All Around the World with the Most Travelled Indian
By NITIN GAIROLA
These days when you say you are an extreme world traveller, the first thing many ask is ‘how many followers do you have?’ Some also mention a word I cringe at, which is an ‘influencer’ (whatever that means). They ask ‘are you an influencer?’, and I don’t know how to respond. I am not sure who I am supposed to influence and for what. I am not a middle man hawking some online wares to earn a few quick bucks. I am simply an extreme world traveller trying to set some travel records and to write an authentic account of the world I witness first hand. Basically I am like an old-school travel writer and storyteller but with a twist – Which is I also break world travel records and my travels are linked to Earth Science & Geography most of the time. So I prefer questions such as ‘how many deserts and forests have you visited?’ or ‘how many countries?’ but certainly not ‘how many followers?’
Sometimes celebrations are in order.
It comes as a surprise to these inquisitive people that some of the world’s biggest travellers today don’t even have a social media account. Their focus is clear – to be the biggest and not to count ‘likes & comments’ and then later get into deals with brands based on online traffic. They just travel the world and most of them have a very wide view and perspective on most things, all because of the educative power of travel. To add to that, most are not egoistic or pig-headed, all thanks to the grounding that wide travel gives you – from places of plenty to places stuck in poverty, from peaceful & prosperous societies to those in the middle of war, for no fault of theirs.
The best way to find out who the world’s biggest travellers are is to check the ‘Nomad Mania’ website. It is an online community that ‘ranks’ travellers, post verifying their travel claims to places in the ‘master list’ of around 1,301 regions of the world. However, almost none of the top travellers in this community have a social media presence, despite all the unique travel content they could have recorded, had they wanted to.
Chasing Rainbows.
These 1,301 ‘Nomad Mania regions’ include 193 UN nations, the additional Traveller’s Century Club territories (which include dependencies & islands that don’t have their own sovereignty but are geographically or politically apart from the UN country) and they further consider ‘every state or province within every country’. This truly determines who the ‘Most Travelled Person’ of the ‘political world’ is and gives authenticity to this claim. It is not easy to justify if not measured and just visiting ‘every country on Earth’ is not enough. This is since there are already around 400+ people (ever) who have visited all 193 UN countries and in fact 3 have visited every country twice. Hence the need for the above list of 1,301 regions which no one has completed in all of human history yet. But we do have Harry Mitsidis who is at a staggering 1,284. That is just 17 regions shy of what no one imagined any man could do in 1 lifetime. Harry is just 52 years old and also happens to be the founder of Nomad Mania, which now has over 30,000 registered and verified mega travellers. It is the go to place for those who want to know where they stand in this silly but serious race.
Just to be clear, in the Nomad Mania master list, India is not counted as 1 but as 36 (28 states plus 8 union territories) and to say you have visited India, you need to have visited every state and union territory in the country. Likewise, USA is not 1 country in the master list, but 48 mainland states plus Alaska and Hawaii, so that adds up to an even 50. Now imagine what it will take to visit all 1,301 regions of the world, many of which are absolutely closed to almost all people or are simply inaccessible remote islands.
Nitin with the India Book of Records title.
Along with Nomad Mania there is another community of extreme world travellers called ‘Most Traveled People’ started by American, Charles Veley. He was once the ‘Most Travelled Person’ during the early 2000’s but now ranked just 14th. Such is this competitive travel game. And the original community amongst these is the California based ‘Traveler’s Century Club’ that opened in 1954. Here you can only become a member if you have visited at least 100 countries. This club includes many who have visited all, so even those on 100 or more can have an inferiority complex in their company. These 3 clubs are by far the biggest communities that rank such extreme travel collectors and surprisingly humble travellers.
In fact after checking these 3 clubs and reading a rare book on this niche topic called ‘Mad Travelers’ by Dave Seminara, I realized that I was beaten in this race by those 400+ who had been to all 193 UN nations. This numbers increases exponentially year on year, and has been picking up pace since around 2010, with just a 2 year Covid break in between. In fact when I last mentioned these numbers in a feature 6 months back, such ‘UN Masters’ were around 300 only.
But in this list of ‘all country visitors’, there are just 4 Indians so far – Benny Prasad, Kashi Samaddar, Ranjan Sharma and Ravi Prabhu. Benny and Kashi did this before 2010 and are also in the Guinness Book of Records, whereas Ravi just recently accomplished the feat but on a US passport (so he is not a resident Indian nor an NRI, but a PIO i.e. Person of Indian Origin). Because of this he doesn’t qualify for Indian record books such as Limca Book or India Book of Records.
There was another prolific world traveller from India and she had visited 180 countries and was the first Indian woman to reach Antarctica in 1977. This great lady’s name was Meher Moos and she just passed away a week back at the age of 78. This sad news was covered in many national papers including Hindustan Times and Times of India. And if anyone thought she was born into money and that’s why she could travel, the answer is that she wasn’t. She was an Air India air hostess back in the day and her life’s message would be that all it takes is clarity of purpose, some insane organizational skills, unbridled execution, a bit of luck and definitely some courage. That’s all. To be clear, I have earned every penny on my own to fund my world travels and I have no big inheritance coming my way either.
So it is here I realized that I can’t compete with people like Harry Mitsidis, Michael Runkel, Joao Paulo Peixoto, Pawel Krzyk, Sascha Grabow and the like or even our own Benny Prasad and Kashi Samaddar when it comes to seeing the entire ‘political world of countries & states’. I just came a decade too late for that. That led to some soul searching as to why and where I travel to. And when I analyzed my destinations from the past, I started seeing a broader theme. While I was trying to pack in a lot into each trip like most ‘country collectors’ do, I was focused more on the natural world of biomes (deserts, forests, etc.) than the political world.
And with that, in January 2021 came the thought that I may become the first person ever to visit every desert on Earth. To put that in context, around 108 billion people have ever lived in Earth’s history, of which 8 billion are still alive today. Could I actually be the first out of 108 billion humans? Wasn’t that a bit too preposterous to even consider? That’s like saying you are the first amongst 108,000,000,000 people, which does sound a bit ludicrous when you actually read all the 0’s after 108.
Of course, it was not lost on me that this would be aided by the age of aeroplanes which Marco Polo in the late 1200s or Ibn Battuta in the 1300s didn’t have. So it’s indeed very clear that all of us new age traveller are exactly that – ‘travellers’ and not ‘explorers’. We take the help of readymade infrastructure and are not remotely close to being called expedition leaders like Columbus, Magellan, Livingstone or Shackleton. God only knows what we would lead our party through and into. So instead of being delusional and comparing myself with real explorers, I went deeper into my research to know if any ‘extreme travel collector’ had ever been to every desert on Earth as they have been to every country.
As it turned out, I found that there are 2 Germans who had been to all deserts and were documented and confirmed as the first ever to do it. They are Michael Martin and Elke Wallner who did it on a 4 year motorbike tour from 2000 to 2004 when I was just 24 years old. They also wrote an amazing book on deserts and it illustrated their adventures through them. So I realized that I wouldn’t be the first human ever and from there it was only one thing left for me and that is to take it a notch up. Why limit myself to ‘every desert on Earth’ and why not ‘every biome on Earth?’. A biome is an official scientific word that divides the natural world into all its deserts, forests, grasslands and tundra regions. I didn’t mention ‘polar ice’ as that comes under the ‘desert biome’ itself, as we know Antarctica and the Arctic are actually deserts due to their low precipitation. To be clear, a biome is a living landscape or changeable ecosystem on Earth and not a more ‘permanent’ physical feature like a mountain or plateau. Hence a region which is topographically a plateau can actually come under any of the above 4 biomes, depending on its surface type.
Clearly no human (ever) has visited every major biome on Earth and nor have I so far. And just in case I don’t, I think I have travelled enough to claim to be the ‘Most Travelled Indian of the Natural World’ at least. But since I am so close to it after 17 years of travel, I do intend to claim the record soon and in any case the ‘First Indian to visit all deserts’ record in almost in the bag.
So it is only after all this travel, soul searching and research that I came up with the ‘Most Travelled Indian’ name and that for me is far more satisfying than having a million followers on social media but with no real substance or depth in my travels. If given a choice between respect and popularity, I would choose the former in a heartbeat as it’s far more long lasting. In fact I did a bit of research on people who do have a million or so online ‘followers’ and found that they are not really extreme travellers at all. They are excellent online content creators and for them their subject of filming or blogging is travel but it could just as well have been any other theme. Most of the so called ‘world travellers’ have, in fact, only seen a small part of the world but it is blown out of context by their brilliant (but somewhat deceptive) content. That is the difference.
For me personally, I love the act of movement but more importantly I see it as an education, since I see myself first as an academic, then a world traveller. For me it’s all about witnessing Geography and Earth Science with my own eyes, to move out of the books & classrooms and into the real world. The need to travel is just something incidental that has to be done to gain this firsthand knowledge and experience. I think recording travel videos takes so much away from the travel experience itself. I honestly did give it a try a few years back (on the advice of so many friends) and I threw it aside when I realized what it was taking away from me. And while I do enjoy photography, I again don’t see myself as a true blue photographer (Hint – I take DSLR camera photos on auto, not manual mode). In fact, I just happen to take some good photographs since I come in front of interesting subjects.
But there is one communication tool that I love to use in order to capture my travels and that is the written word. I used to be a poet in my early days and writing was always in me, just that I felt I was much better at writing poetry than prose. But these days, I do love penning down my travel stories for you, from the past 17 years of world travel. It’s an amazing way for me to look back, to look forward and hopefully to make my lovely reader happy.
And to add to this love for writing, academics and travelling the world, it’s also not too bad to be the first amongst that many. This is not to actually be the 1st only, but to show that an ordinary person (and I am as ordinary as one can be) can do extraordinary things. Honestly, if I can do it, anyone can.
I will soon create my own blog which contains the natural world/biome master list, just as the country/region lists of ‘Nomad Mania’, ‘Most Traveled People’ and ‘Traveler’s Century Club’. But this list would be for Indian travellers only. Then I too would be guilty of using online platforms but I guess now you know the motive for it, which is to simply create a list and a repository. I may top it off with a book down the line.
However it’s also not lost on me that in the end none of this would matter anyway. The only thing that would is how others (anywhere in the world) felt being with you. So here’s to more ‘world travel’ and less ‘world wars’.
Nitin Gairola is from Dehradun and has travelled the natural world more than almost any Indian ever. He has set world travel records certified by India Book of Records, has written for Lonely Planet, and holds National Geographic conservation certifications. He is also a senior corporate executive in an MNC and in his early days, used to be a published poet as well. More than anything else, he loves his Himalayan home.