During our recent trip to the Middle-East Gulf States, Kim, Lucas and I visited four countries. It was the first time visiting all of these countries for Kim and Lucas, while I had visited one of them previously.

On the trip, a couple of travel milestones were reached- one for Lucas and one for myself.

So what kind of milestones could’ve been reached while traveling some of you might wonder? Well, here they are.

Milestone #1: Lucas visits country #25+

We started traveling with Lucas when he was around 2.5 months old. Sure he doesn’t remember those early trips but the bottom line is that traveling frequently at a young age has made him comfortable flying, moving around and exploring. He also hasn’t held back Kim and I from continuing to do what we love.

Lucas has really become an active participant during our trips. He talks about different things that happened on trips, references things and loves exploring new places. He also can name a lot of the countries he’s visited.

During our recent trip, Bahrain became the 25th country that Lucas has visited. By the time our trip was over, his count was up to having visited 27 UN Member States! Pretty awesome for somebody that’s only a little over 3.5 years old!

To get an idea of where Lucas Miles has visited, check out his 3rd birthday recap post here. (This doesn’t include any of our 2015 travels.)

Milestone #2: I visited UNESCO World Heritage Site #100

While researching things to do in a new country, I always check to see if anything interesting comes up from the UNESCO World Heritage List.

For those of you unfamiliar of what the UNESCO Word Heritage List is, here’s a short description from UNESCO, “To be included on the World Heritage List, sites must be of outstanding universal value and meet at least one out of ten selection criteria“.

There are currently over 1,000 sites listed both cultural and natural. I’ve gone out of my way to visit some of these sites and am proud to say that I’ve visited close to 10% of them. (When looking at it that way, it sure doesn’t sound like much…)

The 100th UNESCO WHS I visited was the Aflaj Irrigation Systems of Oman.

The irrigation systems go back as far as around 500 AD. We visited one of the five listed although we couldn’t find the park which had the UNESCO marker! According to UNESCO, “Using gravity, water is channelled from underground sources or springs to support agriculture and domestic use… Threatened by falling level of the underground water table, the aflaj represent an exceptionally well-preserved form of land use“.

While the aflaj was interesting to see, I wouldn’t consider it the most exciting WHS I’ve ever visited. I actually should’ve visited site #100 earlier in the trip, but timing, distance and costly taxis made me change plans and skip visiting one of two other sites during the trip.

(FYI- I keep track of UNESCO WHS sites visited on Most Traveled People.)

During my next trip, this upcoming weekend, I’ll be reaching another travel milestone. I’ll be visiting country #70! (That’s not counting places like Kosovo & the Vatican City.)

What kind of travel milestones do you keep track of? Feel free to share some of them in the comments below.