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.
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.
I see it like reading the wikipedia page for 193 different programming languages Vs. actually learning how to program in a few of them.
Hopefully, within my kid's lifetime, the amount countries that he can travel to, quickly, is achievable. Imagine travelling to between Berlin and Singapore in a couple of hours.
You just discovered the key to happiness, my friend. Everyone gets to make up the rules to the game they play.
The beauty of it is that, if I am happy because I am better than a loser like you, and you are happy because you are better than a loser like me, we both win.
The only real losers are the fools (usually hyper-intelligente ones, on traditional IQ scales) over-analyzing and looking for deeper meaning where there is none.
Having also travelled extensively, people ask where 'home' is. While 'home' might be where the majority of my family is, I can honestly say "earth". Maybe that's an uninteresting answer but it's really true as I have no interest whatsoever in space travel.
The big culture zones IMHO are Americas: North, Central, South and Carribbean; Africa: Southern, Western, Eastern, Northern; Europe: Western, Mediterranean, Eastern; Asia: Middle East, India, South-East, China, Central, Japan/Korea; Pacific: Islands.
Obviously personal perspective will divide or agglomerate those, but its a rough guide.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think you have a good point, but at the same time, I think it's possible that for some combination of person and hobby, you really can avoid it becoming "work".
For instance, my primary hobby right now is cycling. The thing is, I train pretty hard and sprint up hills every day, and suffer through various aches and pains (the latest being a blister on my right palm of all things).
Many of my friends ask me, "Why are you making yourself suffer during your `hobby time`?" I get their point, and I even think that in a vacuum, they have a good point. But I genuinely enjoy the process of getting better at something like this, and even the suffering becomes part of the whole package that makes the pursuit rewarding and enjoyable for me.
So while it is true that "something that seems like play can become work if taken too far", the converse(?) is also true that something that seems like work can actually be play for some people :).
As for least favorite, well, I was served goat in Somaliland
in a situation where it was difficult to decline.
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!
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."
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 ;)
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.
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.
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.
These lists always remind me of something else that an uncouth young man might brag about - but a gentleman would never.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I suppose this would require a GPS tracker permanently recording your position at all times.