Footsteps: around the World in 80 Countries

A collection of short stories from the road less traveled

 by Adam Rogers

 

The following travelogues are culled from a collection of journals, emails, faded letters, and assorted memoirs from the past 40 years. I may have embellished a bit here and there, but overall, the stories are as true as I remember them to be.

 

 My first journey around the blue Pearl was at 19 years of age and took five years on a wing and a prayer with little more than $100 a month to sustain, shelter and transport me through 50 countries.  Many of the stories in this collection are from that time, while others are from my 25 years with the United Nations.  Now that I am mostly retired, and with a son who works for United Airlines, I circle the globe at least twice a year collecting new stories, some of which are shared here.

 

Rather than listing the countries chronologically as I experienced them, I have decided to tell them one by one as stand-alone narratives; stories that best illustrate the nation or people, with an emphasis on how they may have inspired, shaped, and/or formed the person I am today. Of course, at this point in my life, I have been to far more than 80 countries, and so selecting which ones to include in this first edition was a challenge in and of itself. 

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This is a work in progress.  As I complete individual stories they will appear hyperlinked in the list below.  When All 80 stories are complete, I will have the collection published as a volume, and added to my list of books. Some of the stories already appear in the Third Edition of The Intrepid Traveler: The ultimate guide to responsible, ecological, and personal growth travel and tourism.

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1. Algeria

2. Argentina

3. Austria

4. Bangladesh

5. Belarus

6. Belgium

7. Belize

8. Benin

9. Bolivia

10. Brazil

11. Burkina Faso

12. Burma (Myanmar)

13. Cambodia

14. Canada

15. Chile

16. China

17. Colombia

18. Costa Rica

19. Croatia

20. Czech Republic

21. Ecuador

22. Egypt

23. England

24. Ethiopia

25. France

26. Gambia

27. Germany

28. Greece

29. Guatemala

30. Haiti

31. Honduras

32. Hungary

33. India

34. Indonesia

35. Ireland

36. Israel

37. Italy

38. Jordan

39. Kenya

40. Korea (North)

41. Korea (South)

42. Lichtenstein

43. Madagascar

44. Malaysia

45. Mali

46. Mexico

47. Monaco

48. Montenegro

49. Mozambique

50. Nepal

51. Netherlands

52. Niger

53. Nigeria

54. Pakistan

55. Palestine

56. Panama

57. Peru

58. Philippines

59. Portugal

60. Russia

61. Scotland

62. Senegal

63. Singapore

64. Slovakia

65. Slovenia

66. South Africa.

67. Sudan (North and South)

68. Switzerland

69. Syria

70. Tanzania

71. Thailand

72. Togo

73. Turkey

74. Ukraine

75. Uganda

76. United States

77. Venezuela

78. Yugoslavia

79. Zambia

80. Zimbabwe