I've been traveling to lesser traveled countries for 10+ years and always tend to meet the kindest most genuine locals in the places that are not tourist hot spots by any means. Strangers crossing the road just to shake my hand and say "Welcome to Ethiopia", being invited over for Christmas eve celebrations in Colombia, or going to a traffic officer's home to meet his family in a village in the Philippines where he gifted me his son's local basketball jersey. All of these authentic experiences allowed me to culturally immerse myself rather than feel the divide between locals and tourists.<p>So I started to think what things these places might have in common, and one of the main theories I had was the quantity of tourists they have relative to their population, basically how much "tourist congestion" they have. The only locals I would randomly meet in places which have had so many tourists for many decades tended to be the scammers, and the normal locals were so desensitized to seeing tourists that at best they didn't care, and at worst they had a negative view or aversion towards tourists.<p>I only heard about the authentic lesser traveled places from word of mouth from other travelers, I only went to Colombia because a traveler in India told me I can avoid the frat-boy-drug tourism there and experience the local culture. So I recently created a list of different countries ranking them on tourist congestion, safety, and other insights from the UN, WHO etc to see if there is a systematic way of identifying these places based on data. I hope to grow this and add all countries, and later add filters by region, cost, language and create other lists like upcoming local cultural events in various regions of the world.<p>My vision is to create resources for people to pick places that allow them to culturally immerse themselves while being safe, instead of the typical state of tourism where people hang with their own nationalities separated from the locals. Please take a look and support this cause if you have the resources