For world travelers, checking destinations and experiences off their bucket list is a dream come true. And to many, exploring all the corners of the world is on top of that list. But right when you thought that it’s all about visiting every single country, Harry Mitsidis, one of the world’s most traveled people, had a different say on this.

How NomadMania Recognizes the Most Traveled People in the World

Mitsidis is best known for being the founder of NomadMania, a platform that gathers the world’s most traveled people and divides the world differently. As visiting every single country in the world does not necessarily indicate you’ve seen it all or that you’re one of the most traveled people, NomadMania has divided it into 1281 regions instead. By covering more of these regions, you get to see and experience much more.

Luckily, I got to interview Mitsidis himself. We talked about how he discovered his passion for travel, how one can end up being one of the world’s most traveled people, and of course, about NomadMania.

1. From aviation to film to teaching to being a world nomad. Tell us more about how you’ve become one of the most traveled people in the world.

Firstly, thank you for having me as your guest! It’s a real pleasure. My becoming a global nomad was certainly a gradual process rather than a conscious decision at a given moment. As a child born to parents from different countries (my father is Greek and my mother South African), I was exposed to different cultures from the start and my parents loved to travel as well. So, in the late ‘70s and ‘80s, I have had memories of Morocco, the US, Singapore, and various European countries.

Back in the ‘70s, as a kid, and when it was really much more ‘exotic’ than it could ever be nowadays, I loved flying, and I would collect timetables and study maps. For a while in my 20s, I guess my youth focused on other things beyond my childhood interests, and beyond my love for geography and lists.

But then, as I reached my 30s, it became more and more obvious to me that only travel really matters. It’s the only time I feel I am actually doing something worthwhile. Sure, I love everyday things like going to the cinema and certainly meeting up with the people I love, but more and more these have seemed like interludes from the main event – travel.

Through circumstance and pure obstinacy, I decided to do all the countries in the world, not really knowing that there is a community of others doing the same. I finished the world countries in 2008 at the age of 36, wondering what to do next. Once I discovered that I am not alone in this, I guess I’ve become unstoppable…

2. Could you briefly explain how NomadMania works?

Well, the general concept is that to be well-traveled; just ticking countries is no good. It’s too superficial and one-dimensional, as the world is so much bigger than that. But how much bigger? We have come up with an algorithm which factors in a country’s size, population, cultural diversity, economic strength, and tourist appeal, and figured that a list of around 1,300 regions is the best one – big enough to be complete and challenging but still small enough to be manageable. In each region (we currently have 1281 world regions), we present a neatly organized page with loads of ideas on what to do and what to see in the form of what we call ‘series’.

NomadMania is a registered charity and our ultimate goal is to help people from developing countries discover the joys of travel. Have you ever come across a tourist from, say, Myanmar or Ghana? Well, neither have I. And that just seems unfair.

3. What was the inspiration behind NomadMania?

I think the ‘mother’ of all travel clubs, the Traveler Century Club (TCC), was the inspiration. They have been around since the ‘50s and divided the world into 329 ‘pieces’. But to me, those pieces didn’t seem enough – for example, the mainland 48 US states is only one region – and anyway the TCC is generally a ‘rich man’s club’ more or less, while I wanted to create a very democratic, online community accessible to all.

4. How does NomadMania’s challenging goal focus more on quality rather than quantity?

We don’t really have a ‘goal’ for our members. We present a division of the world, but for sure nobody has been to all the regions, and that’s not the idea anyway. NomadMania is often labeled a quantity website, but we have invested a long, long time in developing more than 50 series, which are lists of most things imaginable while traveling – caves, aquariums, pretty villages, temples, we even have a ‘dark side’ series. All these are indexed by the NomadMania region they belong to – so when you open a regional page, you have a neat list of suggestions.

I think that looking at these in terms of the regions, NomadMania offers an integrated whole – both quantity and quality. People can focus on the series that most interest them – nature lovers may opt to go for treks, for example, while a family may focus on the Theme Parks series. While ‘ticking’ these as done obviously is seen as ‘quantity’, the idea is that the world is made of loads of incredible activities that are out there to be done – the more, the merrier.

5. Other than the self-actualization, what do NomadMania members get out of breaking records?

I don’t think most NomadMania members are out to break records, only a small minority may be – and that may well be their own record rather than compete with others. NomadMania gives a lot of useful information on travel. We have an online magazine twice a month with a very diverse group of interviewees, which I believe opens our members’ eyes to just how big and different the travel community can be. We also offer advice on how to travel to difficult countries through our Fixers section, which is generated by our own users who have nothing to gain other than wanting to help others achieve their travel goals.

NomadMania also organizes – at least before coronavirus – meet-ups in various locations, so there is a very practical ability to be part of something greater and getting together with like-minded people. We have also on occasion organized trips ourselves where the cost is shared among the participants, without any profit for us.

6. Are there any other entities that verify NomadMania’s metrics and world map?

Not that we know of. NomadMania verifies the achievements of its own travelers – we are the only website we know of to do so – so that people who claim they are really well-traveled are checked and then rewarded with badges. I would say, given that a very large percentage of big world travelers do follow our division of the world, we are legitimated by our own users.

7. How can someone get registered on NomadMania?

Just go to www.nomadmania.com and sign up. There is no fee and no ‘process’. However, we do require everyone to fill in their profile fully, and for us, that means to fill in visited regions of the world. We want quality profiles, and we are not about having many members at all, so we regularly delete incomplete profiles. We want to position ourselves as a niche player for those who really are interested in how we view the world. Everyone is welcome, no matter how much you have traveled; for sure, NomadMania is not only for ‘big’ travelers.

8. Which region/series/destination spoke to you the most or had a great influence on you?

I will answer the question in terms of the region I loved visiting the most. As a region of the world, I would pick Vojvodina in Serbia. This is a generally less explored part of the world, unfairly, given its cultural diversity, natural beauty, and historical importance.

Vojvodina used to be part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, so you get loads of simple villages built in Hungarian style, while, as a true European melting pot, apart from Serbs and Hungarians, there are Slovaks, Romanians, Ukrainians, and other minorities.

Novi Sad, the capital of Vojvodina, is truly a lovely town in every respect, with a large fort overlooking the Danube – where the now world-caliber Exit Festival is held. Vojvodina may be mainly flat, but there is a mountain range in Frushka Gora which has lots of monasteries, pointing to the deep Orthodox past of the area. In general, this is the place that makes me tick the most; I could stay there forever.

9. Where do you see Nomad Mania going and what would you hope to achieve with it?

We were just getting organized to launch a huge donation drive and then award a few ‘travel scholarships’ in cooperation with higher educational institutions in countries like Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, and Colombia. Unfortunately, the current situation precludes such activities but I do hope that in the longer term, this can be achieved and that we will be able to give back to the world in the ‘currency’ that we love best – travel itself. Some of our members are extremely generous (and wealthy), and I certainly don’t believe that travel should be limited to one’s financial abilities or place of birth. It is a right for everyone, and that’s NomadMania’s ultimate dream.

10. What’s your take on the current state of the travel and tourism industry and how do you believe it’ll change after the pandemic?

People love to travel no matter what. I think that in the short term, people may be forced to travel less, possibly only locally or within their regions. Long-distance travel will be hit for 2020, but eventually, that will also take off, perhaps also depending on how badly a country was or was not hit by the pandemic.

I do believe that it will take a few years for the travel industry to recover and the general economic situation of the world will probably mean that we won’t see the tourist numbers of 2019 probably until the late 2020s. Having said this, human nature won’t change, people are social beings and naturally curious about their world. I believe NomadMania members will be among the first to be out there as soon as it is safe to do so.

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Relevant Read:

• The Future Travel Experience Post-Lockdown

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