Eighteen years ago, a friend was telling me about how his Father-in Law was visiting his 80th country to celebrate his 80th birthday. It dawned on me that I had no idea how many countries I had visited or indeed, how many countries there were. I looked in up and at that time, there were 194 recognised sovereign states, 2 associated states and 17 entities claiming to be sovereign states. I had been to 13.
Until I was 16 years old, family trips were to India three times, the first at 2 years old, with my parents travelling by ship. My Father worked for Scindia shipping as an accountant, so got a staff discount. They had Indian passports, but I was born in the UK, so had a British passport.
There was a teacher travelling on the ship and when the ship docked at Alexandria, they let her take me on shore with her. India ✓ and Egypt ✓
Several holidays in the UK and Wales ✓
At 10 years old, we went on a family holiday to Palma, Majorca. My younger sister was 8 and my baby sister was a few months old. My Dad had a hired a car at the airport and when we got to the car hire place, they gave us a Fiat 500. He laughed his head off and squeezed us and the luggage in. Spain ✓
At 13, we went to visit my Uncle in New York, where I discovered I was allergic to lobster and then on to my Aunt in Chicago, where my little sister got her head stuck in the bannisters. On this visit, we also went to Washington DC and I remember going inside the White House for a tour. USA ✓
At 14, there was a school cruise with Bromley high School to the Baltics and we visited Visby in Gotland, Helsinki, Leningrad and Copenhagen on the way back. Sweden ✓, Finland ✓, USSR ✓ and Denmark ✓.
My parents moved back to India from the UK, when I was 16 and I studied there for 2 years, returning in 1982 to try and get into Oxford University.
Travel back to India was expensive, so the first Christmas vac a friend kindly invited me to join her in Oslo for the holidays. Norway ✓
After finishing finals, My boyfriend, later to be husband had a 3 week trip by car ferry to housesit in Oslo, drove to Sweden and back via Denmark, Germany and Belgium. He hadn’t passed his driving test, so I did the driving. No sat nav, but we had a mini atlas of the world for him to navigate by.
We got married in 1984 and was I studying and working at the weekends. Travel was mainly to Yorkshire at the weekend to see my husband’s family and trips home to see my parents and sisters once a year.
I did win a trip to Paris in a raffle at a work Christmas party. France ✓
A trip to Scotland with my husband and baby daughter to Balmoral. Scotland ✓
Disneyland Paris and two trips to Turkey ✓ and Sardinia, and Cascais, Portugal ✓ with my children, after I got divorced.
Two trips with a friend to the Maldives, ✓ where I learnt to dive and passed my PADI and Morocco, where I developed nephritis and went to straight to hospital on my return.
Total number of countries visited 13 (plus Scotland and Wales)
I was 38.
In March 2003, I met my future second husband, Karl in the South of France at a conference.
He had been to Norway with Venture Scouts and family holidays had been to Europe, including Germany, France, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, Disneyland, USA, Portugal, Scotland and Wales. He had also been to Hong Kong. Total 11
Having a travelling partner made holidays possible again and that year we went to St Lucia ✓ for our summer holiday with my children, then 9 and 10. We also went to Dubai, UAE ✓ for my husband’s 45th birthday and stayed at The Atlantis in opening week. We also ended up in Belgrade, Serbia ✓, which had mistakenly thought was near Montenegro. My children have never forgiven me for that!
The conversation about 80 countries by 80 triggered something in me and I decided to look at how I could increase my travel, whilst still working and bringing up my children.
In 2005, we took two-week trip to Thailand ✓ with Imaginative Family and when we got married in 2006, we asked for Trailfinder vouchers instead of wedding presents. We had enough to do a two-week family trip to China ✓ and Hong Kong ✓ that summer.
In 2007, life changed, I went to work at a global law firm with international offices and saw partners getting on planes to visit clients and our other offices around the world. I wanted to do that, too.
One of my strategic initiatives was to develop relationships with General Counsel and our firm. I held a discussion dinner in London with 12 GCs and 2 of our partners in London.
I asked the Partner, for whom I worked, if I could do the same for our Brussels office and he agreed. He encouraged me to set it up as a separate business and they sponsored the events. I went on to hold dinners in 58 cities over a period of 12 years and that became my work., combining monthly visits to Bangalore for a weekend to see my parents from 2015 to 2020.
I sold Global Leaders in Law in 2017. The timing worked out well as I would not have been able to sustain the business during the pandemic and 2017-2019 gave me two precious years to see my parent regularly and often before we lost them in 2020.
Being on gardening leave, two years of which coincided with no travel due to the pandemic, gave me time to spend in our lovely home in Beaconsfield. By this stage, I had visited 91 countries.
Recently I had a 40th anniversary reunion, with schoolfriends from Bromley. And then a Gaudy at Somerville, 39 years since we matriculated. One of my University friends had made a list of 60 things that she wanted to do by her 60th birthday and that inspired me to set a new challenge for myself- to visit 60 new countries by my 60th birthday in May 2024.
The Challenge began on the 17th August 2022 with a weekend trio to Latvia (#1 60by60) and Lithuania (#2 60by60).
I invite you to follow my journey here.
