There’s a tradition in the U.S. of visiting as many states as possible in a lifetime. That challenge seems paltry compared to the mission over at Most Traveled People (MTP) — a community dedicated to dropping in on every place on Earth.
Half club, half contest, MTP was formed in 2005 by Charles A. Veley after the Guinness organization declined to monitor travel as part of its mission. Veley had spent considerable time and energy traveling the globe in a bid to set a travel record and was disappointed when the record-tracking organization ignored his feat.
“It felt like I had completed the marathon in the Olympics…It felt like I had done all that. Come into the stadium and all the judges had gone home, and there was no one there,” the American told the BBC.
Ashen as he was, Veley’s determination did not waiver.
He promptly created the MTP as a third-party organization tasked with keeping track of the world’s extreme travelers and where they’ve been. He began by combining various global travel lists to form the original MTP master list. That list was 573 countries and territories long.
In the nearly 20 years since, Valey and the MTP have divided and subdivided the list into ever finer slices. The current list stands at 1,500 UN countries, regions, territories, World Heritage Sites, dive sites, and other locations. The man currently sitting at the top of the leaderboard, German Michael Runket, is up to 1,307 MTP locations visited, with 193 to go.
What the stats reveal
Anyone can join the MTP and start logging locations. But digging into the stats from the comfort of a fireside armchair provides fun all its own. For instance, Vatican City is the number one most visited location on the site. That’s perhaps unsurprising given its location at the heart of the Mediterranean.
But number four is New Jersey, which raises several intriguing questions.
Everybody in the top 10 is over the age of 50. Filtering for 20 and under, an American user named Joshua K holds the lead at 600 locations. Not bad, Joshua!
There are 31 locations in the Arctic and Subarctic alone, and 29 in Antarctica and the Subantarctic Islands. The least visited spot on MTP’s list? That honor goes to the Entrecasteaux Reefs, a barrier reef located in the South Pacific. Only one of MTP’s members has made it out there so far.
As for the man who started it all, Veley is nestled comfortably in 6th place. At 57 years old, he’s still got a lot of time to climb up to the number one spot.
