Visit every country in the world

One of my major long term goals in life is to visit every country in the world. I’m not sure when I decided I wanted to do this. It was more of a gradual feeling that I got as I began to travel more and more. A guy from India recently completed this task in the shortest time ever (6 years) and did it on an Indian passport.

Fortunately, I have a UK passport and thus more travel freedom than any other nationality in the world. Where US citizens have issues with countries like North Korea of Cuba, UK citizens are generally fine. Furthermore, I do not need to a visa to visit the majority of countries in the world so this makes things even easier.

The task of going everywhere is still very tough. There are a lot of countries to visit! Actually the first hurdle is to work out how many countries there are in the world. The common view is that the number of United Nations members is the number of countries. This is not really true.

There are a few countries that fall outside the UN for a number of reasons. The Vatican City, Kosovo, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan are not UN members. Hong Kong and Macau are special provinces of China, but have totally different governments and visa rules. Taiwan used to be a UN member, but got kicked out after diplomatic manoeuvring by China during the Korean War. Vatican city is tiny and Kosovo’s independence isn’t recognised by some countries such as Russia, hence not a UN member.

To the list of 192 UN members, I’m adding Vaitcan City, Kosovo, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. This brings me up to 197. But I’m not done there. There are a few countries that are technically territories of large countries that I’d like to visit.

These are Greenland and Bermuda. Greenland is technically part of Denmark, but it is so different that I feel compelled to visit. Bermuda is part of the UK but I’ve always wanted to go there because of the Bermuda triangle (plus the palm trees and white sandy beaches).

That takes us to 199. Better find another one to make it 200, eh?

While not a country at all, The Antarctic is a pretty significant piece of a planet. By any definition it is actually a continent in itself. With various areas administered by various countries, mostly for scientific purposes, over 40,000 tourists visit the Antarctic every year. So I figure that I better be one of them at some point!

There we have folks, 200 “countries” to visit. So far I have been to 30 (including the Vatican City) out of 200. I’m currently living in Budapest, Hungary. This will give me the chance to visit a number of Eastern European countries that are very close by. Hungary is a small country but borders with 7 other Eastern European countries. The target for end of 2010 is to have visited 38 countries. Let’s see how it goes.

Here is the current map as of November 2010:

I’ve already decided what country #200 will be on my list: The Republic of Ireland.

For whatever reason, I’ve never been there. Despite the fact it is the closest country to my homeland of the UK. I feel it would be somewhat fitting to go everywhere else first then finish off in Dublin with a massive party. Hopefully by that point I’ll have developed a taste for Guinness and actually like the stuff though…