In this issue we focus once again on one of our more popular features - the NomadMania UN Masters List, which we have recently amended to be a more accurate depiction of reality. We are also happy to launch a new NomadMania YouTube video, as well as a new poll on mental health and travel, which we hope will result in some useful observations for us all. We are repeating our call for IT help and a final call for our two trips, to Bratislava and Armenia (see more detailed itinerary below), in September. But probably the most important thing today - our Executive Committee, following two months of hard work and many iterations, has finalised its conceptualisation of NomadMania's Mission and Vision. Also note that we have once again amended our Terms and Conditions, especially paragraphs 11 (Prohibited Uses) and 15 (Termination of Services). Please complete your profiles if you haven't done so!
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NomadMania Mission and Vision Statements |
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A lot of work, time and thought has gone into these statements by the 11 members of our Executive Committee. You will find these now listed on the NomadMania website, along with a longer conceptualisation of who we are and why we exist.
NomadMania Mission Statement
To connect travellers, inspiring them to go beyond the ordinary and obvious through deep, meaningful and sustainable exploration.
NomadMania Vision Statement
To be a leading global community that encourages people to discover the diversity of the world and create a positive impact through travel.
What are NomadMania's Aims and Objectives
NomadMania's key objective is to be a leading, well-respected network that connects independent world travellers and encourages them to explore the world deeply, meaningfully, and sustainably.
Our aim is to encourage travel beyond the ordinary and obvious, and to be a source of inspiration for those who are passionate about discovering the world.
By maintaining a community of serious travellers and promoting education and awareness around travel, NomadMania strives to foster greater interest in the world and a better understanding of it, thereby making it more accessible and rewarding for all.
We also aim to:
• provide a wealth of reliable tools, resources, and information to help travellers plan and execute their trips
• motivate and help travellers to discover new places and lesser-known countries and regions
• encourage sustainable and ethical travel practices that benefit both the traveller and the destination.
You can read more details here.
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Our main addition this month is including the new MTP scores to our listing. As we have done for a long time now, NomadMania aims to present all the main travel lists out there so you can have them all under one roof. With the kind permission of the founder of MTP, Charles Veley, we have had that list on NomadMania as of 2018. MTP's recent addition of NomadMania's regions has taken its total to 1500 and we now follow suit.
Please note your MTP score will not be correct! While mostly automated, you will still need to go through every NomadMania megaregion under 'My Regions' and then check your visited regions in the MTP list - if any - which do NOT correspond exactly to NomadMania regions. These additional MTP regions can be found at the bottom of each megaregion list.
MTP regions such as England-Cornwall or Cook islands (southern) or even the Sovereign Military Order of Malta may be among the more visited ones. Once you have completed that, you should have your correct MTP score.
Apart from this, you will also find a new classification of travellers on our UN Masters List.
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Our newly re-organised UN Masters List |
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Our UN Masters includes everyone we know of who has been to all 193 United Nations members, as well as those who are extremely close to the goal. For every person, we try to present as many online links as we can find, including social media links, interviews, wikipedia mentions or published books. We have recently increased the number of books we input to two, so if you are an author and want your book linked, please let us know.
We decided to reorganise this list, in tandem with our new, stricter rules and in anticipation of the launch of our Golden verification, which we expect to launch present as of the spring. While you can sort travellers by country of origin or year of completion (if these are known), the default setting sorts people into 10 categories.
As is only fair, the first three are reserved for our members; those verified for both UN countries and NomadMania regions; then those only verified for UN countries, and finally those who have yet to be verified. If you wish to be verified and go 'up' a rank, please just contact us.
We then list those with a personal website and those with a media reference that we know of, and then we have changed things recently to include those with a more or less 'certain' confirmation that they have visited 193 even though there is no online media reference. Those who have sadly passed away conclude the end of the numbering, in other words, these are the ones we feel comfortable to confirm - and as so many are focused on numbers, this currently means 246 people.
The remaining categories are those who we only have a rumour or an (oral) source about but nothing more; then those who we believe have not done the feat in a way which NomadMania accepts based on our new considerations of 'what is a visit'. Finally we give credit to those who are close to the goal (those who have 186 countries or more) and a short section for a couple of travellers who were really close to achieving this amazing feat.
Our UN Masters List is only as good as the information we get. So, we rely on you to fill in the blanks... please share what you know!
Meanwhile, we have upgraded one of our favourite features - our rolling maps!
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The progressive map along with the progressive count! |
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Let's look at the maps of our founder, Harry Mitsidis and scroll back 21 years to 2002 - and yes, he had not even been to Australia yet! The innovation here is that the regional counter will now move along with the map. That means you can see exactly how many regions you had been to at the end of the year in question. Cool, no?
Obviously for this to work, you will need to add the year of first visit to a region. If you use My Trips, then by definition you would have to do that. But if you have used 'quick enter' then you can manually choose the year of visit by editing each region. We would say that these maps and scores certainly justify the added effort!
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New in NomadMania's IT department |
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Help needed! |
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NomadMania needs your help! We are looking for frontend or backend developers that would be willing to help us expand and maintain NomadMania. This position will be paid for, but please don't expect leading industry levels of compensation.
The technologies we use are HTML5/CSS3, vanilla JS, PHP, node.js and Rust. If you are interested please send us your:
to it@nomadmania.com. We are open for all your questions and suggestions. And as always - spread the love. Let your other travel-enthusiast friends know about this possibility if you think they might be interested.
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NomadMania is planning not one, but two trips for you! We aim at a maximum of 12 people for each group and remember that NomadMania is not an agency and we do not take any commission; if anyone from the NomadMania team participates, we pay the same amount as everyone else.
Bratislava Trans-Danube trip September 1 - September 4
Four-day trip based in Bratislava, Slovakia for the 10th annual Trans-Danube swim organised by our friend, UN Master Ľuboš Fellner, owner of the biggest Slovak outgoing travel agency BUBO.
We will be VIPs and meet the mayor of Bratislava; the trip includes learning about Bratislava's Iron Curtain past and visiting Devin castle and former missile base. We will have a dinner with Ukrainian refugees who are hosted in Ľuboš' hotel free of charge, and a BBQ at the tri-border with Hungary and Austria.
This trip also features a visit to two different World Heritage Sites across the border in Austria and a choice of one more in Slovakia or an M@P region in Hungary.
Go here for details of the Trans-Danube swim! Contact us for the full itinerary! We expect this trip to reach the maximum level of participants very fast so contact us asap to avoid disappointment.
Next is Armenia trip September 23 - September 30
Following last year's incredibly successful Extraordinary Travel Festival, NomadMania is teaming up with Next is Armenia to organise another week of exploration in all three Armenian NomadMania regions.
This trip will focus on abandoned and obscure Soviet relics as well as taking in three M@P regions and, as is the custom with Next is Armenia, home-stays and contact with locals featuring incredible culinary surprises.
We will be heading south to Kapan and Meghri (border with Iran) before enjoying a spa experience at Jermuk, driving on the little-seen east side of Lake Sevan and then doing Haghpat (World Heritage Site) and an abandoned Soviet Factory in Vanadzor. We will also have fun river rafting, wine-tasting and on the way our founder Harry will test your travel knowledge with his famous travel quizzes! Not to be missed!
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2023 UN Masters and Upcoming Trips |
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2023 has so far seen 3 UN Masters that we know of. Congratulations are due to our Finnish member Juha Suoniemi who arrived in Chad a few days ago, making it his 193rd country. Juha has been dedicating posts to every one of the countries on his Instagram profile. Given the current trend, we expect that this year might see us exceed last year's number of 19 UN Masters, although it is unlikely the record of 2019 will be reached!
If anybody here wishes to visit Turkmenistan - which we believe is just about opening once again - please write to us as one of our travellers is planning a trip there in April. Whether this is your last country left to reach 193 or one of those 'hard' ones you want to endlessly explore, this may be a good opportunity.
Moreover, a group of travellers is planning to charter a plane and fly to Annobon, Equatorial Guinea, from Malabo on November 26. If you are interested in joining, please contact NomadMania and we will then forward you on.
Please note the above trips are NOT NomadMania sponsored or organised, and we are not responsible in any way for them, but as a platform that facilitates travel, we are happy to post trip plans in our newsletters and help you all see more of our planet. Feel free to send your plans if you wish.
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NomadMania's New Poll - Travel and Mental Health |
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As part of our commitment to the development of community, NomadMania has already launched quite a number of online polls. We have decided to broaden the scope of these and, with the assistance of our Executive Committee, devise a few simple polls to research topics that may be of interest to everyone.
Please note, if you are entering NomadMania from the app, the polls will not be available, so do enter our desktop version to be able to access them.
Our first poll which launches today and will run for the next 5 weeks is on mental health, created in association with Cameron Mofid. Our aim is to investigate both what motivates you to travel and to what extent and in what way your travels have affected you and your relations with the world around you.
These polls are made by a few of us and should be seen as attempts to be more serious and more far-reaching in what we do. Your participation will be very much appreciated. You can ignore the poll by closing it, and it will appear again after 5 days.
We will present the results of this particular poll in our newsletter in April. Thanks again!
Meanwhile, we remind you it's only a month or so to our special event on March 25! Click here to subscribe to more news about this unique event. And you can now bookmark the address in YouTube where you can follow this!
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What is the BEST thing about NomadMania? | Biggest travellers |
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New YouTube video!
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'What is the BEST thing about NomadMania?' Shot quite a while ago now by the one and only Gustav Rosted, and officially debuted at the Extraordinary Travel Festival in Yerevan, this video now makes it to our channel. Many recognisable faces in our travel community give their reasons for liking our community in a clip that is bound to make you smile!
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M@P regions that you may not know - Pecixe
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If you don't know our Many Quirky Places (M@P) list yet, you should; this is the ultimate extreme travel list with 1301 regions - some easier, some totally obscure and probably unvisitable.
Guinea Bissau is already a quirky place, one of the smaller African countries that was a Portuguese colony back in the day. On NomadMania, we divide it into 2 regions: the mainland and the beautiful Bissagos islands. However, the mainland also includes a number of small islands, and little, if ever, visited Pecixe and Jata islands, to the west of the capital Bissau, make up one of our M@P.
Getting there is half the fun, and given there is no real transport, you'll have to organise your own boat. Do pay attention to the tides, as arriving in low tide means a much longer stretch until you reach the shore. The islands are inhabited and have some rudimentary infrastructure, but don't expect too much. More interesting in general will be scenes of everyday life in a place that time truly seems to have forgotten...
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The Interview - Eddie Tone |
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Eddie was born when his country Romania was a very different place to what it is today. The founder of popular travel portal Tuktuk.ro, the place to go if you are a Romanian speaker into travel, he talks to us about his adventures and feelings about travel.
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Eddie, tell us a little about your early life and how your love for travel developed.
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I am Eddie Tone, born in Bucharest, Romania, the city where I still live today. In the 70s, Romania was a communist country, ruled by Nicolae Ceausescu and subject to the rules of the communist Eastern Bloc, led by Moscow. However, my childhood was beautiful - probably also because I was lucky enough to be born in the Capital (which I still believe is a beautiful city, even today), in a family that put everything on the table for me. I didn't travel much during my childhood. Once, because outside the country it was very difficult to go and almost only to the communist countries in the region - USSR, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and secondly because my parents were not very travelers, even in the country. That doesn't mean that we didn't take the classic holidays, every year, to the sea and to the mountains, i.e., to the Black Sea coast and to the Prahova Valley in the Carpathian Mountains.
I did, however, have some connection with the West: my step-grandfather, an extraordinary man, an engineer by profession, was originally from Udine, Italy. So, my grandmother visited his relatives in the Friuli region about every 3-4 years. She would come back from there with lots of toys, lollipops, but also postcards, photos, and slides of the region. Basically, my first "dream" of going abroad was about Udine. Where unfortunately, I haven't arrived yet.
My first departure abroad was after 1990, when Romania became a free country following the fall of the communist regime. As I worked as a sports journalist in the 1990s, my first outing was a trip to Edessa in northern Greece, where I accompanied the women's national football team - I remember it was a dull match that ended 0-0. And I also remember that Edessa - today a superb town - had many pharmacies. After that, my profession as a journalist brought me countless trips, especially after 2000, when I became a lifestyle journalist. I was editor-in-chief of the best men's lifestyle magazines in Romania - FHM, and Playboy - and the trips abroad were flowing.
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Tell us a little bit about your current work projects.
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In 2010, out of a passion for travel, I founded the travel and tourism website TukTuk.ro, which, in time, became one of the most respectable independent sites of this kind in Romania, with very good traffic, a lot of material of all kinds in the travel zone. This year we also created the English version, TukTukTravelMag.com.
Obviously, over the years, my travel experiences have been posted a lot on my site, where I invited other travelers to write their impressions. As the written press in Romania has almost completely disappeared (there are practically no magazines anymore), I have dedicated myself exclusively to the website and the projects around it. In addition, I have several other websites - one about urban gastronomy (ChiliPepper.ro), another about animals (PisiCutzu.ro), and another about men's lifestyle (Better-Magazine.com).
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2008: Pilanesburg, South Africa |
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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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Romania is a beautiful country, but unfortunately, it is in an unhappy situation: the government is careless about its beauty, and there is no plan for national development and tourism promotion, so everything is done chaotically, locally. Nevertheless, more and more beautiful tourist infrastructure sites are appearing, adding value to the areas.
There are many tourist diamonds in Romania, but if I had to recommend three of them, they would be (no particular order): the Maramures region in the north of the country, on the border with Ukraine, the Cheile Nerei region in the south-west of Romania and the Danube Delta, where the Danube River flows into the Black Sea through its three arms. Each of these has its own strong arguments. Besides, there are many more to visit, from the vibes of Bucharest to the fantastic landscapes of the Apuseni Mountains, from the old churches of Transylvania to the medieval city of Sighisoara or other beautiful cities like Brașov, Sibiu, Cluj Napoca or Iași.
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2006 : Nashville Studio B - Elvis' piano |
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What is your most preferred style of travel and why? When you travel, what are your biggest interests?
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Until a few years ago, I liked seeing as much as possible, no matter how much time I had. I was like a sponge, ready to soak up anything I could find. Recently, however, I've found that the notion of slow travel is the best, most relaxing, and most rewarding. Even if I would cover fewer sights, I prefer it because it gives me the respite to delve deeper.
Otherwise, if possible, I prefer to see places not quite on the beaten tourist track. Besides, I always believe that gastronomic experiences should take pride of place wherever you go.
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2013 - Scala dei Turchi, Sicily |
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Could you share a travel story with us, one that stays deep in your head and heart?
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Like any traveler, the memories are many, mostly pleasant. Many places have stayed with me, from the fabulous 10-day trip through Japan to the experience of watching the Champions League final (won by Manchester United, my favorite team) in the middle of the South African savannah, with lions howling in the distance. I met wonderful people in the places I visited and I've seen many gorgeous things. Still, there are way too many to see. One of the most beautiful experiences was in Thailand, when I helped a little girl to find her mother, and one of the - let's say scariest - was in Manchester, in 1996, when IRA blasted a bomb in the center of the city, and I was only 7 minutes away.
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Can you draw a certain parallel in the behaviour and attitude towards tourists in different countries, what do you think it depends on? Is there a correlation between the openness and generosity of people who welcomes guests and their financial well-being?
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Everywhere there are more welcoming people and less hospitable people. It probably depends on the people - and I think that generally, poorer people, apart from higher crime rates, tend to be more hospitable. It's somehow in the nature of people, and we see that even in everyday life everywhere in our countries.
Then, about the attitude of the locals towards tourists, we have these situations with very popular cities, over-saturated with tourists, where already the locals tend to hate their visitors. Somehow you can't blame them. In recent years (except during the pandemic), tourism has exploded, thanks to cheap plane tickets. The result has been a steady decline in the level of tourist civilization all over the world. And that's a huge annoyance as a local.
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2016 - Barsana Monastery, Maramures, Romania |
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There is a stereotype that travel is only for free and wealthy people. For many, dreams about travel remain a dream. What would you recommend for people with a low budget, for sure, there are ways to see the world and still not spend a fortune?
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I don't think that's true. As I said before, in recent years it has become very cheap to travel. You can do a city break for 100-200 euros, which is almost free. Sure, not everyone can afford it, but open-minded people find ways to save and travel somehow.
These days, if you have access to the internet and a few navigation skills, you can find cheap tourist routes, from plane tickets to Airbnb accommodation. Honestly, only the unwilling don't travel. Well, we're not talking about the underprivileged living in poverty, full of needs.
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Give us a few of your favourites in terms of countries and experiences.
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Number One: Italy. Best places to visit, all over the country, different types, from history to activities, fantastic food.
Number 2: Japan - a completely different world, a jaw-dropping mix of traditional and science fiction. Other philosophies of life are different from anything we know in Europe.
Number 3 - Greece, maybe also because my great-great-great-grandfather was Greek. It's a country that astounds you with the beauty of its islands and also with the beauty of the little-known northern mountains.
Beyond that, every place I've been to has somehow stuck with me, and I would always put countries like Portugal, Georgia, India, South Africa, Morocco, or Iceland on my list.
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How do you plan an upcoming trip, what aspects do you take into consideration?
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In recent years, the pandemic ones, quite chaotically, I would say. I rather preferred to visit Romania - places I hadn't reached or had reached a long time ago. Otherwise, I have no particular method. Admittedly, I'm not a globetrotter either, the kind who stands with my suitcase at the door, ready to leave at any second. I also do other things that need to be sources of income, so I try to combine travel and work as harmoniously as possible.
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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, and why?
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One would be Claude Lorraine, my favorite painter, who lived in the 17th century. I'd ask him how he managed to paint those serene, romantic landscapes that, if you look at them, you're instantly reassured, no matter how nervous you are. Another would be Robert de Niro, who I'd ask, among other things, what it was like to play the rape scene with Elizabeth McGovern in Once Upon A Time in America, my favorite movie ever. Third would be Alexander the Great, the greatest military ruler in history, which I think would get some pretty drunk moments. And fourth would be Ibn Battuta, a great traveler of the 14th century, who many says was the greatest traveler of all time. This man traveled 117,000 kilometers at the time, and if you compare that to the fact that Marco Polo, another big name, traveled "only" 12,000, you'll see that I'd need a thousand dinners with Ibn to listen to his stories.
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Did you like reading this? |
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We thank Eddie 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 March with another interview by a traveller from Asia!
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