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Completing Countries
The reviews this week featured the beginning of a series of updates on the Ethiopian WHS by Wojciech Fedoruk . After finishing a comprehensive trip covering 8 WHS in 15 days, in addition to an earlier trip where he visited 3, he is now the first on this website to have ‘completed’ Ethiopia. The photo below shows what he found at the Lower Valley of the Awash .
Completing Countries can be a satisfying subgoal in the WHS quest, and it doesn’t necessarily belong only to those with high total scores. In this post, I will present a closer look at this based on the ‘ticks’ logged by our community members.
Looking at the countries with at least 10 WHS, I was able to draw the following conclusions:
The easiest countries to complete
The easiest ones are the relatively small European countries where all WHS lie within their European territory:
- Austria: 65 persons
- Belgium: 61
- Croatia: 58
- Switzerland: 56
- Bulgaria: 56
- Israel: 47
- Czechia: 37
- Sweden: 35
- Poland: 31
- Germany: 30
Netherlands by contrast has only 14 people who have completed it, due to the presence of Willemstad on Curacao on their List.
Of the countries with the highest number of WHS, Italy has been completed by 11 members, China by 4 and Spain by 5.
First and only ones to complete
Some countries have only been completed by one person:
- USA, Canada and Mexico ( Zoë )
- Argentina ( Frédéric )
- Ethiopia (Wojciech)
- Brazil ( Luis Filipe )
Countries that have not been completed yet
Countries with large territories AND/OR multiple overseas sites prove to be the hardest to complete. So the following countries have not been completed by anyone:
- France (see map above, has 5 overseas territories on its list, spread across the Caribbean, Indian Ocean, Pacific and the sub-Antarctic)
- India (it takes a lot of stamina; the Himalayan sites prove to be the most difficult)
- UK ( Thomas and Luis Filipe are on 32/33, both miss Henderson Island)
- Russia ( Ivan and Martina are best on 28/31, missing out on the expensive Wrangel Island, the remote Uvs Nuur and the recently added Kazan Observatories)
- Australia (highest scorers are on 18/20, missing out on the sub-Antarctic sites of Macquarie and Heard & McDonald)
The very difficult other ones
Among the countries with 5 or more WHS (and less than 10), the following stand out for their complexity. No one has completed them:
- Yemen – 4/5 ( Tourhistrio and Erik )
- Cote d’Ivoire - 4/5 ( Ask and Loic )
- Mongolia – 5/6 ( Yevhen and KarenBMoore )
And probably the most difficult of them all to finish: the Democratic Republic of Congo. The highest-scoring community members have only visited 2 out of the country’s 5 WHS.
Countries that are nowadays impossible to fully cover such as Syria and Mali have been completed by multiple people during the pre-war periods.
Do you aim to Complete Countries on your WHS travels?
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