On having visited 100 countries
On 1st September, I finally reached a goal I’ve been working towards for almost thirty five years; I crossed the border into my 100th country. I’d been aiming for this in a half hearted way almost from the first time I went abroad as a teenager in 1975 when I got around by hitch hiking. Even then I would try and get my tally up by making diversions to places like Liechtenstein and San Marino.
In the early nineties I became interested in the idea of goal setting. I thought that as a traveller, making it to 100 countries would be an interesting project to aim for, and I was intrigued to find that the self help books were right, if you have a clear goal your mind does find ways to achieve it. So on business trips I used the weekends to go on side trips, from Helsinki a day trip across to Tallinn in Estonia; a weekend in Berlin became a weekend in Poland. And so the country count grew.
I’m glad I didn’t become obsessive about it, and didn’t just go to new countries just for the sake of it. I enjoyed going to new places but often went back to favorite countries, when I could easily have gone to a new one just to up my score. I do admit I did used to look at the map and wonder if it would be worth going to Bratislava for the weekend just to add Slovak Republic, but I didn’t and still haven’t been there. Tunisia was on my hit list for years, being not too far away and easy to get to, and I did eventually get there, and very nice it was too. In 2005 when I was working at Lonely Planet, we had a poll on the company intranet to see who in the firm had been to the most countries and I came out on top with 75; which I think put a few noses out of joint particularly in the Australian office as many of them considered themselves hardened travellers. Only Tony Wheeler the founder of LP had been to more than me with a score of over a hundred.
The real irony is that the 99th country was Kenya, and the 100th was Uganda. This is because when I was a child - Africa was abroad. On children’s TV there were endless programmes based in Africa, Daktari, Tarzan and lots of nature programmes filled with exciting animals. The rest of the world was just a vague notion, while the plains of Africa were on TV every night. It was the only place abroad that I knew about and the one place I really wanted to go to. But I never got around to it until now, tastes and interests change, other parts of the world seemed to offer more, so what was once a childhood dream has finally been realized, forty five years later. And it was as good as I imagined it to be.
So to the future, on my travel map on facebook it seems I’ve only been to 40% of the world, so there's a lot more remaining to see. There are a few big countries I’ve not been to, Japan, Korea and Iran to name but three. I’d like to see more of Central Asia and travel along the Silk Road. The Caribbean is almost untouched as is most of West Africa and there are lots of islands that I think would merit a trip, Madagascar for one. And so the adventure continues...........
Posted 20th September 2010. Zanzibar.
In the early nineties I became interested in the idea of goal setting. I thought that as a traveller, making it to 100 countries would be an interesting project to aim for, and I was intrigued to find that the self help books were right, if you have a clear goal your mind does find ways to achieve it. So on business trips I used the weekends to go on side trips, from Helsinki a day trip across to Tallinn in Estonia; a weekend in Berlin became a weekend in Poland. And so the country count grew.
I’m glad I didn’t become obsessive about it, and didn’t just go to new countries just for the sake of it. I enjoyed going to new places but often went back to favorite countries, when I could easily have gone to a new one just to up my score. I do admit I did used to look at the map and wonder if it would be worth going to Bratislava for the weekend just to add Slovak Republic, but I didn’t and still haven’t been there. Tunisia was on my hit list for years, being not too far away and easy to get to, and I did eventually get there, and very nice it was too. In 2005 when I was working at Lonely Planet, we had a poll on the company intranet to see who in the firm had been to the most countries and I came out on top with 75; which I think put a few noses out of joint particularly in the Australian office as many of them considered themselves hardened travellers. Only Tony Wheeler the founder of LP had been to more than me with a score of over a hundred.
The real irony is that the 99th country was Kenya, and the 100th was Uganda. This is because when I was a child - Africa was abroad. On children’s TV there were endless programmes based in Africa, Daktari, Tarzan and lots of nature programmes filled with exciting animals. The rest of the world was just a vague notion, while the plains of Africa were on TV every night. It was the only place abroad that I knew about and the one place I really wanted to go to. But I never got around to it until now, tastes and interests change, other parts of the world seemed to offer more, so what was once a childhood dream has finally been realized, forty five years later. And it was as good as I imagined it to be.
So to the future, on my travel map on facebook it seems I’ve only been to 40% of the world, so there's a lot more remaining to see. There are a few big countries I’ve not been to, Japan, Korea and Iran to name but three. I’d like to see more of Central Asia and travel along the Silk Road. The Caribbean is almost untouched as is most of West Africa and there are lots of islands that I think would merit a trip, Madagascar for one. And so the adventure continues...........
Posted 20th September 2010. Zanzibar.
