A British traveller has become the youngest person ever to travel to the world’s 196 internationally recognised countries, The Daily Mail has reported.
With the aim of visiting every country before 25 years of age, James Asquith, now 24, started travelling in 2008 when he was still a student. Over the five year period, Mr Asquith, from Stevenage, Hertfordshire, has spent £125,000 visiting 196 countries across the globe. He used university holiday time for his travels, and funded his tour with part-time jobs and by taking jobs in bars and hostels as he travelled.
‘Vietnam was the first independent country I went to and I spent nearly three months there,’ Mr. Asquith told the Daily Mail. ‘I also spent about five months in the US and Canada, getting to 27 states from Hawaii to Alaska.’
Mr. Asquith added: ‘I loved the adrenaline that went with it – but I always seemed to pick the worst timing to visit a lot of the countries.
‘I went to Libya three weeks after Gaddafi fell, Afghanistan two weeks after the terrorist bombings in Mazar-i-Sharif, but generally I just found a local and tried to get an insight into each country.
‘I spent most of my time in Libya with a local man showing me all the war damage, and in Iran I met the hotel owner’s son who was my age who gave me a great local insight.
‘The longest I spent anywhere was six months in Africa. I travelled overland from Senegal to the Congo and then over back up through the east.
‘There were lots of small countries and tricky border crossings, putting trust in some people that drove me as much as three countries a time.
‘But I haven’t finished yet – I’m excited about Tahiti, Easter island, and Antarctica all of which I am hoping to go to next year.’
