The world is small but so fascinatingly diverse. What an incredible planet we live on!

Perhaps my love of travel has something to do with my parents and my early upbringing. My father is Bangladeshi, my mother is Scottish. I was born in Saudi Arabia before moving to (and growing up in) England. I have since lived in Scotland, Sierra Leone, and Vanuatu.

Whatever the reasons, I'm exceptionally lucky to have been given the opportunity to travel since I was young. I'd like to pay back some of this luck by sharing a few experiences from my travels around the world.

I'm documenting each country that I have been to. So far, I've been to 73 countries. For anyone who's interested, my criteria for this previous sentence are the following:

How do I define 'country'? Hey, everyone's entitled to their own methodology on this, right? I have a particular (or should that be 'peculiar'?) interest in how independent, sovereign states function. So on my list, 'countries' are the 193 United Nations Member States, plus 4 extra countries which I consider to be effectively independent and/or sovereign, namely Kosovo, Palestine, Taiwan, and Vatican City. So, that makes 197 countries (only 124 more to go!).

How do I define 'been to'? I take a pretty liberal approach to this one. In my book, I would say I've been to a country if I've spent at least a few hours 'on the ground' there, outside of an airport, and ideally not just metres away from the border. But I don't have to have been to the capital city, say, or have spent a night there, to consider that I've 'been to' a country.