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
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.
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!!
