How Far Have You Travelled? A World Completion Score
How Far Have You Travelled?
Someone asks how many countries you’ve been to. People treat that number like a resume line. It isn’t one. A weekend in Monaco and a month walking the Andes both add a single stamp. A tiny island you can “finish” in a day sits next to a country that changes with every season. Country count measures borders crossed, not travel.
A Chinese traveler who goes by bayfamily2020 (贝版) built a site for the question he actually wanted answered: how complete is your map of the classic world? The interactive checklist lives here: 环球旅行达成度测试. This page is an English companion. The list, the scoring, and the ranks are his. I’m framing the idea for TMFNK readers and saying where I land on it.
He picked 650 classic places and experiences, not every country on Earth. About 500 are landmarks and landscapes. The rest are festivals, pilgrimages, hikes, and one-off experiences such as camping in the Sahara or going into an Icelandic volcano. That mix is the point. A checklist that only rewards famous photos misses the hours that actually stick.
Scoring is blunt on purpose. Roughly 250 items are tagged “must go this life” and worth 2 points. The other 400 are “fine if you skip them” and worth 1. Max score is 900. Your progress is points divided by 900. Call it opinion with a calculator attached. His must-go list is denser in Europe than elsewhere, and he cut famous spots from Italy, the US, China, Japan, France, and the UK so those countries wouldn’t eat the board. He says that out loud. Good.
Experiences get equal billing for a reason. In Nomadland, Swankie tells Fern about kayaking an Idaho canyon and watching swallows and eggshells rain onto the water. That scene never makes a Top 10 landmarks roundup. His site argues those kinds of hours matter more than the postcard. I buy the argument even when I squint at a given ranking.
The ranks are playful Chinese nicknames mapped to completion bands. Rough English sense, original in parentheses:
| Progress | Rank |
|---|---|
| under 2% | Cubicle fixture (工位钉子户) |
| under 4% | Desk farm animal (家养牛马) |
| under 6% | Observer at the bottom of the well (井底观察员) |
| under 8% | Prairie dog peeking out (探头的土拨鼠) |
| under 10% | Rookie at the post house (驿站的菜鸟) |
| under 12% | Annual-leave special forces (年假特种兵) |
| under 14% | Escaped alpaca (出逃的羊驼) |
| under 16% | Free-range chicken on the run (奔跑的走地鸡) |
| under 18% | Cross-border wanderer (跨国流窜犯) |
| under 20% | Human suitcase (人形行李箱) |
| under 30% | Migrating antelope (迁徙的羚羊) |
| under 40% | Drifting sea turtle (漂流的海龟) |
| under 50% | Arctic tern chasing wind (追风的北极燕鸥) |
| under 60% | Gray whale on migration (洄游的灰鲸) |
| under 70% | Street wanderer of Earth (地球街溜子) |
| under 85% | Ibn Battuta (伊本·白图泰) |
| 85%+ | Alien probe (外星人探针) |
After he finished the list, he scored himself and landed in the sea-turtle band. That is the toy doing its job. Even a heavy traveler can look at 900 points and feel the map still open.
Use his site as the checklist. Filter by continent, country, month, or type. Toggle what you’ve done. Most cards already carry English names inside the Chinese labels. Click through when you want a deeper link. I’m not reprinting the 650 items here. The curation is his, and the tool is already live.
Treat the ranks as a conversation starter, not a CV line. Any fixed list of “classic” travel carries the taste of whoever built it. Euro density, which Asian picks he favors, and the must-go versus skippable split will not match every reader’s priorities. Fine. The better question the site leaves you with is not “what percentage am I?” It is “which of these hours would I actually want?”
Related TMFNK Content
- Guide.world: A Curated Compendium of Travel Writing Long-form essays that go deeper than any landmark checklist.
- 50 Years of Travel Tips by Kevin Kelly How to travel for experience rather than stamps.
- Prague 2022 One city done as a real trip report, not a completion score.
Crepi il lupo! 🐺