I retired in May 2024. Earlier that January we decided that we will take a few years, maybe ten, to travel together to all the countries in the world. We started with two very long trips, full of energy and enthusiasm. A third round the world trip described before and a three months trip to Africa and Middle East. Then almost without pause a fourth trip around the world, a “brief” one, with Ioan and his future wife to Korea and China and then alone to Siberia, Mongolia, Belgium and Germany. It was then, on the shores of Lake Baikal that we decided to split our chores, I will travel to all the countries in the world and Ileana will stay home to take care of the important stuff…
That was the first year of retirement in a few words. We spent the summer at home and then started this separate schedule. After a little transition period we figured it out and it's working well. I did the fifth trip around the world by myself, a very special accomplishment because there were limited options to get to 18 islands in the Pacific. Traveling to all the countries in the world became my second career and I take it as seriously as a job. A big part is learning and planing. Logistics... and then executing. A fairly significant change of style and pace as I'm always trying to get back to her as soon as possible. It is more than a full time job, it takes about 168 hours per week, I have a “project” that I’m working on and I joined a group of very interesting and special people that have done or are in the process of completing something very similar. It is very hard for a normal person to understand why anyone would want to do this and it is impossible to a mere mortal to imagine what it is involved in getting this done. By the way, I had a great experience being interviewed by the extraordinary Ric Gazarian for the famous podcast Counting Countries. Take 100 minutes to listen to it here...
At the time we got the idea I was at 45, then we went to Seychelles and Qatar. Since my retirement I went to 63 new UN countries (70 UN+ countries & territories). Places like Taiwan, New Caledonia or Western Sahara are added to the United Nations 193 countries to get to a list of about 266 countries and territories. In the last two years I (or we) also went back to a few of those initial 45: China, Germany, Canada, Mexico, Italy, Turkey, Thailand, Austria, UK.
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| Returning to Xi'an after more than 14 years, unusual but worth it |
The 63 new countries are in order: Netherlands, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, Oman, Bhutan, Morocco, Kuwait, Yemen, Jordan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Liberia, South Korea, Russia, Mongolia, Luxembourg, Belgium, Palau, Micronesia, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Kiribati, Fiji, Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Tonga, Samoa, Togo, Benin, Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, Cabo Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Djibouti, Somalia, Nigeria.
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You cannot see the islands here but you can get an idea of where I/we spent a lot of my/our time
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| One of the many surprises of visiting all these places, the city of Yerevan. I fell in love with it |
The extra territories are Taiwan, Northern Marianas (US), Guam (US), New Caledonia (France), American Samoa (US), Western Sahara and Somaliland.
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Simple beauty. New Caledonia
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No-one thinks of Somaliland when looking at this picture. We all should...
 | Celebrating May 18 in Hargeisa. When you know, you know.
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From May 16, 2024 to May 23, 2026 I left home 15 times for 442 nights (60%)! Twice for 1 night, six times for more than 5 weeks. The nights away were spent:
- in hotels 350 (including a stone hut in Djibouti, a yurt in Turkmenistan, a container in Nauru)
- in one Airbnb - 7 (a lighthouse in Kenya on the shore of the Indian Ocean)
- at relatives mostly in Romania - 61
- in tents - 8
- on trains - 2
- on planes -14
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| our Kenyan lighthouse rented for a week on AirBnb |
We spent almost a year in various hotels, most of them decent or even good. Maybe the best hotel was Hotel Indigo Jabal Akhdar in Oman, but Protea hotel in Entebbe and Crowne Plaza at Dead Sea deserve honorable mentions. I was put up in a 5 star hotel, Meridien in Noumea, in New Caledonia when Aircalin canceled my flight to Fiji and sent me next day to New Zealand.
The worst was Subira House in Lamu, Kenya. Yes, we spent nights in primitive guesthouses, in a broken house on Tikai island in Sierra Leone, but Subira House remains the worst because we expected something decent and it was horrible. Don't go there!
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| Hotel Indigo Jabal Akhdar in Oman |
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| view from the balcony |
Travel was mostly by plane and it decided a big part of my schedule. I bought 172 plane tickets in the last two years. I flew 138 flights (more than 300,000 kilometers which is 7.5 times around the world at the equator), I have more lined up in the next 5 months. I fly only economy, I observed that it takes about the same time as the business class to reach a destination. Also, I can’t afford it any other way, flights are expensive these days. This also opened the door to experimenting with getting and using airline miles and points. I didn’t do much of it before, got a 40 minute flight for 10000 miles in 2024. I calculated that in the last 11 months I spend 585,096 points (or miles) on buying 30 of these flights. A lot of time and some knowledge is required but the main advantage is that changing flights and getting backup options can be much cheaper or even free. While we had some long flights, the longest being from Manila to NYC for 15 hours, traveling for extended periods of time also meant that I took a lot of very short flights, an hour or two. The shortest was when the plane returned after 10 minutes to Noumea, in New Caledonia. The shortest completed flight was for 30 minutes, from Samoa to American Samoa, in a small plane for 10 people. The first airplane didn’t start, the pilot tried for a few minutes then said “Well, this doesn’t work, let me see if I can get another plane” and he did! The flight was memorable for the view of the islands and for going back in time, exactly 24 hours! I departed on December 10 and I arrived in the morning on the 9th.
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| this is the little plane that helped me go back in time... |
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| In Funafuti, Tuvalu, there are three flights per week (on a busy week), so the rest of the time the whole island uses the tarmac for games, sports and social interaction |
We (later I alone) traveled a lot on land. From the Pamir Highway in September 2024, to crossing Pakistan or Saudi Arabia later, taking the transsiberian for 24 hours to Ulan Baatar. The most challenging experience was in Mauritania, getting from Choum to Nouadibou on the train for 16.25 hours on a pile of iron ore. No major trips by boat so far.
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| Once in a lifetime experience of sleeping on the iron ore train |
I learned and dreamed of places in this world since I was a little child. I kept accumulating information, stored somewhere in my brain and now I have been able to make it a real life experience. So many, many times I have been able to achieve my “biggest dream”, sometimes on several consecutive days! Reaching the Tiger’s Nest monastery, seeing Lake Baikal, visiting Nauru (after waiting for it 40+ years) are just some examples. In addition, there were countless pleasant surprises, little towns or big cities, little parks, old monasteries, wildlife refuges, unexpectedly good museums and so on. I thought I arrived in paradise when I visited Irkutsk, thankfully Ileana was with me and she brought me back to earth. But I was also happy to visit Conakry or Bissau, my favorite examples of miserable places where most people wouldn’t go even if you’d pay them. There were many sad places as well, some even tragic, human misery caused by malice or greed or stupidity. And, on returning from my last trip, just a week ago, I had the following interaction with an angry, aggressive young immigration officer at Washington Dulles:
“Where are you coming from?”
“Nigeria”
“Was that your only destination?”
“No”
“Where else did you go?”
“Romania, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Djibouti, Somaliland, Somalia…”
“Why did you go to Somalia?”
“Tourism”
“NOBODY GOES TO SOMALIA FOR TOURISM!!”
“Well, I did”
“YOU’RE NOT THAT BRIGHT THEN!”
He really said that, I was his first client of the day at 5 am. He probably knows better and I don’t mind. He proceeded to ask me about my time in Uganda (only a few hours in the airport) as it pertains to the new Ebola outbreak. I really enjoyed my time in Somaliland and visiting Mogadishu was a great experience. Everyone talks about the war, the ruins and the safety concerns but what impressed me most were the cows. Apparently only 4% of muslims eat beef, so the cows grow by themselves in the streets of Mogadishu, feed themselves somehow on leftovers/garbage (there is no grass anywhere) and take over streets and neighborhoods. The government would collect thousands of them, take them away somewhere but after a while would be overwhelmed and would release them back on the street. Street vendors are in a constant fight with them to protect their merchandise. I never heard of the cows of Mogadishu before, but now you and I know!
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| A moment later he interrupts his phone conversation to defend his bananas |
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| Pushing the cows with the plastic chair, multiple times, trying to preserve his space on the sidewalk |
A few years ago we decided to try to go to 500 World Heritage sites. I was at 149, then in May 2024 I was at 236. Today I am at 398, 162 in just two years, some of them amazing places and some of the best memories of travel we'll ever have. Just a few examples could be Petra, Bwindi Impenetrable National Park or Nan Madol, on Pohnpei Island in Micronesia. Not all of them are life changing experiences, they couldn’t be, but all of them add a little bit more knowledge about this planet, its history and its people. In some countries (Korea 17, Belgium 16, Morocco 9) we were able to visit all of them, in others just one or two. And in others, like Mali, I couldn’t make it to any, no Timbuktu or Djenne this time.
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| Petra just for the two of us |
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| Spending an hour with mountain gorillas in Bwindi Impenetrable, Uganda |
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Up to my waist in water, crossing a channel to Nan Madol
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Socotra, words fail to describe this other world
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Of course, another one, visiting a world heritage site at 8 pm on Sunday, straight from the airport.
Walled City of Baku with the Shirvanshah's Palace, Azerbaijan. Number 397 |
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| very soft and gentle python |
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supposedly this is safe, they are sacred for the local population
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A live World Heritage Site, Tiepele, Burkina Faso
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Niger River
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The most incredible being I learned about, the floating cow
(the air in the horns helps with flotation) |
My strategy has been to try to go to the most difficult destinations first. Out of the beaten path countries. Some of them require visas and some are very hard to get. Some might be on the verge of some sort of "instability" or another. There are 54 countries in Africa, we were at 5, now I am at 31. Visiting 26 African countries, several twice (Morocco, Senegal) has been one of my most difficult and rewarding achievements.
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| I'm sure you can tell that I'm in Lagos, Nigeria, I couldn't be happier |
The next couple of years will probably be very busy, I crossed the halfway mark but I still have 83 countries to visit and many hundreds of World heritage Sites…
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| 110 visited, 83 to go |
To wrap this up, it’s great to travel all over the world, it’s rewarding to work toward completing a project, I’m lucky to accomplish one or another of my life’s dreams almost every other day, but, the best experience has been at home: watching our daughter become a mother and her mother turn into an amazing grandmother… That’s life
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