Visiting Every Nation on Earth — Even North Korea
By Michael Frank on November 29th, 2012
It took Graham Hughes almost four years, but after reaching the world’s newest country, South Sudan, the U.K. native claims to be the first person to have visited every sovereign nation on the globe without flying. The 201 countries include Kosovo, Vatican City, Western Sahara, North Korea, and even war-torn countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia. Of the latter he said it was no big deal since nations at war tend to have few border controls. Hughes based his journey on four key rules: He could not fly, must not drive his own transport, must take “scheduled ground transport,” and to qualify as a visit to a country he “must step foot on dry land.” The toughest part: getting to tiny island nations — his journey included “four days crossing open ocean in a leaky wooden boat to reach Cape Verde,” but he was also “imprisoned for a week in Congo and was arrested attempting to sneak into Russia.” Via The Age.
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