What is a Country? also called a Sovereign Country, Independent State or Sovereign State is often debated but it is generally agreed by the United Nations, The American CIA Factbook, Wikipedia Encyclopedia, and Guinness World Records that there are 193 internationally recognised countries currently in the world.

There are 192 United Nations member nations  plus the Holy See (Vatican City) which is listed as the only non-member state.

The American CIA Factbook (Notes and Definitions under Entities) states there are 194 Independent States. The 192 United Nations members plus the Holy See (The Vatican) and Kosovo (whose statehood has not been internationally recognised). 

According to Wikipedia there are: "193 states with general international recognition: 192 member states of the United Nations (UN). 1 state with general international recognition but not UN membership, governed by the Holy See (a UN permanent observer): Vatican City".

The Guinness World Records people had their own list of "countries" but it was hotly debated as people had claimed visits to many more places, and today there are over 670 places that some organisations recognise as places used to define the "most travelled person". By July 2004 the endless debate on what was or was not a "country" had not been  resolved to the extent that Guinness World Records sent out the following information. “Unfortunately we no longer maintain such a (country) list ourselves because there is so little agreement on this subject internationally that virtually everyone disagreed with our list anyway!.....Rather than become involved in endless debates on this subject we've decided to 'freeze' the records in this category. At present when we refer to countries we mean the member states of the United Nations (i.e. sovereign countries), but do not get involved in the 'territories' debate.”

The world's newest country, Montenegro, was accepted by the United Nations as a member on the 28/6/06. As our motorcycle had already visited Yugoslavia, which changed its name to Serbia and Montenegro in 2003 and retained its United Nations membership as Serbia, it didn't need to be revisited. However Montenegro, the new United Nations member and a new Sovereign State, now an "internationally recognised country", required visiting, even though we had visited it as a province. Our motorcycle visited Montenegro , the Sovereign State on 31/10/06. It would seem illogical to claim to have visited a country if it did not exist at the time of the visit!! 

The UN protectorate, and province of Serbia, Kosovo, recently declared itself an independent country. As the United Nations has not recognised this claim, and it is unlikely it will be recognised in the near future due to both Russian and Chinese opposition, and their UN veto powers, it is not currently internationally recognised as a sovereign country. Although we visited Kosovo prior to its claim of independence if it becomes internationally recognised, to claim it as a country, we would need to revisit.

To support our claim that this Harley-Davidson motorcycle is the World's Most Travelled Vehicle (ie it has visited the most places on earth), we have included the following. The motorcycle has visited 357 places using the Most Traveled Peoples List. The Travelers' Century Club publishes its own list it accepts as places its members can count for a visit. The motorcycle has visited 223 places according to that list. Emil and Liliana Schmidt, for their world record of the Longest Driven Journey use the pre 1996 Guinness World Record List, adjusted, of 259 places. The motorcycle has visited 197 places using that list. Other travellers like Emilio Scotto's motorcycle trip have not indicated what list they have used to calculate their claims to places visited nor a list of places visited to permit a comparison. Should anyone wish to discuss our  claim to "The World's Most Travelled Vehicle" we would greatly appreciate correspondence on the subject by email to: forwoodp@yahoo.com