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. 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 205 countries; the number may fluctuate a bit, and it doesn’t include Tibet, which has a pretty legitimate case for independence but without its own border guards. I have made an exception to my rule of having to control their own territory effectively for Western Sahara (just to annoy the Moroccan imperialist authorities and their horrible border guards), and the Palestinian Territories (to annoy the genocidal Israeli governemnt.) One of the many lists of countries on Wikipedia lists the same 205 entries that either are recognized by at least one other state as being independent, or effectively control a permanently populated territory. Sadly (since I really loved both of my visits to the "country"), I have had to remove Nagorno-Karabakh (aka Artsakh) from the list since it ceased to exist in 2024 after the Azeri re-conquest of the territory. I include the Cook Islands and Niue on my list, although they may have the weakest claim of all of these places. Here is my list of 12 non-UN countries that I include:
Vatican City (not a UN member, perhaps surprisingly)
Palestinian Territories
Western Sahara
Somaliland
Taiwan
Abkhazia
South Ossetia
Transdniestria
Northern Cyprus
Kosovo
Cook Islands
Niue
So in my quest to visit all the countries (and semi-countries and pseudo-countries) of the world, I am currently sitting at 156/205, or 76% complete. I need to hurry up before the onrushing scythe of Father time catches up to me! The plan for the next little while is to add to the list by visiting Saudi Arabia and (perhaps) Socotra Island (part of Yemen) during Christmas vacation, and perhaps add Algeria to the list next summer.
My current list of missing countries has the following geographical spread:
Americas: 24 (13 Caribbean island countries, 6 mainland Central American countries, and 5 mainland South American countries.
Europe: 1 (the pseudo-country known as South Ossetia, more properly known as the Russian-occupied Tskhinvali region of Georgia)
Africa: 11, consisting of Algeria, Equatorial Guinea and 9 contiguous countries spread across the Sahel-centred Axis of Instability that extends from Mali to Somalia.
Greater Asia: 4 countries (Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Afghanistan and North Korea)
Oceania: 9 countries
Anyway, without further preamble, here’s my list of the countries I have visited (and/or lived in), arranged according to the date I first visited them. The non-UN members of the list are coloured red.
1968
1. Canada
1969
2. US
1977
3. France
4. Switzerland
5. Liechtenstein
6. Germany
7. Netherlands
1981
8. Tanzania
1982
9. Norway
10. Italy
1988
11. UK
12. Vatican
13.. Greece
14. Hungary
15. Austria
16. Czech Republic (Prague, then part of the now-defunct Czechoslovakia)
1990
17. Belgium
18. Monaco
19. Poland
1991
20. Australia
21. New Zealand
22. Fiji
23. Cook Islands
1994
24. Egypt
25. Turkey
1995
26. Spain
27. Kenya
28. Uganda
29. Democratic Republic of Congo
30. Japan
31. Singapore
32. Indonesia
1996
33. Philippines
34. Malaysia
35. Thailand
36. Cambodia
37. Nepal
1997
38. India
39. Sri Lanka
40. Pakistan
41. Luxembourg
42. San Marino
43. Andorra
1998
44. China
45. Portugal
46. Morocco
47. Tunisia
48. Jordan
1999
49. Israel
50. Palestinian Territories
51. Syria
52. Lebanon
53. Chile
54. Argentina
55. Peru
2000
56. Bolivia
57. South Korea
2001
58. Mexico
59. Brunei
60. Laos
61. Taiwan
2004
62. Kazakhstan
63. Kyrgyzstan
64. Tajikistan
65. Uzbekistan
66. Turkmenistan
67. Iran
68. Bahrain
2006
69. Vietnam
70. Burma
2007
71. Mongolia
72. Palau
73. Bangladesh
2008
74. Bhutan
75. Cyprus
76. Northern Cyprus
2009
77. Kuwait
78. Azerbaijan
79. Georgia
80. Armenia
81. Iraq
82. Bulgaria
83. Serbia
84. Kosovo
85. Macedonia
86. Albania
87. Montenegro
88. Bosnia-Hercegovina
89. Croatia
90. Libya
91. Malta
2010
92. Ethiopia
93. Somaliland
94. Djibouti
2011
95. Denmark
96. Abkhazia
97. Russia
98. Ukraine
99. Transdniestria
100. Moldova
101. Romania
102. Slovakia
103. Belarus
104. Lithuania
105. Latvia
106. Estonia
107. United Arab Emirates
108. Oman
109. Qatar
2012
110. Slovenia
111. Togo
112. Benin
2013
113. Maldives
114. Iceland
115. Ireland
2014
116. East Timor
117. Solomon Islands
118. Papua New Guinea
2015
119. Finland
120. Sweden
2016
121. Paraguay
122. Brazil
123. Uruguay
124. Zambia
125. Botswana
126. South Africa
127. Mozambique
128. Zimbabwe
129. Malawi
123. Madagascar
2016
121. Paraguay
122. Brazil
123. Uruguay
124. Zambia
125. Botswana
126. South Africa
127. Mozambique
128. Zimbabwe
129. Malawi
123. Madagascar
131. Swaziland
2017
132. Lesotho
133. Namibia
2019
134. Panama
2022
135. Burundi
136. Rwanda
2023
137. Angola
138. Republic of Congo (Congo-Brazzaville)
139. Gabon
140. Cameroon
141. Nigeria
142. Ghana
143. Sao Tome & Principe
144. Cote d'Ivoire
145. Guinea
146. Senegal
147. Guinea-Bissau
148. Gambia
149. Mauritania
150. Western Sahara
2025
151. Cape Verde
152. Liberia
153. Sierra Leone
2026
154. Comoros
155. Seychelles
156. Mauritius
