Places I’ve been

How I count countries

Here is a list of all the places I have been to so far. Most of my travel has taken place whilst in my thirties, so I was definitely a late starter. I caught the bug in my mid-late twenties during some work related travel, but I wasn’t in a position to travel much more for quite some time. Now I have intentions to visit every country on Earth, as challenging as this will be, its not something I need or want to achieve in the next 12 months, if it takes the rest of my life, I am more than happy with that.

You can click on places on the map, or jump to them below to read more about my travels in the country, by all means get in touch if you have any questions or want any advice on visiting.

Note, I have defined my list as the 193 UN sovereign states, plus the Vatican, Taiwan and Kosovo for 196.

To split countries into continents I use the United Nations geoscheme, the UN M49 standard published by the UN Statistics Division. That puts Turkey, Cyprus, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan in Western Asia rather than Europe, even though they play football in UEFA and sit on the Council of Europe. The UN groups the Americas together, so I count Central America and the Caribbean as North America. Kosovo and Taiwan aren’t on the UN list, so they go in Europe and Asia.

I have read/heard many debates about what is the ‘right’ list of “every country in the world”. Different definitions included the obvious list of the 193 UN sovereign states, or only countries attached to continents (ruling out Polynesia), or only countries with their own currency (ruling out Tuvalu and Nauru for e.g, and arguably much of Europe), or countries that have control of their own government (including eg Somaliland and Transnistria). The travellers century club lists over 300 countries which includes all sorts of strange territories.

Everybody is free to use whatever list works for them, I find 196 works for me, its what Guinness World Records uses, so its good enough for me!

Likewise I have heard multiple arguments about what constitutes a country visit. For me, I want to have a memorable experience, and that typically means staying a while or visiting more than once. However, sometimes I only have a limited amount of time and don’t think there is much to see in a country so will just stay a few days or a night. I have a rather more unusual ‘criteria’ – you need to be in a country long enough to ‘use the facilities for a number 2!’ (excluding the airport!) Its just something a little different. For some travellers a ‘visit’ includes transiting through an airport but it doesn’t meet my criteria

I get to decide where I want to go and whether it is a visit and so does every other traveller.

Happy travels!