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Solo travel has been on the rise for the last few years, boosted by Gen Z and millennials, leading to younger and younger travellers breaking world records. 

Arjun Malaviya, a 19-year-old from Westlake Village, California, has already been to 118 countries alone. 

“I’m the youngest solo traveller in the world to reach 100 countries- and the youngest person to visit every nation in Oceania. My journey has taken me from escaping Russian airstrikes in Ukraine to spending time with the Taliban in Afghanistan, to exploring the least-visited country on Earth (Nauru),” Malaviya said. 

This is a step ahead of Lexie Alford, the current record-holder for the youngest person to visit all sovereign countries. While Alford had visited more than 70 countries by 18, Malaviya had ticked off his 100th country at 17 years and 228 days old. 

His list of destinations also includes a number of less well-visited countries such as Syria, Iraq, Iran, Myanmar, Venezuela, Tuvalu and Papua New Guinea, along with more popular ones such as Australia, Germany, Bolivia and Indonesia. 

Family trips and working multiple jobs

Malaviya’s love for travel started young, while accompanying his parents, Arpit Malaviya and Anita Venkataraman, the owners of an aviation software company, on business and family trips. 

By age 16, he had already graduated from high school and finished a general education course at Moorpark College, which meant he could transfer to a four-year university. However, he thought being a 16-year-old on a college campus did not sound appealing. 

He had already been working multiple part-time jobs during high school to fund a long-held dream: to see the world alone, before turning 20. His gigs included coaching tennis to young local players trying to get on their high school tennis teams, as well as being an office administrative assistant.

A lack of social interactions during the pandemic further fuelled his wanderlust, as did a lifelong love for geography, which made him want to visit the far-flung places he had only read about before in person one day. 

So in June 2023, at 17, Malaviya set out on his epic journey, armed with a plan, a backpack and no safety net- despite having never flown alone before. 

“The main reason I wanted to travel the world is because I remembered the family trips we used to go on when I was little and it was always my favourite time of the year when we would go on them because I learned so much about different cultures,” Malaviya says. 

He adds: “I’ve always been a curious person, so it was fascinating for me to explore other countries with different languages and people.”

From Oceania’s most remote islands to Myanmar’s rural landscapes

Kicking off with relatively easier Southeast Asian destinations like Japan and South Korea to build confidence, Malaviya soon moved on to more ambitious plans like Oceania, South America and Europe. 

Some of his favourite travel experiences include teaching English to language exchange students in Iraq, visiting the very remote Rock Islands of Palau, a small island nation in Oceania, and villages in Myanmar, along with time spent in and around Caracas in Venezuela. 

He’s helped rice plantation workers in rural Indonesia and experienced rare religious festivals in Iran. He negotiated special access to Saddam Hussein’s Babylon Palace in Iraq to explore it firsthand, despite it usually being closed to the public. 

Malaviya also spent time in villages across Papua New Guinea and Nauru, the least-visited country in the world, spending time with local children and learning about their culture. 

His travels took him from Brazil’s favelas, to Bolivia’s salt flats, giving him an opportunity to see the majestic Northern Lights in Norway, meet elephant families in Sri Lanka and explore iconic castles in Slovenia. 

However, it also uncovered some deeper-rooted issues in remote parts of the world, like Oceania. 

“I truly believe that some of the most beautiful, untouched nature in the world was in the remote island nations of Oceania. They are filled with some of the kindest people I met throughout my journey and I thoroughly enjoyed my time there. I took the lack of internet as a positive and used it as a way to unwind and connect with nature and the local people. 

“However, I do feel quite sad that when I went to countries like Nauru and Tuvalu, it seemed to me as if a lot of the youth doesn’t have that much of a future ahead of themselves due to the fact that they are on an isolated island nation and the cost of a flight to even get off the island is extremely high.”

He found that the limited availability of fresh food in these regions and a high amount of food preservatives had also taken a toll on children’s health. 

Malaviya met with Taliban members in Afghanistan, who treated him with surprising kindness and curiosity, wanting to know more about his life in the US, as well as religious leaders in Iran. 

By sticking to low-cost hostels and Airbnbs, and using his funds from part-time work and childhood savings, he managed to keep costs in check. Travel apps such as Rome2Rio also helped find the most cost-effective and time-efficient routes to destinations, further slashing his spending, as did eating a lot of cheap street food. 

Throughout his journey, he realised that people across the world are a lot more similar than they are different, despite the challenges and dangers in their own countries. Most people he met seemed to want the same things as everyone else –  a job, a good life for their family, education and food. 

He also thinks that sometimes the perceptions of a country on the global stage may be heavily influenced by their current government, instead of the locals. His goal was never to sensationalise these places or show off his travel, but to always listen, understand and prove to other people that the world is a lot smaller and more interconnected than it seems. 

He also believes that a curious and respectful attitude can make all the difference. 

“At the end of the day, if a local in another country sees a kid solo travelling and you need help, they are going to want to help. I noticed that the world is filled with so many kind people who did so much to help me, whether it was inviting me to their home for a meal or snack or driving me somewhere.”

Some of the places he would especially love to return to include Iceland, Palau, the Philippines, Iran, Venezuela and Bolivia.

Warzones, airstrikes and detainment

It hasn’t always been pristine beaches and stunning landscapes, though. Malaviya has had to keep a calm head and think on his feet to get himself out of some very harrowing situations along the way, including escaping unexpected Russian airstrikes in Odessa, Ukraine, in November 2023. 

“I visited Odessa because I was in the capital city of Chisinau, Moldova and I noticed that it was only a three-hour bus ride to Odessa and thought it would be a nice day trip. I took the bus to Odessa in the morning, and when I got there, air strike sirens started going off immediately,” he said. 

 “All the buses had been cancelled since the road was iced over, so I had to go to the bomb shelter and stay there for a few hours before exploring the city for a little bit, then finding a bus that was going to drive back very slowly so that it doesn’t skid on the icy road.”

He eventually made it back to Chisinau in Moldova but this was by far his scariest experience as yet. 

Another time, he was detained and prevented from leaving the country by Venezuelan airport authorities who thought he was running away from his parents, since he was a minor. 

“I had to negotiate with them for nearly two hours and tell them to view the security camera footage of when I entered the country so they could see that I entered the country alone and was leaving the same way,” he said. 

“They thought I had come with my parents and was trying to leave alone. I eventually convinced them and was allowed to pass through immigration and leave Venezuela right before the boarding ended for my flight to Bogota, Colombia.”

“Get comfortable being uncomfortable,” Malaviya says

Throughout his extensive journeys, Malaviya held on to one key life motto: learning to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, no matter what, when or where. He firmly believes this is what helped him grow the most, even beyond travel, and gave him the courage to step beyond his nice Californian hometown. 

“Many times, I was put in uncomfortable situations, but since I trained myself to be comfortable with whatever happened during my travels, my judgment was never impaired by anxiety or nervousness, and that helped me get through my travels,” he emphasised. 

“For example, if I looked uncomfortable around the Taliban, they might have wondered if there was something I was up to or if I was hiding something, but since I looked so comfortable and calm, they had no reason to suspect I was doing anything.”

His biggest piece of advice for young people like himself who want to take the plunge into travelling? 

“Just go for it. Go out there and travel! Nowadays, with so much bias in the news on major issues, it is hard to know what is true and what isn’t. However, if you go and see what’s happening in a place for yourself, no one can take that away from you.” 

Malaviya is currently a computer engineering student at UC Santa Barbara and plans to continue travelling until he visits the rest of the 195 countries in the world.