Travel 36 countries, five continents 5,360 m at the highest 10 marks
2 countries in twenty-four years, then 34 in four.
Two countries in twenty-four years, then 34 in four. Mostly solo, mostly with a backpack.
A count does not show the part I would actually tell you about, so the figure below plots elevation instead: a ledge 116 storeys up, two unlit caves, thin air in Peru, a volcano on a birthday trip, and six weeks I spent horizontal.
Where I have been, by elevation
Fig. 1 Selected journeys, plotted by elevation. The connecting terrain and cave depths are illustrative. The dashed lines are Kilimanjaro and Huayna Potosí: still on the list.
chosen not chosen dashed: not yet
About this chart
These are approximate place elevations, not a GPS track or a total of metres climbed. Mount Rigi uses Rigi Kulm’s published elevation.
The COVID years are compressed. The 79 days were one uninterrupted stretch at home, not the whole two years.
The blue mark is about six weeks recovering from emergency surgery in Bangalore. That one wasn’t a trip.
Not yet: Kilimanjaro, 5,895 m; Huayna Potosí, 6,088 m.
- 2019: EdgeWalk, CN Tower, 356 m. Toronto. Canada. 116 storeys, hands-free, no rail. I have vertigo.
- 2022: Mount Rigi, 1,797 m. Switzerland. May 2022. Rigi Kulm, the Queen of the Mountains.
- 2023: Recovering, Bangalore, 900 m. About six weeks. Recovery from surgery in late July until the stent came out on 1 September 2023.
- 2024: Cenote Oxman, Yucatán, below ground. Mexico. No ladder out but the one you climbed in on.
- 2024: Bruny Island, Tasmania, sea level. Australia. The Southern Lights. The furthest south I have been.
- 2025: Machu Picchu, 2,430 m. Peru. Same trip as the next mark.
- 2025: Rainbow Mountain, 5,000 m+. Peru. The altitude is the whole difficulty.
- 2025: Caving under Budapest, below ground. Hungary. Unlit limestone passages, under a capital city.
- 2026: Acatenango · Fuego, 3,976 m. Guatemala. Birthday trip, February 2026. Fuego erupted all night across the saddle.
- 2026: Khardung La · Chang La, 5,360 m. Ladakh. India. The two highest passes I have stood on, a week apart, a metre apart.
Field log 1998 → now
Running count in the margin. Return visits are listed, never counted.Photographs open for a closer look.
36 countries by this point
Aug 2026
Sri Lanka
The closest country I had not been to. In Oct 2023 I stood at Dhanushkodi and looked at it across thirty kilometres of water; it took another three years to cross them. Four of us up through Sigiriya, Polonnaruwa and Ella, then a work off-site on the coast. I climbed Pidurangala rather than Sigiriya. Pidurangala is the rock you climb in order to look at Sigiriya. I got to the top of Little Adam's Peak in the dark, after the rain took the sunset. Never rode the hill-country train, which is the one thing everybody goes to Ella for.
Still 35 countries. This trip added none.
May 2026
India · Ladakh no new country
An SE team off-site that I extended. Khardung La and Chang La, the two highest passes I have stood on and within a metre of each other, either side of a week spent at 3,500 m in Leh. Then Turtuk, the last Indian village up that road, close enough to the line that the village changed countries in 1971. No new flag on the map and the two highest points I have ever reached.
35 countries by this point
Jan – Feb 2026
Türkiye · Guatemala · El Salvador + USA, Canada again
Central America overland. I climbed Acatenango on a birthday trip and watched Fuego erupt through the night. One of the hardest things I have done. Craving more of it.
32 countries by this point
Aug – Sep 2025
Poland · Slovenia · Hungary · Slovakia · Denmark · Sweden + USA, Germany again
Six countries in five weeks, and underground caving beneath Budapest: unlit limestone passages under a capital city, which is not what most people book Budapest for.
26 countries by this point
May 2025
Malaysia + Singapore again
Five hours before the flight, I was still packing and had no itinerary. I went back to Singapore for an Okta event and caught up with friends, including one I hadn't seen in six years. In Kuala Lumpur, I finally stood below the Petronas Towers I'd read about as a kid, and visited Batu Caves.
25 countries by this point
Feb 2025
Japan · Peru · Chile + USA, Canada again
Machu Picchu and Rainbow Mountain in the same trip. The second tops out above 5,000 m, and the altitude is the whole difficulty.
22 countries by this point
Jan 2025
Ireland · Scotland + UK again
Three weeks that grew out of a one-hour talk at NDC London: London, York, Edinburgh, Ireland. “UK and Ireland, you have my heart.”
20 countries by this point
Jul 2024
Australia · Thailand
Bruny Island, Tasmania. I went to see the Southern Lights. The boat took us south of the island, the furthest south I’ve been, around 2,200 km from Antarctica. A year earlier, around the same date, I was recovering from surgery.
18 countries by this point
Feb 2024
Mexico + USA, UK again
Cenote Oxman in the Yucatán: a freshwater sinkhole in limestone, no rope, no ladder out but the one you climbed in on.
Still 17 countries. This trip added none.
Oct 2023
India · Dhanushkodi no new country
Six weeks off my feet, and then the far end of the country. Dhanushkodi is the last point of India on that side: a town the 1964 cyclone emptied, on a spit of sand pointing at Sri Lanka thirty kilometres away. I stood there three years before I got to the other side.
17 countries by this point
Sep 2023
Singapore · China
A month after I moved to Bangalore I had emergency surgery, a stent in my kidney, and about six weeks recovering. The stent came out on 1 September. Later that month I was on the Great Wall. I went to China mostly because most Indians do not.
15 countries by this point
Nov – Dec 2022
UK · USA
A London layover finally meant meeting online friends in person. Then San Francisco, re:Invent in Las Vegas, Chicago and New York. One conference day clocked 41,000 steps; Chicago brought my first snowfall. The itinerary changed repeatedly. The holiday season helped. The winter didn't.
13 countries by this point
Nov 2022
Nepal
Kathmandu traffic made Bangalore look easy. There was also the wonkiest cable-car ride of my life, bubble tea, and a friend I'd now run into in five different countries who showed me around. I left already wanting to return.
12 countries by this point
Sep 2022
Netherlands · Belgium · France · Luxembourg · Italy
Paris went from a bad first impression to a city I wanted to revisit. In Bruges, my two-kilometre taxi to the station cost €12; the train more than 300 kilometres to Luxembourg cost €9. I met university friends in Luxembourg, then headed to rainy Bergamo before returning home through Amsterdam.
7 countries by this point
May – Jun 2022
Switzerland · Spain · Austria · Czechia · Germany
The start of a year that took me to 13 new countries.
2 countries by this point
Sep 2019
Canada
Where all of this started: my first trip abroad and my first solo one, built around a hackathon at Waterloo. I have vertigo bad enough that a thirteenth-floor balcony bothers me, and I paid $195 to walk hands-free around a ledge 116 storeys up the CN Tower. I asked how many people had backed out at the top. Sixty-one. I was not the sixty-second.
Still 1 country. This trip added none.
Jun 2019
India · Mumbai no new country
I was twenty-one when I saw the sea for the first time, in Mumbai. Canada followed later that year.
1 country by this point
1998 – 2018
India
Twenty-one years, one country. No passport until I needed one.
For this personal count, England and Scotland are listed separately.
Fig. 2 The same record, projected
Hover or tap a visited country for the year I first got there
Drag to turn. Hover or tap a filled country.With the globe focused, use arrow keys to rotate and Home to reset.
First visits
The first time
I got there.
Pick a country to see the year. The journeys and photographs are in the field log above.
Return visits don’t change the year.
All countries, by first visit 36
19981 country
- India
20191 country
- Canada
202213 countries
- Austria
- Belgium
- Czechia
- France
- Germany
- Italy
- Luxembourg
- Nepal
- Netherlands
- Spain
- Switzerland
- UK
- USA
20232 countries
- China
- Singapore
20243 countries
- Australia
- Mexico
- Thailand
202512 countries
- Chile
- Denmark
- Hungary
- Ireland
- Japan
- Malaysia
- Peru
- Poland
- Scotland
- Slovakia
- Slovenia
- Sweden
20264 countries
- El Salvador
- Guatemala
- Sri Lanka
- Türkiye
Coverage uses 35 of 195 UN member and observer states, rounded. UK and Scotland share one outline but count separately in my log.
Natural Earth geography. India’s outline follows the same India point-of-view source as the flat map.
Not on the map yet.
Taiwan has a date and flights booked. The other five are intentions, not itineraries. None is counted in the 36 countries above. Kilimanjaro and Huayna Potosí are the dashed lines on the figure above.
Taiwan + the US & Canada again December 2026
Flights booked for a December 2026 layover around AWS re:Invent. Set to be my thirty-seventh country.
Everest Base Camp
I have been to Nepal and not to this, which is the wrong way round. 5,364 m, four metres above Chang La, which I have already stood on, except this one is a two-week walk in rather than a road.
Norway, above the Arctic Circle
For the aurora, in winter, on purpose.
Kilimanjaro
Acatenango was 3,976 m and nearly finished me. This is 5,895 m.
Huayna Potosí
6,088 m in the Bolivian Andes. On the list for my first 6,000-metre climb.
The rest of the record, work included, is on one long page. The nine years these trips happened around are on About.
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