The official 10th anniversary and birthday of NomadMania is behind us. We celebrated it in the most amazing way possible - by joining over 100 amazing travellers from the whole world in Yerevan, Armenia. We attended the Extraordinary Travel Festival there from October 14-16 and wow, was it an amazing event.
We can only congratulate the organisers headed by Ric Gazarian of GlobalGaz for their incredible organisation of a conference that everyone wants to attend again. And we are quite impatient to do so! Amazing job!
Our founder Harry Mitsidis led his group of travellers across Armenia on a pre-conference trip, which was an absolute success. If you haven't heard about Next is Armenia, then this is your chance to get to know this agency that focuses on authentic experiences and book your next trip through them - in Armenia and Georgia as well. They did an impressive job and our savvy travellers were truly happy afterwards. The highlight of our trip was definitely the cake prepared by our guide Shushanik as a surprise for our 10th Anniversary, October 13th.
Meanwhile, our manager Milana Bojinovic joined the conference that followed and represented NomadMania there. She shared some free T-shirts, though she made everyone play a geography quiz in order to "win" one and met all of those community pillars that we communicate with on a daily basis.
|
|
|
|
More importantly, she finally shared the results of our poll "What is a visit" with the community for the first time in a dynamic presentation. This sparked a lot of interest and now it's finally the time to share it all with you here, so read along.
Milana was also faced with some surprising news coming from the 'opposing' end of the travel community. She took this the best way she knew - with a kind smile on her face and with a strong stance. Here at NomadMania we don't believe in competing with others, but only with the past versions of ourselves.
This is the only way to move forward and we can only hope to work together with everyone involved to create a better and stronger community for all of you. Most importantly, we hope to create a friendly and easy to keep up with environment for the travel community. We don't pretend that we don't make mistakes, but we like to own them and take accountability for them. Thank you all for your incredible support and donations that came our way!
|
|
|
|
|
|
Amazing guide Shush surprises our founder Harry Mitsidis with a cake for 10th anniversary of NomadMania |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Our manager Milana explains our findings from the poll 'What is a visit' |
|
|
|
|
|
|
The organisers and EPS moderators gathered for a Q&A session |
|
|
|
|
|
|
ETF mutual dinner at the end of second day |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
With so many things happening, you may have forgotten, but our second Travel Awards are closer and closer. November 27th will be there sooner than you think, so there is not much time left to choose the final winners.
If you are wondering what happened with all your nominations for the Awards, you can find out on our Awards page where we explain the process briefly. To sum it all up - we made a Committee with as many as 10 great travellers who had one task - to find the BEST 5 candidates in each of our six travel categories. So that was 30 great candidates to choose out of many, many impressive names. Well, we added one extra, just to stay quirky.
The team was lead by our manager Milana, who made sure they get all the data and vote accordingly. Since we ended up having some of our Committee members being nominated in some of the categories, or even better - their mother - our manager voted in order to replace them where this was needed, so we tried our best to avoid any direct conflict of interest. Never the less, we remind you that this is not science and it is just for fun and we hope it stays that way. Otherwise, NomadMania's team didn't have much to do with the final results of the vote. OK, we did do one small intervention - we added that one MORE candidate in the Biggest traveller category, but we hope you can forgive us. After all, the final vote is on you and you only.
What should you do now? Head to our voting page and check out the candidates. If you can't make up your mind just yet, give it a couple of days. We are still gathering a good enough representation data about our nominees, so you still might see something new about each of them if you come back later.
Don't forget, our voting is open for one month. We will close it on November 21st, after our next big newsletter. You cannot vote with a new profile. Only members who signed up until October 1st and who have registered at least 20 regions will be able to cast a vote here!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The stars of our Community - Trav and Ling |
|
Between July and August, NomadMania made a poll called 'What is a visit'. Our manager admits that when she saw this poll and the sheer number and the scope of questions, she thought no one will bother to reply. But she knew she was wrong after replying to all of the questions herself, as she found herself drawn to read more and more sometimes silly and somewhat extreme situations that Trav and Ling find themselves in.
We ended up with 987 replies and a considerable amount of data. You can see the full results per question here - in our results page. This is, of course, open for any discussion and interpretation that you may want to bring to the table, but we did draw some conclusions out of this.
If you are very much into this kind of stuff, we are providing a full analysis of the poll on this page, while we will present only some of the most interesting results below.
|
|
|
|
|
Our poll and presentation were split into different means of transit, that started with Aviation. Here we share our very first question and the clearest result.
Our first firm conclusion, which was then confirmed in many other variations of similar questions - airport transits without leaving the ground of an Airport are NOT considered a visit to a country or a region.
|
|
|
|
The second question led our Trav outside of his terminal and immediately, we noticed a divergence in our results. This continued onward through our poll, so we made a clear split of the groups of travellers.
One considered the age and we have the two extremes here - travellers below 34 years old and travellers above 55 years old. These both groups were to show a consistency in sharing an opinion, opposing the other group in almost all cases.
The other group considered the travel intensity, or experience with travellers split into those with less than 150 NomadMania regions and those with more than 400. They also show a great consistency and lead to some interesting conclusions.
|
|
|
|
Our next travelling theme was Railway travel and here we received some not so unanimous results. This led us to a conclusion that more surveys are needed to reach the final consensus about what the community thought about what is or is not a visit.
|
|
|
|
Road travel, at least in the case of a bus, painted a similar picture as the previous two. It appears that our community is not so keen to accept any kind of visit that only includes stations/airports. The breaking point seems to be getting out of such places and seeing at least a bit - even if it's just the Jackson street in Dallas or a roundabout in Addis Abbaba.
This was somewhat different with the car travel, which included a bit more flexibility and not even leaving your car was needed to pay a good visit to a place.
|
|
|
|
Maritime travel reminded us of our roots that include an infamous 'touch down' to the grounds of the place that we're visiting in order to consider it visited. We could clearly see that the more time was spent walking on a location where Trav and Ling had sailed into, the more likely it was to be considered a visit by our community.
|
|
|
|
Finally, we included some special and bizarre cases that were both fun and nerve-wracking. We have discovered that a totally blacked out 'visit' to a place is considered to be as a legitimate way to get to know a place by sometimes as many as 47% of our community members.
This all lead to some head scratching moments and the big decision - we will repeat the poll in late November with similar, yet modified questions, in order to confirm the validity of the results so we can then create some policies.
|
|
|
|
In short - these were the conclusions that we shared. It still remains to be seen what course of action this will lead us to after we repeat the poll on 'what is a visit'.
So stay tuned, follow what is going on with our main page and please, by all means, take part in the next poll. The last thing that we want to do is decide on such issues on our own and this is why it's so important to cast your vote whenever you can.
|
|
|
|
|
UN Headquarters (New York) - M@P regions that you may not know
|
|
One of our very rare 'buildings' included in M@P are the UN Headquarters in New York which are a must-visit for anybody with an interest in geography and politics. While the area is in New York, sovereignty within is actually not US even though all payments here are in dollars.
The presence of this shows that M@P is clearly not just full of difficult places to go to. This one is really easy, with frequent guided tours taking you around the grounds and introducing you to the history and processes of the UN which, for better or worse, seems to be the best the world can do right now. Lots of photo opportunities and depending on when you go, there may be different exhibitions which highlight some of the UN missions around the world.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Interview - Ed Hotchkiss |
|
Ed is the man behind the website Exploring Ed, as well as the author of a fabulous phonebook on the subway stations of New York entitled 'Station to Station'. He tries to stay in a country at least a week, so clearly our poll would never concern any of his visits! Eventually he hopes to reach 193!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ed - India - Kumbh Mela Festival, Prayagraj, India |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ed, please tell us something about yourself - where do you come from, when and how did you start travelling?
|
|
|
|
|
I’m from Denver, Colorado. My family didn’t travel much. The only big trips we did were two from Denver to Kansas City, which is 600 miles of flat plains, to see my grandmother. For a child, a full day of Interstate 70 was the epitome of monotony. The closest thing to interesting were periodic signs giving the distance to “The World Biggest Prairie Dog.” We finally drove off the highway to see what I thought would be a huge, living, breathing prairie dog. To my disappointment, it was perhaps a 10 foot statue of a prairie dog made of concrete. Not an auspicious start for a world traveler.
Yet there must have been some intrinsic interest in seeing the world even as a child. I was always fascinated with maps, current and historical ones. At one point in elementary school, I could identify every country in Africa, a feat I couldn’t duplicate until a few years ago.
I did explore Denver extensively on my bicycle while in junior high and high school. I rode an old paperboy bike with no gears and square handlebars pointed up. I would especially go through industrial areas on winding roads and bridges by the South Platte River. Today many of these places have been developed into apartments and have no resemblance to my Denver days.
While in high school, I had a few episodes of travel outside of Colorado. My science class took a bus trip to Puerto Peñasco on the northern shore of the Gulf of California, in Mexico. I only remember singing on the bus with my friends and seeing the beach for the first time. I was also part of civic and vocational organizations and was able to travel to Chicago (a really big city to me at the time) and Atlantic City. When considering colleges, I flew to New York City to check out Columbia University and ended up walking from Morningside Heights to the World Trade Center.
So, there was no particular indication that someday I’d roam the globe except that I was peripatetic in my small world and checked out hundreds of books from my local library on foreign cultures and geography. That changed after I graduated from high school and started hitchhiking across the U.S. and a bit of Canada. Before I was 21, I had been to all the lower 48 U.S. states. I wish I took photos then as I met many people, both wonderful and strange, and had many adventures.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ed and his wife Khadija - Machu Picchu, Peru |
|
|
|
|
|
|
On your blog, you mention that you travel along with working and raising a family. How do you manage to combine extensive travel with your everyday life? Does it require some special planning skills or is it just another part of your life?
|
|
|
|
|
While working, I took advantage of every vacation, holiday and long weekend to travel with the family, either on day trips, cross-country drives or international trips. I also traveled internationally for work and could explore on weekends and some nights.
My wife Khadija worked in Egypt for the United Nations and my youngest daughter, Ayan, accompanied her and attended high school there. While visiting them, it was a base to travel to nearby countries. Khadija later transferred to Guyana, which became a new base for exploration.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ed and Phil - Khajuraho, India |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Registan at Sunrise - Samarkand, Uzbekistan |
|
|
|
|
|
|
You’re on a mission to visit all countries in the World. How did you come to this idea? When do you see yourself achieving it?
|
|
|
|
|
I was doing a gut renovation of a brownstone in Harlem and my contractor stopped performing. I decided to take over the job, even though I had scant construction experience. This was the catalyst to stop working, something I had been thinking about for several years.
When the brownstone was finished, I was ready for a new stage in my life. I just decided one day to go to every country. To start it off, Khadija, Ayan and I went to Cuba for New Year’s, as it had just become possible for all Americans to travel there. Then Khadija and I traveled internationally 4x/year, once each to Europe, Africa, Asia / Oceania and Latin America / Caribbean. We were able to keep this rhythm for a few years and I started my blog, ExploringEd.com to document my insights and experiences.
It all stopped in March 2020, when the Covid lockdown started. For the next year and half, I still explored but by bicycle in the outer boroughs of New York City. I also found a publisher for my photobook, a decade-long project, which chronicles my travels on every subway line in NYC. My book features candid, black-and-white photographs of passengers in their daily life. After spending months choosing and scanning negatives and designing the book, “Station to Station - Exploring the New York Subways” is available for purchase.
In each country I visit, I want to learn about the history and politics, plus experience the culture and art, so I typically spend a minimum of a week and research extensively when I return. I don’t want to set foot in the country and say I’ve been there. Even with careful planning and visiting adjacent countries in single trips, this will probably require 15 to 20 more journeys in the next three to five years.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Hotchkiss Family - Beiteddine Palace, Lebanon |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Umayyad Mosque - Damascus, Syria |
|
|
|
|
|
|
What do you do for a living? How do you fit that into travelling?
|
|
|
|
|
My time now is exclusively focused on travel and photography. While home, I write about my adventures on ExploringEd.com and social media and enjoy the culture and entertainment in New York City.
I worked for multinational financial firms, based in New York City. The one thing I did right in my life was saving as much as possible, starting with my first job. Because of that, I was able to quit work in my fifties and live off my savings. It helped that Khadija had high level jobs in the United Nations, thus providing additional income.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Station to Station - Cover |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Khadija, Ayan, Vanessa, Halimo and Savannah by the Highline, NYC |
|
|
|
|
|
|
You travelled to 48 US states before you turned 21, all on a low budget, hitchhiking. How did young Ed get this idea and courage to achieve it? Where does the wanderlust in you come from?
|
|
|
|
|
My father and I had a close relationship, but frequently argued, often over nothing of importance. After one such encounter, I was so frustrated and hot-headed (blame it on my tender age), I stormed out of the house and went on the road and started hitchhiking. I ended up going to several states on hardly any money. But the freedom of the road and the thrill of not knowing what would happen appealed to me.
When my childhood friend Phil, whom I dedicated my website to, and I were freshmen at the University of Colorado in Boulder, I threw out a wild idea of hitchhiking to San Francisco for a weekend and he immediately agreed (What normal person would do this?). In Oakland, two inebriated young ladies picked us up and were soon stopped by the police, who turned the car over to us. We had to get them out of jail even though we’d been in the city for only a few hours. For lunch, we went to a Hare Krishna center that offered free vegetarian food and their mystic philosophy. On the way back, after losing our meager stash of cash playing blackjack in Carson City, we were freezing late at night on a desolate stretch of Interstate 80 in Utah. A pick-up truck stopped to give us a ride, but only had room in the open bed. We were so cold that we told stories about being submerged in icy water to distract ourselves. In five days we went there and back, but I didn’t know this was just the start of many adventures hitchhiking and traveling the world.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Karakoram Mountains - Sost, Pakistan |
|
|
|
|
|
|
What are your biggest travel interests? What do you like to explore the most?
|
|
|
|
|
I love to listen to the life stories and pursuits of the folks I meet, locals and fellow travelers.
I’m immensely interested in culture and art. As much as possible, I try to hear live music, see art exhibits and study the local architecture.
I’m also fascinated by geology and wildlife. I can never see enough waterfalls or go on enough safaris.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Chimpanzee - River Gambia National Park - The Gambia |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Please share some travel stories with us. What are some of the most surprising moments that you remember from your travels?
|
|
|
|
|
My travel stories range from ordeals to surprises to simple moments.
1) When traveling the Silk Road, literally by road, with Phil, we were stuck at the China and Kyrgyzstan border for two days. We had arranged a ride to pick us up in Kyrgyzstan, but they had to stay miles from the border. We couldn’t contact him, because this was in the pre-cellphone era.
We sat on the Chinese side, next to an arch with Chinese characters on one side and Cyrilic on the other (Kyrgyzstan used to be part of the USSR). Out of boredom, we walked through the arch and almost started an international incident when Kyrgyz soldiers started running from the hills and the Chinese soldiers were waving us back. We wisely returned to the Chinese side. After sleeping in a taxi with a driver who was agitated and wanted to return, we decided to go to a Chinese military base a few miles back.
Upon arrival, we found a few troops marching under the direction of a superior in front of nondescript single floor buildings. We were ushered into the commander’s office. We never figured out his rank, but he was in his early forties and had the look and manners of a leader. He knew enough English to communicate with us. We showed him all sorts of documents (visa, passports, letters), as bureaucracies like to see them. He left us in a small room and an hour later he returned and escorted us to a large cargo truck with a Kyrgyz driver. He told us this will allow us to cross the border, but don’t try to come back because you and I will both be in big trouble. Once we passed the arch, we drove for a half hour, past the Chinese and Kyrgyz border troops, over uncultivated landscape and found our ride was still waiting after two days.
2) My top wildlife experience was seeing wild Gorillas in the Bwindi Impenetrable Park in Uganda. I had arranged a ride from Kigili, Rwanda and arrived in the tiny village of Kisoro. Here I saw a group of Mzungus (“white people” in Swahili and some Bantu languages) milling around the entrance to the park.
While standing next to a covered area with seating for maybe thirty people, I chatted with two brothers from Holland. Each weighed over 250 pounds and had blond hair, gray close-cut beards and thick black rimmed glasses. They were hard to tell apart, but one had a slight limp. They were telling me of their adventures in Uganda, including Murchison Falls and a white rhino sanctuary. Augustine, one of the park guides, thanked the crowd for coming and supporting the preservation of the gorillas. He said each party was accompanied by guards with guns, so they could scare away forest elephants if we ran into them. He told everyone to be sure to pull their socks over their pants to stop ants from getting in. We proceeded on the ever-slippery path to find Gorillas, which we did. We had an hour but it was raining hard and they were not moving and obscured by foliage.
I had planned only one day because it was expensive but eventually, price be damned, I went again. It was the right decision and this time I went with my own guide and guards with guns. Then I saw a band of several gorillas of all ages, in a sunny opening, actively eating and interacting with each other. I’ll never forget this extraordinary experience!
While walking back, the guide told me the previous day that a German man weighing over 120 kilos (265 pounds) required a stretcher to be carried out of the forest. Twenty porters, working in shifts, were required to carry the man. After several hours of exertion, they extracted him. Just before they were out, they ran into an elephant, placed him on the ground and scattered. Luckily, the guards maneuvered the elephants away. When I told my Kigali driver the story back at the lodge, he revealed that the man was one of the Dutch brothers I had met the previous day.
3) On all of my wife’s and my trips, we have been blessed with kindness from local people. It has ranged from men digging our car out of the sand on a remote desert road in Tunisia, to search and rescue workers looking for Khadija who was lost in the Lofoten Mountains in Norway, to Toyota Dealer employees who fixed the undercarriage of our car in Eswanti in record time.
One of my favorite cities is Hanoi, as it is so colorful and energetic. Through our hotel we arranged for a college student, Hanh Bui, to be our guide for half a day. Students volunteer mainly to practice English and do not charge anything but they should be compensated in some fashion. Hanh Bui brought an unfiltered perspective to Vietnam society which would’ve been missed by a professional guide. Once in a market, I haggled for a few minutes over a Vietnamese military cap with a woman hustling her goods up and down the street. I agreed to about 1/3 of what she initially asked for but once I told Hanh the price, she said it was too much. She knew because she helped her mother who worked in the market. The woman became quite upset, so I gave her what we agreed upon, as a deal was a deal and the extra I paid I considered my tourist premium. Sometimes, you can’t take advantage of local assistance no matter how helpful it is.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Are there some favorite countries or places that you like to revisit over and over again?
|
|
|
|
|
I have many more trips to do in India, as I love the colorful tableau and the exuberance and diverse cultures.
For photography, I would like to return to Iceland in summer to take advantage of the many hours of soft light over the incredible landscape.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Busy Street - Kashgar, Xinjiang, China |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Market Women - Port Vila, Vanuatu |
|
|
|
|
|
|
How did your general view of the world change with travelling?
|
|
|
|
|
I find that while there is remarkable diversity around the world, there are constants in every country. Parents want to take care of their children. Families hope their lot in life will improve over generations. Friends and family are immensely important. People and cultures have well-deserved pride in their lives and accomplishments. Deep down we all want the same out of life.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ed and Khadija - Taj Mahal - Agra, India |
|
|
|
|
|
|
How do you choose where to go next? What does your trip planning process look like?
|
|
|
|
|
Now I’m focused on seeing every country in the world, which I count as 197 (193 UN members, 2 UN observers - Palestine and the Vatican, Taiwan and Kosovo). I’m at 121, so 76 to go. After that, I will just pick whatever suits my fancy and go there for as long as I want.
Often my trips involve visiting friends, either living in their home country or working elsewhere, and events such as weddings and festivals. Khadija, from working at the United Nations, has an especially wide circle of friends across the world and almost every multi-week trip, we visit someone we know.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Goldschmidt and Hotchkiss Families - Petra |
|
|
|
|
|
|
What would you recommend to fresh travellers who might want to travel more but don’t think it’s possible or don’t dare?
|
|
|
|
|
Don’t delay going to places you want, as they may not be there in the same way for much longer.
In 2008, my family went to Syria and decided to skip Aleppo as we thought we’d go there on our next trip. In 2011, the Syrian Civil War started and eventually the city was flatten by bombs. The city may partially recover in some form, someday far from now, but it’ll never be the same as it was prewar.
On the other hand, my wife, friends and I spent three weeks in Myanmar in 2018. The country was coming out of isolation and enchanting to travel through but in 2021, there was a military coup and tourism has virtually stopped. We were quite fortunate to go during that window of opportunity.
Speaking of fresh travelers, my eldest daughter, Halimo, is now exposing her daughters, Savannah and Vanessa, to the world of travel. They love exploring the Caribbean and recently spent a week in the Baja Peninsula in Mexico.
So moral of the story, don’t put off travel even when you’re young!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Young Buddhist Monk, Hsipaw, Myanmar |
|
|
|
|
|
|
We have a signature question that we ask all of our guests: if you could invite 4 people from any era to dinner, who would your guests be and why?
|
|
|
|
|
Assuming I could communicate with them, they would be:
A Neanderthal, so I could understand his or her way of life and see how close their species was to homosapiens.
A Native American from around 18,000 years ago, so I could get first hand information of the culture, history and technology of the time. I’d ask about the animals that roamed then including mastodons, mammoths and saber tooth tigers.
A Polynesian sailor from around 10,000 years ago so I could learn how he or she navigated vast expanses of ocean just in canoes and by reading the stars.
An Egyptian architect who helped design and build the pyramids, maybe 4,500 years ago. I could then learn exactly how and when they completed this monumental task.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Did you like reading this? |
|
We thank Ed for sharing his personal photos with us here at NomadMania.
We only send two emails a month and every time we share new features and NomadMania plans for future. Be the first to find out what's happening next.
Our next 'shorter' issue will be out on the 5th of next month with an interviewee you have probably already heard of!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|