

For One Man, It Really Is the End of the World - biswajitsharma
http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130404190015-21564708-for-one-man-it-really-is-the-end-of-the-world

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jasonkester
I've thought about doing this in the past, but decided against it. To pull it
off, you have to focus on it so hard that it just becomes work, and you miss
out on a lot of the reasons you travel in the first place.

Most obsessions are like this, I guess. Find anybody doing a "collect all the
X", and you'll likely find a person who long ago stopped really enjoying X. It
reminds me of the guys a few years back who were determined to completely max
out some airline's "all you can fly in 30 days" ticket. Lots of suffering for
suffering's sake [1].

Naturally, I can't claim that I've somehow had a better time travelling
through my meager 65 countries than the subject of this article did with his
193. But I bet if his goal wasn't "every single one", but rather "as many as
it takes", it would have been a lot more fun.

[1] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=782792>

~~~
chiph
* To pull it off, you have to focus on it so hard that it just becomes work, and you miss out on a lot of the reasons you travel in the first place.*

I think the thing is to relax - you've got 60+ years to go see them all, so
there's no time pressure, really. Sure, countries come and go, so you might
miss some. But the cultures typically last beyond the containing country
anyway.

~~~
obviouslygreen
60+ is potentially an overstatement depending on when you start.

More importantly, 193 countries in 60 years is less than four months per
country. I'm not sure how much traveling you've done, but travel arrangements
take planning; so does lodging, depending on where you're going (less-
populated or less tourism-friendly countries can be an issue regarding where
to stay if you haven't figured it out beforehand). Also, visa requirements can
be very complex, and obtaining one can be both time-consuming and expensive,
depending on how many fees or bribes (yes, in eastern Europe and some other
places, this can be anywhere between helpful and necessary) are involved.

While you're right that relaxing would be the only way to handle this without
going totally insane, that definitely won't make it a nice, leisurely trip.
There _is_ work involved, and a lot of it, much of it intellectually taxing.

~~~
apendleton
Four months per country would be the average, but the distribution wouldn't be
equal like that, especially because I doubt anyone trying to do this would
plan a separate trip for each country. If you wanted to, you could fairly
easily fly into somewhere in the Schengen zone, get a rail pass, and do all 26
countries in the zone in a couple of months' time, without any visas, and
staying in hostels you booked along the way. The only planning you'd need to
do would be to book airfare, and that would give you a fair bit more wiggle
room for the rest of the world.

~~~
chiph
Also, planning & travel can go on concurrently, given cellphone coverage in an
area.

So if you were a schoolteacher with summers off, you could spend 2-3 months
traveling in closely-connected countries. Leaving you 9 months to de-stress
with a room full of 14 year olds. :)

------
nextstep
The real problem with HN is that everyone here is very insecure. Whenever
anyone does anything remotely cool or unusual, there's always a boatload of
comments crapping on their achievement.

193 countries? That's not impressive; he probably didn't enjoy them. He didn't
_really_ see each country I he didn't _live_ there (whatever that means).

Maybe you're all just jealous?

You know what's easy to do? Be the first to post some cynical, contrarian
bullshit in the comments.

~~~
rocky1138
This isn't a problem only found on HN but all of society in general, across
the world.

Thankfully, for all there is, HN has less than the average news site, and it's
why I continue to frequent this place. When HN becomes the next Reddit, Digg,
or mainstream news portal, I'll jump ship.

------
yitchelle
This would have been interesting if he have LIVED in all 193 countries.
Travelling through the countries, like he did, does not seem to add much value
to one's life other than some self-centric ego boost. I am not trying to
dilute the effort and the resourced he put into this achievement, it is a
significant effort, and expensive as well. However, I read the post and
thought, meh.

I have lived in about 6 countries in my 40yrs and still felt that I have
missed something worthwhile in those countries. The culture, landscape, food
etc in the various countries are what I travel for. Not for a stamp in my
passport.

~~~
jdotjdot
There is still something extremely valuable to be found in visiting all of
these places. Indeed, the more time he spent in each place, the more he would
learn--but there is a limited amount of time and the world is huge. You could
equally argue that he should have visited and/or lived in __every town __,
since every town has its own unique experience.

By your standards, what does "living" somewhere even consist of? Staying there
for a month? A year? 10 years? I've been places for a year and don't feel like
I "live" there, and I don't see how arguing that he should have "lived" in 193
places is a valid criticism. Nor is asserting that he's only traveling for the
stamp--he refers often to what he's learned about people and the human
condition, and the stamp is simply a proxy for measuring his progress in this
journey, since you really can't measure "how much have I learned while
traveling?" until way after, as he says.

While it's not strictly necessary to visit every single country, I think what
he's down is incredibly valuable and that people should travel even more for
better cultural understanding.

~~~
galactus
I think the point is that when trips are too short they are not really adding
anything to your "cultural understanding".

I see it like reading the wikipedia page for 193 different programming
languages Vs. actually learning how to program in a few of them.

~~~
sageikosa
I always feel that the Commodore 64 and Apple ][ pages fail to capture the
actual essence of those machines.

------
Lucadg
I've been in about 60 countries. After a while the novelty/new perspective
feeling diminishes. I don't really think it's worth the effort to see all
countries. What's a country anyway? Mostly borders. People and cultures are a
different thing and tend to spread differently over borders.

~~~
lkozma
I came to post the exact same sentiment - why all the obsession with countries
and not, say every climatic zone, or every major language group or every
integer latitude, or whatever.

~~~
elbear
Probably because that's the most obvious thing.

------
mmayberry
Ive always had a small problem with what Chris is doing. Ive followed his
journey from day 1 and have grown increasingly furstrated by his "travels".
Sure he has "visited" every country in the world but its often for 1 day at a
time. He floew all the way to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan went on a jog, spent the
night and then flew home. IMO that is hardly traveling let along visting every
country.

As his journey went on it become more about self promotion and the promoting
of his products than anything else. AND, he never showed proof that he was
actually visiting said countries. All his followers ever saw was a tweet like
"PDX - LHR - TBL - DXB - LAX - PDX"

Im sure Chris is a great guy and he has obviously built himself a nice little
business/brand but I dont agree that he should be praised or really even
recognized for something like this.

------
auctiontheory
As someone who actually has lived around the world, I find "counting
countries" to be in poor taste. It's not as if you can have a meaningful
experience of the people and culture(s) in such a short while. What does it
really signify that you have "done" India or Nigeria or Brazil?

These lists always remind me of something else that an uncouth young man might
brag about - but a gentleman would never.

~~~
endersshadow
At the risk you thinking less of me, I think you've missed the point entirely
about "counting countries." I mean, clearly this guy did it for the
achievement (and hell, that's tough to do--kudos to him), but I think saying
how many countries you've been to is entirely acceptable and gentlemanly--it's
communicating about your general experiences.

It's a way to communicate how much of the world you've seen--it's a starting
point for a conversation. I've never seen it come up in context of, "I've been
to 73 countries!" and then that ended the conversation. Even here, the fact
that he's finishing up this remarkable achievement is used as a launching
point to discuss some of the neat aspects of his journey.

This place is getting more curmudgeonly every day.

------
andyking
One has to wonder what counts as a "country," and when you can say you've done
them all:

    
    
      As for least favorite, well, I was served goat in Somaliland
      in a situation where it was difficult to decline.
    

As far as I know, Somaliland is a bit of a 'limbo' state, it isn't universally
recognised and many see it as just a region of Somalia.

If he visits Somaliland and counts that, did he also visit Transnistria? And
if so, how low down the list do you go - do you then have to visit every self-
declared nation-state all the way down to Sealand?

The list that fascinates me is the amateur radio DXCC list of "entities" which
count separately. Many of them are dependencies of other countries, a lot are
uninhabited (I might book my next holiday on Peter I Island or Scarborough
Reef) but there are currently 340 of them: <http://www.arrl.org/country-lists-
prefixes>

It's all really interesting stuff!

~~~
precisioncoder
From the article: "How did you define “country?” for this trip?

I used the U.N. standard. There were 192 countries when I started, and one was
added (more on that in a moment). I've also been to plenty of regions,
islands, and culturally distinct places that don't technically count as member
countries: Taiwan, Kosovo, Kurdistan, etc."

~~~
mmayberry
Big gray area in this one. During his visit to Eritrea he was denied entry at
the airport and never made it past security. However, because he "talked" to
people from Eritrea on the plane and disembarked from the plane he considers
it a visit even though he was DENIED ENTRY into the country.

My neighbor is from Iran and I was once denied entry into Iran because I have
an Israeli stamp in my passport yet I've never claimed to have visited Iran.
Chris however, would probably disagree ;)

------
maurits
I have lived in 8 and pretty much always traveled in the region I lived. I
love having the time to emerge yourself and soaking it all in, something I
can't do when on a tight travel schedule. And as such you will not see me on
any packaged holiday tour soon. But to each, his own.

For me the most apparent thing has been that I've lost what was left of my
nationalism or "home" feeling. Mostly I feel like a tourist in my own country,
enjoy what it has to offer, being fluent in the local language is funny, but I
don't belong in it any more than I do where I currently live. I'm not even
sure if this is a good or a bad thing per se.

~~~
jackbravo
My guess is that feeling like a tourist everywhere is not a good thing.
Someone above mentioned that he felt like a citizen of the world, so feeling
at home on earth is enough, you don't need to be a nationalist.

But how do you feel at home? I think I feel I'm home when I see the faces of
people I love, and do the things that I like (work and hobbies) everyday.

------
sachitgupta
More from Chris: <http://chrisguillebeau.com/3x5/this-magic-journey/>

------
aashaykumar92
This is something I have dreamed about doing...but how does one financially do
this? I'm still in college so sorry my naivety. It just seems that it would be
incredibly expensive to embark on such a trip. And I completely believe it's
worth the cost but still, how do you determine when you have enough to embark?

And beyond just visiting all the countries, I would like to incorporate
service into my travels. So for every country that I go to, I would like to do
community service there--anything to help the underprivileged but specifically
help in making sure people are properly nourished if that is a problem. I know
I can't save everyone, but I do want to do some good while having fun.

~~~
k-mcgrady
The easiest way to afford it would be to work online during the trip. Then I
would guess you travel by bus/train which is a lot cheaper than flights in
many places. Travelling at night would cut down on the amount you would have
to spend on accommodation.

------
localfugue
I'm not really sure what to make of this. Is this supposed to be a record
breaking thing or a talk of the kind of obsession that this guy has/had? In
either case, 193 countries visited in a year is no mean feat - it requires a
good amount of dedication/focus to achieve that. So, the real question is,
what did he get out of this worldwide trip? Changed perceptions, ideas and
what does he intend to do with it? It's not entirely necessary that he has to
share them, but then, he had given an interview - so I think it's a natural
question.

------
smackfu
Reminds me of my friend saying during our vacation, "you just want to stay on
the train one more stop so you can add Switzerland to your list of countries!"

------
IanDrake
> his journey to Norway, the last country on the list

I wonder how Norway feels about that.

Seriously though, this seems like a poor way of measuring travel. For
instance, I can cross the border to Canada and almost nothing changes, not the
landscape, not the people, etc... However, if I fly to New Mexico (from MA),
I'm in the same country, but so much has changed.

------
jimbobimbo
FWIW, here's the Russian designer who travelled to 180+ countries and took
tons of photos during the process: <http://www.tema.ru/travel/>

I've read he also has a bet with another Russian guy to the tune of $100k on
who will visit all the countries first.

------
peteri
Try Graham Hughes <http://www.theodysseyexpedition.com/> he's been to every
sovereign state (201 apparently) in the world without flying. Took three years
and he's only recently finished.

------
Jabbles
You may find <http://mosttraveledpeople.com/> interesting. A site whose
members are determined to visit as much of the world as possible.

------
Aloisius
Now, who will set the record for being occupying the most area of the world
during their lifetime?

I suppose this would require a GPS tracker permanently recording your position
at all times.

------
D9u
I find it sad, yet indicative of the status quo, that this topic has
relatively few points, yet the one about a film 'critic' who died at an
advanced age has several hundred points.

It seems that more people are interested in fiction than fact.

Also, the world appears to be a bit more accessible today than when Nick
Danziger completed his overland trek through Eurasia during the mid 1980's.

<http://www.nickdanziger.com/index/books/danzigers-travels/>

~~~
joonix
Because it's a mediocre interview. Wow, he ate goat. Tantalizing.

~~~
D9u
Haha! Good point, but I'm still far more interested in a story about visiting
193 countries than I am about a media shill who finally succumbed to cancer.

~~~
fyi80
I'm more interested in a story about someone who watched 193 movies each year,
than I am about a travel shill who finally collected all the stamps in his
passport.

It takes all kinds to make a world, friend.

------
sageikosa
Over 3500 counties/parishes in the United States of America...so little time.

