Ten Years Around the World

On January 23^rd, 2020, I wrote an update on the first five years of my ambition to visit every country in the world and, as one or two events have happened since then, a ten-year update is now due. January 23^rd, 2025: shockingly, the same goal I set out in a Hawaiian bar on the shores of Waikiki Beach exactly a decade ago alongside a local called Bruce and his pet mongoose is still the same goal today – the only other things I’ve maintained for this long are my support of Nottingham Forest, my obsession with Penguin biscuits, and my appreciation of all things Saoirse Ronan.

Rewind to that date, half a decade ago, and the term COVID-19 had barely been spoken, Vishnu, my beloved campervan, was barely a pipedream, and Subway’s bread hadn’t yet been declassified from the bread list. My tally, at that point, was forty-nine nations and fifty US states, comprising road trips from Vancouver to Key West and from South Korea to Kidwelly as well as two backpacking expeditions through Central America and the bulge of West Africa. It was a solid start and kept me on track to fulfil my aspiration in twenty years but, as you’ll gather later, my schedule has undergone a fair amount of change.

So, what has happened since then? Well, little did I know at the start of 2020 that a certain pandemic would shut the world down for almost eighteen months making travel almost impossible and making a chat with your neighbour over the fence, unless stood out of spitting distance, a criminal offence. This was a particularly trying year travel-wise, with a single road trip around Greece all I could manage without King Boris throwing me in clink alongside Mr Cummins and that guy who plotted to kill Carol Baskin. However bizarre and frustrating a year it was, it wasn’t all spent learning how to knead dough like Paul Hollywood or speak fluent Elvish, though, and it offered an opportunity to start to build a career teaching online as well as plan a means of combining this with my travelling obsession…

Enter 2021, and two pivotal figures in the following year’s events: Vishnu and a certain water polo player from Kittle. Having purchased an empty builder’s van at the beginning of the year, it took a full ten months of converting (thanks to a hardworking couple from Bristol), tweaking, and testing before the first of four euro trips could take place. Lowri, bravely, was onboard with my plans and off we went exploring France, the Iberian Peninsula, and the fascinating micronations of Andorra and Monaco. It gave us a chance to sample teaching from the road, which we adapted to quite quickly, and to learn a little of vanlife: a single saucepan and one jumper is more than enough and a diesel heater that doesn’t blow up on its first use is useful.

The following spring, with heater repaired and excess kitchenware shed, we headed across the Irish Sea to, unsurprisingly, Ireland. We spent three joyous months there, falling so much in love with the Emerald Isle that it has since become a preferred location to plant our roots when time, and finances, allow. Feeling emboldened by the success of previous trips, we took to the road in September in the direction of Italy and the Western Balkans; a four-month tour that included getting broken into in Rome, setting off celebratory flares in Croatia, and spending Christmas on the shores of Lake Kotor, Montenegro. The journey opened our eyes wide to the corners of Europe where beers can still be bought for one Euro and where people can still be greeted in the morning without bemusement or asking if anything was wrong with you.

At the start of 2023, I decided to leave the endless hustle and bustle of Four Roads and embrace the calm of coastal West Cross by renting a place with Lowri a stone’s throw from the UNESCO-listed Swansea Bay, or at least it should be. Between furnishing an unfurnished property and starting a new role at UCL, it wasn’t until the autumn that we could finally climb into our sacred carriage once again and return to the continent for part three: Benelux and Central Europe. This mountainous tour both over and under the Alps took its toll on Vishnu’s underbelly, as well as challenging our ability to consume an unseemly amount of Swiss cheese, Bavarian beer, and Hungarian politics – but by golly did we try.

A two-week visit to Egypt and Cyprus kick-started 2024 as we embraced stubborn street sellers, hardened hawkers, and those who stalk tourists for hours on end waiting for an opportunity to snag your sterling. Our final euro trip, to Scandinavia and the Baltics, covered countless nations out for our dollar but at least they were polite enough to ask for it first. After several weeks of avoiding reindeer roadkill and driving headlong into fjords, we hit the continent’s northernmost point: Nordkapp. Having reached the southwesternmost point, Cape Saint Vincent in Portugal, three years prior, it meant Vishnu had seen more of Europe than Coldplay’s tour bus although I still had a smidgen of time remaining to spend avoiding Soviet prisons in Belarus before returning with all digits, and most brain cells, intact.

Our current annus may have only just sneezed but there’s been just enough time to reach my ninety-sixth nation, Dominica, as well as propose to long-suffering Lowri atop Saint Lucia’s second most prominent peak. As a negative response would’ve made the remainder of our voyage around the Eastern Caribbean extremely tricky, she kindly acquiesced to my request and that brings us neatly up to today’s date: Hit The Road Jack’s tenth anniversary. A mathematically pleasing one hundred nations remain although, with priorities extending, including the desire to spend far more time in each remaining country, a further twenty years seems a reasonable timeframe to reach my last – should no further nations be added to the list (watching you Bougainville and Greenland). So, liver and sanity depending, see you in about twenty-five countries time or on January 23^rd, 2030, folks.

J