Ladies and gentlemen, we are happy to launch the celebrations for the 10 years of NomadMania! Yes, it's that long already!
In fact, The Best Travelled was first launched in early April 2012, and for six months until October 13th of that year when we launched officially, we piloted and tested many of its features.
Things have changed so much since then that our original design is probably unrecognisable. What hasn't changed is our detailed division of the world - most of our regions are still the same - as well as our passion for getting you all to fill your profiles.
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As part of our celebrations, we are launching our online poll on 'what is a visit'; read on below.
Moreover, we have a huge announcement to make in this issue.
Effective immediately, our founder Harry Mitsidis announces his retirement from NomadMania. In our 'Traveller of the month' section, we say a little more about this! Of course NomadMania is in the best of hands with a whole team working together to bring you new features, an exciting travel award season starting as of August 21 as well all other operations, headed by our manager Milana.
In order to celebrate Harry's departure, we are opening up our 4th NomadMania Conference which will take place next year between March 6-10 at Bocas del Toro, Panama. Harry will be present there in what he claims will be his final travel event, along with a number of other big travellers from all over the world. Our past 3 Conferences have been by invitation only, however this time we will give out some places if you show an interest. Contact us by email (contact@nomadmania.com) if you are seriously interested in joining.
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The highlight of our previous days has certainly been our Warsaw travellers' meet-up. Our team of three (yes, the majority of our core team is based in Warsaw currently) was joined by 8 other travellers!
We had a Ukrainian member travel all the way from Krakow to meet us in Warsaw. He's been based there for years now and this is not his first time to travel some lengths to meet up with NomadManians. We were so glad to re-unite with him after almost three years and to hear that his family is doing well for now. Not all stories were all that cheery, unfortunately. After all, the war is on our border...
On a more positive note, we were honoured with not one, but TWO members who are also UN Masters! One of them, Slawek (first photo, on the left) is half-Polish and now he spends his days running a big business in Warsaw. He still travels a lot and likes to learn new languages to enrich his palette of 11 languages that he speaks already. We interviewed Slawek way back in 2015, check it out! The second one, Bill (first photo, on the right) is our American member who happened to be in Warsaw when we sent our previous Newsletter and announced our meeting. With some travel plans being cancelled for him, he decided to stay and meet with us. Such a pleasure and honour, indeed! We interviewed him last year after he completed 193.
We had a great fun and stayed almost the last at the restaurant. We are thankful to all who joined us and we can't wait to repeat such a gathering!
Second photo, from left to right: young Adam, Sidney, Slawek, Milana (our manger), Daniel (our IT guy), Emilia, Aleks, Bill, Wojciech (our Committee member), Piotr and Daniel.
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New on NomadMania - What is a visit Poll |
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The issue of what constitutes a visit to a travel or region is one that goes back to the origins of the travel communities. Different clubs have tried to create and implement different rules, with varying degrees of success.
Must a visit be legal? Must you cross immigration? What about transiting a place by train? What if you see a place only at night? All these questions can lead to endless traveller debates. In fact, in the 2nd NomadMania Conference in the Azores back in 2019, this was the main issue discussed.
As part of our celebration of our 10 years, we have decided to resurrect the debate by presenting our longest online poll ever. Our old forgotten mascots Trav and Ling (special hug to all who remember them) go on a number of adventures around the world, by plane, train, car or boat, and in each one of the hypothetical situations, some of which are deliberately humorous, we ask you to assess if we can consider they have visited the place.
It may take you up to half an hour to go through each 'storyline' and decide whether the situation is or isn't a visit. We urge you all to participate - and we will keep this poll online for a month. The results will be presented in late September - we can't wait to see what conclusions can be reached...
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Today we launch the last of our "reminder" series from our Awards video collection. This one is all about the younger men also joined by the youngest man to have visited all UN countries, where they share some valuable advice about travel in general.
This is the guest list, in case you were wondering: Tudor Clee - New Zealand 🇳🇿 Wanderreds - Alvaro Rojas - Spain 🇪🇸 Sal Lavallo - USA 🇺🇸 Gunnar Garfors - Norway 🇳🇴 Sam Goodwin - USA 🇺🇸 Anderson Dias - Brazil 🇧🇷
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Star of our Community - the founder of NomadMania |
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As mentioned above, with the celebration of our 10 year anniversary, comes the biggest change so far. Our founder and the main leader of this project for the past 10 years, Harry Mitsidis, is announcing his retirement from this project. We decided to honour him and give him more space to say everything that has to be said. Read along...
To match a face to a name, here is a photo of Harry with one of his favourite local fixers - Wassim Allache from Algeria.
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I had the idea of launching a travel website back in 2011. After more than six months of development led by designer Stefan Petrovic and after countless email exchanges with Artur Anuszewski regarding what should and what shouldn't make the final list of regions, the test version of what was then called The Best Travelled appeared online on April 2, 2012. For a long time after that, I was at the helm of the website, often heading groups of willing interns, ambassadors or volunteers whose valuable input developed the project even further.
The increase in membership, the creation of Committees with more people involved and the successful but time-consuming execution of 3 major trips to difficult places - Mali, Niger and the Pacific islands - led me to eventually realise that a manager was really needed as I could not handle the growing workload alone.
Since the appearance of Milana Bojinovic in June 2019 as manager of NomadMania, I have gradually tried to limit my commitments, even though many still write to me directly or still call it 'Harry's website' despite all the efforts that I have made to have multiple Committees and events where key decisions are made. After 10 full years of explicitly or implicitly leading, I have now decided it is the right time for me to let the project be developed by a younger team with ideas perhaps more in line with the technical and communicational methods of today.
Quite apart from the fact that anyone leading anything for more than 10 years sounds more dictatorial than anything else, I feel that my introverted nature is ill-suited to the demands of a project which in fact requires a much more sociable, outwardly engaged focus. At the same time, both the pandemic and recent political events have taken out a lot of the joy that I used to feel in managing NomadMania. Many people have told me that this is my 'legacy' but I certainly hope that my legacy, if any, lies elsewhere, in something I have yet to discover.
The biggest reward has certainly been meeting so many incredible travellers in the past years, people I didn't know existed before my crazy idea of starting a website back in 2011 and thank you to those who have taken the time to embellish my impressions of many places with their own hospitality. I have come full circle and wish to now focus on other projects. I will remain engaged in NomadMania only in a very minor advisory role which won't take up more than an hour or so per month. I plan on attending ViennaMania in September (details in our meeting section), will lead the ETF tour in Armenia in October, and will then also be present at the 4th NomadMania Conference in Panama in March 2023.
Our newsletter will also feature a farewell interview with me before the end of the year - feel free to email questions to contact@nomadmania.com which we will incorporate in this interview. If you would like to send an email to me, I will ask you to please do so in the next few weeks, as I plan to discontinue my NomadMania email address and most of my social media as well.
Thank you all for being part of the community, and please keep up your enthusiasm as the fantastic and untiring NomadMania Team gears up to our 2nd NomadMania Awards and more new features in the autumn (that's 'fall' in American English).
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M@P spotlight - Timor Leste - Atauro island
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M@P is a list that truly includes some unusual and entirely unvisited places - which may or may not be worthy of a visit in the first place! Timor Leste is one of the world's youngest countries - celebrating 20 years of independence this year - and it has only one major island, Atauro, which lies north of the capital Dili. Head just a little further north and you are already on the Indonesian island of Wetar.
Atauro's charms are simple. The best way to go around is hitch-hike the few lorries that ply the only main road of the place. There seems to be no specific capital or hub of activity but there is a resort for divers, which is probably rarely too full. Enjoy the endless beaches and meeting the friendly locals!
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The Interview - Madeleine Karlsson |
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This adventurous Scandinavian girl will remind you of why all the backpacking stories make sense and lure you out to travel. She is restless in her travels. While she may have started out as a "sold it all to backpack" traveller, she is now much more organised and on a mission - visit them all!
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Danakil depression - Ethiopia |
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Madeleine, tell us something about your early life and how your interest in travel developed?
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I grew up in Falkenberg, a small town on the westcoast of Sweden. We didn't have a lot of money growing up so summer holidays were spent at home, but with Falkenberg having great beaches and many tourists coming to spend their summers there I kind of liked it.
The only person in my family that had somewhat traveled is my uncle. He use to work on boats that took him to different places in the world. I remember staying in his place sometimes when I was a kid and he had a real shrunken head from Peru, that I was both super scared of and also curious about. He also had a stuffed baby crocodile that he use to chase my sister and me with.
I did my first trip in Europe when I was around 19 years old and like most Swedes the trip went to Greece for some serious beach time. Yes, we Swedes are obsessed with summer and beaches probably because we "suffer" long and dark winters.
My first trip outside Europe was to Thailand and Malaysia with friends in 2004, a real eye opener for me. This was before internet was a big thing and you pretty much needed a guidebook and reading travel magazines to figure out where to go and what to see. We went because a friend was getting married in Thailand, but when we arrived it turned out Budda had thought a week earlier was a better date to get married so we missed the whole thing.
I got really hooked on travelling after this and the year after I was ready for the first trip by myself. Also this trip went to Southeast Asia. I was a bit scared to be honest but after landing in Bali that was the first stop, meeting other travelers and fantastic local people it was all good.
Travelling solo turned out to be something that suited me great, so I went home, quit my job, sold my car and went on an around the world trip for 9 months. I came home super broke with great memories and bitten hard by the travelbug.
I thought that I would be satisfied after 50 countries that was my first goal, but ofcourse it went the other way around, I just cant get enough of different cultures, watching animals in the wild, and, being from Scandinavia, sun and good beaches
So my goal of 50 countries went to 100 and then I needed to see it all. What if the countries I didn't visit are actually the best?
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Which character traits help and hinder you while travelling? Tell us about your personal travelling style, please.
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I'm truly a backpacker but sometimes also enjoy staying at a nice hotel. When I go on longer trips I mix my accomodation quite a bit. All from homestays, hostels, hotels and camping.
But for travelling inside a country I always travel with the local people. For me this is the best way to get to know people and get a good understanding about the country I visit.
Going on chicken buses i Central America is the best experience. Once I spent a hole day on a chicken bus going through Guatemala to the border of Honduras - so much fun.
Also in West Africa going in shared taxis is good fun, my longest trip there was from Guinea Bissau to Guinea squeezed in with 10 people in a Peugeot for 12 hours. That was one sweaty ride!
Since I am covered with tattoos, all with histories from my travel, it's always been easy for me to attract local people. Quite often they seek me out with questions about the tattoos and some of them want to take pictures.
I am never as happy as when I travel, if possible I would travel full time. But for now I try to make one longer trip in February, escaping winter, and then some long weekends and 2 weeks in autumn.
Sometimes its necessary/easier to do group tours. Not really the way I like to travel because I want to be “free” to move on when I like. But I had some great experience with this too since it's been in countries where you meet people just like yourself.
With that said almost all countries are quite easy done alone, in my experience people are very helpfull and getting a local guide is also a good option.
I like to read up before I go and make some plans, but also leave some room for spending extra days or just chill for a few days. Otherwise I like to stay busy, want to see and do as much as possible.
Im a big animal lover so if there is a chance to see animals in the wild I will be there. Also very interested in mummies and burial rites, and tribes will always get my attention too.
Im also a big fan of diving and snorkeling, sharks beeing my favourite animal in the ocean.
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You have been on safaris, had encounters with wild animals, have visited tribes and did quite a few adventurous things. Have you ever been in an extreme situation? Tell us about the most exciting ones.
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Oh its hard to pick one, I love going on safaris, staying with tribes people and visit areas that are not all secure.
A few years back I was in Tajikistan, went on Paimir highway and spent a hole day driving on the border to Afghanistan with just a river separating them.
I could not let this chance go to waste. Only problem was that I didn´t have a valid visa getting back into Tajikistan, but did actually have one with the wrong passport number because by mistake I sent the wrong passport for my first visa.
My Tajik guide said lets give it a shot, we can always bribe immigration when you come back.
So I got my Afghanistan visa. The morning when I was crossing over to Afghanistan, the Talibans had taken over the village where I was supposed to cross, so we went to the next one, just a few kilometres from where the Talibans were. When going through Tajiki immigration they were super worried, they had never had a tourist crossing alone, and I was also a woman.
Going to the bridge connecting the countries I was thinking that this could be the most stupid thing I have ever done, but when reaching the Afghani side a military man opened the gate, he had a heart shaped Afghani flag on his uniform and he welcomed me to Afghanistan with a big smile.
The man owning the hostel I stayed in on Tajiki side had arranged a guide to pick me up, he took me around the village where everyone were super friendly, wanted me to take pictures of everything and wanted me to tell the world that not everyone in Afghanistan were terrorists.
I also spent time with my guide Masad's family on the countryside picking walnuts from the trees.
Coming back into Tajikistan they never saw that my passport did not match my visa so I got back in without any problems
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Dinka tribe in South Sudan |
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Can you dismiss some popular myth or stereotype about the places which you have visited?
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Every time I hear or read something bad about a country it kind of triggers me to go there and prove them wrong. All countries have something good to offer, and most of the time it's the local people that turn out to be great.
Many times people told me “you can't go there, it's not safe”, but as long as you do your research and you don't take unnecessary risks, you will be fine.
During the last Easter I went to Tunisia. Over the years I had heard other people from Sweden who went there and they hated it. They felt that they were not left alone and that the girls got a lot of unwanted attention.
Luckily I had a whole different experience, only thing that was hard was finding food during the day since I went during Ramadan. I stayed with a great family that took me around town and to a breaking fast dinner one of the nights.
I will definitely go back one day to get the whole food experience that I missed out this time.
Overall I don't pay too much attention to other people's bad experiences and media reports. The only way you will know is to go there yourself.
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Nyiragongo volcano Democratic Republic of Congo |
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How did your general view of the world change with travelling?
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This is a bit related to the question above - don't let your view of the world be the one from the media and other people's experience.
An observation I have made is also that the poorer countries have much happier people. I live in Norway, one of the riches countries in the world. Don't get me wrong, it's a great country to live in, but people here are quite lonely. We have enough money to live a good life but you don't see the same kind of happiness here as in less fortunate countries.
We always stress about having a great career, a new car, a big house, children, time for the gym and so on.
I spent a lot of time in Africa in the last 5 years, seeing people with very little access to clean water, not enough food, that have problem putting their kids through school. But they still make the most of it and are grateful for what they have. Mostly you also see that they have a good connection with their family and friends, something we definitely could learn from.
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Give us a few hidden gems of your country that most foreigners may not know, but you absolutely recommend.
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I have been really bad with travelling my own country, but my hometown Falkenberg is definitely worth a visit. People mostly think that Sweden is all winter and snow, but we also have great beaches. Falkenberg has quite a few and in the city you find a 2 km long sandy beach.
Also if you go to Sweden at summertime and go up north you will experience midnight sun. Go in the winter and there is no daylight at all, but there is a chance to see the northern lights.
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Harar, Ethiopia, feeding wild hyenas |
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Which places would you come back to and why?
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There are a lot of really good places I would like to visit again, Madagascar for one. I went there for 10 days a few years back but would love to come back and visit more places.
Lemurs - say no more. One of the most funny animals to watch, just love them. I dont speak french but had a great time with the local people that I found super friendly and helpful.
I also have a plan about retirement in Costa Rica. I love most parts of Central America and can definitely see myself living there when I get older.
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There aren't many women who have visited all UN countries, so you will go down in history once you complete it. Do you have this as your goal? Do you have any other ambitious travel goals?
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Yes, I want to see it all! I'm going for both UN countries and UN + list!
Hope to get it all done in the next 5 years, fingers crossed that we are done with pandemics.
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Finally, our signature question - if you could invite any 4 people to dinner, from any period in history, who would your guests be?
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Ragnar Lodbrok, the famous Viking king, since I'm from Scandianvia. it would be awesome to spend time with a Viking and hear all the stories from that time.
David Attenbourough, could probably talk about animals with him for hours and hours.
Johnny Cash, because you always need music. Him, being rock 'n' roll star of his time and me, being too young to have ever seen him.
Erna Solberg, former prime minister of Norway. I'm not much into politics but have always liked Erna.
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Did you like reading this? |
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We thank Madeleine for sharing her 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 August 5th with a very special "not alone" travellers interview!
Click here if you wish to receive NomadMania news and updates.
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P.S. Our new designs which include, but are not limited to, the new anniversary logo and the anniversary banners and other images are a work of a Ukrainian refugee and one of our scholarship recipients. If you would like to hire him, please contact us at contact@nomadmania.com !
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