These ultra-travelers won’t settle for anything less than the world.
For a growing subset of competitive travelers, a fierce race exists to collect every passport stamp and solidify their place in history. Earlier this year, in partnership with Ford Motor Company, Lexie Alford became the first person to circumnavigate the globe in an electric vehicle. This was her second record after becoming the youngest person to travel to every country at the age of 21 in 2019. She is also the current youngest person to travel to every sovereign nation.
Today, there are thought to be just under 400 individuals who have reached every country, more than the number of people who’ve been to the International Space Station as per NASA. But when does country counting go too far? The lengths one influencer went to in her sprint to 196 countries landed her in hot water with the consumer watchdog Traveler’s United, which sued her for deceiving her brand partners and followers about being the first woman to visit every country (the case is ongoing).
“It’s gotten out of control,” says travel blogger Lee Abbamonte. “I used to know every single person who had done it; now it seems like there is someone new every other week.” Abbamonte became the youngest American to visit every country back in 2011. He completed his quest in Libya after sneaking into the back of a minivan from Egypt during the Arab Spring. “When I finished, I think l was the 80th person ever to visit every country,” he says. “By accident, I was basically one of the first travel bloggers and surely the only blogger who was talking about random places.”
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Though Abbamonte doesn’t necessarily regret anywhere he’s been, he laments that the act of visiting every country means spending a lot of time and money to get to places you’re less than enthused about just to check it off a list. “People ask me if I would do it again and I probably would not, and the reason is because not everywhere is worth going to,” he declares. “And now people are inventing things to be the first to do. Next, it’ll be someone trying to play the xylophone backward while smoking a cigar in every country,” he says in jest.
The Connecticut-born adventurer was traveling simply because he liked it and wasn’t explicitly seeking any form of notoriety—but it found him. An effervescent and outspoken character, he is now an in-demand travel expert with appearances on hundreds of TV shows, radio gigs, and speaking engagements. “I wouldn’t have the career that I’ve had for the last 15 years or so without the novelty of having been to every country,” he confesses.
Ugandan-American Jessica Nabongo is the first Black woman to document her travels to every country, continent, and U.S. state, and she also found international acclaim for her formidable accomplishments. Her first book, “The Catch Me If You Can,” was published by National Geographic, and a second, a cookbook, is in the works. “My travels are and probably always will be driven by my curiosity and my desire to tell people’s stories,” says Nabongo.
A self-proclaimed geography nerd, travel was always a big part of Nabongo’s life. The Detroit native studied abroad at the London School of Economics, worked at the United Nations, and visited family members spread all over the world. “Before Instagram existed, I had been to over 30 countries. I would be doing this even if there was no internet,” she says.
Nabongo believes that a game of copycat now exists in the competitive traveling space, spurred on by social media. “They see that people have grown their following because of it, and they want that dopamine hit from likes and shares.” She doesn’t lose sleep over people’s motivations to potentially follow in her footsteps but only hopes that any would-be country collectors have a genuine desire to learn about the people and places they see versus just getting their stamps and leaving. “One of the biggest lessons I learned is that most people are good, and that’s something that I carry with me.” With this belief, she has never used a hotel safe to store her belongings or money anywhere in the world.
Where finances are concerned, Nabongo says people were convinced she had sponsors for her global jaunt, but she actually leveraged her savings and airline loyalty programs, points, and miles and also launched a travel crowdfunding campaign towards the end. “In 195 countries, I only had one free trip,” Nabongo reveals.
United Airlines employee Romaine Welds, who’s from Jamaica, similarly completed his all-nation odyssey without any external funding. In September 2022, he fulfilled his mission to visit all 195 UN-recognized countries when he landed in Antigua, becoming the first Caribbean and non-biracial Black man to realize this feat. Even more remarkable is that his first trip outside Jamaica was just 16 years earlier, when he emigrated to the U.S. on his very first flight. Throughout his journey, Welds maintained his full-time job and worked double shifts to finance his travel dreams, and he has no plans to slow down. “As soon as I return from a trip, I start planning the next one,” he shared. “My goal now is to visit festivals, rituals, and some bucket list places.”
Seeing every country in the world hasn’t quelled Gunnar Garfors’ sense of wonder either. The peripatetic Norwegian has been to every country in the world—twice, and he was the very first person to do so (two others have since followed). “I’ve been to every country, but I have not been to every place and there are always new villages, new mountains, new activities, new or old things to see for the first time or again,” he said poetically.
Garfors is the author of several travel books published in multiple languages, including “Elsewhere,” which recounts his experiences in the world’s least visited countries. He also currently has 11 travel-related world records. “We set the world record of visiting the most U.S. states in 24 hours and also the most countries in 24 hours. We managed 22 states and 19 countries, both in 24 hours.” Garfors acknowledges the perceived insanity of this type of extreme travel. “You go all in on what is essentially a hobby; it’s certainly unusual,” he says. “Then again, if people call me weird or crazy it always beats being called normal. That would be the worst to be told.”
As would be expected, he has some incredible tales and tips he’s picked up such as always traveling with a small paper notepad to help bypass language barriers. “I was in Iran once and nobody spoke English so we couldn’t order in a restaurant so I drew a sheep and a cow and that’s what we got.” Iran, Sudan, and Ireland are the countries Garfors found to have the warmest locals. “In Ireland, you go to a bar and within 10 or 15 minutes you’re invited for dinner at somebody’s house. It’s marvelous.”
Travel has given Gunnar Garfors an education in the world but also himself. “Seeing yourself from the outside really opened my eyes. In Kiribati, for instance, [I met people who] haven’t even heard about Norway or Europe and it does kind of hit you in the face that you’re not the center of the universe,” he explains. “If travel doesn’t humble you, I don’t think anything will.”
With the immense potential for personal growth that travel facilitates, Garfors finds it perplexing that some people within the country-counting community aren’t entirely honest about their travel conquests. “Quite a few people are lying or are unable to prove that they’ve been places,” he said. “A lot of them they go to airports and they say ‘oh, I’ve been to a country’ or they go the demilitarized zone between South Korea and North Korea where you don’t get to see anything or talk to anybody.”
Not everyone lies though. Many are candid, collaborative, and forthcoming about things like hard-to-get visas and those are the competitive travelers who Garfors prefers to mingle with in forums, Facebook groups, and at extreme travel conferences. “It’s always good to be able to play ball with someone else as crazy as you are,” he says.
Research for Garfors’ latest book about the 13 countries on the equator took him back to the Maldives, where he timed his trip to coincide with the arrival of another prolific country counter, fellow Scandinavian Thor Pedersen who was ending his every-country tour there in May 2023. The Danish explorer has one of the most astonishing profiles given that he is the first person to visit every country in the world without flying.
It took Pedersen 10 months to plan a trip that eventually took 10 years for which he set himself three cardinal rules: absolutely no flying, staying in each country for a minimum of 24 hours, and no returning home until visiting the final country, unless he quit entirely. Then, there were three semi-mandatory sub-rules: not paying any bribes, sticking to a budget of roughly $20 a day, and never eating at McDonalds.
Pedersen set off in October 2013 when the iPhone 5 was the latest model being marketed. He took more than 300 long-distance buses, over 200 trains, 40 container ships, shared motorcycle taxis, and a high-performance yacht, sometimes having to backtrack due to illness, visa delays, or conflict.
The project was called “Once Upon a Saga” and it had a high financial cost as well as emotional. “I depleted my personal funds, sold some possessions, and took out two loans,” he reveals. “A few years in, I found that what used to be 1% work and 99% fun had turned to 99% work.” His three cardinal rules seemed innocent at first but created a mental prison for him as the years went on. “Four years turned to five, then six, then seven, and then a global pandemic broke out when I was just missing nine more countries. I finally reached the last country and returned home after nearly a decade. You’d have to be a certifiable nutcase to do a thing like that,” Pedersen says.
The fact that Thor Pedersen wasn’t flying at all caused complications in places like the notorious Panama-Colombia border. “Saudi [Arabia] was also tough to crack. They would have me if I flew but would not accept that I traveled overland.” Trapped by ambition, he contemplated going home thousands of times even before the pandemic broke out but stuck it out, ensuring he visited all 203 places that are considered countries. “The United Nations counts 193 member states and two observer states. That brings you up to 195.” He also went to countries that are partially recognized to different degrees like Kosovo, Western Sahara, and Taiwan, spending an average of 18 days in each country.
Pedersen’s story is one of endurance but also love. His now-wife came to visit him 27 times during the saga. “She did not want to get between me and what I wanted to do. She stayed supportive until the very end.”
Despite the difficulties of his no-fly journey, Pedersen wholeheartedly believes people should cross borders to learn as much as possible about who we share this planet with, though seeing every sovereign state is probably too lofty of an objective.
“Should people visit every country? I don’t see why they should; it is a lot,” he states. With the Saga, I found myself wearing self-imposed shackles and bound to do certain things in order to make progress and reach a goal,” he says. “Now I travel wherever I want, whenever I want, and stay as long as I want, or I do not travel at all. It is my choice and I love it.”
During the decade, Pedersen collected passport stamps, memories, and life lessons, but no official records. “I’m less interested in records than in making world history, and that I know we did.”
Didn't a British guy named Graham Huges do this like 15 years ago? Somebody should Google his name and Odyssey Expedition.
Hmmm, ticking countries off the bucket list is one thing (please, most countries "visited" in 24 hours!?) but actually exploring them is completely different, something that Garfors and Pedersen alluded to in part.
Sure, I explored "only" 110 countries (not all of them UN-affiliated!) but I would have spent a minimum of three days (bar micro prinicipalities like San Marino or Vatican) in each, depending on size. I wouldn't count staying overnight in Karachi, for example, as actually visiting Pakistan.