In our first larger newsletter of the year, we fully embrace the new format of our newsletter and present three new rubrics - the first will be NomadMania related and we will present new features that we have every month on the website. The second is traveller related: a very short shoutout to one of our community members; we will use this to once again celebrate our award recipients in the past year. And the third will be a travel related rubric, showcasing some of the lesser known parts of our planet. Of course we will always top it off with an interview with someone who is sure to inspire the rest of us
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In general news, we are pleased to announce the first NomadMania supported meeting in 2 years hosted by our member Eugenio Bregolat in Shanghai on February 17th. If you are in the area and wish to join in, please go to our Meetings section for details. We hope to start encouraging more local meetups as of the spring, so if you would like to host an event do get in touch with us!
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New on NomadMania - LPI ranking |
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Location of Low Passport Index Ranking on NomadMania.travel |
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The Low Passport Index (LPI) ranking is conceived as a list of travellers who travel on passports which can be considered less 'privileged' in terms of freedom of entry to a number of places.
Using the Henley Passport Index Ranking, only travellers from countries who have access to fewer than 95 of the 227 territories considered for their index are considered. Look here for the list. Dual nationals are not considered. We do ask, if someone on the list is known to have a passport also from a HIgher Passport Index country, that this be made known to us.
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Filters can be helpful while exploring our new feature |
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As with any ranking, we've added filtering options so you can explore in depth. Check the LPI ranking per country, per different scores, or all together.
Once again, we urge you to keep in mind that we can't know if some travellers have dual passports, especially if that second passport is from a Higher Passport Index country. In such a case, that user should not be on this list. We ask you to let us know if there is a case like that.
Have in mind that we are trying to honor travellers who have more difficulties entering most countries of the world.
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Which Country Do You Love? | The Biggest Travellers | NomadMania |
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Did you see our latest video on YouTube?
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When we planned our online Awards Show, launching a YouTube channel became a thing that we had to do. Because we never plan small things, we made a plan to try and regularly update the Channel with some fresh video content, as much as that was possible for us.
It is worth noting that this is one more thing that you should check out about us and especially, watch our latest published video That Gustav (@gus1thego) produced for us.
This one is funny in particular because he went on and asked some of the biggest travellers and their peers about which country is their favorite? What do you think?
Stay tuned, as there will be a sequel (equally good, though!) launched this next Sunday!
P.S. Don't forget that following our channel and giving thumbs up to our video makes it easier for you to catch our future content and gives us the much needed wind in the back. Thank you!
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A star of our Community |
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Our NomadMania awards ceremony held on November 28, 2021 left no doubt that our community is full of many truly interesting people. We were especially happy to present our Lifetime Achievement Award to Andre Brugiroux from France who has been travelling since the age of 17 in 1955! The award was custom-made for Andre and he is especially glad to have received it! Once again our admiration and congratulations to this dedicated traveller.
You can read our interview with Andre here.
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M@P regions that you may not know |
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Named as 'Valencian island', the municipality of Rincón de Ademuz is an exclave of the Valencian community located between the province of Cuenca (Castilla La Mancha) and Teruel in Aragon. While the local language is in fact Spanish rather than Valencian, this area has almost always belonged to the Valencian Community. We really love the quirky nature of exclaves, which is why we elevate them to places every traveller should explore - and here you have it on our M@P list!
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The Interview - Gianni Vernetti |
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Gianni Vernetti from Italy has been travelling for more than four decades. From a backpacker to a distinguished columnist and politician, his travel style may have changed somewhat but not his thirst for understanding and exploring the planet. We are extremely happy to be hosting him today!
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1983 : In Pokhara, Nepal after completing the Annapurna Circuit |
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Gianni, please tell us something about your early days and your first trips.
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In 1978, when I was 17, I made my first overland trip through Europe: I hitchhiked from my hometown Torino in the north of Italy to Brindisi in Puglia, then I took a boat to Patras and then I begun to island hopping in several Cyclades islands.
I was on a very low budget, travelling with just a sleeping bag.
When I reached Samos, I realise that it was possible to cross the strait and easily reaching Turkey! Asia was in my mind since I was very young.
When I was a boy I read all Emilio Salgari’s novels on the Far East. Emilio Salgari never travelled outside Italy, but thanks to his ability and hard research he wrote some of the most interesting travel novels of the XIX century.
During my teenage time I was fascinated by all decolonisation process in Africa and Asia and the birth of new independent counties following the departure of european rulers. I vividly remember as well the end of the Vietnam war in 1975.
I was captured as well by the “Hippy Trail”, when thousands of young europeans took the road to India and Nepal overlanding by bus, car or hitchhiking.
Going back to Samos, that morning I realised that Asia was in front of me. Without hesitation I bought a ticket and crossed the small strait that divided Europe and Asia.
I reached Istanbul by bus and spent there two weeks, spending most of my time at the Pudding Shop a small restaurant in the heart of Sulthanamet.
The Pudding Shop was an exceptional place: the beating heart of the “Hippy Trail”, where, in a single afternoon, it was possible to chat with dozens of travellers on their way to Tabriz, Teheran, Kabul, Delhi and Katmandu and read the famous board full of paper messages, essential to communicate during that time, before the internet era.
I quickly filled up 2 block-notes with many travel projects on how to reach Nepal from Europe. At that time I had no guidebook but I got enough information on itinerary, roads, places to stay, “hidden secrets” and hundreds of exceptional places to visit.
My next big trip took form during those days. The final decision was taken: next year, after my graduation from high school, I would have overlanded without hesitation from Europe to India and Nepal!
With this big program in my mind and tons of first hand infos in my pocket, I bought a train ticket from Istanbul to Belgrade and Milano, and come back home.
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How did your travelling “career” really begin? Did you always have the travel bug?
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My travelling “career” then begun with a big disappointment.
Following my first trip to Turkey before described, all my big plans for a long Asian trip after high school graduation, quickly vanished. We were in 1979 and that year two events dramatically changed Asia: the Khomeini’s revolution in Iran and the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.
I was too late. The new regime in Iran and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan radically transformed both countries, making a safe overland trip impossible.
Chicken Street in Kabul, that was high in my list of places collected during my afternoon at the Pudding Shop, and once Kabul’s main traveller hub, became one of the most dangerous places in all the city and probably in all Asia.
The “hippy trail” died forever, and so the overland trip from Europe to Asia.
My big overland Asia trip was cancelled, but not my “wanderlust”.
That summer I moved down to Africa hitchhiking all around the Mediterranean though France, Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and back to Italy through Sicily.
Shortly after, even that road would have been closed.
Political tension between Morocco and Algeria on Western Sahara and Algeria civil war in early 90s, led to the closure of their border in the last 35 years.
The world as we have known since II World War, almost “blocked” during the Cold War and in many ways easy to roam around, was again on the move in unpredictable directions, affecting seriously the way of travelling.
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You are a former Senator and Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs of Italy, but also a columnist and a business owner in the environmental sector. Was your travelling “career” influenced by your other careers, or vice versa?
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Definitively yes.
Almost every year during
my University studies and then during my PhD course, I travelled every summer
at least for three continuous months.
Then I began to learn
foreign languages on a continuous bases (today I’m studying Russian) and all
my cultural, professional and political interests were more and more focused on
international issues.
It is difficult to say
if first came the “egg” or the “chicken”, but my strong passion for travel
and my strong interest in geo-politics were both influencing each others during
the time.
Following the events of
1979, in my 20s and 30s I travelled all around Asia deepening cultural,
anthropological and political aspects of different countries.
Also thanks to my early
and continuous travelling, I consolidated my expertise in international
relations acquiring skills and capability that help me to better understand the
world around me, conflicts, political and governmental relations.
When I was 40 y/o I was
elected for the first time in the Italian Parliament and I already knew what
would have been my focus: international affairs. So I did.
I was a member of the
Foreign Affairs Committe of the House and of the Senate and then I became
Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs of Italy holding the responsibility of all
bilateral relations between Italy and seventy Middle East and Asian countries.
I also represented my country in different international organisation, among
the others the Human Rights Council of the United Nations.
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With Ban Ki Moon, former secretary general of the UN |
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On your NomadMania profile, you are only 19 UN countries away from visiting them all. Is this a goal of yours and when do you expect to achieve it?
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Yes, for sure. But I’m
not only interested in the 193 countries member of the UN. I’m very much
fascinated about geo-political facts and about the original ways people,
minorities, indigenous nations organise try to organise themselves.
This is the reason why I
visited quite extensively some self-proclaimed countries like Somaliland or
Nagorno-Karabakh or the less known autonomous Republic within the Russian
Federation, like Tuva, Yacutia, Buriatia, etc..
I’m very much interested
as well on the stories of “dissidents” in dictatorship countries and in all the
experiences of “government in exile”. This is the reason why I’ve been several
times in Dharamsala in India, meeting with his Holiness the Dalai Lama, the
Tibetan parliament and the Tibetan Government in Exile, actively supporting
them in their fight for freedom.
Taiwan is not a UN member
countries, but is one of the most interesting Asian country with rich Chinese
cultural heritage combined with healthy democratic institutions, that both
lacks substantially in the People Republic of China.
The Kanaks people of New
Caledonia deserves and independent country as well.
I’m fascinated by the
struggle for freedom and human rights of people around the world.
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Dharamsala, India - meeting with Tibetans in exile |
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Did your political career bring you benefits, or disadvantages for that matter, with your travels?
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Yes and No. As said
before, my political career was influenced since the very beginning by my
travel experiences. My young wanderlust led me to be an expert in international
affairs and at least strongly influenced all my choices in the following years.
On the other side, during
all the time that I hold political and diplomatic responsibilities, it was almost
impossible for me to travel in many places around the world for security
reasons.
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2010 - Child soldier rehabilitation camp in Chad |
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Your professional career always included some way of environmental awareness and fight for it. Did this influence your travels too and in what way?
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Yes, sure. Since 2013 I decided not to run again for the Italian Parliament and founded Gea Solar (www.gea.solar), an international company that develops large scale Solar energy projects in different emerging economies. Together with Italy and Spain, we are currently developing solar projects in Mali, Ghana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Mexico and Argentina.
I’m strongly convinced that we need a strong public/private partnership to be able to reach the ambitious goals set by the United Nations to dramatically reduce CO2 emission for addressing the climate change threats.
We chose to operate even in challenging countries, like Mali or the Democratic Republic of Congo, often avoided by many western companies, because I’m really convinced that renewable energies can be one of the most important components of human development: they are easy to install, competitive with fossil fuels, decentralised and naturally clean.
So, I’m continuing to travel worldwide not only with family and for pleasure but for developing these projects as well.
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Meeting the press in Hargeisa, Somaliland |
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Could you share some travel stories with us, the ones that stay deep in your head and heart?
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On 9th November 1989 I
was working on the final draft of my PhD dissertation.
During those days, there
were several indicators that Eastern Europe was quickly changing. By the end of
October, thousands of East German tourists in Hungary were able to cross the
“iron curtain” in Austria, arriving freely in West Germany.
That day at 8pm, I
switch-on my TV to hear the evening news and suddenly I watched incredible
images of people crying and dancing on both side of the Berlin Wall, crossing
peacefully the Check Point Charlie to West Berlin.
The Cold War has finally
ended. One hour before during a press conference in Berlin, the spokeperson of
the East German Politburo had just announced that all citizens of East Berlin
were allowed to cross the Wall.
One hour later I was with
an old friend of mine on an old Volvo Polar and two sleeping bags. We drove all night the 1.300km that divided my city from Berlin and the following days,
around 12pm, we witnessed the first removal of the Berlin Wall in Alexander Platz.
We then spent some days
in Berlin feeling that extraordinary and incredible moment when the iron
curtain disappeared and the people of Europe were finally able to reunite.
The stamp of the last day
of existence of the DDR (the East German Republic) stands proudly on my
passport!
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10 November 1989 - Fall of Berlin Wall |
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In July 2006 I was in
Kabul on an official visit to Afghanistan. I met our soldiers of the Nato
mission, the President Hamid Karzai and several officials of the government.
But the fact that touched me most was to enter the Kabul library meeting the
extraordinary men that saved thousands of books forbidden during the Taliban’s
rule. Now sadly that dark regime has come back and the future of that
incredible country is more uncertain than ever.
In 1985 I was together
with my girlfriend Laura (today my wife) on a very long overland trip within
China: that was the very first year that China issued in Hong Kong individual
traveller visas and we spent three months roaming around by boat, bus and train
travelling more then 12.000km within the country. China was incredibly
different from now: just bicycles everywhere, no cars and no english speakers.
We had to learn a little chinese to survive and with train station signs only
written in Chinese a small book bought in Hong Kong “saved our lives” many
times: a Chinese Railways Timetable written in English and Chinese allowed us
to understand when we had arrived in our destination in remote areas.
We had as well many
incredible travelling experience with our 4 kids: when they we 6, 4, 2 and 1
y/o we spent one month driving 4.000km in Namibia and our youngest child
Lorenzo had his first birthday below the shade of the Sossusvlei dunes.
A couple of years ago we
were again all together (now they are 25, 23, 21 and 20 y/o) and we took the
Transiberian train from Moscow to Vladivostock stepping down in several remote
locations: we especially loved Aginskoye in the Agyn-Buriat Autonomous Okrug
within Transbaikalia and Birobidzhan in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, both with
incredible stories of unique preserved cultural heritage.
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With Hamid Karzai, former president of Afghanistan |
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2017 - In Vladivostok with my children, after 9,200 km by train |
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What is your most preferred style of travel?
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Overland. By train, bus, car, motorbike. I like to slowly arrive in one place appreciating all the changes along the way. Naturally it isn’t always possible and planes are in many cases unavoidable, but I always try to feel “the dust under my feet”.
We have an old Land Rover Defender essentially devoted to this, but the problem now is that there is a continuous “family battle” to book it!
We have four children that now became four young adults. They naturally love to travel and me and my wife Laura are quite proud to have transmitted them some right principles: to love differences, to be able to adapt, to run out from their comfort zone, to explore the outside world, to not follow the “mainstream” and to try to find out as much as possible their original ways to live.
They took all this very seriously and they are now better than us in many ways. They all left home very young, they went to study at Universities abroad, they became four very serious travellers. A couple of years ago one of my sons, when he was 19 y/o, drove with 3 friends from our city Torino to Banjul in Gambia crossing Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania and Senegal. They all travelled around Europe by bus and train since the were 16 and now they have already independently travelled around most continents by their own.
Already for many years we have a very important “family file” with all countries and territories visited by each member of us. I may say that there is as well an healthy competition among us… Discovering the NomadMania website was a confirmation that we are not alone in this positive madness…
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2008 - Snowboarding in Svalbard |
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When you travel, what are your biggest interests? You seem to be pretty invested in our NomadMania Series, so do you have some favourites amongst them, perhaps?
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Since I was very
young I collected maps and spent hours studying itineraries, borders, analysing
geo-political limitations and opportunities, localising interesting places to
go, planning dozen trips.
Drawing itineraries on
maps is still one of my favourite activities!
The highlights that I put
on the map are very eclectic: sometimes could be a World Heritage Site, in
other cases a village, a city or a natural place that we discovered reading
fiction and non fiction books, or simply something that we are still missing.
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2002 - Namib desert with the kids |
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We have one question that we ask all of our guests, our signature question: if you could invite 4 people from any era to dinner, who would your guests be and why?
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Robert Louis Stevenson, a great writer that died too young. Treasure Island and the maps of Treasure Island has been a recurrent reading since my childhood: I read everything he wrote, including the story of his family of Scottish lighthouses builder. A trek to the mountain of Vaea in Samoa, to pay homage to his graveyard, is on top of the list of my next travels.
Woodrow Wilson, the 28th President of the United States of America. Following World War I, he envisioned and promoted the birth of the League of Nations and the Permanent Court of International Justice. He was a true liberal internationalist advocating democracy promotion and the protection of human rights worldwide.
All international institutions that we have nowadays, came out of his vision.
George Orwell, a great journalist, unique novelist and finally a freedom fighter. His dystopian novel “Animal Farm” and “1984” are a constant warning about the risks of totalitarianism and help me to love the freedoms our generations have won even more. His first hand account of the Spanish civil war, “Homage of Catalonia”, is probably the best war reportage ever written.
And finally an Italian: Altiero Spinelli, one of the founding fathers of the European Union. He drafted the famous “Manifesto of Ventotene” during the time he was imprisoned in the tiny Italian island of Ventotene by the fascist regime. His vision of a federalist and united Europe, written in 1941 during the darkest time of our continent, continues to be a strong inspiration for the generation to come.
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2021 - Socotra with my wife Laura |
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Did you like reading this? |
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We thank Gianni 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 February 5th with another traveller from a Low Passport Index country!
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