While we are here thinking twice to go from our room to the kitchen, this 21-year-old has become the youngest woman to have touched every country on Earth.         

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Misunderstood creatures 🐍 I honestly did a terrible job planning my trip in Sri Lanka. I usually try to get away from cities and tourist traps to get a more authentic feel for the country I’m visiting. Choosing the path less traveled can occasionally/inevitably lead to unexpected complications, wasted time and frustration. Sometimes we miss once in a lifetime opportunities. Sometimes our experiences don’t live up to the expectations we created in our minds. And that’s to be expected! Being able to accept that things didn’t go the way you wanted them to and making the best of it anyway is a really important life lesson traveling has taught me. This photo reminds me that even mistakes can result in something beautiful & unexpected

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21-year-old Lexie Alford after stepping in North Korea has broken the Guinness World Record of the current 24-year-old James Asquith. She has seen all 196 sovereign nations. She did this recently on 31st May. 

Since her parents had their own travel agency, traveling is all that she did since she was merely a kid. She describes her urge to travel all the time because her parents had a knack to do so too.    

My parents placed a lot of importance on exposing me to every way of life around the world and that had a very profound impact on the person I am today. I’ve always had a curiosity about other people’s ways of life and how they find happiness.  

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This was one of the top 5 craziest adventures of my life! After riding like maniacs on the top of our 15 passenger van through the Karakoram Mountains for countless hours we arrived at the launching point. We switched into these 4×4 rock crawling land rovers and ascended up the aptly named “most dangerous road in the world”. The local driver swerved recklessly around loose gravel corners with heart pounding 500+ ft. drops to the left. After nearly 3 hours of that, we arrived at the starting point for the hike to Fairy Meadows. Our group quickly fell into different paces which gave us time to feel even more secluded in the deep wilderness of Northern Pakistan. We hiked up roughly 2500 ft. as the sun set on the little Swiss cabins we would sleep in that night. The temperature dropped rapidly. All our bodies were acting funny because of the altitude. The 10 of us huddled around the common room stove sharing stories and stretching our deliciously sore muscles. ‘Twas a day & night that I’ll never forget ✌🏼#pakistandiaries

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Lexie mentions that her original agenda was not to break any record earlier but when she realized that people have started looking up to her, she didn’t want to back out.    

It wasn’t until things started getting really challenging that I realized I was inspiring people around me, especially young women. Feeling that support meant that I couldn’t give up when things got tough. I was determined to show everyone that the world isn’t as scary as the media portrays it to be and that there’s kindness everywhere.

The idea of her breaking the record of traveling all the countries in the world happened after completing her 12th grade.           

The very first time I thought about breaking the world record was in October 2016 in my home, California. I graduated from high school two years early and had gotten an associate’s degree from a local college. I was ready to start my gap year when I dropped the idea of going back to school and began to pursue the record full-time.    
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Some questions I’m asked all the time usually revolve around if I get scared traveling alone as a woman or if I feel safe in the more ‘dangerous’ countries around the world. Personally, I get freaked out the most by hypothetical scenarios I make up in my head rather than what might realistically happen to me. I think its like this for most people… We become afraid of what we hear on the news without realistically understanding how low the probability is of actually having an issue. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ I just wrote a blog with some of my most helpful tips for solo travelers! I go over the reasons why I plan ahead, what to wear, how to take good photos of yourself and the most important thing you can bring with you when you’re traveling alone. The link to my website is in my bio 😊

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But since traveling is not the cheapest thing to do, she did have a lot of planning to do. Her traveling has always been ‘self-funded’. She got hold of some branded deals throughout her journey by particularly being active on her Instagram page. She did a lot of photography and blogging through her journey. She also co-hosted a travel show which will be airing soon.