A Northern Irish man has spoken about what it's like to mark the milestone of having travelled to 199 countries across the world.
Jonny Blair, who is originally from Bangor, has been a globetrotter for most of his life and has visited almost every country in the world.
Since leaving Northern Ireland behind to explore the world, Jonny has visited 199 countries and over 1,000 cities, working in multiple jobs - from broccoli farming to PR to selling cheeseburgers to planning travel apps.
Along the way, Jonny has also lived and studied abroad and visited every continent.
Now 41 years old, Jonny is now based in Poland where he writes, blogs and teaches.
On December 31 2021, Jonny finally hit country 199, when he landed on Beef Island in the British Virgin Islands. His experiences of countries 100-199 will feature in a new book series that he's writing which will be a follow up to his previous trilogy 'A Northern Irishman’s Journey Through 100 Countries.'
Speaking about how his fascination with global travelling began, Jonny told Belfast Live : "I initially became fascinated with travelling whenever I was a kid and saw all the teams that would play in the World Cup. That always stuck with me. Once you saw all the flags, all these different places, these different people, that sort of stayed in my head.
"Then once I got out of Bangor and got my first taste for travelling, as an adult, it developed from there. I can't exactly put my finger on it, but I've just developed this fascination for other cultures, which I think all stemmed from football."
While many may wonder how Jonny finances his globetrotting, he said that it comes down to a careful balance of work and travel.
"I moved to Australia years and years ago," he explained. "At the time that I moved, I'd been to around 33 or 34 countries. While I was in Australia I met people who'd been backpacking for years and had travelled to these incredible places.
"I was earning a lot of money working out there, so initially I took four months off from work in Australia to tour South America and three countries in Africa.
"Then back in Australia, I met a girl from Hong Kong, and it just seemed like a logical next step to go to Hong Kong and use that to set me off around Asia.
"I got a job in an Irish pub in Hong Kong - I think I was the only Irish person who'd worked there for 10 years! - and I just travelled around Asia. I ended up getting a job as a school teacher in Hong Kong as well, and that gave me three months off a year. So those three months would just be for permanent travel - and I'd never go to the same place twice.
"So it'd be things like two weeks in Ethiopia, two weeks in Tanzania, two weeks elsewhere. It got to the point where I was earning money blogging as well; earning money from PR, just doing random jobs here and there. And it was always the way that, wherever or whenever, I made a bit of money, and I was just off somewhere."
Jonny's roving nature was upset slightly by Covid hitting in 2020. However, he still found ways to get around.
"The last six or seven years, I'd been slowing down the pace anyway, and then with Covid things were that bit more difficult in terms of travelling.
"But now that things are opening up again I've been seeing new places. In the last two months, I managed to go to nine countries in the Caribbean, which brought my total to 199.
"But Covid has definitely been the most difficult thing to deal with yet when it comes to travel. Before 2019, the biggest struggle was getting visas to certain countries - places like Turkmenistan, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan. Luckily I had a friend who was able to help me in sorting visas for those places. But when Covid hit, getting a visa became impossible for some countries, and much trickier for a lot of others."
Incredible as it might seem, Jonny managed to swing a visa to visit Afghanistan several years ago.
Asked whether it was a difficult country to visit as a traveller, he told us: "I actually played in a football match in Afghanistan, and afterwards we went to local restaurants. Things that were almost normal. It's the kind of place where...It must be a wee bit like Belfast in the troubles.
"There's an edge, of course, and there's a dangerousness. But people are still living their lives there. Same with Iraq and Iran. But if you really want to go, you'll go even if a place has that edge. I mean, you can go to Benidorm and get robbed or injured on your first night there, or you can take the risk backpacking in Iran. The worst thing that happened to me in Iran was that I ordered the wrong food a few times!"
With all his travelling, Jonny said that he would make infrequent trips back home to see family and friends.
"When I'm back in Belfast, I do pop into the pub, and I love it, but I couldn't do that every night personally. It's not for me. I like the diversity of being somewhere new every few months. I would get bored going to the same place year after year."
He added that he still very much loves the fact that he was raised in Northern Ireland.
"I've never been homesick, but every day I still care about Northern Ireland. I'm never thinking, 'Oh I wish I was having a pastie supper in Bangor and a bag of Tayto', but I do miss it when I return there and have to leave again. Some of my friends are big travellers, so a lot of them are doing the same thing. And as for my family, I do miss them of course, but they're used to me leaving!"
Asked what his highlights are from travelling the world, Jonny said that getting to see Northern Ireland in the Euros was a particularly strong one.
"There is a lot of football highlights," he said. "I was at the Euros in 2016, so that was one of the best experiences.
"But before that, it has to be getting to visit Antarctica. That happened because I found a special promotion which let me do a 13-day cruise at a discount, and with that we managed to travel to Antarctica. The first step on that land was like a dream.
"Another highlight was seeing Machu Pichu on Christmas Day. To wake up in a tent in the middle of nowhere and then walking down to see this Lost City in the middle of the mountains. It's a different world out there."
You can find out more about Jonny and his travels here.
