No doubt, you are already asking yourself how you can travel alphabetically. The process is complicated by what you can count, and how you count it. Everyone has a different idea of what constitutes a visit to a country. Some people say you only need to step foot on the soil, while others say you need to work there. For myself, I take a somewhat more moderate approach to qualifying visits. So, without further ado, here are the unofficial rules to travelling alphabetically.
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You have step across an official border. This means that transit stops do not count, unless you get out of the airport. Without this rule, I could have been done years ago, just by choosing appropriate air routes.
- You must interact. Examples of activities which can count are:
- using lavatory facilities
- eating a meal
- marrying locals
- discovering secret caches of weapons of mass destruction
Breathing, and looking at photos on the tourist web site do not count. These are far too passive. To illustrate, if you drove across the Tete corridor in Mozambique to get from Zimbabwe to Malawi, that would not count because you did not really do anything in that country. On the other hand, if you were pulled over and robbed at gunpoint on the way across, that would count, and would probably make a good story to tell your grandchildren.
- A country with more than one common name in usage (e.g. Holland) can be counted only once, but the letter chosen is up to the individual.
- You must stay within one official language. You cannot conveniently switch from English to German spelling, just because you need the letter K.
- The date of the visit determines the name of the country. If you visited Yugoslavia before the breakup of the country, it counts for Y, and Y only. I have no idea what to do if a country breaks up while you are in it, and if that happens, figuring out which letters can be counted is probably the last thing on your mind.
Text and images copyright © by Curtis Marr. All rights reserved.