By The Numbers (Updated, August 2022)

Lipah, Bali

I haven't updated this in nearly 6 years, so it's time to bring this up to date.

Here's a list of the countries I've visited over the course of my life, arranged by the date of my first visit to the country.  I don't count my home country, Canada.   Of course, exactly what constitutes a country is a bit slippery.  My well-travelled friend Natalya Marquand holds (or rather used to hold) that the only objective list is the 193 permanent members of the UN.  Others maintain that these countries, plus the non-UN-member Vatican City, make up the 194 canonical countries of the world.  I think the reality is a bit slippier.  When I visited Nagorno-Karabakh and Abkhazia, despite the fact that these countries aren’t universally recognized, I had to get a visa to visit them and cross at a border post manned by people in uniform who stamped my passport.  Somaliland not only has its own consulates and border guards, it even has its own currency.  And, to take an extreme example, anyone who claims that Taiwan isn’t effectively an independent country isn’t really recognizing what’s been de facto the case since 1949. (People's Republic of China, I can't hear what you're saying!)

So my list of independent countries is a bit bigger than 194.  It’s about 204 countries; the number may fluctuate a bit, and it doesn’t include three countries (Western Sahara, Palestine and Tibet) with pretty legitimate cases but without their own border guards. One of the many lists of countries on Wikipedia lists 206 entries that either are recognized by at least one other state as being independent, or effectively control a permanently populated territory, but they include Western Sahara and Palestine which are at the moment illusory pipe dreams, to the distress of the people who inhabit them.  If I'm not counting Canada, that would make 203 possible destinations on my list (or else 193 on the UN+Vatican list).

Anyway, without further preamble, here’s my list of the countries I have visited, arranged according to the date I first visited them.  The non-UN/Vatican members of the list are coloured red; there are eight of them, so if you’re counting by the UN+Vatican list, it’s 125 (out of 193).  I would make it 133 out of 203.  Whichever way you count it, I’m now well over half-way to my goal of visiting them all, and my to-visit list is now down into double digits.   

1969

1. US

1977

2.  France

3.  Switzerland

4.  Liechtenstein

5.  Germany

6.  Netherlands

1981

7.  Tanzania

1982

8.  Norway

9.  Italy

1988

10.  UK

11. Vatican

12.  Greece

13.  Hungary

14.  Austria

15.  Czech Republic (Prague, then part of the now-defunct Czechoslovakia)

1990

16.  Belgium

17.  Monaco

18.  Poland

1991

19.  Australia

20.  New Zealand

21.   Fiji

22.  Cook Islands

1994

23.  Egypt

24.  Turkey

1995

25.  Spain

26.  Kenya

27.  Uganda

28.  Democratic Republic of Congo

29.  Japan

30.  Singapore

31.  Indonesia

1996

32.  Philippines

33.  Malaysia

34.  Thailand

35.  Cambodia

36.  Nepal

1997

37.  India

38.  Sri Lanka

39.  Pakistan

40.  Luxembourg

41.  San Marino

42.  Andorra

1998

43.  China

44.  Portugal

45.  Morocco

46.  Tunisia

47.  Jordan

1999

48.  Israel

49.  Syria

50.  Lebanon

51.  Chile

52.  Argentina

53.  Peru

2000

54.  Bolivia

55.  South Korea

2001

56.  Mexico

57.  Brunei

58.  Laos

59.  Taiwan

2004

60.  Kazakhstan

61.  Kyrgyzstan

62.  Tajikistan

63.  Uzbekistan

64.  Turkmenistan

65.  Iran

66.  Bahrain

2006

67.  Vietnam

68.  Burma

2007

69.  Mongolia

70.  Palau

71.  Bangladesh

2008

72.  Bhutan

73.  Cyprus

74.  Northern Cyprus

2009

75.  Kuwait

76.  Azerbaijan

77.  Georgia

78.  Armenia

79.  Nagorno-Karabakh

80.  Iraq

81.  Bulgaria

82.  Serbia

83.  Kosovo

84.  Macedonia

85.  Albania

86.  Montenegro

87.  Bosnia-Hercegovina

88.  Croatia

89.  Libya

90.  Malta

2010

91.  Ethiopia

92.  Somaliland

93.  Djibouti

2011

94.  Denmark

95.  Abkhazia

96.  Russia

97.  Ukraine

98.  Trans-Dniestria

99.  Moldova

100. Romania

101.  Slovakia

102.  Belarus

103.  Lithuania

104.  Latvia

105.  Estonia

106.  United Arab Emirates

107.  Oman

108.  Qatar

2012

109.  Slovenia

110.  Togo

111.  Benin

2013 

112.  Maldives

113,  Iceland

114.  Ireland

2014

115. East Timor

116. Solomon Islands

117. Papua New Guinea

2015

118. Finland

119. Sweden

2016
120. Paraguay
121. Brazil
122. Uruguay
123. Zambia
124. Botswana
125. South Africa
126. Mozambique
127.  Zimbabwe
128.  Malawi
129.  Madagascar

130.  Swaziland

2017

131.  Lesotho

132.  Namibia 

2019

133. Panama


Part of the reason that this list has not been updated since December 2016 on my blog is that the past 6 years have seen a real lull in new countries visited. Partly this is because of me spending 2 years living and working in Georgia, partly it's been that I've gone to revisit old favourites (like Kyrgyzstan and Armenia and Indonesia), and partly it's that covid-19 has put a massive dent into my travelling plans.

However, that is about to change. In three weeks' time I am getting on a flight to Cape Town to take Stanley, our beloved 4x4 camper, out of long-term storage so that we can take him for a drive around the entire continent of Africa. (At least that's the plan!) So over the next 12 months I hope to add Burundi, Rwanda, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and (perhaps) South Sudan and Eritrea to the list. In 2023 I hope to add Mauretania, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon, Congo and Angola to the list, along with (perhaps) Algeria, Cape Verde, Sao Tome and Equatorial Guinea. 

So by the time Stanley's Travels rolls back into South Africa, I might be in the mid-150s in terms of countries, leaving only about 50 or so to go. The majority of them will be in Central America, northern South America and the Caribbean, with a number of African countries left out of this trip because of security, visa or logistical reasons, and a mixed bag of Pacific islands along with Yemen, North Korea and Afghanistan. I still think I stand a reasonable chance of getting to visit all the countries in the world before I'm too old to enjoy the process. Stay tuned!!