i dont care how many countries you've been to

and neither should you

John Smith, 63 countries and counting, *insert random flags*. See the world!

- a typical Instagram bio of someone who considers themselves a traveler.

I’m ashamed to admit this, but when I see a profile like that, my first instinct is to qualify myself against this person. Am I more or less travelled than they are? Have they been to some cool places I’d like to visit?

My second thought is “Ew”, as I quickly stop myself from following that train of thought. Not again, I won’t fall for this bullshit. My brain should have led with “What are you trying to prove and why is this the only information you choose to share about yourself to strangers on the internet?”

made a helpful starter pack

The way I see it, country-counting is kind of like bodycount: an arbitrary number that doesn’t actually say much about anyone, yet people seem oddly obsessed with it. Also, once you start living a little, it gets harder and harder to keep track of it. Unless you can count it on one hand, I’d be side-eyeing anyone who knows their number off the top of their head, let alone puts it on display publicly.

So I can’t help but ask myself: “What is it that compels people to ascribe so much importance to a number?”

country is a social construct

Duh.

No, but really. Countries are made up, often in extremely flawed and unromantic ways. So why do we care so much about how many spaces between arbitrary lines drawn up in a boardroom have we visited?

Modern borders have been shaped by politics, warfare, strategic purchases, land exchanges, and diplomatic deals in pursuit of resources, and that’s for the countries that got lucky. Many less fortunate nations were created forcibly with no consideration for their ethnic, cultural, and religious makeup, defined by their colonial overlords without much input from the local populations. The aftermath often came in the form of civil wars, genocides, broken families, and overall suffering.

Not to mention that some countries are currently under occupation, having their sovereignty challenged, and there are over a hundred disputed territories worldwide.

Reducing these intricate global dynamics to a game of numbers to be upped or flags to be collected feels… odd.

how exactly are we counting?

For the sake of this article, I went ahead and, with some help from a handy online map tool, found out my number. I landed on 47, in case you care (and I hope that by the time you finish reading this, you won’t). But even during this one exercise, some question marks came up.

The general consensus appears to be that airports don’t count. Which works for me, as there’s no way in hell I’d remember every airport I’ve had the misfortune of catching a connecting flight at. But then what? Is everything else fair game for claiming a country as conquered?

When you say you visited a country, you aren’t giving away much information about yourself or your interaction with said place. I went on an all-inclusive in the DR with my dad when I was 17 and spent the entire vacation drinking daiquiris by the pool. Did I add it to my final count? Yes. Did I learn anything about the Dominican Republic or its people and culture while there? Not at all, unless we count my newfound appreciation for rum.

I also spent a week in the Brazilian jungle, but while creating my silly little map, I was hesitant to include it.

That’s because I didn’t go to Rio or Bahía or anywhere else representative of the country. Instead, I was on the Brazilian side of the triple border region in the Amazon rainforest, where national allegiances become blurred and pushed to the sidelines. Borders run through rivers and jungles, and you rarely register whether you’re in Brazil, Peru, or Colombia. The Amazon feels like a whole different entity, defying the Western idea of what a country should look like.

I reluctantly put Brazil on my map, but I drew the line at Peru. Even though I technically did visit the Peruvian side of the same region as well, I felt like adding the whole country to my map based on a short tuktuk ride through a village and a chaufa would be insincere.

And what about Vatican City, is that a country or a non-country? I walked in and out while in Rome and included it in my map because it’s small anyway, so it must count. Easy win?

I could have made this map in a million different ways, and that’s without having to deal with controversial territories and all that. The final number says nothing of value about me or the kind of person I am. Flight attendants, soldiers, Doctors Without Borders, missionaries, drug traffickers, performing artists, and influencers all travel a lot. I doubt that they would relate to one another much through shared experiences.

which one is the correct way to represent a Taiwan trip? 🤔

and what are we trying to achieve?

“Fialka,” I hear you say. “People do it for fun. It’s not that deep.”

Scratching places off a map on your wall or creating an online visualization of the theoretical percentage of the world you’ve seen, never killed nobody. Citing an arbitrary number is a great hook for short-form content if you need to establish yourself as a travel expert. I get that.

But if it isn’t that deep, why are there so many people out in the real world making their country count their entire personality? If it isn’t about numbers, why is “30 before 30” an aspirational milestone to accomplish? Why are those godawful Contiki tours taking people to 10 different European countries in 20 days? “How to visit X countries in Y amount of time” is a staple on travel TikTok, after all.

Why are we so damn obsessed with collecting countries like Pokémon?

I suspect that for some people, it’s about flexing. Sure, travel can be low-cost, as people often like to point out. But it isn’t free, and to travel a lot, you need a strong passport on top of money. Since travel is considered an acceptable item to spend on in our current “experiences over things” social climate, it’s easy to subtly signal status, wealth, and privilege via country count.

It often do be like that, doesn’t it? Did you really have to go to all these places only to come back and still be racist? Source: Reductress

For most, however, it’s probably more about some imaginary kind of street cred. People see themselves as travellers, and an invisible force of human nature drives us to try and validate that identity through some easy-to-quantify metrics.

Except this is where we all go wrong. Travel is not a hobby, and the act of visiting countries by itself is meaningless. It’s not about how much we travel or how many places we go to. It’s the how and what we do with our time abroad that makes us well-travelled.

how to make your travels feel less like filling a pokédex

• Travel with a purpose. It doesn’t have to be a noble cause, but having a solid “why” before you go somewhere is a gamechanger. It could be external factors like a business trip, a concert, or a wedding. Or, even better, align your travels with your actual interests and hobbies. For example, I plan most of my trips around scuba diving these days.

• Slow down. An obvious one, but what if, instead of doing 10 countries in 20 days, you’d narrow it down to just one or two? That way, you’ll be able to actually take things in and have a taste of what life is really like somewhere else.

• Revisit. It’s not a crime to go back somewhere you’ve already been, even though it won’t up your numbers. Some countries are so diverse that you would need years to explore them thoroughly. There’s no way that you’ve seen it all. You aren’t less of a traveller for not constantly chasing novelty.

• Reframe. Focus on what you’re actually getting out of your trips. Like, what’s the point of it all? I’m not even saying that you need to learn something groundbreaking or travel in a certain way to make it count. But if you’re rushing through as many countries as possible for the sake of it, what is it for? To be able to say you’ve been there? There must be a better way.

• Don’t feed the narrative. I guess I’m guilty of this myself today, and for that I’m sorry. But let’s get the idea that more countries visited = more life experience or knowledge out of our heads for good. And let’s stop trying to reduce ourselves and our lives to silly, meaningless numbers.

So, dear reader.

You may have visited many countries, and for that, I congratulate you. But I don’t care.

Here’s what I want to know: what does that number represent? What did each of those places mean to you? What did you experience there? Did you learn something new? Meet someone unforgettable? Feel yourself change a little? Did something in that place touch your soul?

Or was it just an excuse to consume, tick boxes, and then scratch off another spot on your map at home?

There are no wrong answers. But we need to get better at asking the right questions.

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fialka

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