Why the urge to cover the globe? I’ve decided to join the world of extreme travel.

I’ve always loved going abroad. But I recently learned there is a group of people whose passion is visiting as many countries and territories as they can, no matter how difficult or dangerous. For many, the gold standard is 193—all the member states of the United Nations—although many are stuck at 192 because Americans aren’t allowed into North Korea following the State Department ban in 2017.

Sometimes called country-collecting or competitive travel, and once the domain of mostly wealthy men, extreme travel is now a rapidly growing and more-diverse community, fueled by social media and collective curiosity. People who claim to have visited all the countries in the world, or to have set any kind of record, may attract media attention, book deals, sponsors—along with disputes and controversy. Just what counts as a “visit” has been endlessly debated. Claims of being first in any category, such as first woman, have been challenged and turned into feuds.

The spur to travel

People plunge into extreme travel for all sorts of reasons. “The lightbulb moment was usually reading about someone online,” says Ric Gazarian, the host of “Counting Countries,” a podcast about extreme travelers. Many decide to take up the travel challenge after a major life change such as the death of a spouse, a breakup, recovery from illness or retirement. Gazarian, who has been to 184 countries, decided to plunge into extreme travel after being laid off from his financial-services job in 2008.

The odyssey also appeals to those who love checking lists. “The country-collecting impulse isn’t that different from being a stamp collector or a birder; there’s a compulsion for completeness,” says Dave Seminara, author of “Mad Travelers: A Tale of Wanderlust, Greed and the Quest to Reach the Ends of the Earth,” a book on the extreme-travel community.

In my case, my father backpacked around the world in the 1970s, leaving me with the idea it was a normal thing to do, something you don’t want to miss. And then, in November, I went to a conference in Bangkok, the Extraordinary Travel Festival, organized by Gazarian, with over 200 country counters. By the end, I was hooked.

Whatever the reason people decide to travel, there is plenty of support out there. Members of the Facebook community Every Passport Stamp share advice on everything from safety in war-torn countries to finding the right guide. Online groups, meanwhile, offer competitive rankings, advice forums and forthcoming conferences in places like Uzbekistan and Ethiopia.

At the group Most Traveled People, growth is exploding, says founder Charles Veley, a software developer in Larkspur, Calif. The group has about 40,000 members, up from 30,000 a year ago. Likewise, the group NomadMania added 12,000 members last year, bringing its total to about 42,000. “Last year was the biggest year on record,” says founder Harry Mitsidis, who lives outside London.

Mitsidis says he can confirm that 382 travelers in the world have been to every U.N.-member country. NomadMania works to verify many claims, using passport stamps and other documents. Mitsidis has been to every country twice.

The Travelers’ Century Club, which is open to people who have visited 100 or more countries and territories on its list, works on the honor system. Some of its 1,600 members have visited all 193 of the U.N.-member nations, while the most ambitious travel to all 330 countries and territories on the list, including remote islands without airports.

New places, new thrills

All that traveling can bring eye-opening—even life-changing—experiences. Diane Pechenick, owner of Healing Dives, a medical-equipment company in Woodland Hills, Calif., has been to 106 U.N.-member countries and a total of 156 countries and territories on the Travelers’ Century Club list. She particularly enjoys seeing animals and loved visiting Antarctica last year, where she was able to watch penguin behavior. In massive colonies, penguins were cohabiting with seals and seabirds.

“They make little penguin highways in the snow, and if two of them bump into each other, they do a little ritual, one has to get out of the way,” she says.

Earlier this year, Pechenick was scheduled to go gorilla trekking in the Democratic Republic of the Congo with NomadMania, but her trip had to be rerouted due to the worsening political situation there. So, her group did a gorilla trek in Uganda and spent time watching giant silverback gorillas. “We went to a park in southwest Uganda that few people visit,” she says.

“There’s joy in seeing things that are so foreign to your everyday reality,” says Pechenick. “This shakes up your routine, and you’re immersed in a whole different universe.”

Ted Nims, a former investment banker in Chicago who has visited 178 of the U.N.-member countries, went to Iran in 2023. His tour group was told never to photograph the military—then encountered a group of cadets walking in formation. “We were all thinking, do not take a picture,” says Nims.

But “the cadets wanted to take selfies with us,” he says, adding, “It became a big group of people having fun together.”

Nims also travels with a stash of inflatable soccer balls and has handed them out to kids in about 70 countries, including Bhutan and Madagascar. “You can see how excited they are,” he says.

John McKenzie, who left his job as a grant manager in Washington, D.C., in 2022 to travel more, loves “being able to connect with people and experience hospitality in a way that doesn’t exist in your home country.” Since then, he has been to Belgium, Armenia, the country of Georgia, Argentina, Uruguay, Qatar, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somalia, Eritrea, South Korea, Bhutan, Japan and Cuba, bringing his country count to 64. “Once you get through the hassles, you encounter the kindness of people,” he says.

One of his most memorable examples happened in a poor town in a remote area of Tajikistan in 2008. An elderly man beckoned McKenzie into his home. “We had tea and smiled a lot,” says McKenzie. “I think back to that moment quite a bit. It was a moment that changed how I looked at travel in different countries.”

It was an epiphany, says McKenzie. Before, when he traveled, he was mostly trying to see the sights, and what stands out now is usually an interaction with a person.

“It’s the kindness and unexpected surprises from humanity that makes me want to explore these other places,” he says. “I still think about that as a pivotal moment.”

Bad trips

At the same time, travelers who are determined to see every country can find themselves in places that are unexpectedly harrowing. Plenty have faced detainment, imprisonment, scams and body searches, particularly in politically unstable places.

Nims keeps a map in his Chicago living room using white pins for standard visits and blue pins for trips that had issues with police or other problems. “There are more blue pins than I would like,” he says.

Slawek Muturi, a real-estate investor in Warsaw, Poland, has been to every U.N.-member country at least twice, as well as Vatican City and the Palestinian territories, which have nonmember-observer status at the United Nations. He says he has had few bad experiences, with one notable exception.

In January 2024, he flew to Mauritania in Africa and took a public bus, planning to travel through Senegal, Guinea and Burkina Faso into the Ivory Coast. When the bus broke down in Burkina Faso, he decided to walk about 6 miles to the border but was stopped “by heavily armed gentlemen.” He was detained for four days without his phone and without understanding who the men were. “I was scared I had been kidnapped,” he says.

He learned the men were civilians and had been told to report anything unusual. He was unusual. “They had never seen a tourist walking,” he says. What’s more, his background made him seem suspicious: “I was a guy of color saying he was from Poland,” says Muturi, who was born to a Kenyan father and Polish mother.

Some places are just a pain to reach. When Gazarian last year tried to get to the remote island of Tuvalu, an island country in the Pacific Ocean, he found there were only two or three flights a week, and only leaving from Fiji on Fiji Airways. He learned a fuel truck in Tuvalu was broken, limiting available seats, and called repeatedly to check on the missing part. He finally learned the truck had been repaired, and he made it to Tuvalu.

Not always so dangerous

For many travelers, seemingly dangerous places turn out to be benign. David Langan, a furniture-business owner in Dublin, Ireland, says he didn’t have any major negative experiences in 18 years of travel. Langan, who completed all 330 countries and territories on the Travelers’ Century Club list in November 2022, studied what was happening on the ground, used common sense and didn’t go into war zones. “I never felt threatened, and I haven’t been robbed,” he says.

Taylor Demonbreun set a Guinness World Record in 2018 with the fastest time to visit all sovereign countries, at one year and 189 days. (Guinness counts 195 sovereign countries, including Vatican City and Taiwan.) In her travels, “the more terrified I was of a country, the better it went for me,” says Demonbreun, head of product for a travel startup.

“The Iranians were so welcoming and kind,” she says, after visiting Kish Island in the Persian Gulf. “I could talk to them about anything. Travel is about opening minds.”

Randy “R Dub!” Williams, the San Diego-based host of a syndicated music radio show called “Slow Jams,” says he completed visits to 193 countries in May of 2023. He’s still traveling but admits he does miss checking the boxes.

A visit to Suriname in 2013 kicked off his love of seeing little-known places. “I was intrigued and astonished that I was standing in the capital of a country that my friends and family had never heard about,” says Williams.

In Tuvalu, Williams bumped into other country-counters. “We’re a small tightknit community,” says Williams. “No one goes to those countries if they don’t have to; you go and recognize a lot of people from the group.”

Hard currency

The cost of these adventures can be, well, all over the map. “We have people who can afford to go first class, and we have happy backpackers,” says Margo Bart, the president of Travelers’ Century Club. Many extreme travelers work remotely or they alternate work and travel, and many are retired. Travel influencers try to help cover costs by posting on TikTok and Instagram and gaining sponsors.

Veley, the founder of Most Traveled People, estimates you could visit all 193 countries for about $1,000 a country and all 1,500 countries and other areas the group recognizes at an average cost of $500 apiece. For relative beginners, Veley advises traveling by region, staying in hostels, using budget flights and becoming an expert in points and miles. “Make friends in the community and try to share costs, particularly if you are going to more-difficult places,” he adds. “There are thousands of like-minded individuals out there, and they are all fun people.”

Demonbreun, who spent two or three days in each country, says she started her trips with about $15,000 in savings and ended up about $60,000 in debt. She cut costs by finding hotel sponsors and listing them on her website. She also took the cheapest possible flights by getting multistop tickets and using 114 different carriers.

After hearing everyone’s best and worst stories, I still want to get to 193 countries before time runs out. Now, like many couples, I just need to negotiate the travel time in my marriage. “I want to travel with you,” my husband says earnestly. “Just not continuously.”

Kathleen Hughes is a writer in Los Angeles. She can be reached at reports@wsj.com.