What is a Visit - and lots more! |
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Our first long newsletter of 2023 will really be LONG! We strongly suggest getting a cup of tea or coffee and sitting on a comfy couch before you read it all. The main subject of this issue is a presentation of our second 'what is a visit' poll; however we also have a section on MTP, we present our new marketing Manager, we are announcing two NomadMania trips, and as always we have a star of the community, this time a little bit of a mystery! We top it off with a member of our new Executive Committee, Cameron Mofid, whose interview we are proud to present.
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You can see the history of Triumphs on your home page by clicking this button |
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But first, some news about the newest updates on the NomadMania website. We are updating and increasing our Triumphs and Achievements sections. We are adding more milestones for you so that more of you get mentioned as you increase your scores in our Series or get more countries on our lists.
Achievements are found directly on your profile or, if you make it to the Master ranking, you can click the number there and get a dedicated Achievements page shown. Make sure you check the new ones that you just got - with more categories than before.
We also remind you that our achievements are updated only 4 times a year. Each achievement 'card' is downloadable and you can share, embed or print it for your own use, so have fun with those!
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Meet our new Marketing Manager |
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In our last issue, we mentioned the new way we present people who are our associates. And we are especially happy to be announcing that for the first time ever, NomadMania has a dedicated marketing manager who will be responsible for developing and implementing a coherent marketing strategy for us.
The name Eugene Petrus may be unknown to you, but perhaps you will remember the only non-human interview that we have ever hosted with Chapati, the wonderful canine who has visited 40 countries. Eugene and his wife Kristina adopted Chapati during their trip to India. You can read our interview with Chapati from 2020 and check in with her and their 'pack' through their Instagram page. We are happy to note that she is doing fine, even though she gets panicky every time Kyiv, her new home, experiences bombings.
NomadMania is committed to giving employment opportunities to as many people in Ukraine as possible, and we will be announcing further partnerships in our following newsletters; for now, feel free to contact Eugene with your ideas as he urges you to below!
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Self portrait - Eugene Petrus and a bombed building in Irpin, Ukraine |
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Eugene Petrus, born in 1985, is a Ukrainian marketing and customer experience specialist. With over 15 years of experience, Eugene started his marketing career in the global advertising network working for British American Tobacco. In 10 years, he covered the path from junior manager to regional account director in charge of the most prominent BAT brands throughout the CIS region. However, having that kind of corporate job resulted in only a few-week vacations a year.
A zest for travel led Eugene to quit the job and start his first half-year journey to South-East Asia. Right at the beginning of that journey Eugene and his wife, Kristina, found a dying puppy on the streets of Kochi in India. They brought her to health and continued their travels as a pack. Since then, Eugene, Kristina, and Chapati have covered 40 countries in Asia and Europe, popularizing dog adoption and thoughtful travelling with pets. Eventually, that led Chapati to the title of a record-holder of Ukraine and India as the biggest pet traveller.
This shift towards travel brought Eugene into project work and marketing consulting. He also started to develop as a pet photographer for @travelingchapati and lately entered the university to study filmmaking.
As part of the NomadMania team, Eugene aims to contribute to the travel community and further increase the value of NomadMania. He is open to your insights and suggestions you may share at marketing@nomadmania.com. He will be happy to personally talk with any NomadMania member willing to share their thoughts, opinions, hardships - you name it.
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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.
The exact itinerary will be ready soon but do register your interest by writing to us! Our previous trip was pure joy, so we don't expect anything less this time.
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Meanwhile, let's celebrate the first UN Master of 2023 that we know of. On January 4th, 25-year-old Billy Offland landed in Eritrea and completed his travels to every UN country. Billy therefore becomes one of the youngest people to achieve this feat; he is currently in the process of being verified by our verification guru Thomas Buechler. More on verification further below, and meanwhile, well done Billy!
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What is a visit - part II |
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Our second 'what is a visit' poll took place between November 21st and December 31st, 2022 and we thank all of you who participated in this. You can now see the full results of this poll here. We analyse some of the issues below and explain what the implications of this vote are for the NomadMania community.
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Visiting a gas station in North Macedonia |
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We asked most aviation questions in our first poll, so this second one focused on other issues, including transit by land, with four questions presenting different versions of our mascot Ling's transit from Greece to Serbia via North Macedonia.
Our poll indicates that the threshold is experiencing something significant. 59% reject the transit when this only involves a quick stop at a gas station even if Ling went out of the car to buy a bottle of water; however in the example where Ling did not get out of the car but drove around Skopje and saw the town, 62% did consider this a visit. Implication: putting your foot on the ground is not enough on its own; but it isn't even necessary if you see something of the country. It goes without saying that just 'crossing the line' into a country/region is totally rejected as a consequence of this vote.
This extends to our example of Trav taking a train from Buchs, Switzerland to Feldkirch, Austria via Liechtenstein. Only 17% accept a transit without getting off the train as a visit; only 24% accept getting off at the platform as a visit; however, a quick visit outside the station for 10 minutes is accepted by 54% of respondents, in what is one of the closer votes in our poll.
In fact the closest vote is shown below with a 50-49% split and 1% abstaining. In the example where Trav goes outside the bus station at Navoi, Uzbekistan for 10 minutes only, 50% accept the visit, with this percentage being higher for older and more experienced travellers; and much lower for younger and less experienced ones. All we can say here is that you aren't making it easy for us when the vote is so close, and that, truly, every vote counts!
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On the way to Bukhara |
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Another really close vote, whose result actually surprised us with its closeness, is the extreme example where Trav and Ling do not even remember their experience in a country because they were drunk. The aim of this question was to see the perceived significance of consciousness during a visit. This is also a 49-50% result, with the 'no' winning by the skin of its teeth.
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Blackout visit to a place (Sweden) |
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Interestingly as well, a pure business visit to a country, where nothing other than an office is really seen and experienced, is still considered a visit by 70% of our respondents.
Our poll then took a different direction by asking extremely specific questions in certain examples. An interesting one is at Bouvet Island. One scenario had our heroes land on the remote Antarctic island in total fog, where they couldn't see a thing. The other example had our heroes fail to land but they cicrumnavigate the island and see quite a lot of it. Interestingly here, in both cases the majority considers this a visit but the percentages are very different: when they land without seeing anything, this is 82%. When they don't land but see a lot from afar, it is only 52%.
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Not landing on Bouvet - visit |
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There are extremely interesting implications for our UN Masters from our specific questions about the DMZ (demilitarised zone between North and South Korea), Karki (Azerbaijan exclave) and Golan Heights. Let us look specifically at this.
In the example of an exclave, Karki, which is de facto no longer part of the country even if it is de jure, 38% consider this a visit to Azerbaijan and 61% reject this. What is interesting here is that even though technically Golan Heights would be the same example (an area which is de jure part of one nation but de facto belongs to another), only 12% accept this as a visit to Syria compared to a massive 87% rejecting this. Similarly, for the DMZ visit between the two Koreas, only 17% accept this as a visit to North Korea compared to 82% firmly rejecting it.
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Votes about the legitimacy of a visit to Golan Heights as Syria |
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How will we use the results from
'what is a visit' polls? |
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All of this has long-reaching implications for a lot of what we do, as this is now a community vote and some of the results cannot possibly be disputed. In response to this, we would like to announce the following:
1. NomadMania will publish a definitive document within the next three months (this is a lot of work so we ask for your patience) where the parameters of what is a minimal visit are clearly outlined based on your vote.
2. NomadMania will, following a short review time, revisit all our verifications especially for our travellers where there is concern that visits to North Korea and Syria may have involved only the DMZ and Golan Heights.
We will no longer accept legitimate UN Masters if a visit involves these areas and thus will move these travellers to the 'Known to have transited' rubric of our UN Masters list. We ask for a reasonable time for us to complete this without being intrusive.
We are committed to maintaining our credibility in line with our rules but since these will be outlined for the very first time now, we will give adequate time for everyone to understand and get used to them. Let us note that we will not accept arguments such as 'Guinness accept certain visits' etc. We are not Guinness and our NomadMania community has clearly 'spoken'.
3. We will be launching a new Golden Verification badge which will be an additional, up-to-date verification of our members (some of who got their badge as far back as 2014). After piloting, we will let you know when we can accept voluntary Golden verification, which we will ensure is indisputable, followed by 'compulsory' Golden verification for high-ranking members.
In conclusion, and perhaps rather surprisingly, we can say that the poll reveals that younger and less experienced travellers tend to be more concerned with a certain level of experience in travel - if this is achieved, they are more likely to count it as a visit including if there is no 'stepping' into the region. Older and bigger travellers tend to focus more on the 'technical' aspects of a visit - as long as a foot touches the ground, they are more likely to accept a visit even if very little has been experienced.
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What's the tea with MTP? |
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On January 1, 2023, MTP decided to incorporate almost every NomadMania region into its own list of regions. We wish to clarify that this was decided UNILATERALLY by MTP without prior consultation with us.
Contrary to any impressions that may have been created, NomadMania is NOT merging with MTP and continues its entirely independent operation as always.
There is also a clear difference in how each other's lists are presented. NomadMania incorporates the MTP list as a standalone list; you get a pure MTP score on our website if you fill in your profile accurately; we aim to incorporate the new MTP changes within the next 15 days or so.
The addition of the MTP list as a standalone list on NomadMania was done in 2018 with the kind permission of MTP founder, Charles Veley. The current inclusion of NomadMania's regions on MTP, however, does not give you the opportunity to see your NomadMania score on the MTP website; our regions in the MTP website are incorporated into their overall list of, now, 1500 MTP regions.
In the spirit of cooperation, MTP has assured us that the NomadMania name will be included on the MTP site in a visible position so that credit is given where it is due.
In a further effort to enhance the community experience and discuss our lists, communities and travel in general, we are very happy to announce that on March 25th at 17.00 GMT, MTP founder Charles Veley and NomadMania founder Harry Mitsidis will be meeting for a live online chat with Ric Gazarian of Counting Countries as the host.
This will be an unmissable event - never been done before - so we ask you to save the date and further details will be announced very soon! Click here to subscribe to our mutual Newsletter that we have created for you.
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Welcome to Solitaire - Namibia (Sossusvlei) | Travel with Harry Mitsidis |
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New YouTube video!
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Solitaire is a rather unusual name and indeed a very quirky place in the middle of nowhere in Namibia. More a pit-stop than an inhabited community, it will certainly remind you of the Wild West, with abandoned vehicles galore. Watch our video to get the full experience!
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Image by Michael Siebert from Pixabay |
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Stars of our Community - Kiboko |
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Our star in our community is our friend nicknamed Kiboko from Germany. Kiboko means 'hippo' in Swahili and that is his handle and well as his profile photograph. While we know his real name, he is reluctant to share it with the community as a whole, as, in his words 'Germany is a country full of envy.'
Why is Kiboko our first star of 2023? Simply, because in an incredibly organised way, he went through all our Series and found 120+ errors, from duplicates, to wrong GPS marking, to some items which are no longer there and belong better in our 'Vintage' section, if at all. We are absolutely amazed at the dedication of 'Kiboko' and even though he doesn't want any fanfare over this, we wanted to express publically how much we appreciate all the time he has spent to make our Series offering better. So, a big heartfelt thank you and for everyone else, we remind you that we are always receptive to comments about our Series which we always hope to keep accurate and up to date.
For Series fans - we know you are out there - after many years of requests, we are happy to announce one last Series which we will launch soon... Moreover, our 'Top of the Tops' is now almost complete at our aimed 3001 items. This is absolutely the final call for any ideas, additions or objections to our existing Top of the Tops, which essentially filters the best things Planet Earth has to offer travellers!
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M@P regions that you may not know - Fourneaux Islands group
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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.
One of the lesser visited regions is Australia's Fourneaux Islands, part of the state of Tasmania, but not on the island of Tasmania itself. These islands, to the northeast of Tasmania, are barren, windy and little visited, but certainly give off a certain rural charm. The main island here is Flinders island, which is easily accessible from Launceston and Melbourne's small Essendon airport on flights with reliable local operator Sharp Airlines. If you like sheep, cows, rare birds and hikes where you are the only hiker, this place, whose population doesn't exceed 1,000 people, will certainly not disappoint you at all! The small 'town' of Whitemark is the 'capital' of the island; expect truly small-town Australia here with only one gas station to tank up!
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The Interview - Cameron Mofid |
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Cameron Mofid is the youngest member of our newly launched Executive Committee. At the age of 22, he already has 110+ UN Countries under his belt and beyond that he is already the founder of an organisation and has been a speaker at TEDx. We are very happy to have him be a closer part of the NomadMania family!
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Cameron, tell us a little about your early life and how your love for travel developed.
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I grew up in San Diego, California. While I didn’t come from an extremely adventurous travel family, anthropology was valued as being a significant part of my education. I was fascinated with geography, language, history, politics, economics, and other teachings that enabled me to understand why the world is the way that it is. When I was a child, we had a massive map in our garage that spanned the entirety of the wall. My grandmother would call out a country, and my brother and I would compete to see who could point to the country first. “Uganda” has been etched in my mind for as long as I can remember… One summer in middle school, my mom sent me to a three-week geography boarding camp, where I learned to fill out a blank world map with all 195 countries, amongst other unconventional geography skills. I’ve been a travel nerd for quite some time.
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It seems tennis has played a very important part in your life so far. How has that affected where you are today?
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I began playing tennis from an early age. While I’d like to think I was a phenomenal tennis player destined to win Grand Slams had it not been for injuries, that was not the case. But tennis did provide me with something incredible - friends from all over the world. For my senior year of high school, I attended the Academia Sanchez-Casal, which is a boarding school for tennis players in Naples, Florida. There was around 40 of us in the entire school. In my graduating class, I was the only one who spoke English as a first language. Living, training, and studying alongside individuals from countries all over the world gave me more perspective on anthropology than I had ever known from previous studies. During our time at the academy, we completed internationally on the ITF Junior Tour. While tennis was the focus, I was enthralled with the traveling experience as a young adult.
After deciding to forgo collegiate tennis, I decided to start Legends United, which is a charitable platform where professional tennis players could donate their signed memorabilia to raise money for a variety of causes. The academy’s founder, five-time Grand Slam champion Emilio Sanchez, opened the door for me with internships at the world’s largest professional tournaments. While working as an intern, I would simultaneously collect memorabilia from the world’s top tennis stars. Within the first few months of Legend United’s inception, we were supported by Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray, the Bryan Brothers, and many more of the tennis greats. I was later offered to join the team at the Nick Kyrgios Foundation, and ultimately decided to take a gap year before starting my studies at the University of Miami to pursue the work. In 2019, I traveled to 46 countries across 6 continents. I had officially fallen in love with travel.
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You're only 22 and yet you’ve graduated with a degree in finance and management and are nearly finished with your MBA from the University of Miami. How have you been able to balance your travels and your schoolwork?
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It’s certainly been a busy last few years! When I started at UM a few years back, I wanted to ensure that I didn’t stop traveling. I’m extremely fortunate to go to school in Miami, which is one of the world’s largest travel hubs and a gateway into the Caribbean and Latin America. Whenever the university was on vacation time, sometimes even a long weekend, I’d plan a trip somewhere. I most certainly would not be able to travel with as much ease if I had gone to school anywhere else in the country. My professors have also been extremely supportive of my travels, many of whom offered me the flexibility to miss classes when need be. By taking extra classes over the semesters and during summer, I was able to finish my undergraduate degree a year early. I just finished up my MBA in December and graduated as valedictorian.
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With peers at an ITF Junior tournament in Curaçao |
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Your website has a special mental health section. Tell us a little about that and again, how mental health has played a role in your travels.
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Since my youth, I’ve struggled with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), which has been quite debilitating. Many think that OCD is simply having an inclination to be organized, but in actuality it’s an extremely impairing disorder where an individual’s unwanted thoughts (obsessions) lead to repetitive behaviors (compulsions), such as hand washing, checking things over and over, following strict routines, etc. When I was younger, I used to do everything possible to hide my disorder from my friends and family out of fear of being judged or viewed differently. Years of suppressing that ultimately led to anxiety and depression. Travel was my escape. The feeling of hopping on a plane to a new destination was the most freeing feeling in the world. While my OCD made (and still does make) traveling more difficult for me, it also helped me find ways to manage my disorder. OCD is in many ways about control, and traveling is in many ways about relinquishing control to the journey. I’ve learned to adapt, and to push myself into situations that my OCD would historically prohibit me from doing.
Through travel, I’ve realized that there are hundreds of millions of people around the world that struggle with a variety of mental health disorders. That realization gave me the courage to open up to my friends and family about mine. I’m fortunate to be able to speak openly about my disorder, but I’m well aware that the majority of those suffering are not. My approach is to be as open as I possibly can about my mental health - even speaking about it on a TEDx Talk and NBC’s Today Show. I’ve made it my mission to try to break the stigma around mental health, and my hope is that by promoting vulnerability around the world, I can do just that.
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Now, turning to travel - what has specifically motivated you to visit every country in the world?
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It’s tough to say. It certainly didn’t start out with a specific motivation, rather just me wanting to explore the world. Once I made it to around 50 countries, I started to believe that it was possible, and it kind of went from there. In doing my research, I saw that there was a community of people out to accomplish a similar feat. That’s when I started to take it more seriously.
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With friends in Petra, Jordan |
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What do your family and friends think about your endeavour?
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After graduating from my tennis academy, I had friends all over the world. At one point, virtually all of my closest friends were from other countries. My first big trips started with me going to visit them and their families. Over time, the journey evolved into what it is now. Many of them have either hosted me or joined me on trips, which has made the experience that much more meaningful. They’ve been nothing but supportive.
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At a Syrian refugee camp in Beqaa, Lebanon |
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It seems that reaching 193 is now a 'thing' and many young people are aiming at this, complete it at a fast pace and young age. What is your take on this, and do you/do you not feel that you can get a true impression of the world's complexity by visiting countries so fast/young?
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It’s a very valid question, and it’s one that a lot of young people trying to accomplish 193 shy away from. Of course, I’m not immersing myself as much as someone who spends weeks in a country, and I’m likely not getting as much out of the experience as they are. In my eyes, I see this initial journey as a taster, where I can experience so many of the world’s cultures and determine which ones I feel inclined to travel to again later in life. To answer your question, I don’t think anyone can ever truly understand all the world’s complexities, but I am doing my best to learn as much as I possibly can in my time everywhere I go. There have been numerous countries I would have never expected to love, which became my favorites upon visiting, and vice versa. Moving faster has enabled me to visit those places. Travel will always be part of my life, and if I can get to 193, I plan on going back and spending a much longer time in my favorite countries.
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Now tell us a travel story of yours that has really left a mark with you.
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In February 2022, I was traveling though Suriname, and spent some nights at a boutique hotel in Paramaribo. I was the only guest at the time, and the owner, Ron, insisted on showing me a wonderful time in the country. Ron organized a day trip with his friend’s motorboat to a few Surinamese villages. While we were sauntering the dirt roads of Rust en Werk, the skies unleashed a considerable rainstorm. Ron and I were stranded with no raincoats, no umbrella, nowhere to take shelter, and unable to take our small motorboat back to the mainland. As we sprinted through the rain, a voice called out to us from a nearby home and signaled for us to come in. That voice came from an elderly man named Brian.
Recognizing that the rain wasn’t going to subside anytime soon, Brian invited us into his home to exchange laughs, stories, and some of the world’s most refreshing coconuts. He even invited us to sleep in his home. When the rain subsided, he gave Ron and I a tour of his village, which he has lived in for nearly the entirety of his life.
I couldn’t help but think that a man who had financially so little was prepared to offer everything he had to a complete stranger, without ever asking for anything in return. We are taught from a young age that poor means unsafe, and that exercising extreme caution should be an automatic default. Brian shattered this notion for me. He is evidence that people are inherently good, and there is endless value in showing kindness to those around us.
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With Brian in Rust en Werk, Suriname |
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Which of the countries you have been to so far has surprised you the most and why?
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There are many, but if I have to choose one it’s Iraq. Leaving the incredibly rich history aside, I was deeply inspired by the resilience, kindness, and generosity of the people. Iraqis have suffered through the ruthless dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, a bloody eight-year war with Iran, a misguided invasion by the United States, an unfathomable wickedness by ISIS, and a palpable instability in the current day. In knowing that, one would expect Iraqis to be frightened, paranoid, and hostile. That could not be farther from the case.
As a whole, Iraqis exemplify what the rest of the world needs – fortitude, humbleness, and selflessness. It’s for those values that they have survived their struggles and are fighting for better lives. It’s hard to walk down a busy street in Baghdad and not see Iraqis sharing food, tea, and laughs with one another. Their benevolence is infectious. My time in Iraq was remarkable and I can’t wait to go back one day.
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What is your general style of travel?
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I started off my travels by using Couchsurfing, which is an app where you can meet and stay with strangers across the world completely free. In addition to saving money, it provided me with the ability to meet some incredible people. I don’t use it too much anymore (for logistical purposes), but it’s a microcosm for how I view my trips – an opportunity to connect with people. I’m much more interested with the people than I am with the places. For that reason, I like to travel solo, because it allows me to wander freely and meet people serendipitously.
I don’t like luxury travel so much because I think it takes away from the authenticity of the experience. That said, I try not to travel too basic to the point where it’s a logistical nightmare or I increase my chances of getting sick.
As I spoke about earlier, I travel on the quicker end of the scale, generally spending less than a week in each country. That said, I think that will shift later on in my travels.
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You seem to have a very socially aware approach to your travels. Does that set you apart from your peers who travel or not, based on the travellers you have met?
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I’m relatively new to the travel community, so I haven’t met too many of the world’s top travelers. However, I can view my experiences in comparison to my friends and peers at my university. While I don’t love the idea of comparing travel experiences, I do believe that being socially aware has provided me with a more meaningful experience. There are amazing content creators, many of whom in this community, who do a remarkable job of showing the world’s places. I want to focus on engaging with and spreading the messages of the world’s people.
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You haven't yet visited Russia and Belarus. Given the debate we have recently had in NomadMania on the war in Ukraine, let us ask you - would you travel to these countries right now or not and why?
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In all honesty, I haven’t put enough thought into it to give a definitive answer. But I will share my thoughts. A very important part of our job as travelers is to learn, and that responsibility carries even more significance during times of controversy or in places of conflict. Given my very human-oriented approach, I’d be very inclined to travel to Ukraine, and potentially even Russia and Belarus to meet as many people affected by the war as I could.
On the other hand, our job as travelers also entails promoting positive social change. Does traveling to Russia or Belarus embolden their position in the war and leave a message that people will come regardless? Potentially so. The war in Ukraine has (rightfully so) garnered the attention of the entire world, likely because of the prominence and power of the countries involved. But let’s not forget that there are regimes across the world, many of which in lesser developed countries, that are extremely oppressive and launch unjustified wars (which are more sparingly covered by the media). Our community still travels to those countries, not to support the regimes, but rather to learn about the places and the people. I guess I’ve left you with more questions than answers, but that’s where I’m at with my thoughts.
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In South Sudan visiting the Mundari tribe |
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So what are your travel aims in the next 6 months or so?
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At the time of writing this, I’ve been to 113 out of 195 countries. I plan my trips very last minute, so it’s tough for me to give geographical goals. That said, I do hope I can become a better traveler. By that, I mean doing an even better job of learning the history of the places I go and connecting on an even deeper level with the people I meet. In doing those things, I think I will have a much more meaningful experience.
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And finally our signature question - if you can invite any 4 people from any period in human history to dinner, who would your guests be and why?
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Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, Winston Churchill, and Nelson Mandela. In my eyes, these are four of the greatest and most influential leaders in world history. There is considerable value in their perspective and seeing how they altered the course of the world would be priceless.
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We thank Cameron for sharing his personal photos with us here at NomadMania.
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Our next 'shorter' issue will be out on the 5th of February with another great interview!
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