Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
sadly. “It was such a momentous realization. You've got to do things when you can.” So
why go back to Cancún if you've never seen Tierra del Fuego? Why put off seeing Laos if
you're right next door in Thailand? Gather ye visa stamps while ye may! Old Time is still
a-flying!
The Travelers' Century Club has expanded the world's list of “countries” to 319, but
even that is too limiting for some collectors, forever hungry in a shrinking world for
the next place, the new thing. And so a TCC member named Charles Veley created
MostTraveledPeople.com
,
a website where his loyal globetrotter readers can vote on an
even longer list of legit destinations. They've currently inflated the count to a whopping
872. All fifty U.S. states are now separate “countries” on the list. So are the twenty-two re-
gions of France, even if they're all about the size of Vermont. It's the rare spot that
doesn't
makethecut,infact.PointRoberts,Washington,atinybitoftheUnitedStatesthatdangles
down from Canada just a few hours northwest of my house, is currently on the vetoed list,
with only 40 percent approval.
Noone'sbeeneverywhereyet,butthecompetitionisintense.“Igetalotofe-mailsfrom
peopleclaimingthatotherpeoplearecheating,”Veleytellsme,hisunfailinglymild,affect-
less voice betraying no irritation whatsoever. “Some people just like to tattle.” We've met
near his home, a converted colonel's residence in San Francisco's decommissioned Presi-
dio.Helooksexhausted,notsomuchfromlastweek'sfour-countryswingthroughEurope,
during which he was able to cross off the tiny North Sea island of Heligoland, but from a
subsequentstopthatsoundsevenmoregrueling:takinghisthreeyoungchildrentoDisney-
land.
Though Guinness doesn't have a category for it anymore (too subjective, too conten-
tious), Veley is, by the universal acclamation of international newspaper headlines, the
world's most traveled man.
He's been mugged
in Buenos Aires and peed on by Costa Ric-
an tree frogs. He's had his canoe overturned in the hippo-infested waters of the Zambezi
River. But in photos of his journeys, he's always smiling placidly, usually in a neat Oxford
blue shirt and khakis, whether he's hanging out with Nepali holy men, Ethiopian village
children, or Rio's Carnival showgirls. The overall effect is like that prank where a stolen
garden gnome turns up in odd places all over the world, always with the same wide eyes
and benign grin.
Atthirty-seven,CharlesbecametheyoungestpersoninthehistoryoftheTravelers'Cen-
turyClubtopolishofftheclub'sentirechecklist.Heandsomefriendshadfoundedthesoft-
ware company MicroStrategy, and the dot-com boom of the late nineties had made them
millionaires many times over. Charles decided to retire early and see the world. All of it.
Hetraceshiswanderlustbacktoachildhoodfascinationwithgeography.Notallsystem-
atic travelers love maps—TCC chairman Klaus Billep confided to me that “when we add
Abkhazia or Tokelau to our list, people have no idea where they are. They have to call us
or look them up on our website.” But Charles is a map nut after my own heart.
