In fourth sport are citizens of Denmark, Finland, Italy, Sweden and Spain who can travel to 187 countries without a visa. Passport holders of seven countries - Austria, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the UK and the US - are ranked No 5 with visa-free access to 186 countries.

The Henley Passport Index assesses the validity of 199 passports across 227 destinations. Henley & Partners receives exclusive data from the International Air Transport Authority, which forms the basis of the index. For each destination, if no visa is required for passport holders from a country, then a score with value = 1 is created for that passport. A score with value = 1 is also applied if passport holders can obtain a visa on arrival, a visitor’s permit or an electronic travel authority when entering the destination. These visa types require no pre-departure government approval because of the specific visa-waiver programmes in place.

India is ranked a lowly 81 with the blue passport enjoying visa-free access to 60 countries, including Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Thailand, Serbia, Ukraine, Fiji, Iran and Qatar. In 2017, the country’s rank was 87.

The latest index was made public in October.

Because of the ongoing conflict, Afghanistan and Iraq are bottom of the list with a ranking of 106. Passports of these war-torn nations are good for visa-free entry to only 30 countries.

Countries with citizenship-by-investment (CBI) programmes in place all fall within the top 50 of the Henley Passport Index and are continually rising up the ranking. For example, Moldova, which launched its CBI programme in the second half of this year, has climbed 20 places since 2008. Every CBI programme country has improved its visa-free/visa-on-arrival score since the start of the year.