The project
In August 2018, we set off on a unique trip around the world in an attempt to become the first couple to travel to all 196 sovereign nations while promoting SUSTAINABILITY, PEACE, and LOVE! 🙂 ♥
The plan
The plan is to visit each country’s most romantic destination or most popular travel attraction (whenever and wherever possible) while focusing on our mission to promote sustainability, peace, and love. However, we are not doing it just to see the beauty of planet Earth. The goal is to raise awareness about the importance of sustainability by planting trees (we are planning to plant at least 500 trees to offset our carbon footprint and the carbon footprint of our supporting partners), peace by posting powerful messages in Instagram stories, and love by creating a unique couples’ travel guide for every country in the world and to prove with visual content from all across the globe that love is all around us. We have paused our normal lives for at least 3 years to achieve this ambitious goal.
We also want to show the world how much beauty, peace, and love between people and towards nature can be found in each and every country in the world. We also want to point out the existing problems, on which we must all work on and try to fix them. We want people to appreciate their own home country and also to encourage others to travel, but to do it sustainably (to reduce and offset their carbon footprint) since travel plays a big role in building a tolerance, open-mindedness, and acceptance needed for world peace.
First, we are planning to visit all 54 sovereign countries in Africa, as this is where life began, next will be Asia, Australia and Oceania, North America, South America, and finally Europe.
We will write blog posts about our journey, share our adventures and acquired knowledge with you in newsletters, and post daily photos and videos on Instagram. We could always use your help in selecting specific destinations and activities, as such please leave your suggestions in a comment or send us an email or DM on Instagram. 😉
The purpose
In 2013 we got married and went on our ‘first’ honeymoon. It was a 6-month trip through North and South America and it was awesome! Before the trip, we had our lives and careers all planned out. But the time we spent traveling changed us. We became much more aware of the beauty our planet has to offer as well as of the numerous problems it faces. An uncontrollable desire to see and help the world was born. We came up with a project that can do both – 196xLOVE enables us to travel the world and to promote sustainability, peace, and love, the three things we believe in most.
One of the reasons why we want to visit all countries is to show the world how small our planet actually is and that we are all part of the same environment, we all affect mother nature and consequently one another, which means we must all do our part towards the better future.
SUSTAINABLE TOURISM/SUSTAINABILITY
Sustainability is LOVE for nature. The only way to ensure the survival of humans, animals, the environment, and consequently the concept of love is through sustainability. Our generation was given a great responsibility to protect the environment. We have to make sure to preserve the Earth and all its beauty for future generations.
- We will plant at least 500 trees to offset our carbon footprint and the carbon footprint of our supporting partners.
- We will do a 10-minute environmental clean-up wherever and whenever possible. Our goal is to raise awareness of pollution and other environmental issues and to encourage others to do the same.
- Since animal agriculture has a negative impact on the environment, we will try to offset our carbon footprint by not eating beef, lamb or pork during our journey.
- We will promote sustainable tourism by traveling responsibly ourselves. We will use environmentally friendly products, minimize our waste, use water sparingly, choose ethical tour operators, use ECO flights, and stay in sustainable hotels, resorts, and lodges as much and as often as possible.
- We will promote sustainability with our 196xLove board, which will travel with us to all 196 countries.
PEACE
Peace is LOVE for people. And we can only revel in love if we live in peace. Peace is a basic need and we must do our best to protect it.
- We will post 200+ Instagram stories to promote peace.
- We will promote peace, random acts of kindness, and cooperation beyond boundaries of religion, race, ethnicity, and nationality.
- We will visit schools/orphanages/kindergartens (as often as possible) and remind the children about the importance of sustainability and peace, and encourage them to be the best possible versions of themselves.
- We will promote peace with our 196xLove board, which will travel with us to all 196 countries.
- Update: Since we have been on the road, we also became “PEACE NOW” ambassadors.
LOVE
LOVE is the greatest power in the world. It can destroy hatred, stop wars, heal broken hearts, bring happiness, and even create lives.
- We will promote the concept of love with our Love board, which will travel with us to all 196 countries.
- We will promote love by searching for the most romantic destinations and by engaging in the most romantic activities to finally create a unique couples’ travel guide for every country (those suitable for visitors) in the world.
- With visual content from all across the globe, we will break stereotypes and prove that love is, in fact, everywhere and everything.
An initiative for promoting sustainability, peace, and love
If you are interested in supporting us and would like to learn more about the project, please click on the link below.
An initiative for promoting sustainability, peace, and love
If love, peace, and sustainability seem like things worth standing for and supporting, you are more than welcome to click the link below and make a small contribution to the project.
196xLOVE is going to be an amazing, crazy, epic, life-altering journey. We can’t wait to go and see the world and we are super excited, honored, and happy to take you with us! 🙂 Stay tuned! 😉
In case you have some additional questions about 196xLOVE please check out our Q & A post.
Wow, what an energetic undertaking. I wish you all the best, all the luck in the world. I do think you will need it. Please keep aware of your surroundings. I have traveled quite extensively and I always stay aware. I hope that Gibraltar will be on your journey. I have not been there and hope to visit later this year. When you have completed you year, and hopefully achieved a new Guinness Book record, What will be next? A book? A movie? Surely, you will have enough material for both or either.
Hey, there, Jacqueline!
Thank you for great wishes. Like you said, we are sure going to need it. 🙂
We will definitely have a lot of new and interesting material … a book, a movie … all options are on the table 😉
Stay around!
LOVE
I wish you safe passage. I know you will need it — especially in Iraq, Venezuela, and North Korea. For these last three countries, you may want to get off the plane and get right back on. It would help with setting record time, to say the least.
I would love to see every country in the world myself. But I am naturally afraid to step foot into some. You may need to find a trusted bodyguard — perhaps one who is a armed veteran of the U.S. Army.
I love your concept of breaking down the borders that divide the world. Just remember that borders dissolve only a tiny bit at a time. And some borders really are for our own safety — to protect us from those who would not respect our personal boundaries.
To improve the “sustainability” part, I recommend avoiding planes. Instead, let’s have a solar-powered car and a cargo ship. Maybe you can find a solar-powered plane. Offsetting your carbon footprint from planes may take a lot more work than you expect.
Or — if you want to use planes, then try getting seats that were going to go to waste anyway.
Hi, Michael!
Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us and expressing your concern over the safety issues in some countries. However, we want to visit every country even “dangerous ones” not just the airports; it just wouldn’t feel right.
About the sustainability part … you have some good suggestions, however, we are going to race against time, so planes will be our main mean of transportation. We will need to plant 300 trees to offset our carbon footprint due to all the flights on our way.
We will try to get the seats that would remain empty otherwise.
Stay in touch.
LOVE
Wow- this sounds like the most awesome honeymoon ever! I don’t know very much about travel destinations, but one place that has fascinated me is the Blue Lagoon in Iceland. It just seems too cool. So glad to hear that you are raising awareness of environmental issues on your trip. I wish you the best and can’t wait to see the posts and instagrams start pouring in!
Thank you so much for encouraging words!
LOVE
Now these are couple goals that i would like to achieve, a travelling honeymoon with such a powerful initiative. I wish you all the best and glad you are starting with my continent Africa, hope you are coming to East Africa, we got so much love to give.
I would love to follow your journey as I am also a travel enthusiast, will you showcase your journey on social media i follow you there?
Hey, there, Anita!
Thank you very much for such kind words. We really appreciate it. We will be as active as possible on our blog, but our main focus will be on our Instagram account. Hence, Instagram might be the best way to follow our journey.
LOVE
Hey, i followed you on Instagram. Looking forward to see how it unfolds.
Thank you. We’ll do our best not to disappoint you. 🙂
I love the project on this website. It reminds me of the novel “Around The World In Eighty Days”. This trip will be for real though. I am sure you will get the support you need for your project. I hope none of your plans get you in trouble while you are in countries where authority figures are not always friendly toward ideas from foreigners.
Hey, there!
Thank you. We hope so too :S 🙂 There sure is a lot that could go wrong, hence we are preparing for the worst and hoping for the best. 🙂
LOVE
This is such a sweet project that you both are starting. I think you can literally have your whole marriage life stored in an online archive aka this blog. I see that you are seeking crowdfunding to realize this dream of yours. Perhaps you could try the Patreon platform. Many people have had a lot of success with it.
Hey, Cathy!
Thank you for the compliments and for the advice. We’ll take a look at the Patreon platform.
LOVE
I think that’s very ambitious of the both of yall! But also sounds like a whole lot of fun! Good luck in your travels and be safe out there. Hope yall two set the world record!
Thank you and don’t forget to share our link – let’s spread LOVE together. 🙂
LOVE
Y’all are both very ambitious and that sounds like a fun goal! I wish me and my husband could travel the world! I’m sure the both of y’all will gain a whole new perspective.
I hope y’all set the world record! I’ll check back later to see the progress,Good luck in your travels and safe journeys!
Thank you!
LOVE
Wow sem popolnoma navdusena nad vajinim podvigom! Tudi midva z mozem zelo rada potujeva. Moj dragi je italijan in najdlje kar sva sla je bil Bali za najine ‘medene tedne’ in potem “pobegnila” od tam ravno po prvem izbruhu ‘Mount Agung-a’ predno so tam zaprli letalisce… zeljim vama polno lepega na potovanju in se res veselim vsake slike/videa na instagramu 🙂
Živjo!
Hvala za lepe želje in spodbudne besede. 🙂 V čast nama bo.
Srečno, lepo se imejta, uživajta in se varno vrnita!
Hvala, Metka! 🙂