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Happy Valentine's Day! |
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We know, we know... Valentine's Day is perhaps a cheesy day for some of you. But here at NomadMania it is rather important for us, as it happens to also be the birthday of our founder, Harry Mitsidis, who for the first time since our website started will shift decade and enter the 50-59 age group on this very day. So we wish all of you a lot of love, flowers, chocolates and obviously travel, on Valentine's Day and every day!
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We remind you all that our first NomadMania meeting since the start of the pandemic is finally happening and it is in Shanghai on February 17th with our member Eugenio Bregolat in charge. Have a look at our rather empty-looking meetings section for details - and hopefully soon this section will be filled again, as our Austrian contingent is planning the next ViennaMania event this autumn - and who wouldn't love to go to Vienna?
As this is known as our 'short' newsletter we will do just that and keep it short, dedicating our space to our interview with Saeed.
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The NomadMania Interview: Saeed Shahani |
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In January, we were pleased to launch our LPI (Low Passport Index) list of travellers and to honour them, we will be presenting a number of travellers from LPI countries in our 'short newsletters' on the 5th of each month . Saeed from Pakistan has been to almost 100 UN countries, and travelled the first 80 exclusively on a Pakistan passport, so he certainly has experience of the difficulties of travel. We are very happy to host him today and hear his experiences of travel.
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Saeed, please tell us
something about yourself. Who are you, where do you come from and how did you
start travelling in the first place?
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I am 29 years old and
originally from Lahore, Pakistan, where I lived until about 11 years ago before
moving to London, UK.
Pakistanis mostly travel
within their own country, and very few foreigners visit us, so as a result the
travels in my childhood were to typical holiday destinations in Pakistan. When
I was about 10 years old I travelled with my family to the UK, which burst my
little bubble and I realised the world could be quite different from where I
lived.
Due to both lack of
money and interest I did not travel much until the age of 25; I would do annual
vacations with a friend or significant other in closely guarded tourist
destinations, and perhaps had seen about 7 countries in total. Then in 2018 I
organised a regular trip with friends to Amsterdam, and on the last minute they
all backed out. This inadvertently became my first solo travel, and I got to
try a lot of things that were novel for me, such as backpacking, couchsurfing
and motorcycling abroad, some of which stuck with me. Soon as I return I booked
3 more trips for the next consecutive weekends, and once i returned I booked
travels for the the rest of the year. By the end of the year I had already
visited 50 countries in total.
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What is the main driver
that brings you back to travelling?
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To me travel is a medium
of discovering other things, but of course in the context of this interview the
medium is the message. Primarily, I am attracted to the unknown; I enjoy the
foreignness of the experience, to familiarise myself in new surroundings, to be
inspired by nature or by human achievements, to gain understanding of a people
or for my stereotypes to be proven wrong, and to be experience discomfort in
the unknown, which quickly turns into an achievement of its own.
However, there are two
things that have stuck the most, and even when I start feeling homesick i look
forward to these. First, its the people; sightseeing or excursions in nature
can be pleasant, however they can get monotonous quite quickly, but I get never
tired of meeting people, whether its fellow travellers, or more importantly,
locals. I have built lasting friendships that resulted out of just a single
conversation, or sometimes have someone open up instantly and tell me the most
honest and emotional parts of their life. Every time I think about a country I
visited I usually think about the person I met there first.
Second, its motorcycling.
Its something I always enjoyed but it didn’t truly integrate with my sense of
self until i took a couple of trips abroad. There is something about slowly
becoming one with the bike, being completely in tune with your surroundings,
watching the landscape and the human footprint slowly change. I believe its the
best way to discover somewhere new.
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Motorcycling to Mount Mulanje in Malawi, 2019 |
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You have roots in
Pakistan, but live in the UK. How did this influence you as a person and as a
traveller?
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People in the UK are generally well travelled, at least in certain parts of the world, so the impact of living in London was hearing stories of my friends from their travels in Europe, South East Asia and so on. That kind of opened me to the idea that travel could be fun and a learning experience. Having lived in Pakistan, I already had perspective of what developing countries could be; I was readily able to discount negative stories about a lot of places, but also was able to relate to people from these places as my upbringing was quite similar.
Unfortunately, as a Pakistani I’ve also had to deal with a lot of suspicion and hassle from immigration authorities. I travelled the first 80 or so countries on my Pakistani passport, and was taken aside almost regularly and had to go through enhanced interviews, or held for longer periods of times without reason. Having to apply for a visa for almost every one of those countries was also a pain; once, I went to the embassy of Malawi in London, and was straight up told by the person that she wouldn’t offer me a visa if I travelled without someone from the UK/EU as ‘Pakistanis are criminals.’ It taught me that people can be treated quite differently at times, and that travel is a privilege. Its important not to feel bitter by these experiences though.
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Visiting Tiger's Nest in Bhutan, Christmas Day 2018 |
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Do you aim at visiting
all UN countries and why? If not, do you have any ambitious travel goals?
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I aim to travel to UN
193 + 4, although the urgency died down since the onset of covid. I had no
interest in doing this a few years ago, and didn’t understand it when an ex
talked about attempting it. Officially, I made it my aim when I had already
been to 50 countries, as it seemed I was already partially underway. The reason
I have kept this aim is because it makes planning travels easier; the countries
cut a nice cross-section of different cultures and landscapes, so by visiting
all of them I should be able to get a good sense of the world.
Once I am able to
complete this, or perhaps somewhere along the way, I would like to do a couple
of special trips. One, I would like to bring a dirt bike into DR Congo and
visit every province overland, cutting through the jungle. Another, which is
more doable, is to motorcycle from the end of South America to Colombia, mostly
camping in wilderness.
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Please share some
special stories from your travels.
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I once arrived in Krakow
on a Saturday morning just for a weekend, and struck up a conversation with
someone at the airport. They were going to a wedding and joked if I wanted to
come; since I had no plans I took it up straight away. It took us the best part
of a day to get to Warsaw and then to a village in the east an hour past
Bialystok, the last major city. By the end we were driving on a dirt track at
night in the forest close to the Belarusian border, and I was seriously
questioning my decisions. We started to approach this dark building in the
forest, and as soon as I opened the door, there was a wedding going on with all
the festivities. People were amused by my foreignness and would take turns to
dance with me, take pictures, or do shots of bimber, a home-made vodka. Despite
barely anyone speaking English, I felt like I connected with many people there.
I was given a place to stay for the night, and the following morning I took a
train to get back to Krakow, and straight to the airport to get home!
Another time I was
visiting Sarajevo, Bosnia and decided to couchsurf with a guy who was hosting
several refugees in his house. These people barely had anything, and had taken
harrowing journeys from Iran and Afghanistan. Despite this they had a very
positive disposition, and insisted on me sharing their food. One of the guys
spoke Urdu, the primary language spoken in Pakistan, so I decided to take him
out with me and spend the day doing regular things such as sightseeing and
going for drinks. On the way back he bought one bottle of beer that several of
the guys were going to share. As they took turns to drink this beer, an Iranian
guy who barely spoke any English offered it to me, which I politely declined.
He then spent a minute to come up with the words, smiled and very slowly said,
‘everything in life is free.’ It struck me quite deeply; although its such a
simple thing to say, it carried a lot of meaning from someone who had very
little of his own. To this day it serves me as a reminder to be more generous
to others.
One more I could share
is from West Africa. I was having breakfast with a friend in Sierra Leone on
Christmas Eve, and someone overheard our conversation about travelling to
Liberia. The person turned out to be a local politician and offered to host us
in his country. For our entire time in Liberia, we were hosted by this
political party which was very kind of them. At some point I casually mentioned
reading about General Butt Naked, the infamous Liberian warlord, and our host offered
to help us find him. It took us two days but I finally got to sit with him over
tea at his sister’s place, hearing about how he sought forgiveness for his
actions, rediscovering his faith, and running a charitable foundation. This
shouldn’t be seen an endorsement, however.
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With the Virunga National Park rangers, DR Congo |
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What are your biggest
travel interests? Where do you go before you go everywhere else?
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Motorcycling by far is
my favourite thing to do while travelling, and I usually make an effort to rent
a bike and head to the countryside. Not only does it give me a more complete
view on the country, but I also feel as if the locals treat me less as a
tourist and more as a traveller.
Otherwise I try not to
remain too rigid with respect to my interests. For me travel is a way to open
myself up to new experiences, so i try to create a cross-section of every
country with respect to the places, things to do and any excursions. Once in a
while I will also do something I generally dislike, which on occasion has
turned me around.
That being said my mind
generally drifts towards places of historical interest, mountains, and
wilderness.
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What were some of your
biggest surprises on your travels so far?
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I think the biggest realisation was that travelling isn’t as hard as I originally thought it would be; I have been able to go from A to B, find food and lodgings everywhere in the world where there is a human footprint, regardless of language or cultural differences. Particularly, people had discouraged me from travelling around Sub-Saharan Africa, but I was always able to find my way around there.
The second thing, perhaps not so much as a surprise than a long-term realisation, has been to look beyond the duality of human nature as it is portrayed by others. I have met many people who will either talk about how everyone is inherently nice when you travel, or will mostly talk about the danger and how everyone is out to get them. I found people to be very kind and positive earlier in my travels, in part because I wasn’t expecting them to help me or go out of their way to talk to me. But over time I came to realise that it equally depends on me; you have to learn to be patient, not be in a rush, and be open to others, in order for them to reciprocate. At the end of the day nobody owes you anything, and any interaction is a two-way street. Sometimes the travellers with negative experiences are those who interact negatively with locals. Where I have stopped to have a conversation, locals have indeed been kind to me; for example, on my trip in West Africa across 10 countries, in several of those I was offered free rides just because I got along with the people.
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Camping on Mt Nyragongo, DR Congo, 2019 |
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What is it about the
travel that gets you excited the most and what keeps you going even when it is
tough?
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To me it is important
that the determination to carry on or see your goals through comes from the
inside, because it is the best constant you can have; the external world is
ever changing and outside of your control. If I think about the times when the
going got tough – for example, motorcycling through a thunderstorm in the North
of France, through tropical downpour in Costa Rica, being detained for a couple
of days at the Guinea Bissau-Conakry border – first and foremost I reminded
myself that before I began I decided on this journey, and therefore I must see
it through. This is because for me when I am in a moment of crisis, it is very
difficult for me to think about the exciting things about the country, the
sights or my itinerary; if anything my mind suddenly gets clouded by
negativity. But I trust myself that I started this journey for valid reasons,
and I don’t need to think about them at this point, what is important is that I
carry on, and I will look back when I reach the checkpoint.
This approach also leads
to a heightened sense of achievement when you reach the end, and looking back
this is what excites me about travel. To realise that I overcame the challenges
gives me deep satisfaction. Recently, I hiked Volcano Acatenango in Guatemala
over 2 days in poor weather conditions, and only 3 of us made it to the summit.
The achievement I felt at the top was very similar to what I mentioned earlier.
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How did your general
view of the world change with travelling?
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I think I am a
completely different person now from when I first started travelling. I used to
be interested in a very small part of the world and had a rather narrow view of
the different lives that could be lived, and in turn the different lives I
could live. Initially travelling across Europe, I realised that I could easily
integrate in many of the countries, but was later surprised myself on how
positive I felt in several of the countries in Asia and Africa. The general
view of the world is usually on how much chaos and poverty there is around the
world, but really there are interesting lives to be lived everywhere. The only
question is how willing you are to adjust to your surroundings.
Slightly related to the
above, I also started to see more options and opportunities around the world.
With some privilege included, it doesn’t take much to find a way to fulfil your
basic needs in most parts of the world. Sure enough, there are pros and cons to
every country; for example, in London we suffer from year-round bad weather and
have poor work-life balance, but then benefit from good infrastructure and
higher salaries. In a place like Pakistan one has to accept lower wages and
limited career opportunities, but then benefit from stronger community networks
and a better standard of living in terms of the associated costs. Ultimately,
no country can offer the best package for everyone, but from travelling I have
become more compromising to accept multiple options.
As I write this I have
been travelling for a few months in Latin America, and am quite surprised
myself that I can see myself living, and for the moment am living, in a number
of these countries.
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Finally our signature question - if you could invite any 4 people to dinner, from any period in history, who would your guests be?
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I will limit the question on purpose to the context of a conversation
about travel, just so I keep with the theme.
My first guest would be Kamran Ali (@kamranonbike), a Pakistani cyclist
who amongst other things cycled from the end of South America to the edge of
North America. Kamran has a very emotionally honest way of writing and has
several photoessays on his ups and downs during travels, as well as the people
he met on the way. I would love to hear some of these in person.
The second would be the greatest traveller in history, Ibn Battuta. He
travelled across the entire islamic regions of North Africa, Middle East, Asia
and South East Europe, covering about 120,000km. He would have had the most
holistic sense of the civilizations in those regions, which I would love to
hear about.
Third, I would like to meet Marco Polo, in particular for his insights
into the court of Kublai Khan. In recent times there has been a lot of
scepticism on whether he actually did go to China, I’d like to hear this first
hand and make my own judgement.
Last, I have to mention
Anthony Bourdain. Not only would he have been a great dinner guest for his
culinary knowledge, but also for his insights into travel and discovering other
cultures in an open-minded way.
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Chichen Itza, Mexico, 2022 |
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Did you like reading this? |
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We thank Saeed 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 'longer' issue will be out on February 21st with our usual fun rubrics and always some good surprises!
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