimately getting everywhere I intend to post on every country in the series. The order is random - unless I get requests to cover particular places sooner (please drop a comment, or email using the link top left).

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Great timing -- I had meant to look for a tool/site that would let me create one of those maps. Ideally I'd prefer a desktop tool, so I'd be able to use for as long as Windows apps can run somewhere (and not be at the mercy of some website), but this will do for now.

So I am curious -- how do you count countries that split. E.g., I was in Moscow in 1986 -- does that qualify me for just Russia or also all the assorted 'stans and other former Soviet Union states that are now countries of their own?

The Global Traveller said...

Each website has it's own way of dealing with changes in country borders.

For example PassportStamp has not yet added Kosovo as a country, although they say they will once UN formally recognises it (and includes it in the ISO country listing). When they do add it, there will be an option to record whether visit(s) to Kosovo was before or after it was a separate country.

Some other websites already have Kosovo separate.

I think it is totally up to you how to interpret. Personally, when Kosovo split I added it to my countries still to go to list even though I'd already been to Serbia. If my prior Serbian visit included the part of the country that became Kosovo I would have considered that an already visited place but not an already visited country. I know others feel differently.