Sophia Lee in Kyrgyzstan, one of the many places she has visited as she races to become the youngest person to travel to every country in the world.
Courtesy of Sophia LeeAt the age of 20, Sophia Lee has already been to more places than most people will visit in a lifetime. The Alaska-born German-American traveler has set an ambitious goal: to become the youngest person to travel to every country in the world.
So far, Lee has visited 180 countries, leaving just 15 as she races toward a self-imposed deadline: her 21st birthday on May 17. But she has more time than that: The current record holder, Lexie Alford —whose journey captured global attention—became the youngest person to visit every country at age 21 years and 177 days, giving Lee until November to break it.
If Lee succeeds, she will join a small but growing group of travelers who have made it to every corner of the globe, including one of her role models: Cassie De Pecol , a multi-record holder, including the fastest time to visit all sovereign countries .
De Pecol is excited about Lee’s impact. “During my travels, I made it my purpose to speak to as many young women as I could, to encourage them to follow their dreams through seeing the world in their own way,” De Pecol told me in an interview. “I wanted to be a woman they could look up to and learn from, someone who had seen every sovereign nation, because I didn’t have that when I was planning my own journey. Now, Sophia can be that for the next generation.”
Melissa Roy , the first South Asian woman to travel to every country, shares that enthusiasm. “No matter the age, a journey of this scale requires far more than passport stamps: It takes determination, courage, adaptability and a genuine curiosity about people and cultures,” Roy told me in an interview. “Having visited every country in the world myself, I’ve found that travel expands empathy, challenges assumptions and reminds us that we are all deeply connected through our shared human experience.”
Colorful fishing boats line the shore in The Gambia, one of the many countries Sophia Lee has visited on her journey to see every nation in the world.
Courtesy of Sophia LeeHow She Got Started
Lee says that growing up in Alaska and being surrounded by nature sparked her curiosity about the wider world. But she didn’t leave the U.S. until she was 13. “I started traveling internationally at 13, when I went on my first solo trip to Costa Rica and over time that grew into a passion for storytelling, photography and learning about other cultures,” Lee told me in an interview.
From there, things escalated quickly. For the past seven years, she has been traveling full-time—often solo—moving from country to country in a journey that has taken her from remote Himalayan regions to some of the most complex destinations in the world. “What inspired this journey specifically was the idea of challenging the perception of how far a young girl could travel alone while using travel as a platform to highlight different cultures and support women’s empowerment and girls’ education,” she says.
Sophia Lee in Haiti, where travel can be logistically and politically complex. Courtesy of Sophia Lee
Courtesy of Sophia LeeRacing Against The Clock
Now, in the final stretch, the journey looks very different from how it began. “At this stage, everything comes down to visas being approved on time, flights aligning perfectly and border crossings going smoothly,” Lee says. “There’s very little room for delays.”
Her remaining list includes some of the most challenging destinations in the world—places where access can shift overnight due to political instability, visa restrictions or safety concerns. “Some of the more challenging ones have been Haiti, Ukraine, Afghanistan and Somalia. The last difficult ones will be Sudan and Iran,” she says, noting that both require careful planning, local support and constant monitoring of conditions on the ground.
To navigate this final stretch, Lee is working with fixers, adjusting routes in real time and building contingency plans in case access changes. “Adaptability is essential,” she says.
High in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains, Sophia Lee passes through the Col du Tichka, one of the many stops on her journey around the world.
Courtesy of Sophia LeeA Different World For Travelers Trying To Visit Every Country
The world that Lee is navigating is not the same place that previous record holders experienced. “Visas have become significantly more restrictive for U.S. passport holders,” she says. “Countries that were once straightforward to visit are now more complicated or even closed.”
That shift has had a direct impact on her journey. “The past record holders were able to complete all 195 countries on a U.S. passport, which is currently impossible without a second citizenship,” she says.
Lee has dual citizenship and says using her German passport has been essential for accessing countries that currently restrict U.S. travelers. Without it, she says, completing the journey “would be extremely difficult, if not impossible.”
London, England: Taking in the view of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben along the Thames—one of the world’s most iconic cityscapes.
Courtesy of Sophia LeeWhat It Takes To Travel To Every Country
While early parts of her journey included longer stays, the final phase is defined by speed and precision. “It’s less slow travel at this point and more about efficiently and safely entering each country, capturing meaningful moments and continuing on to the next destination,” Lee says.
She typically spends anywhere from a few days to two weeks in each country, though earlier in her journey she spent longer stretches, including six months in one place.
The balance between depth and completion has fueled ongoing conversations in the travel world about what it really means to visit a country.
Norwegian traveler Gunnar Garfors has lived in eight countries and set a number of world records, including the first person to visit every country twice and the most continents visited in one calendar day. While he says that he understands the thrill of trying to break a world record, he draws a distinction between logistics and the importance of actually traveling.
“It is always great to be able to inspire people to explore the world, although lately it seems like many have confused logistics for travel. Spending a few hours or a day in each port of transit is insulting to those that live there and to people that dream of properly visiting and getting to know a new culture,” Gunnar Garfors told me in an interview. “Travel is a privilege, and should be about creating friendships, exchanging experiences and learning about the world and ourselves. I hope that Sophia Lee will eventually find time to actually visit her destinations—the world is full of incredible, spectacular and extraordinary people and places.”
At 17, Sophia Lee visits a temple in Ladakh, India, an early trip that helped spark her deep interest in culture and religion around the world.
Courtesy of Sophia LeeMore Than A Checklist
Lee says that some of her most meaningful moments have come from human connections. “Meeting people from completely different backgrounds who show kindness and hospitality is a reminder that despite differences, there’s so much shared humanity,” she says.
Her favorite destination so far? India. “It holds such a deep place in my heart. My grandmother traveled there as a young woman while working on community development projects in Delhi, and I grew up hearing her stories,” Lee says. “I’ve now been to India five times, and it’s a place I keep coming back to.”
At 17, Lee spent time living alone in Ladakh in the Indian Himalayas, while working on a documentary about women’s Buddhist nuns, an experience she calls one of the most transformative of her life.
In Mauritania, Sophia Lee rides an iron ore train across the Sahara, one of the most challenging and unusual travel experiences on her journey.
Courtesy of Sophia LeeThe Cost Of Visiting Every Country
Traveling to every country in the world is a complex and expensive endeavor. Lee Abbamonte became the youngest person to visit every country in 2011 when he was 32, and he pulled it off without sponsors or brand partners. At the bare minimum, you need approximately $1,000 per country for transportation, visas, accommodation, activities, food and more, Abbamonte told me in an interview. “So it’s roughly a minimum of $200,000 and that’s really doing things cheaply—in reality it’s more than that,’’ he says.
To pull off her world-spanning journey, Lee says she has relied on a mix of strategic routing, overland travel and income generated while on the road, including content creation and brand collaborations. “Funding it has been one of the most difficult challenges,” she says. “I started this journey as a teenager with no savings.”
The unpredictability of global travel has also created constant obstacles. “Plans can change within hours,” she says, recalling moments when visa issues or flight disruptions forced her to completely reroute her itinerary.
Traveling solo has added another layer of complexity. “Safety has been a major challenge,” she says. “Traveling alone, especially before I was 18, put me in situations that were dangerous.”
On Socotra Island in Yemen, Sophia Lee poses on a tank during her travels, one of the many moments that have made her family nervous about the risks of her journey.
Courtesy of Sophia LeeA Family Watching From Afar
For her family, Lee’s journey has been both inspiring and nerve-wracking. “I joke that these past seven years have given me a few extra gray hairs,” says her mother, Jessica Meriam. “I’ve also realized that a lot of my worry comes from what we see in the media, which can be very different from the reality of being in a country.”
Lee’s grandfather, Edward Farrar, recalls moments when her choices pushed him out of his own comfort zone. “My admiration was tested and finally gave way to genuine fear and active resistance when Sophia decided to go to Afghanistan,” he says. “I think that was the first and maybe the only time when I said that I could not in good conscience be quiet about her decision to go there. I firmly advised against it, regardless of world records.”
Lee went anyway.
Sophia Lee wearing traditional clothing in Kyrgyzstan during her travels around the world.
Courtesy of Sophia LeeWhy More People Are Trying To Visit Every Country
So what is driving the surge of travelers attempting to visit every country? Abbamonte says that his own motivation was simply a love of travel. “It seemed like a fun thing to do and document on my new travel blog that I never expected anything to come of—bloggers and influencers weren’t things at that time,” he says. Abbamonte also thought it would be “a good conversation piece and a little thing to brag about amongst my well-traveled friends and grandkids one day.”
Abbamonte says he has been trying to understand the new era of country counters, noting that “20-something year olds don’t just travel to every country for no reason.”
His theory: “Social media, money, not working a real job and a changing work landscape has all contributed,” he says.
Harry Mitsidis is the founder of NomadMania , a community where world travelers can meet and help each other while also having the tools to learn more about the world and track the places they visit. Mitsidis agrees that the increase in “UN Masters” (as NomadMania refers to someone who has visited every country) is closely tied to the rise of social media.
“The current surge of people is 95% the result of social media, the desire for 'fame' or monetization of the achievement following it—as we can witness by some of the younger people claiming visits to every country,” Mitsidis told me in an interview. “While I don’t want to be critical of anybody’s motivations, everyone has to make a living and I am sure becoming a social media star beats an office job.”
Mitsidis says the rise in this achievement is changing how it is perceived. However, country counting alone doesn’t necessarily reflect the depth of a traveler’s experience. NomadMania, he points out, ranks travelers based on regions and level of exploration, not just passport stamps.
“I think all attempts are good in that at least I would assume attempting a visit to every country opens up one’s eyes to the world, no matter the motivations,” he says. “But at the same time, the more people do it, the less the achievement is worth, and by the time we reach 1,000 UN Masters (which will probably be in around five years time at this rate, unless North Korea stays shut or war makes other countries unvisitable), we won’t even be keeping score anymore.”
In Angola, Sophia Lee takes in the view during her journey to visit every country.
Courtesy of Sophia LeeWhat Comes Next?
For Lee, the motivation remains simple. “It’s not really about a record,” she says. “It’s about showing that if someone like me can go to these places, connect with people and share those experiences, then the world isn’t as dangerous as it can sometimes feel.”
And she’s already thinking about what comes next. “This is just the beginning,” she says. “I want to continue traveling, telling stories and eventually spend more time in the places I’ve visited, doing humanitarian work and giving back.”
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This article was originally published on Forbes.com
