Cameron Mofid has seen every nation in the world by the age of 25. NBC 7’s Derek Togerson spoke to the world traveler.
There are 195 countries on Earth. Show him a map, and San Diego native Cameron Mofid can tell you where every single one of them is — but not because he’s studied the globe.
It's because he’s been to all of them.
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WATCH HEREThe Bishops School alum recently became the youngest person ever to visit every single nation in the world, begging two questions: how and why did he pull this off?
“I think the why is probably more important than the how. So, I'll start there, I guess,” Mofid said. “Since I was a little kid, I always had a fascination with geography and geopolitics and meeting people. When I was in fourth grade, we had reading time in class. The book that my teacher let me choose was not like a normal book, a fiction book. It was a geography book.”
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In his late teens, that love of geography was further fostered through sports. Mofid’s promising tennis career ended with a broken elbow, but he wanted to stay involved with the sport, so he started writing for Florida Tennis Magazine.
“I spent my gap year traveling to, like, 20 countries, writing about these tournaments,” Mofid said. “So that year, I had gone to Singapore, Milan, London and Marrakesh — places that, you know, I'd only dreamed of.”
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Mofid enrolled at the University of Miami in Florida, where his entrepreneurial spirit further fed his vagabond soul.
“I started doing event marketing my freshman year of college. Well, I call it event marketing. I was promoting for nightclubs in Miami. So, kind of the quintessential Miami experience, I guess, and I was using that money that I was making to do little weekend trips,” Mofid said.
After a couple of years, his passport was filling up fast. Then the pandemic hit. During some down time, Mofid looked up the record for the youngest person ever to visit everywhere. It was 25 years old.
“I thought to myself, 'Well, I've been to about 50 countries. I have about five years to reach this crazy goal. What if I had to save up for the next few years, do some little trips when I can, and then after I graduate, spent a couple of years trying to visit every country in the world?' That’s exactly what I did.”
Working six nights a week for the next three years, while also earning his MBA, he saved up as much as he could. As soon as he graduated, it was time to go globetrotting.
“I threw a bunch of clothes into a Nike duffle bag, got rid of my apartment and set out for two-and-a-half years," he said.
One of the things he absolutely wanted to do was not just grab an airport layover and check a nation off the list. Mofid made sure to experience each place.
“Average of four nights, I would say, in each country. But some were less, and some were more," Mofid said. "Microstates like Vatican City or Andorra, I would say just as a day trip. But bigger countries, Venezuela, Japan, Egypt, Spain, I'd spend many weeks in.”
He started his travels using the Couchsurfing travel app, staying with strangers for free. One thing Mofid realized quickly is that for many countries like Italy or France, you can take a trip and just kind of wing it.
“You can't really do that for the Congo or Yemen or Libya or the Central African Republic. These are places that require immense planning, even to figure out how to get inside the country," he said.
Flights, visas, and, at times, guides to take you across the border and back can get expensive quickly. Sometimes things go smoothly. Sometimes you get detained in Djibouti and accused of espionage.
“I was visiting an area, which, really no tourists go to. It was this kind of rural market," Mofid said. "I was taking pictures around the market, maybe I looked like a spy, I don't know. One of the shopkeepers reported me to the local police.”
Mofid was arrested and taken to a holding cell in 110-degree heat where he waited to meet with the head of the National Police.
“Which I thought was a little ridiculous given the fact that, you know, you search my camera roll, and it's selfies of me in front of, like, a volcano. That was a good half-day experience," he said. "It wasn't too bad once they realized that it was a total waste of time. They let me go and they told me they didn't want to see me back.”
The 195th and final country was the toughest of them all: North Korea. After two failed attempts, Mofid got his break when the borders were opened up for the Pyongyang Marathon. Mofid joined a group of runners to complete the historic journey.
“I went with a few of my best friends, which was really exciting for me. People who I'd met along the road over the years and just the perfect ending to the story for me," he said.
With that stop, NomadMania, a group that verifies world travel records with more stringent criteria than Guinness, verified his achievement as the youngest person ever to visit every country.
But his most meaningful visit came in the middle of his travels. He saw extreme poverty in Nigeria, his 115th country. Feeling like he needed to help, he organized a GoFundMe to support a local school. The goal was $5,000. Within a week, he'd raised $10,000.
Then NBA All-Star Kyrie Irving heard about it and made a $45,000 donation, helping Mofid launch Humanity Effect, a nonprofit that now supports 750 students and continues to grow.
“We have two schools there. We have an orphanage. We're almost done building a medical center," Mofid said. "We have a very supportive group of donors from around the world who have seen our progress, and we're funded that way. I have never taken any salary, nor have any of our volunteers.”
All in all, Mofid estimates the adventure cost him on average about $1,000 a country. Now, those of us who call America’s Finest City home like to say we live in one of the greatest places in the world. Mofid can speak intelligently about that. So, how does San Diego stack up on a global scale?
“In my experience, all things considered, San Diego is top 10, maybe even top five greatest cities in the world in terms of, you know, overall quality of life. Obviously, it's a very expensive city. But that aside, it's just such an amazing place," he said.
