Escaping the Country-Count Obsession: What Travel Is Really About
Leaning into the depth of travel experience >> country-count
This post was originally shared on my website here.
One’s ‘country-count’, the number of countries a person has visited, is often part of a traveler’s bio.
Keeping track of my country-count is something I’ve never done (aside from listing the 9 countries I traveled to in the journey included in my book), and I prefer not to share publicly.
This is not to conceal any ‘hidden gems’ I’ve visited, or because I don’t size up against the counts I see in other people’s profiles (I assure you that I definitely don’t measure up in terms of country-count).
The real reason I prefer not to share my country-count as one of my defining features is because I believe measuring travel in this way takes away from what I believe travel is truly about—experience.
Why Are We Obsessed With Country-Count?
We humans love to count, measure, and quantify everything in life.
We count our calories, macronutrients, and measure our weight to stay on track of our diet.
We count the number of followers on our Instagram, and the likes on our photos.
We measure our intelligence based on the results of aptitude and standardized tests.
We quantify a person’s worthiness for a job based on their level of education and the years of previous relevant work experience.
It’s no surprise that when sizing up the worth of a traveler’s experience, we may look to the number of countries they have visited.
Being a girl who loves numbers, logic, and reasoning, I agree that using data to quantify and measure many things in our lives is helpful. Without these systems, educational institutions and businesses would have no guidance and backbone on which to operate.
But, today I’m going to zero in on one particular type of measurement—country-count—that I believe has stolen away the real magic that inspires us travel writers, influencers, authors, photographers (and whatever else I’m forgetting!).
Swapping Country-Count for Experience
This isn’t the first time I’ve written about how bucket-lists or country-counting might be a damaging way to measure our travel experiences.
Similar to people to emphasize the value of slow travel, I also write about how even when I didn’t get to see many cities or towns within a country, my experience with the people I met, and the depth to which I had gotten to know them, were incomparable to anything I could have experienced had I traveled further and farther.
A friend of mine had spent only ten days in India when he visited, whereas I had spent two months. I stayed around Bangalore and the state of Karnataka, while he traveled across several states in the South. Here’s a short excerpt from my book so you get the gist:
“I was in India only for ten days, and I saw more of India than you did in two months!” he laughed.
I laughed, too, because it was true.
He had covered a lot more distance and had seen many more cities and towns than I had. But of the places he saw and the people he met, how deeply did he connect with them? Did his heart ache like mine did when he left?
Who Can We Meet? What Can We Learn?
If you’ve read my book, you’ve probably cried along with me saying goodbye to my friends in India. Every time I re-read those pages, I cry all over again as I picture forcing myself to walk away from my friends and get on a plane that placed hundreds of miles and mountains between us.
One of the many blessings that I believe solo travel provides is encouraging us to be bold and make new connections and friendships while we are away. Being alone gives us the space to spend time with new people in moments we’d normally cling to the friends and people we are comfortable with.
Traveling slowly and solo taught me how full the world is of wonderful people, and how many tiny wonders there are within a single city, town, or neighborhood. In fact, I don’t think we need to travel far at all in order to learn something new or make a new friend.
Instead of asking how many more countries we’ll get to see before we die, what if we asked ourselves how many more people we’ll meet and learn to love before our time on earth is through? How much will we have learned about their ways of life, and how they perceive the world around them?
I don’t think there’s a way to count or measure my travel experiences, but what I can say is this.
It’s not the number of places we get to see as travelers that change us. It’s the depth to which the memories made in those places take root in our soul that bring value to each opportunity we have to travel.
If the way I see the world, the people in it, and even the way I perceive myself has changed after I have stayed in a new place, I know that I’ve done something right.
If I Could Count the Times I Left My Heart Behind...
I’m going to end today’s post with another quick paragraph from my book, which I hope inspires you to take your next trip slowly, and to embrace the magical opportunities life gives us to connect with new people, and make our experiences matter.
I usually stress about settling into a place when I make travel plans. Where will I find a place to sleep? What will I find to eat? In retrospect, these problems have simple solutions. I can ask someone for directions. My map can help me find a hostel. Supermarkets, street vendors, or local restaurants are easy to find. It’s not hard to settle into a place and learn to love new people and places. The smells, the crowds, the food, and the heat—I got used to the Indian norms without difficulty.
Leaving is the part I didn’t anticipate. How will I deal with missing new friends? Will I ever see them again? After two months spent with my friends and their families, it’s as if I’m leaving a chunk of my heart behind.
Thanks for reading!
If you’re looking for more inspiration to travel deeper and fill your heart with wonderful new experiences, you can order a copy of my book below.
Wishing you wonderful adventures today, and always.
Much love,
Danika.
P.S. Last week I was featured in the Toronto Guardian about my life as a writer and dancer. Check out the article here!
I couldn’t agree more — it’s not about the number of places you’ve been, but the depth of experience you’ve gained from each one. That’s what truly matters in life :) thanks for writing and sharing this!