The money she saved kept her going for the first year and a half of her travels. From there, she's been working as a travel consultant in her family's agency when she's at home in Nevada City, California and also doing photography and blogging while she's traveling.
Alford is still in the process of submitting nearly 10,000 individual pieces of evidence to Guinness World Record in chronological order, but the record clock stopped the day she entered country number 196. When she arrived in North Korea, she said she felt one thing:"Relief. I've been working through extreme anxiety for the past six-plus months overcoming the obstacles that go along with getting into some of the least accessible places in the world," she says.
But there were countries where Alford felt uncomfortable traveling alone as a woman."To be honest, spending weeks in each country wasn't in my budget. The least amount of time I spent in a country was two to three days. South Sudan, Somalia, CAR, Mali, Chad and Papua New Guinea are a few of the countries I didn't spend much time in because I didn't have the means for proper security. I would love to go back and explore more of them someday," she says.
My advice for young people who want to do this: Believe that you can do anything you set your mind to.