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Questions have recently been asked on WhatsApp about Lampedusa, Pantelleria, Anjouan, and individual islands in the Maldives  and why the first is on the list and the others aren’t. This post is to summarize past Board discussions and offer my own comments.

Lampedusa, along with Linosa and Linate within the same Pelagian group, is more than 200 miles from mainland Italy so qualifies under Rule 4a1. 

Pantelleria has, indeed, been discussed in the past as a possible addition. It falls into one of the gray areas that do crop up no matter how carefully we try to follow the Rules. On the one hand it is more than 200 statute miles, though not nautical miles, from the closest part of the Italian mainland. Together with the fact that like the other islands it is on on the African plate ( though that is not an official criterion ) and is often informally grouped with the others, the Club decided not to proliferate further the number of Italian Mediterranean destinations. We would accept a visit to any of them as a qualifying visit.

Anjouan is another gray area. Its claim would not be under Rule 4a1 but 4b2. It has not been discussed recently, certainly not since the 2008 defeat of the separatist rebellion that removed its de facto 1997-2008 autonomy, and its claim now would hinge on whether we consider its current level of autonomy to rise to the definition of “separate state, province, or department.”

The top level divisions of the Maldives are currently, I believe, the 4 cities and the 18 atoll councils. I think that even the most far-flung of the latter are within 200 miles of the closest next council, and so would not qualify under either Rule 4b1 or 4b2.

Finally, a word about the evolution of the list that may be of interest especially to newer members. When the Club was founded, the United Nations list was largely restricted to the 51 founder members and many obviously independent countries were not UN members. The Club early on took a more expansive view and included additional destinations: today, of course, there are very few countries not in the UN, and it is a perfectly worthy goal to confine one’s own list to just the UN countries, just as it is a perfectly worthy goal to try to visit a much expanded list like the Nomad Mania or MTP lists. Many members choose to set their own personal targets while still enjoying the social aspects of the Club and the companionship of a group of like-minded serious travelers. The TCC list, at 330, is based on the Rules that were codified in the 1970s and are posted on the TCC website. No set of Rules can be perfect but the Club does try hard to adhere to them and to interpret them in the light of today’s conditions so as to provide and maintain a list that covers all the obviously sovereign nations plus various other destinations, especially island destinations, that are of interest to serious travelers. There is something particularly appealing, almost atavistic, about reaching an island destination and many find that to be a rewarding thing to do. Occasionally this does result in seemingly odd choices, but as many members have observed it generally provides a satisfying list of places to explore, and by trying never to bend the Rules we are usually able to avoid subjective decisions. Having said that, I acknowledge that even the ostensibly clearest of the Rules can be interpreted in different ways: for example, you might think Rule 1 the most straightforward, but reasonable people can even disagree about what constitutes a sovereign government. Every two years the Board reviews the list, taking into account member comments and requests, and though not always unanimous in our decisions on the gray areas we try to  reach consensus. Finally it is worth saying that the vast majority of member requests are to add places - almost never does someone propose removing somewhere - so that the Board will inevitably sometimes appear as the bad guy in resisting a particular claim, but we want to avoid perpetual expansion of the list and so tend to be cautious in adjudicating proposals that are not clear-cut.