2019 - And what a (record-breaking) year it has been! (I)

Surprise of the year: amazing Tajikistan 

There are good years and not-so-good years. There are years to remember and years you wish you could forget. There are long years, seemingly never-ending years and years that pass in the blink of an eye. An then there are great years... surprising, mind-blowing, record-breaking years like 2019. Please bear with my overuse of hyperbolic adjectives, how else do you think could one describe a year that has been richer in travel and experiences than (almost) all those before? 

But hey, you don't need to take my word for it, with all this social media craziness people really tend to exaggerate these days, don't they? So let's... um... see the figures. Which by the way I'm only listing here year after year lest I should forget them - and I have to admit even this would be quite a difficult task if I didn't have a number of notebooks to help me keep record of my past travels.