In May 2020, a month into the first Covid lockdown in Miami, Florida, 20-year-old student Cameron Mofid found his obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) beginning to spiral out of control. “I was first diagnosed with the condition when I was 12. It produces obsessive thoughts that drive compulsions like washing hands, tapping or endlessly replaying conversations. When I was alone in the apartment with nowhere to go during Covid, those intrusive thoughts got much worse,” he says. “It can become paralysing being stuck in a mental loop. It was worrying and I felt like I really needed to get out of my head and that space.”

With nothing else to do, Mofid began searching through travel destinations on his laptop, hoping for a near future where borders would reopen and he could leave. As he scrolled, he came across a fact that would change his life. “I saw that more people had been to space than had visited all 195 countries in the world,” he says. “I was shocked that so few people – about 300 – had seen the world, and I also learned that, according to the travel platform and community, Nomad Mania, the age of the youngest person to visit every country at that time was 27. I wanted to do something impossible: I decided to beat that record.”

The age of the holder of the Guinness World Record for the feat, at the time, was 21, but Mofid noticed that the Guinness World Records rules had allowed the use of airport transits to gain new border stamps, in lieu of actually spending time in each country. Mofid wanted to break the record according to the rules of Nomad Mania, which meant setting himself the extra challenge of not only leaving the airport in each country but also spending at least a few days there.

Mofid in North Korea, having completed his 195-country odyssey. Photograph: Courtesy of Cameron Mofid

Five years later, on 6 April 2025, only a few weeks after his 25th birthday, Mofid crossed the finish line and claimed the record in Pyongyang, North Korea. He was one of the first foreigners to enter the country in six years, forming part of a delegation allowed into the city to run a marathon. “I couldn’t believe it was real,” he says. “There were 50,000 people in the stadium cheering us on and my adrenaline was so high that at one point I thought I might even win the race!”

Speaking from his parents’ home in San Diego, California, where he has been living for the past four months since his return, Mofid sports a close-cropped beard and is full of energy and enthusiasm, despite describing how, during his five years spent travelling, he experienced everything from severe illness in Algeria to imprisonment in Djibouti, detainment in Afghanistan, and witnessed horrifying poverty in Nigeria. “It’s no exaggeration to say it’s been life-changing,” he says. “My OCD has been much better for it and I’ve witnessed the kindness in humanity, as well as the luck that sees some of us born into privilege and others into awful poverty. I now want to do something with the rest of my life that has purpose.”

‘It’s no exaggeration to say it’s been life-changing’ … Mofid in Afghanistan. Photograph: Courtesy of Cameron Mofid

Growing up in the coastal neighbourhood of La Jolla, San Diego, Mofid was raised by Egyptian and Persian American parents who encouraged him to take an interest in the wider world. “I would play a game where my grandmother called out the names of countries and I had to find them on a world map we had in the garage,” he says. “I was fascinated by the world and became really interested in visiting places like Lesotho and Somalia – not the usual places a kid might end up on holiday.”

While his parents would take him every year to Egypt, where his grandmother eventually relocated, it was actually through his love of tennis that Mofid started travelling more widely. Training as a promising junior player, he achieved an international ranking and at 17 moved to Naples, Florida to join a tennis academy. It was there that he broke his elbow and, after two surgeries, was forced to retire from the game at 18.

Faced without a future in the sport, Mofid decided to spend a gap year writing about tournaments for Florida Tennis magazine. “I spent that year covering professional tournaments in cities like Hong Kong, Marrakech, Milan, London and Singapore, and it was the first time I felt something shift in me,” he says. “Travel gave me a kind of escape from my OCD. I was breaking away from stressful situations in my mind and exploring new environments that my OCD hadn’t seeped into. I didn’t feel trapped in the same way.”

When I entered Afghanistan, a member of the Taliban holding an enormous machine gun offered me tea

Once he returned and enrolled at the University of Miami in 2019, Mofid continued to travel, as an escape from his OCD symptoms and the confines of his dorm room. He began working nights as a club promoter in Miami, selling entry tickets and packages to partygoers, to fund weekend trips to Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and Nicaragua. By the time the world ground to a halt during Covid, he estimates he had already been to 50 countries.

Still, if he was to beat the record for visiting every nation in the world, there was planning to be done and money to be made – in order to reach the other 145 locations. He took extra credits at college so he could graduate earlier, while he expanded his freelance club-promoting into a nightlife business, holding events around the city. “I was at college in the day and then working nights, often until 4am, scanning tickets and dealing with drunk 21-year-olds,” he says. “In March, during spring break, we had 30 events in a row. I was exhausted but it was worth it to fund my trip.”

Mofid in Sudan in his graduation gown, with local villagers. Photograph: Courtesy of Cameron Mofid

By December 2022, Mofid had completed his studies – including an MBA whittled down from two years to seven months – and had constructed a master spreadsheet of countries to visit, planned routes and airline costs. “My parents were worried about me going to places like Afghanistan and Iraq, but I took my last exam, packed my duffel bag and the next morning I flew out to Sudan,” he says with a smile. “I went to the ancient Nubian pyramids six hours from Khartoum, put on my graduation gown and got villagers to take pictures with me. I’d missed graduation back home but this was already so much more memorable.”

Planning trips by region, Mofid spent the next two years veering between running his nightlife business in Miami and heading off for a month or two to tick off as many countries as possible on his list. “I would visit anything from seven to 20 countries at once, planning everything meticulously to keep to a really tight budget. Usually, as soon as I got home from one trip, I was so excited I’d plan the next one the next morning,” he says. “The longest stint I went on was three months, which was my second to last trip. I started in Oman and then went to Iran, Dubai, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Russia, and then bussed and walked to Estonia.”

At the barber’s in Pakistan. Photograph: Courtesy of Cameron Mofid

When Mofid found out that air travel was suspended to Afghanistan while already en route through the United Arab Emirates, he had to enter via the notoriously dangerous Torkham border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. A local fixer encouraged him to dress in Afghan robes and to grow a beard in order to blend in, but he was immediately detained by Pakistani police on arrival, who were confused as to why an American citizen was disguising himself. “I was interrogated about my travels and tried to explain that I was just a tourist, not a spy, while in front of me another man was being whipped. It was terrifying,” he says. “Thankfully, I was released – and as soon as I crossed into Afghanistan, a member of the Taliban holding an enormous machine gun offered me tea.”

In Djibouti, meanwhile, a market seller called the police after spotting him taking photos of the psychoactive substance khat. “Everyone surrounded me and I tried to talk my way out of it but I was taken straight to the local jail,” he says. “It was 43C (110F), they took my phone and I had a flight to catch that night. After half a day of waiting, the head of the national police arrived to interrogate me. Once they saw selfies of me at various locations they realised I was just a tourist and released me, but they told me to not come back.”

At a waterfall in Laos. Photograph: Courtesy of Cameron Mofid

While some might see these experiences as naive, Mofid is keen to emphasise the importance of what he has learned on his travels. “Travelling has made me so much more attuned to people’s stories and the complexities of what’s happening in the world,” he says. “Nothing is black and white, and we need to start treating migrants with humanity. People, at their core, are inherently good. In country after country, I was met with kindness. In Suriname, a man gave me shelter and a meal in his shack during a storm, and in Baghdad, everywhere I went, people offered me tea and hospitality, regardless of the fact that I am American. People who had almost nothing were willing to offer me everything; I realised that the more you travel, the more you realise how little you actually know.”

In Nigeria, the 115th country he visited, Mofid spent time in the Makoko slum on the outskirts of Lagos, which is partly built on stilts over water. “It was the worst poverty I’ve ever seen, with more than 100,000 people living over sewage water,” he says. “Only 15% of kids in that section of Makoko go to school and they are totally cut off from the rest of the city. The one school we did visit, the teachers hadn’t been paid in months and most of the students lacked supplies. I decided I had to do something to help so I set up a GoFundMe.”

Raising a few thousand dollars from fellow college students, Mofid was about to end the campaign in January 2023 when a donation for $45,000 came through from NBA player Kyrie Irving. “With that amount of money, I felt I had a responsibility to be a custodian,” he says. “I had been coming home between my trips and watching people drop $50,000 on a night out in Miami; that’s enough to fund an entire school in Makoko. It isn’t how the world should work. I left the business and the following month I founded the charity Humanity Effect as a way to support that community.”

Mofid with pupils at the school rebuilt by his charity, Humanity Effect, in Makoko, Nigeria. Photograph: Cameron Mofid

Two and a half years on, Mofid has completed the construction of a second school, built an orphanage for 40 students and led a medical mission to Makoko. The charity is now his main focus. “Ninety per cent of our current circumstance in life is based on our birth, it’s the greatest luck we have,” he says. “These kids had bad luck and helping them is the thing in my life I’m most proud of.”

Mofid also describes his OCD as “the best it’s ever been” since he began using his travels as exposure therapy to triggers such as dirt or unfamiliar social situations. “Through staying in places that were filled with worms or spiders or had no running water, I found the tools to manage it and reassure myself that I was OK,” he says. “Travelling can be very isolating and it taught me to be happy in my own company. Now, I can see OCD as my superpower, since it gives me a relentless curiosity – something that powered this mission to visit every country. I’m learning to accept it and live with it.”

Mofid achieved his record, but it may already have been toppled. According to Nomad Mania, a 23-year-old recently completed the round-the-world challenge. But Mofid believes the experience itself was worth the effort. “Travel teaches you the value of curiosity and empathy, and there are plenty of places I’d like to go back to and explore more thoughtfully,” he says. “Top of the list is Japan and then probably Iraq. First, though, I’ve never been to New York, so there is still plenty to see at home, and lots of time now to get there.”