How many countries have you visited?

I was sharing details of our epic trip planned for next year with a friend and he mentioned that his partner had a plan of “40 countries visited by the age of 40 – then 50 by the age 50 and so on”. I really liked that as a target. I haven’t met that target yet. I hadn’t really thought of that kind of target, so I went home and downloaded a list of the 196 countries from Britannica and in one column added countries I had visited to date – as of December 2024 (definition of visited below). In the next column I added in the probable countries, excluding those I have already visited that I will visit next year on our big trip.

What were the numbers? Keep on reading.

The seven Modern Wonders of the World

One of my measures of being a traveller has been to visit the seven modern wonders of the world. Because they still can be seen, they were a more interesting list than the seven ancient wonders of the world that don’t exist anymore except for the pyramids in Egypt.

I have two more to go – Petra in Jordan and Chichen Itza in Mexico. We will be visiting these in 2025.

There are also the seven natural wonders of the world, and I don’t want to visit all of them. By accident I have visited the Grand Canyon, Great Barrier Reef, and the harbour in Rio De Janeiro. Of the remaining four I only want to visit Victoria Falls in Africa.

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Number of countries visited

So, back to the number of countries I have visited. To date I have visited 39 countries in my more than 60 years. Next year we are planning to add another 35 countries to that list in just over 9 months. This doesn’t include countries that I have visited before, like South Korea and several European Countries.

Here is a spreadsheet of all countries and my list. You can click on the country hyperlink to visit the Britannica link for that country to find out more.

That will give me a couple of years breathing space although we are planning a trip to Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Laos in coming years, and I haven’t been there before.

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What does “visited” mean?

You have to clear immigration and customs, spend at least a night outside of the airport and have a meal in a location that is not at the airport. So you could just spend 12 hours in a country and sure, it would be argued that you have visited, but what is the quality of your experience? These are my criteria and thankfully if I am comfortable with those rules then that’s all I must satisfy. Transiting doesn’t count. As good and complete as Changi Airport is, you must exit immigration to say you have visited… and why wouldn’t you. It is one of the best cities to visit and live in.

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What about the USA States?

At this stage I am just over half-way, having visited 26. We plan to tick off another three on Epic 5 – USA Part 1 next year after we arrive in New York.

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Where are we going next year?

It Starts with a map

So do I have a map of where we are going in 2025? I am glad you asked. Still a work in progress. Click the map picture below to go to the live map.

Of course we would love you to follow us on our adventures as we embark on the longest trip we have ever attempted.

Epic Destinations

Because it will be an epic journey next year, I have broken it down into 8 “epics” which are:

1. Asia
2. Eastern Europe
3. Middle East and North Africa
4. Western Europe
5. USA Part 1
6. Carribean
7. Central America
8. USA Part 2 and home

This is relevant for sharing photo stories about the destinations so you (and we) can look at a chunk or epic and dive into the countries or cities that make up that part of the adventure.

When?

We leave for Hong Kong from Melbourne on the 18th of march before heading to Seoul and Busan in South Korea. We then head to Japan for 2 months following the “Sakura Trail” North. Then back to Hong Kong for Epic 2.

Our Travel Style

We are both over 60 but reasonably fit and used to travelling, walking and being flexible. We travel with just carry on luggage so basically 7-8 kg bags each. When you travel through winter in some locations, it can be a bit cold, but we have been okay so far. Travelling with just a small backpack is extremely liberating and folks generally accept our practical dress sense.

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Linking my photo albums in Adobe Lightroom to Portfolio

Portfolio is an Adobe webpage builder that allows you to easily link Lightroom albums to a nice looking webpage. When you add in an image map with a thumbnail graphic for the locations you have visited, you get a quick way to share the many photographs of your travels.

My first experiment with this image mapping process was used for our South America trip in 2022- 2023 and here is the resultant embedded image map that links to the South America Albums

South America Photo Albums

Since then I have visited California in July this year, Taiwan in November 2023 and China in October 2024. I hadn’t included the European and Thailand legs of our 6 month epic in 2022 and 2023 so I created a new image map shown below. Click on any of the thumbnails to visit the Lightroom album stored on Adobe Portfolio.

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Europe, Thailand, California, Taiwan and China Albums – 2023 – 2024

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