Crisis! Crisis!

Crisis! Blomi tells me that Jimmy Petterson -- who "has spent most of the last 40 years as a ski bum" -- has collected skiing 76 countries. Me, sadly, only 58... and some of those aren't even on snow, but sand, grass, or ash.

But no need to despair. This just calls for a slight adjustment of my travel schedule! Well, not really, because many of the possible places are far away... and I prefer to visit skiing when I'm somewhere for other reasons anyway (such as for work). I cannot and should not randomly fly around the world.

Although I have to wonder where on earth even in theory I could find those 18 more countries to ski at, beyond the white dots that I've already been at in the above map. And Georgia and Thailand that I'm already headed to. The obvious other ones are:

• Iceland
• Belarus, Ukraine
• Mongolia
• Albania, Kosovo, Serbia, Macedonia, Cyprus
• Uzbekistan
• Mexico (but requires very high altitude mountaineering expeditions)
• Peru (but skiing no longer allowed)
• Algeria
• Israel
• Namibia (on sand dunes)
• uh... what else?

That is not 18 countries yet. What am I missing? There are obviously also places like Iran, Syria, Pakistan or Afghanistan, but they are currently not at a state where any kind of tourism is possible.

Graphics (c) 2018 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved. This article has also appeared in TGR. Tämä artikkeli löytyy myös suomeksi Relaasta. And all skiing-related articles can of course be found from planet skier.net!