Not all passports are created equal.

Anyone lucky enough to have a European passport on top of that South African ‘green mamba’ will tell you about the joys of travelling abroad without the need for a visa.

Not that the ‘mamba’ is completely useless, because it does grant you visa-free access to a number of countries.

One thing that all passports have in common is a particular colour scheme: red, blue, green and black. While there are variations on these colours, they’re always the same.

The Telegraph will tell you why:

Simply put, countries stick to more conservative colours because they appear more official. Lime green and baby blue might appeal to fashion brands, but they don’t tickle the fancy of sensible bureaucrats and civil servants.

Furthermore, there are political and geographical considerations when it comes to passport colour. EU countries, with the exception of Croatia, use burgundy.

Perhaps it is a coincidence, but Turkey, which hopes to join the EU, changed its travel documents from black to burgundy in 2010.

Britain adopted burgundy in 1988 but announced a return to blue ahead of Brexit.

Most countries favour green. Muslim countries in particular use green because it’s said to have been the prophet Muhammad’s favourite colour. Black, on the other hand, is the least popular passport colour.

While the outside of the passport is pretty standard across the board, some countries have made creative and unique changes to the inside of their passports.

If you put the Norwegian passport under a UV light, it reveals the Northern Lights:

The Norwegian Passport has a cooler security feature than yours! It shows the Northern Lights when put under UV light. Pretty cool I think! Source: https://t.co/xT6GgnrOPe pic.twitter.com/8o3cAt2jFx

— Simon Kuestenmacher (@simongerman600) April 29, 2018

The Canadian passport also takes on new life when placed under a UV light:

If you open up the Finnish passport, you’ll find drawings of elks and birds, and it also doubles as a flip book. Flip through it and the animals move:

Elk is so last season! New version has this! Fun to get a new passport, you never know what you will find 😁 pic.twitter.com/aPp6nBRtsT

— Antti Lipponen (@anttilip) August 8, 2018

Then there are those passports that are just incredibly powerful. If you find yourself with a Japanese passport, you’re on your way to pretty much anywhere with very little resistance.

Happy travels, friends.

[source:telegraph]