How many countries have you visited? It sounds like a trivial question, until you try to answer it off the top of your head. Almost nobody gets it right on the first try.
I have frozen on that count more than once myself. You remember the big trips, sure, but then you forget the three-hour layover that technically counted, and you start second-guessing the country where you only ever saw the airport. (Which opens the eternal debate: does the airport count? For me it does, but I respect anyone who disagrees.)
The reason counting visited countries is hard is that the information is scattered. Part of it lives in a passport stamp, part in an airline email, part in your memory, and a good chunk in your phone’s photos. Pulling all of that together by hand is tedious, which is exactly why most people give up halfway.
Here are the common methods, and where each one breaks:
First, memory. It is the fastest and the least reliable. It handles the big trips and quietly ignores everything else.
The second method is the passport. Good in theory, poor in practice, precisely because more and more countries have stopped stamping. No stamp, no proof, and your collection ends up full of holes.
The third and most stubborn method is the spreadsheet. I will admit I have tried. It lasts two trips. By the third you forget to fill it in, and the sheet becomes one more abandoned tab among twenty others.
That said, the count does not have to be painful. The approach that actually works is to let an app do the boring job of gathering the evidence for you: location, imported flights, a geotagged photo, whatever you have. That is the idea behind this guide on how many countries you have visited, which walks through the steps.
In practice, that is what Stamp Hunt does: each country becomes a digital stamp, and the more proof you give it (GPS, a boarding pass, a photo), the rarer the stamp. The number adds up on its own, with no spreadsheet to maintain. The first 10 stamps are free, and there is a free codes giveaway if you want to go further.
In the end, counting countries is not really about the number. It is about not letting a trip fade into a vague “I think I have been to about fifteen places”. Fifteen? Are you sure? Exactly.