It's the Solstice today folks - summer or winter, longest or shortest day, depending on where you may be! Enjoy it for what it is.
In this issue, we bring you loads of content, including a fantastic interview with a great young traveller, and also some inevitable sad news with two tributes to travellers recently passed.
As it's a Tuesday, our M@P list has just been increased by ten more regions, reaching 1191 today.; we present one of these regions here today as well, and you can expect another 110 regions to appear in the next 11 weeks. This is your last chance to suggest places you believe qualify for this list.
We would also like to remind you, in the spirit of giving, of our donations drive. Our expenses have increased as we have hired two of our Ukrainian scholarship recipients to help us with some tasks and give them some much-needed funds; one of them is from Donetsk itself and has found himself in Bruges after a very dangerous escape through Russia. Remember that your donations to NomadMania will help our future scholarship programme, as well as our constant content too. So please don't forget that button above our website, and you could donate either as a one-off through the bank or PayPal, or through Patreon on a more regular basis, which gives you some further benefits too.
Moreover, we shout out to possible volunteers who could help us with a. Monitoring our UN Masters list by researching, keeping track of who is going where etc. (ideally someone on EPS) and b. Figuring out our operational issues as our calculations are very complicated and checking these and all their permutations is essential. We thank our members Tor Anders Birkenes, Samer Kawar and Joey Shurtleff for valuable contributions to both of these in the past. So do give us a shout out if you have a couple of hours to spare per month to help us with your keen eye or a keen online research spirit!
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We will use this chance to remind you once again that our live travel meet-ups in Paris - on June 28th - and Warsaw - on July 9th - are approaching. You can see the details by clicking here.
Our Brussels meeting on June 7 was a joyful success as we are told. "We didn't have the quantity but the quality and we had nice talks about NomadMania and travel, of course. We thought that maybe it would be nice doing it on a "regular" basis and why not again after summer for example."
So now that you know, keep an eye on our Meetings page and our Newsletters where we keep informing you about the scheduled live meet-ups. As always, anyone is welcome to organise a NomadMania meeting in their own city or while travelling. Just send us an email to contact@nomadmania.com and we will work with you to help you organise everything.
To conclude, here is a picture from the Brussels meeting with the host Aurelien on the left, Maarten in the middle and Bart on the right.
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New on the NomadMania APP - interactive Series! |
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How to add photos to series |
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We try to bring something new to the table every month. This time it's a new app update with new features released - interactive series.
From now on you will be able to add pictures to each of our 60.000+ Series items. When you tap on a series item, you should get an icon of a photo along with the 'mark completed' tab. Just follow along and upload your photos!
Interactive series is a new feature on the both of our app versions, Android and iOS, that will enable you to share your experience with other travellers in a more interactive way. If you tap on a series item on the map, using the app, you can now add photos, but you can also suggest a change of location or report a mistake directly to our team in a much more immediate way.
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Who visited ALMOST ALL countries of the world? | NOMADMANIA Awards 2021 |
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New watching materials? |
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We keep on reminding you of our Awards with our videos. This may seem like we lost the edge for new content, but quite the contrary. We are just trying to 'tease' you and prepare you for what's next. Last year's Awards happened in November, the dullest month of the year, according to our founder.
Now with the summer in full speed and incontrollable crowds rushing the paved touristy streets of Europe and some other major travelling destinations, for the first time in three years, we are starting to get ready for the long autumn and winter. In order to do that, we have to review what we did in the past, so we invite you to have a look to another of our shorter clips from the Awards series - Who visited ALMOST ALL countries of the world?
This panel was actually called "On the road to 193" and it was an absolute hit. Many of these people are actively working on fulfilling their dream with more countries opening up for travel and we hope to see them nominated in the next round of our Travel Awards.
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A chance to be featured
Here is a chance to be featured in one of our videos done by Gustav Rosted (@gus1thego)!!! He wants to include you and here is what he says:
Hey, I’m making a video about NomadMania and I wanted to ask YOU to send me a short clip of you saying what you like about NomadMania (1-2 sentences - short and precise.) A lot of top travellers will be in it!
Video Title: What Do You Like About NOMADMANIA?
Film it horizontal and send it to contact@nomadmania.com by June 30 the latest for a chance to be featured.
Thank you!
Gus from @gus1thego
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Our tribute to two dear friends and great travellers |
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Stars of our Community |
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Early May struck us with some sad news - we found out that our member and a friend of many in our community, Michael Nowins, passed away with a sudden death in April. He left a deep trace and some of our members wanted to pay their tribute by writing about their travelling companion. Michael last contacted NomadMania on March 2nd, following our controversial email about Ukraine. His words were these 'Thank you for sharing NM's thoughts and actions on the terribly sad events going on in Ukraine. I agree 100% with what you wrote. Very proud to be associated with NomadMania.'
Then the end of May wasn't any easier when we heard from our beloved Hungarian friend and a UN master, Ildiko Szabo. Her friend Gyula, a UN Master himself, so important to her that she called him her travelling pappa, passed after suffering a heart attack.
In this section we bring you some more words and photos of these two great travellers. May their travels and lives serve as an inspiration to many of us.
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Michael Novins, a beloved traveler, regarded by those who knew him as a generous and thoughtful person and a good friend, passed away suddenly on April 11th.
Michael, #19 in the US, loved to travel and was close to finishing 193. Michael refused to race, regularly revisited countries to fill in missing regions, and wanted to see the world's best, including staying at historic hotels, visiting landmark restaurants, and seeing UNESCO sites.
Michael, a University of Chicago Law School-trained attorney, was brilliant and had an incredible memory for details. Traveling for him was pure joy and not a competition. He enjoyed doing the research and figuring out the travel logistics. Michael was happy to help anyone who asked for his insight and regularly wrote trip reports and recommended his guides or fixers.
My favorite part of my trip planning process was discussing the itinerary with Michael. He always had helpful suggestions or recommendations and didn't want me to miss anything. As a result, every trip I took had his fingerprints. For example, Michael alerted me to the December flight deals to Costa Rica. My recent visit to St Catherine's Monastery in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, was another terrific Michael suggestion.
In Michael, the travel community lost a fantastic guy who brought excellence to the travel world. We will miss you!
A friend
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I was traveling in Syria when I heard that Michael Novins had passed away unexpectedly. Michael, 58, was one of the most widely traveled people I knew: ranked among the top 100 travelers by NomadMania’s “TBT” score, he had visited 186 UN member states, 290 TCC regions and 731 NomadMania regions.
In recent years, Michael worked as an attorney about half the year and pursued his passion for travel during other months. His knowledge of wildlife was encyclopedic, so he researched off the beaten path wildlife destinations, among others. Recent trips included the monarch butterflies in Michoacán, Mexico and Komodo dragons on Rinca Island, Indonesia. Both had few other tourists, so Michael wandered for hours among creatures that so fascinated him.
Michael never bragged about his travels. He wasn’t interested in being an “influencer” in the sense of that word today. He traveled because he loved seeing the world. He generously gave travel advice to others because, chances are, he had already been where you were about to go.
When the pandemic first hit, Michael stayed close to home in New York. Michael, I and another traveler, Harvey Silikovitz, lived in the same neighborhood. We regularly met at our local park and, as restaurants opened again, for brunch. (If we can’t travel the world, hey, let’s go to the park!) Michael, being smart, informed and with a clever sense of humor, was always good company. He also often called or messaged asking if I had seen the latest US political nonsense – together with his insightful and witty take on it.
Harvey and I now know why Michael didn’t respond to the latest proposal for a meetup. Michael had many good friends in the NomadMania community, and he will be sorely missed. Rest in peace, my friend.
Justine Kirby
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Gyula Ágoston is the first Hungarian man to visit every country. He was born on 5th of July 1947 in Central Slovakia. During the deportations of Hungarians in the spring of 1948, his family settled in Bakonyoszlop, Hungary. He started primary school there, then moved to Győr in 1959, where he finished primary school and the Technical School of Mechanical Engineering.
He then obtained a degree in mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Heavy Industry in Miskolc, and graduated from Business College in 1975. He spoke several languages, English, German, Spanish, and a bit of French and Thai. He worked in Austria until his retirement from 1988 to 2006, afterwards as a pensioner he took the leap and decided to visit every country in the world.
He traveled the world mainly solo or with his close friend. His last country was Yemen in December 2021. His favourite country was Thailand. He was very family oriented, he could always be expected to travel a lot with his siblings. Unfortunately, his travels are over, fate intervened and he died of a heart attack on 27th of May 2022.
Ildiko Szabo
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M@P regions that you may not know |
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As you may be aware, in April we updated our main NomadMania list of regions; some were transferred to our M@P list, and one of these are the distant Chatham Islands which belong to New Zealand. Located about 800 kilometres east of 'mainland' New Zealand, this small archipelago is home to about 800 people but at almost 800 square kilometres, it's bigger than at least 20 sovereign countries.
The two biggest islands are 'main island' and Pitt island, which is the first populated point on earth to see sunlight based on the local timezone - the two now make up different regions on M@P, and the photos here are from the main island only. Kudos to anyone who makes it to Pitt island!
Truth be told, getting to the island is half of the adventure, the flight on Chatham Airways is bound to be fun, as are the people going, each one of whom must have a story! Once on the island itself, well, the material for a traveller wears slightly thin to be honest. Nevertheless, witnessing a distant isolated community and some beautiful natural scenes will do you good, as will the undeniably fresh air!
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The Interview - Billy Offland |
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Is he going to be the youngest person to visit all UN 193 countries in the world? Perhaps, but no matter what, he will certainly be ONE OF the youngest people to do so. His intrepid spirit and noble curiosity are what drive him ahead. He doesn't intend to stop at visiting countries only, that much is obvious.
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Tracking Tigers and Rhinos with the Nepal Tiger Trust, Chitwan NP |
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Billy, tell us something about your early life and how your fascination with travel began.
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I’m Billy, 24 from Manchester, UK. I was incredibly fortunate that my parents did not see having kids as an obstacle to travel and so once or twice a year we would take up to a month off to go on a crazy adventure my Dad had been planning since we got back from the last one. Trips like Papua New Guinea, Bougainville and the Solomon Islands; taking the boat to Kawthoung in Myanmar and Sailing up the Mergui Archipelago on a (barely) converted trawler; Safari around Niassa in Mozambique before going off to Bazaruto, to name just a few (and yes, we absolutely love islands). From day dot, my experience of travelling was unconventional by most normal standards but for us, it was what we did and the four of us would be constantly on the move trying to make the most of whatever time we could get off.
I guess I do not need to go into too much detail about how this inspired me, most of you who will read this will know that once you expose yourselves to travel like this you never want to stop; travelling is addictive and I become hooked on this sense of adventure from a very young age, inherited from my dad. Reflecting on it all though, there were three main lessons I took from this early travel into my solo travels and which should make a little bit more sense throughout this Q&A.
1. Travel with a purpose / a lens: Deciding where we went next was informed by our ethos of ‘see a place before it’s ‘ruined’’. What this meant was to reach and experience places before the onset of cultural homogenisation, often due to the detrimental impacts mass tourism; inspired by the changes in Indonesia since my dads travels there in the ’80s (not saying this is all negative!). Recently, I’ve been travelling with a focus on nature and what we can do to protect it, I guess ‘see a place before it's ‘ruined’’ also relates to the environment too.
2. Travel is Education: For my parents kids were not an obstacle. Persuading our school to lets us have a week off either side of the holidays, was. Our trips were sold to school as a different type of education, one that we could not get in the classroom. This taught me to constantly view travel as one big lesson and to see how I can use these experiences to better myself in my day-to-day life and future career.
3. Travel is not the be-all and end-all: At age 15, the summer holidays had finished, I landed back from North Korea that morning and was in the classroom 10 minutes after form time had started. My form tutor was convinced that I meant South rather than North and no one else really had a clue. No one was that bothered, or so I thought, it was just what us Offlands did. So, I had to come home and just crack back on with normal life. Travel was a tool, it made my life more fulfilling, and it formed and enhanced my perspectives. For me, it was not ‘normal’ life nor was it my whole life. Normal life was back in Manchester where I could consolidate everything I had encountered across my travels and apply to my studies, either as case studies as part of my course work in school and university or simply knowing how to treat different people and how to get the most out of every experience.
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You're going to be one of the youngest people to reach 193. What urged you to do this feat and what have you learned from trying to get there?
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For me, the opportunity came around in the form of a project intending to get a global perspective on the current biodiversity crisis during my undergraduate degree in Sustainability and Environmental Management (or SEM) at The University of Leeds.
As an aside, my whole inspiration for choosing this degree originated from my travels. As I mentioned before, we are island people, so I spent a disproportionate amount of time playing in and below the waves. I remember this first realisation of environmental destruction, comparing 2 similar habitats in varying states of disrepair; there were the Andaman & Nicobar Islands, in the Indian Ocean, with some of the most colourful and beautiful reefs I have seen to this day, and then the Lakshadweep Islands which had recently undergone a devastating El Niño event which left a graveyard, devoid of life and excitement. As a young teenager, these troubling images stayed with me. When I was 18, seeing what the realities were on the front lines, what people were doing about it and what I could do about it, was all I wanted to do. So, I ran off to Principe to work for the Principe Trust in Conservation; to get my divemaster and do some marine conservation research in Madagascar and to slowly move around Indonesia and Malaysia seeking out those last bastions of pristine reef environments (at 1.5degrees of warming 99% of reefs will experience unrecoverable heatwaves [El Niño Events – of the kind I witnessed in the Lakshadweep Islands] by 2030) – Best diving spots for me were Raja Ampat, Sipadan and Bunaken!
Anyway, that’s how I came to be studying SEM, but the project for 193… Combine inspiration from the IPBES ‘Global Assessment’ (a million species could go extinct within the coming decades – headline); the opportunity to do a ‘Year in Industry’ which I extended to 2 years; some dissertation research; an opportunity to travel, with a focus, around the world, and my ‘World Conservation Journey’ was born.
Before starting I had already visited more than 100 countries and what became apparent further down the line was that with my 2-year time scale, if I was to take the project seriously, really get this global perspective, and get real information from real people on the ground in places I had not been to before, then I would be one of the youngest to have reached the goal of visiting nearly every country in the world – and that was a nice little motivator to keep going when it got tough (and trust me it did).
What did I learn? This is a question! I want to break it down into 2 segments, environmental things and personal things.
Environmental: The loss of biodiversity, charismatic megafauna, primary forest, and general habitat, is no joke. It is happening, and it is serious. Keeping our wild areas wild, intact areas intact and greening our urban environments HAS to be a priority not just because there is an intrinsic right for these species to thrive, but because it is integral for our and our future generation’s survival, wellbeing, livelihoods, culture and identity. The good news is that so many amazing people have shared their time, expertise and passions with me. I have learnt that these mavericks from every country in the world are committing their lives to save what they love and with the right support these people, communities, and collectives can contribute to positive change! For those of us fortunate enough to be able to travel regularly, we also have power. One example is that National Parks and protected areas exist and can protect biodiversity because of the money that we spend visiting! It is also our responsibility to travel consciously with positive impact.
Personal: There are the basics - the fact that the overwhelming majority of people in this world are kind and welcoming, and the only luxury I need for comfort is some form of primal shelter (a realisation that came after spending a night sleeping under a rock overhang, wedged uncomfortably between some smaller rocks and wrapped only in a thin sleeping bag liner in Gola Rainforest National Park in Sierra Leone). But for me, one of the most important lessons is the importance of tapping into local knowledge. As you’ll see, I’m not the most organised traveller with specific places I need to see in each place. Being fluid and being willing to ask people for tips, tricks, advice and information on the road massively took the pressure off me having to plan things to the nth degree and allowed me to experience things in a way I would never have been able to otherwise.
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My first wild elephants in Loango NP, Gabon |
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Some people say that 'rushing' to do 193 at a young age like yours is pointless and gimmicky, not real travel. What would you respond to that?
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Hahahaha! For context, it has taken me 24 years to get to this point and I think I might have spent around 35 months over the last 5 years travelling so I guess I’ve done a lot and been so fortunate to spend so much time on the road with a catalogue of diaries, memories and friends to show for it. It’s not exactly like I have retired either, if anything I’m even more excited about doing certain trips than ever before!
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Kids and us Kids deep in the Mergui Archipelago |
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What is your general style of travel? (solo/group, land/air, budget/luxury, planned/spontaneous etc)
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Apart from the Offland family classics, since I was 18, the majority of my travel has been independent, solo, long-form, backpacking trips on a budget which are spontaneous and freeform but have direction. Hostels, couchsurfing or staying wherever there’s a somewhat ‘shelter’; public transport, shared taxis, back of motorbikes; street food and local eateries and spending as much time as possible away from cities and out in nature. This is my style of travel!
I have always travelled trying to coherently link places together in one line or loop with a pet hate of staying in one place for too long and going back on myself (to be avoided at all costs!).
What came first the chicken or the egg… my love of travelling by land, an environmental conscience, or always wanting to travel in an efficient way. Travelling by land is the best! When it is planned right you might not spend many days in each single country but you get a lot of value. In most countries taking a flight out means you can often be hesitant to stray too far away from the main capital area but when you travel overland, you get to see so much which might not necessarily be along the usual ‘trail’. A couple of examples from my travels, crossing overland out of Burundi so travelling down the entirety of Lake Tanganyika through Tanzania stopping at the jaw-dropping Mahale Mountains National Park to see the chimps; getting the boat from Azerbaijan to Turkmenistan and covering from Turkmenbashi to Konya Urgench by public transport in a couple of days to make it to a techno festival at the ships graveyard in the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan and spending some days winding through the northwest of Bangladesh to get into Nepal via Darjeeling. I guess my ethos is planning where I go in a country based on the overall trip I want to do instead of planning my trip based on where I want to go in a country. If you have not already, I can only recommend trying some land-based travel, especially by public transport which I use 99% of the time. It’s cheap, you meet people, it’s environmentally sound and it’s fun!
One of my favourite experiences which might sum up how I move, is my visit to Kiribati. I arrived in Tarawa without realising it was a Friday, which meant that I could not have any conservation meetings until Monday (I learned to hate weekends). Realising that there was no need to be on the main island (normal rules apply, try and get as far out as possible) I stood at the ticketing desk for an hour getting the staff to help me decide where I could get to and where I could stay. Within 2 hours, I was sitting in front of my overwater bungalow on Abaiang Island, one of the most beautiful places ever!
Although the pandemic presented additional obstacles, apart from delaying my mission for a year, it thankfully did not stop my travels (I had visited 75 new countries since it began). The whole situation, as you can imagine, made my usual penchant for land border crossings impossible (some were notoriously challenging, but possible with a bit or work, luck and perseverance…). Regardless, through planning it right and even changing multiple continents I did no more than 6 flights over 4 hours long, which I was very proud of. The biggest challenge though was uncertainty, and this made our travelling communities more important than ever! Pre-pandemic you could almost guarantee that information a couple of years old was valid but I often found myself second guessing reports only made a week before. This fit into my spontaneous nature very well!
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Lakshadweep Islands, 2009 |
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Which countries surprised you most, positively or negatively?
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Andorra & Georgia – The mountains in both completeelllllyyyyyy blew me away. I remember almost running up to the glacier in Kazbegi (Georgia) after leaving late in the morning and having to make it back in time to stream the Manchester United match. The way up was non-stop but, on the way down I had to stop about 3 times to sit on rocks and just absorb the beauty that opened up in front of me – a hiking trip in Georgia is heavily on my list.
Algeria & Mauritania – I guess much like the mountains, the Sahara is another environment where you cannot help but feel isolated and insignificant compared to the vastness that mother nature has created. Always I will be fascinated by and in awe of the communities and cultures which call these areas home.
Algeria’s credentials should come as no surprise to anyone anymore but Tassili N’ajjer National Park in the south-eastern corner, close to the borders with Libya and Niger has to be a must.
I never saw myself as a desert person. It’s an environment largely devoid of the stimuli that usually get my travelling senses tingling; the overtness of biodiversity and nature everywhere, compared to the impression that the desert regions are just sand and shrubs. Mauritania however blew those preconceptions right away. A random choice for a university reading week break combining the classic trio of Mauritania, Senegal and, of course, Gambia, but my week in Mauritania, with its empty coastlines, even emptier deserts but with such a rich and unique history - which doesn’t feel like it is too far in the past - places this country firmly up as one of my favourites… A camel adventure from Ouadane or Walatah to Mali should be a good reason to return.
Every country has its attributes that contribute to one’s lasting impression. Personally I’m often reluctant to dwell on the negatives and I actually had a great time on this island, but I have to talk about Nauru. Rather abstractly, I see it as a microcosm of the rest of our world when viewing it through an environmental lens, and unfortunately, I could not believe the hopelessness I felt about the future of that country. The island is split into two layers, the coastal region and then ‘topside’. Nauru, as well as being famous for the fact that no one goes there and that the majority of its Gross Domestic Product (a terrible indicator by the way) comes from housing refugees for Australia (I am definitely not an advocate for this system), was once once the wealthiest country in the world (per capita) after its independence in 1968 thanks to its natural guano deposits which could be used for fertiliser. The extraction is intrusive and foreign mining corporations, partnering with the Nauru government, had no qualms with decimating the majority of ‘topside’ leaving rocky pinnacles and no place for people or agriculture, a ‘moonscape’. The money flowed and after holidays, luxury shopping trips and complete mismanagement of the sovereign wealth fund there was soon no more money. Instead, a scar on the landscape which meant that self-sufficiency, growing enough fresh food and having a sustainable future look almost impossible. This does not sound like a great trade-off to me where greed once perpetuated, and lessons have not been learnt as Nauru are planning double-down to become the new test-bed for deep-sea mining, rise again the pacific predators. Lest the rest of the world make more sensible and sustainable decisions because as shown here, nature is the backbone of our survival and when it ceases to exist, it ceases to provide.
Positive surprises there are the fact that there are free backyard gyms across the island which have housed Olympic medal-winning weightlifters and that Australian Rules Football is a big past-time.
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The riches of Raja Ampat, West Papua |
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And what about specific places?
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Dzangha-Baï, Dzangha-Sangha Protected Reserve, Central African Republic.
Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe was the first time I can safely say I was over-run by Elephants. The work that Dave and his team at Friends of Hwange have been doing to create available surface water year-round in the pans around the park to keep the elephants here and alive is nothing less than knighthood worthy. Arriving back from a day of beers and safari with new friends, ready to bed down at Ngweshla Camp for a braai and probably some more beers, we were engulfed by a scene I only thought imaginable in a high-budget CGI movie. Running sable welcomed us into the clearing that reminded me of walking down Sir Matt Busby way on the way into Old Trafford on a Champions League night. There was life everywhere. Zebras and wildebeest mixed in inconceivable numbers; hippo heads bopped in the water, their eyes wandering trying to steer clear of the animals that in a rich wilderness stood out and dominated, the elephants. They were everywhere, we stopped our Land Rover and elephants swarmed around us like an aerodynamics test. Groups were dotted as far as the eye could see, some moving in formation towards an unknown destination and others spraying each other with water and actively trying to aggravate those placid hippos. But what’s better than seeing all these elephants here? It’s seeing them in a place where you don’t usually expect it. The forest.
Savannah elephants and forest elephants, their main difference being the formers smaller size but for us, the tourist, the difference is one you see one a lot easier and in far greater numbers. Forest parks by nature are normally intensely thick and whereas I find it a lot more immersive of an experience, by virtue of its density, animal spotting is a completely different ball game to that in the savannah (which can already be pretty hard). However, not at Dzangha-Baï. A short bare-footed walk through the forest brought us to a large, stilted hide. Beyond here is the golden ticket, a natural forest clearing in which you’re almost guaranteed to be able to sit back for hours watching tens, if not hundreds of forest elephants go about their business. Hiding away silently amongst the treetops gives you a unique vantage point and insight into the life of the elephants, it’s like your personal, real-life screening of a BBC Natural History programme, where suddenly, if you look hard enough you start to see the personality and silly traits of each elephant and the relationships between them all. This must be the best place in the world to watch elephants (gorillas, chimps and bongos too if you’re lucky).
Raja Ampat, West Papua, Indonesia
It was on my list of the best diving spots in Indonesia. Hanging out at my other favourite diving spot in Bunaken, Sulawes, i I was warned against heading up there at that time of the year as “the weather not good enough”, “the tides aren’t good enough” and “it will be a waste of money”. I was 19, stubborn (still am) and went anyway, albeit with lower expectations. What was under those waves I still cannot get my head around to this day. The experience of clinging to a rock 20 metres below the surface watching 1000’s of tuna, jacks, trevallies, groupers, sharks and rays stationary, swimming against the current that was threatening to wash me away from one of the greatest dives I had ever done, still to this day stays unmatched.
Honourable mentions also go to:
Socotra – perhaps the best island in the world. Its diversity and uniqueness in landscapes and topography I best describe as a creator lumping a load of leftover features they used to create the rest of the world into an arbitrary location in the Arabian Sea.
Galapagos Islands – It shouldn’t be a surprise but the fact that if I wanted to, I could grab a bird without too much objection or go nose to nose with a sealion both in the water and on the pristine beaches means this spot really really lives up to expectation.
Easter Island – Those Moai are even more impressive in person!
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Trying to blend in in the Galapagos Islands |
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Tell us a couple of specific travel stories that really made a difference to you.
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The first happened less than a month into my first solo backpacking trip around Indonesia at 19. Having had to live with my dad regaling us with tales of empty beaches and no tourists in Indonesia in the 80s for the first 19 years of my life, I unfurled the map to set my mission and try to find those Indonesian islands of today. With no mention in the guidebook and small reports online from passing sailboats I knew that perhaps the Anambas & Natuna Islands in the Riau archipelago, sat in the middle of mainland Malaysia and Borneo - but somehow Indonesian - might be the closest I would get. For a month the sparse ferry schedule and waves dictated my life as I slowly moved clockwise from Letung to Tarempa, Natuna to Pulau Midai and then to mainland Borneo. The jewel in the crown was after many failed crossings, setting my eyes on Pulau Laut the furthest north island in the group where I was told I was the first tourist to step foot on the island in two decades. For a week I explored the island and its beautiful fringing coral reefs by motorbike; through the quaint hamlets in the coconut groves and the stilt fishing villages on the water where I was offered turtle eggs whilst wearing a ‘Captura Zero’ tshirt from my time in Principe, the irony. I feel like I found what I was after in Pulau Laut, life was perhaps as close to how my dad saw it in the 80s as was possible in the 21st century. However, what stayed with me most was what also nearly brought me to tears. After my many solo snorkelling trips along each corner of the island, it was a lonely green turtle swimming through an algae infested graveyard of dynamited coral which took me over the edge. Whereas, from the surface, the fringing reef looked like it would hold a box of treasure in the form of intact coral and thriving fish communities, instead my naïve expectations of remote communities had opened a pandora's box of emotion about the impact that our carelessness and lack of awareness can have on our environment. I had to study this.
As a traveller though, undertaking a journey like this so early on as a solo backpacker really set me up for being by myself. It taught me how to survive when there is no infrastructure set up for tourists or even tourists themselves and when 99% of people there speak none of your language (thank God Bahasa is such an easy language to pick up).
More recently I did a journey from country #175-179, Angola to Cameroon. In a time when arguably travel has never been easier with all our tech and the plethora of travel blogs and groups like EPS and formally Thorntree (RIP), finding a route with very little information about how to do it the way that I want to is quite rare. I found the challenge in the form of a budget, independent overland journey from Cabinda to Yaounde through Congo (Republic of) and Central African Republic. As a traveller like we all are reading this, we have to be good at ‘making things happen’, especially if you’re going about it independently. I had done a lot of this and especially travelling as much as I did through difficult terrain during covid, as well as learning to be incredibly flexible and responsive I had to become even better at making things happen including things embassy staff and many others said would be impossible (ahhhh that beautiful word). This journey was just textbook that, so much easier to just say ‘sack it’ but after sketchy border crossings and confused guards, getting tracked by the secret police, and long and uncomfortable bus journeys across the entirety of The Congo it was all rewarded with hitchhiking on a park boat across the Sangha river; sunrise drives along metre-wide paths through the primary rainforest with a military motorbike man and an AK-47 strapped to his chest and; ultimately, Dzangha-Baï and the opportunity to hunt with the BaAka. At each step of the way, I was guessing and hoping more than I did before, questioning whether I should’ve just somehow found $1000usd to cut out all the faff but it solidified it for me that the challenge in travel is almost always worth it and that yes I got to where I wanted to go but without the knowledge and kindness of the local people who pointed me in the right direction, tried to interpret my terrible French and went out of their way to help me I would not have got anywhere and would not have had the amazing experience that I did. For me, this was the biggest realisation. I have been so fortunate to do some amazing travelling and by some accounts that might make me a ‘good traveller’, but without all of those incredibly kind people along the way none of it would have been possible, so really I owe so much to them.
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Riding the roof up the Karakoram Highway near Hushe, Pakistan |
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How have your friends and family reacted to your endeavour?
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I am so lucky to have such great family and friends who support wholeheartedly the travel that I want to do so I have never once had to make a trade-off between the relationships that I love and the travel that I love, as much as everyone may get tired of hearing random anecdotes or out of the blue comments in the rave of “it sounds like a morning in Syria” as an ethereal hard drum tune with a floaty Arabic vocal gets dropped.
There is always the element of ridiculousness about telling someone that you have pretty much been to every country in the world though and weirdly sometimes I hesitate to do so. As I alluded to before, I do not want to be defined by the travelling I have done but rather how I have used the lessons that I have learnt throughout these adventures to make me a better person who can have the most impact on this planet.
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Critically Endangered Forest Elephants in CAR |
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And what next, once you reach 193?
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The great thing is that I’m only 24 so I almost have a whole lifetime of travel ahead of me. Now that I don’t have to spend all my free time trying to travel to every country in the world, I can be selective about the places that I really enjoyed and travel to those that truly resonated with me and the things that I love doing. So, I recently wrote up a list of 40 trips or things to do in countries which should give me some direction for a very long time!
More immediately, I’m in the final stages of prepping to head off to Pakistani Kashmir for 6 months to make a documentary about Beekeeping and Sustainable Development which I am so excited about. Now that I have to properly get back into ‘normal’ life and try to find a career, having an opportunity to do work which I love, using so many of the skills and tricks I have picked up throughout my travels, in an area that I adore, is a dream come true. Also, people always ask me what my favourite countries are and one staple which always seems to make people laugh and get conversation going is that ‘anything ending in a -stan is a big yes!’. Pakistan could not be a better place for me to return to first.
Overall, post 193 (or 197 as I call it) hopefully means loads more travel, even more intrepid than before but still always continuing to meet mavericks and learn from them to better be able to communicate what’s happening on the front lines of our biodiversity crisis.
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Discussing Indigenous Aboriginal Perspectives on Conservation with Dr Anne Polina – somewhere along the Fitzroy river, Western Australia |
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What advice would you give to yourself five years ago based on what you know now?
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- Get Libya and Eritrea visited AS SOON AS POSSIBLE because then you will be the youngest boy to travel to every country in the world and that would be quite cool!
- When you visit Kiribati send a message to the conservation people on Facebook rather than by email because they will see that message and they will tell you that someone has chartered a plane that you can jump on going to the Phoenix Islands which is described as having waters like they were a thousand years ago!
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Telling stories of conservation success in Zimbabwe with the boys |
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What do you like most about NomadMania?
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I love that it isn’t just looking at 193 countries and instead 1301 regions. This feeds into one of my favourite expressions my dad tells me ‘you have only been where you have stood’. Just because I have visited 193 countries it doesn’t mean that that’s it, I have barely scratched the surface. Even if one day I’ve visited 1301 regions, what about all the beaches, and world heritage sites? NomadMania shows there’s always more to a country or a place than just toe-tapping. For all us travellers, I am sure this keeps us travelling.
As well, I often love flicking through the rankings, especially to find other young travellers to follow on social media who are doing cool things that will inspire me.
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Experiencing the vital, frontline work of antipoaching team in Mbuluzi Game Reserve, Eswatini |
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And finally our signature question - if you could invite any four people to dinner, who would you invite and why?
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Cerys Matthews – An incredible conversationalist, with a globe-spanning record bag and who is both interesting and interested in all corners of art, culture, and literature.
Wilfried Thesiger – I have read all his books in the last few years and have fallen in love with him for his exceptionally rich accounts of his journeys and his unabashed disdain for progress. I’m sure he would beguile us all with his stories and would probably be a stickler for banter which would add a funny edge to the evening.
Anthony Bourdain – A distinguished traveller and exceptional chef, there’s no way I’m cooking with the crowd I have round and I’m sure Wilfried would not be too impressed with a faux-Chinese takeaway, so we need a chef and who better than Anthony with his quick wit, exceptional stories and a penchant for a drink and a smoke.
A mate – doesn’t matter who, anyone who can get over from work in time, I just need someone on my side in case it all goes wrong and preferably who can be a good doubles partner for pool.
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Getting to be a music & travel nerd, Aral Sea, Uzbekistan |
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We thank Billy for sharing his personal photos with us here at NomadMania.
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Our next 'shorter' issue will be out on July 5th with a new rubric of interviews!
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