Visiting Every Country in the World – In One Trip
Source: Rodrigo_Soldon at flickr
OK, let’s enter the world of fantasy for a brief moment. Let’s say you had quite a bit of money saved from many years of working, and wanted to embark on the most epic of all journeys – visiting every country in the world on one trip. Could it be done? Is it even remotely possible?
You might briefly think “yes”. After all, you could take a swing through North and South America in one big go – those countries are lined up in a row for the most part. And heading through Europe doesn’t seem so difficult. People do that all the time. So what does that leave? Asia and Africa? Seems entirely doable.
But what if I told you the current world record for visiting every country was 6 years, 10 months and 7 days? And that wasn’t all on one trip. If you could visit every country like that, you’d be the first to ever do so.
By the way, the man who holds that record says it cost him 350,000 pounds to do so, or $500,000. So start saving now.
The main problem seems to be visas. Some of the smaller or more totalitarian ones require them (you can’t just show up unannounced), and some takes years to procure.
I would also imagine that such a trip would be exhausting and pointless. Say you stepped a toe into Finland for an hour, before catching the next flight, just to say you did. You did not really visit Finland. You did not eat the food, or meet the people, or experience anything about the Finnish culture. An around the world journey whose purpose is to visit every country would feel hollow if you don’t get to spend any time in each one. With 190 countries, spending a week in each would then take you 4 years!
So in short, you probably can’t just take off and see the world in one go before coming home again. Now if you just wanted to do most of the world but not all, that’s a different story entirely.
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