Maurizio Giuliano - Travel

Travel

According to the Guinness Book, through his work, he had travelled to every single sovereign country in the world (which totalled 193 according to the Guinness Book) by 20 February 2004. He claimed that he had visited a total of up to 238 territories (including the 193 sovereign countries recognized by Guinness), and stated that North Korea had been the hardest country to get into, after numerous attempts and long waits to get a visa.

He started travelling at age 14, and believes that, as of 2004, he had travelled at least two million miles, including on the Trans-Siberian Railway and through 11 round-the-world air journeys. Some of his earliest journeys were to Albania and Sierra Leone in 1991, aged 16, and to Mongolia in 1992 on the occasion of the national festivities Naadam. Most of his later travels were related to his journalistic work.

On 20 February 2004, he visited Suriname, thereby completing his visit to all sovereign nations of the world. He held a press conference there on 24 February, where he stated that he had chosen Suriname to complete his record, as the country had always fascinated him due to its richness and variety in cultures and ethnicities. He then travelled from Suriname to London, with 42 passports (of which 30 Italian and 12 British) filled with immigration stamps, in order to prove his record with Guinness World Records.

He claimed that most of his travels were unrelated to the record, and that only since 2001, on the suggestion of friends, he had the Guinness Record in mind when planning his travels. In explaining his record, however, he stated that he might be affected by an "addiction to crossing borders".