Visiting Every Country Twice
- Gunnar Garfors
- Dec 10, 2018
- 1 min read
On the river bank in Asunción, the capital of Paraguay.
After two years of research I have finally finished my book about the world’s 20 least visited countries (titled ‘Nowhere’ and available to preorder in Norwegian, to be released in April). Returning to all of them for research gave me so much. I met people with incredible stories, saw jawdropping sites and sceneries and am now left with countless non-forgettable experiences. It may not come as much of a surprise that I also noticed vast amounts of changes from my first visits.
That made me realize that no country deserves to be visited only once, and I decided to revisit every country in the world. Another reason to do it is that people and places change, just like your hometown and the country you live in. That I have been in a country 15-20 years ago doesn’t exactly make me an expert on it anymore, if it ever did. The changes have been too substantial. Stories and experiences luckily last forever, relevant travel know-how from around the world does not.
I am currently writing this in Paraguay, which means that I have now visited over 95 percent of all the countries at least twice, with only a few ones remaining. Follow my quest to finalize the second round of the worlds countries on Instagram or Twitter and find out whether I will in fact be successful. Some visas are trickier than others, let’s say, and both bureaucracy and cancelled flights have hampered countless travel plans before…
Regardless of progress, I’ll publish photos every day on social media, using #everycountrytwice.
Wish me luck…
Gunnar’s dedication to seeing the world twice is truly inspiring. It really changes your perspective on what 'visiting' a place actually means. However, as someone who also loves long-haul travel and rugged adventures, I know how much strain those long flights and mountain treks can put on your knees and back. I've found that MrJointPatch is an essential part of my travel kit for managing joint stiffness, helping me stay mobile and ready for my next destination!
Gunnar, your quest to visit every country twice is absolutely inspiring! It’s so true that travel know-how from 20 years ago doesn't cut it in today's rapidly changing world. I love drafting my travel itineraries and 'least visited' country lists in Markdown for its simplicity. To share these lists with my fellow travel enthusiasts in a professional way, I always use Markdown To Pdf. It converts my notes into clean, high-quality PDFs in seconds. Good luck with the remaining 5% of your journey!
I completely agree with the sentiment that no country deserves to be visited only once. The way places evolve over a decade or two is truly remarkable, and revisiting them offers such a fresh perspective. I’ve been keeping a Markdown-based travel log of my own return trips to compare the changes. For anyone else documenting their global adventures, I highly recommend using Best Markdown To Pdf to turn your digital travel diaries into beautifully formatted PDF documents. It's perfect for archiving these lifelong memories!
This is such an inspiring and thoughtful reflection on travel. The idea that "no country deserves to be visited only once" truly resonates, especially when considering how rapidly places and cultures evolve. It's fascinating to hear about the depth of your research for "Nowhere" and how those initial return visits sparked this incredible second-round quest. Documenting such profound changes and revisiting places after so many years must provide an unparalleled perspective. Best of luck with the remaining countries and navigating those tricky visas! For anyone needing to organize their travel photos, a tool like Merge JPG could be handy for consolidating image files.
This is truly inspiring! The idea of revisiting every country, especially after recognizing how much places and people change over time, is such a profound perspective on travel. Being able to experience these shifts firsthand, like you're doing in Paraguay, must lead to incredible insights. I can only imagine the stories and non-forgettable experiences you're gathering for your "Nowhere" book, and the challenge of navigating bureaucracy and tricky visas adds another layer of adventure. Best of luck on completing this remarkable quest! When you're ready to share those invaluable travel notes and transform them into polished documents, you might find Markdown to Doc to be a really handy and free online tool for converting your markdown drafts to Word documents…