..And each camper, armed with only a thermos of coffee and two thousand dollars cash, tries to visit as many countries as he can: Enter the strange, marriage-destroying world of competitive travel. Charles Veley, a dot com millionaire claims to have visited no fewer than 518 countries, autonomous regions, islands, trust territories, protectorates, and other 'places.' Indeed, he claims to be the world's most traveled man. Others disagree, and because there is no governing body to determine just what constitues a 'place' or, for that matter, a 'visit', there's no neutral arbiter who can settle the debate.
Now, serious travel is a fine endeavour and -- if money and time were no object -- I, too, would want to visit the State of Yap (home, as many of you with 1970s-era Guiness Books of World records will recall, to the world's largest currency). But if your budget (like mine) is limited, and if your untreated dromomania doesn't require you to visit, say, South Sandwich, membership in the Travelers Century Club might be a more suitable goal.
Readers are, of course, invited to stake a claim as the most traveled ALOTT5MA reader.
UPDATE: I would note that a useful 'place' list can be found in the .pdf application for the Travelers Century Club. It makes a useful distinction that places which are of the same country, but geographically or ethnographically separate, can count as separate places. So Alaska counts as its own place, as does Tahiti, despite being part of metropolitan France. By these standards, I've been to 23.
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