Meet the Dubai resident who has visited 122 countries

At one point in his life, Ranjit Roy had five jumbo Indian passports which he used to lug around whenever he was travelling. A jumbo passport, to provide some context, has 60 pages so the passport bundle was large enough to make immigration officers at airports look at him with some trepidation. ‘They always used to go ‘Oh no’ when I approached their desks,’ he says, with a laugh. To make life easier for the officers, Ranjit used to meticulously index the passports’ pages with Post-It notes, to help the officers spot visa stamps easily. ‘And they ended up complimenting me on how organised I am.’

Today, Ranjit holds a Caribbean citizenship so he doesn’t need as many visas anymore– a huge perk, considering the fact that the Dubai resident has travelled to 122 countries and island groups so far and plans on travelling to many more.

The 55-year-old is also a member of the exclusive, US-based non-profit organization The Travelers’ Century Club (TCC), which reserves its membership for travelers who have visited 100 or more countries. According to a TCC spokesperson, Ranjit is one of only two members from the Middle East.

‘I have covered most of South America, the Caribbean, North America, Europe, Asia and Australia and New Zealand, but still have some ground to cover in Africa and Central Asia,’ says Ranjit, a banker who moved to Dubai two decades ago. ‘The city became a very convenient launching pad for my global travels. With the airlines here being so well-connected, it’s relatively easier to jump on a flight and go to some of the more remote countries,’ he says.

The TCC’s list has 330 countries and territories unlike the UN recognized list of 193 countries, but Ranjit says he refers to the latter. ‘Travel makes me feel free, liberated and rewarded,’ he says. ‘It’s also a bit of an escape from the routine and humdrum of life. I couldn’t live without it, as I learned the hard way during the Covid-19 pandemic.’

Raised in Kolkata, India, Ranjit is sure he inherited his parents’ love for travel - their wanderlust took them across the country as a family. Later, he went off to the US for college.

His first memorable solo trip took place when he did a semester in Vienna. ‘It was during the Cold War, when you still had Hungary, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia intact as part of the Eastern Bloc. I was not able to get easy access to Western Europe given my erstwhile Indian passport, so while my friends set off to France, Germany and Italy for the weekends, I went off on my own to Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Hungary because they had good diplomatic relations with India and [getting a visa was not too difficult].’

‘It was an unusual experience,’ continues the senior banker. ‘There was very high security, and travellers were checked and documents scanned at the borders. People were very guarded too because they were under constant surveillance, but when I would say that I am from India, they would sort of warm up to me.’

He remembers an incident when he was on a train travelling from Vienna to Yugoslavia to see the Postojna Cave. ‘We were nearing a place called Maribor when I met with this gentleman who opened up. Among the many stories he told me were a few heart-rending ones on what he had been through during the Second World War. He actually bared his back and showed me his scars.’

With a passion for exploring and a thirst for adventure, Ranjit, an intrepid traveller, does not think twice when it comes to travelling to countries that are considered ‘unsafe’. For instance, when he landed in Guatemala in 2015, he was assigned both a driver and an armed escort. ‘Parts of Central America are not the safest of places. You’ve got Costa Rica, which is reasonably stable but then there is Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador. I was told to be extremely careful in El Salvador at that time. I had to realign my route sometimes at the cost of missing a country like Honduras, which was declared the most dangerous country in the world that year, and a monument or a ruin or two in Guatemala.

‘But had I not ventured out to those countries, I would never have seen some of the most beautiful sights in the world, like the volcanoes of Guatemala at Lake Atitlán, and Lake Nicaragua and its surrounding areas.’

He rates Central America as one of the most misunderstood and least appreciated regions. ‘Some people might say Guatemala is unsafe but the people are very warm and nice.

‘Once, a driver offered to take me to the Caribbean coast. I stayed all alone in a small hamlet in Livingston at the mouth of the river Rio Dulce. It was the most picturesque place with a wonderfully unique Creole culture, and no tourists around.’

He admits there could be crime in some areas of those countries, but believes the same could be said of some of the more popular cities in the world.

Ranjit, who travels largely for pleasure but also on work, has plenty of travel anecdotes to share. For instance, he talks about the time he ended up in a splendid hotel made of salt in Bolivia purely by chance. ‘I remember going to Uyuni in 2016. We were just seven people in the small aircraft. The airport we landed at was slightly larger than a shed. I didn’t speak Spanish, the local language. Everyone exited the airport except for me because the travel agent who was supposed to meet had failed to turn up. I didn’t know what to do so I waited patiently, having called my travel agent at La Paz.

‘Hours later, and pretty late in the evening, a decrepit pickup truck came by and transferred me to a hotel, which turned out to be incredible – it was made of white salt and was in the middle of deserted salt flats.’

Although he did spend some anxious hours, he ended up having a great time. ‘I got to visit Bolivia’s famous salt flats, Salar de Uyuni.’

Once, while on a family vacation in Mauritius, he took a spontaneous detour to Madagascar to see its famed baobab trees and lemurs. ‘The lemurs were in enclosures in some places and were difficult to locate in the outer areas in the limited time I was there. So I went to an enclosure and requested the caretaker there if he could allow me to see the lemurs.

‘He was very obliging and poured honey all over my face and neck. This attracted the lemurs and soon I actually had eight or nine lemurs all over me.’

Ranjit says that ideas and inspiration for his next vacation can come from anywhere – a picture, an article or even a conversation. ‘I was at a Diwali party in 2011, quite bored. I was just swiping through my phone and looking at places to travel when a person next to me suggested, ‘Why don’t you go to Antarctica?’

‘I thought, ‘Why not’ and within 48 hours, I had booked the tickets.’

He has travelled to Brazil, from there to Buenos Aires and then the Argentinian city Ushuaia at the southern tip of South America (also known as the southernmost city in the world).

‘I boarded a converted Russian research ship which was taking us to the Falkland Islands, South Georgia - which has the largest concentration of King Penguins - and various bays in Antarctica. They don’t usually allow large vessels in there, let alone too many passengers, so it’s off the beaten track completely. What I didn’t know was that the ship was actually on a historical voyage carrying the remains of the explorer Frank Wild which were discovered in South Africa after many years.

‘There was a BBC crew onboard and we were going to have a burial ceremony next to the grave of Frank’s friend and famous Polar explorer, Ernest Shackleton, whose descendants were also onboard with us.’

Ranjit has also been to Greenland, Iceland, Alaska and Lapland where he stayed in an ice hotel (‘Not an igloo,’ he stresses. ‘They actually sculpted the hotel out of huge blocks of ice’), and slept on deer skin placed on a bed made of ice.

More recently, he has participated in an extreme snow drifting and sports car racing trip, that offered remarkable views of the Northern Lights.

Once, he was so mesmerized by pictures of the Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival in Taiwan that he planned a spontaneous trip in 2017. ‘I didn’t have a ticket to the event, but I told the guard there that I’d come all the way from Dubai.

‘I ended up being introduced to the town mayor who asked them to let me in. He invited me to sit and watch the famous launching of the lanterns. It was just spectacular.’

On his 50th birthday, Ranjit had promised himself that he would plan more trips that were a bit higher on adrenaline. ‘Bankers don’t like taking risks, so these adventure trips bring out a different side of me,’ he smiles.

‘I got into sports car driving and signed up for driving tours and trips in Italy, Spain and Portugal where you sometimes go at a speed of over 280 km per hour as on the Autobahn in Germany. Bungee jumping and skydiving are next on my bucket list. There is so much to do and see. I just have to make the time. And I will.’