Introduction

Voiceover: You’re listening to the Zero To Travel podcast, where we explore exciting travel-based work, lifestyle, and business opportunities, helping you achieve your wildest travel dreams. And now your host, world wanderer and travel junkie, Jason Moore.

Jason: Hey, Jason here with ZeroToTravel.com. Welcome to the show. Thanks for hanging out, letting me bring a little travel into your ears today. This is the show to help you travel the world on your terms, to fill your life with as much travel as you desire, no matter what your situation or experience. And as you know, most places are discovered at this point, right? But I try to do my part to introduce you to some places to visit before they get too discovered, let’s say. And today we’re going to put the spotlight on Bosnia and Herzegovina, and I’m doing it by bringing in two local experts, Nermin and Katrin Numic.

They’re a Bosnian-German couple who run a travel agency locally in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with the goal of helping people discover some of those in-between places most tourists miss. And of course, that’s exactly what we’re going to focus on today. We’ll link up to their website. You might be confused by the name, .Cheyf, it’s pronounced. And it is actually a Bosnian term. It’s basically enjoying a little me time, a little simple pleasure in your day. We talk about that as a cultural concept, and of course you’re going to get a ton of hidden gems and just get a vibe for what there is to see and do in this country.

Stick around on the back end, I will leave you with a fun fact about this area of the world and a little quote to let you go about your day. Don’t forget zerototravel.com/newsletter. If you want to join the community off the pod, keep in touch over there, would love to welcome you to the newsletter community. Okay, without further ado, here’s my conversation with Nermin and Katrin. I hope you enjoy it. Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you on the other side, my friends.

How Nermin and Kathrin Met

Jason: Nermin Numic and Katrin Numic, welcome to the Zero To Travel podcast, my friends. I hope I got it right there with the pronunciations.

Nermin: You did great, my friends.

Jason: I said friend, there’s two of you here though. Nermin and Katrin, I know you go by the nickname Numa, so we’re going to roll with that. Anyway, welcome to the show. You guys are a couple, you’re doing some pretty cool things in Bosnia, and we’re going to get some of the hidden gems from you today, along with a bit of context on how you ended up there. Well, that’s probably a good place to start, because we all love a good transition to travel story here. How did you end up living a life abroad? But first of all, we have to go to, where did you guys meet? Give us the origin story of your relationship.

Nermin: She’s pushing me that I should start.

Katrin: She’s literally pushing you like she was nudging you with her elbow.

Nermin: So we met in Cape Town, South Africa, 2016. So this year is ten years. I was there for work. She came there for work, but more because of the city. And we met in a classic manner, on a house party. I immediately fell in love. She needed some time. It was my first week there, and she was like, I need friends, I don’t need to meet someone, I’m not interested. But persistence. And I speak German as well, she’s from Germany. We were in a faraway country, so one thing led to another.

So in the end, I was living there a year and a half in Cape Town, South Africa. She did as well, one year. And then when I needed to move for work back to Europe, to Prague, Czech Republic, then came the question if she wants to move with me, which was not the plan for her, neither for me. But then, you know, nobody came, none of us came to South Africa to find the love of their life. But then she was convinced somehow. So we moved to Prague in Czech Republic for a year, half a year after that, half a year in Hamburg, a year and a half in Munich, both in Germany. And then we should have moved back to Cape Town in South Africa, where my former employer offered me a better position, head of business development, which is great for my CV, and we really liked Cape Town. So we signed a contract, I signed a contract with that company in February 2020. COVID was somewhere far away in Asia. And then when we cancelled our flat and should have left the apartment in Munich, there was a complete lockdown in Germany.

Katrin: And in South Africa.

Nermin: Everywhere, I mean.

Katrin: Yeah, I mean, at that time, everywhere, yeah.

Ending Up in Bosnia During COVID

Nermin: So long story short, we went to Katrin’s mom to live for a short time, until the borders opened, that as well she could move somewhere, because in Germany it’s not so easy to find an apartment when you just left one. From Germany to Split in Croatia, and then from Split to Sarajevo. And then we spent six months here. We were just waiting our time, basically, until South Africa opened the borders again for foreigners, because you couldn’t even go there for business travel.

So this half a year, I showed her my country. I mean, she has been here before, to meet my parents and my friends, and we did maybe the classic touristic stuff, but I never showed her a little bit more. But as well, it was a new experience for me. I’m born and raised here, but I left the country when I was 30. And, you know, I had different interests, different budget, didn’t come now with a wife here. And as well, I travelled the world through my company, was treated well everywhere. And when we travelled through Bosnia, we were both amazed. Like I said, even if I’m from here, I needed maybe this shift of perspectives to come here and to see how amazing this country is, what unique culture and as well nature it has, with different climates, different topography and everything. I was amazed by it, and as well, Katrin was too.

Jason: Do you think you were seeing it in a different way because you had spent so much time abroad, and then you were coming back and you were getting to show her? So you kind of get a heightened awareness around what is there actually, what should I show her, what are the things to do here, what makes life nice here?

Nermin: I showed her all the things that I know that are a tourist attraction, but now I had a different perspective. So this country, the biggest part of the Dinaric Alps go through Bosnia and Herzegovina, and it has three major climates, but six if we count the sub-climates. So it creates a lot of natural wonders. It has over 200 waterfalls. Sarajevo is in a valley. One of four Olympic mountains is literally in the city. This is all stuff that I took for granted, and as well all the different religions. So Sarajevo was always called Little Jerusalem, four major religions living side by side, synagogues, churches, mosques. So all of that stuff I grew up with. So when you grow up with something, it becomes normal for you. So that as well became a new perspective for me. And as well, living the last three years together in Europe, in Prague, Czech Republic, and two cities in Germany, before that in South Africa, this untouched nature, but as well, this organic food that is here, this is the norm. I mean, in this half year, it was also COVID, of course, so there weren’t so many tourists. But for me, it was just mind-blowing that there is nobody there to see how beautiful this is. There are just no people. And I think that makes it very special also.

Jason: So Katrin, you were there temporarily, you thought, for COVID, but then you guys decided to stick around. How was that for you? Because there are challenges that come with moving abroad, and I’m sure on some level maybe you thought you’d end up there, but maybe you thought you’d end up in Germany, your home country, or maybe you will one day, who knows. How was the adjustment, the excitement of moving to a new place, and then the reality of the day-to-day life, and trying to settle in and build a community and all that kind of stuff?

Katrin: I mean, for the first six months that we spent here during COVID, it was just really nice for me to spend more time with Nermin’s family and friends. Because, yes, I’ve been regularly, every summer, sometimes in the winter we went to visit, but it’s different if you live in a place versus visit a place. So for me it was just really nice to explore more of his hometown and to get to know the people of his life better, because in just two weeks of vacation you don’t have a lot of time to go into depth, right? And then we went back to South Africa for like a brief episode at the end of 2020, just for six months, and visa troubles, work troubles, in the end we came back to Europe. We came back here to Bosnia because we didn’t know where else to go. And then we were thinking, like, do we want to stay here, do we want to move to Germany, do we want to move to a third country, what should we do?

Deciding to Start .Cheyf

Katrin: Well, we decided to stay here, and we decided to open the travel agency, just to try, because tourism was slowly picking up again. And we were both convinced that there is really something to see here in the country that deserves more attention, or that Bosnia has a bad reputation in general anyway, and it deserves a better reputation. And then coming back here from South Africa, that was an easy transition, because I mean, Bosnia is southern Europe, or south-eastern Europe. So of course there is a little bit of a different mentality than in Germany. It’s more like the south of Italy or the south of Spain, people are more Mediterranean, people are more loud, more open. But in the end it’s still a European country. So moving back here from South Africa was not a hard transition, because South Africa is, of course, very different, culturally.

Jason: You guys decided to start this up. And for everybody listening, we’re going to get into some of the highlights on what to see, give you some reasons to go. I do think this is a, although in my little bubble of people that I talk to, and I know we connected through our associate producer, Caitlin, who has spent a lot of time there and met you guys in person at one of these fairly recent Nomad events, this is a destination that I think people that are travelling a lot, they’re aware of, but maybe for the more sort of mass tourism crowd, let’s say, it’s not as on the radar, I would say.

Nermin: That changed.

Jason: Yeah, okay, that’s changed.

Nermin: Or it’s still changing. I mean, what I want to say, it was on the radar, now it’s picking up, yeah. But it wasn’t like that five years ago, it was really exotic.

Jason: Katrin, your background, content creation, marketing, this stuff. But Nermin, you were, technical sales consultant and battery testing, I’m looking at your LinkedIn here, lighting solutions. This was more in her wheelhouse than yours. So when you guys decided to start this company and show people what you had to offer in this country, and start these small tours which we’re going to talk about. But just in the beginning, I’m just curious for people listening that are going through that decision-making process for themselves, how did you guys decide? Was it just going to do this, or was it more intentional? Because you’re working together as a couple, not everybody can or wants to do that. I’m pretty sure my wife doesn’t want to work with me, I’m fairly confident that I would drive her crazy, and she would drive me crazy, I don’t know if it would work. But how is that working for you guys?

Nermin: First of all, you’re completely right, we knew nothing about tourism when we started. We just knew the kind of tours that we would like to take if we were tourists visiting Bosnia. And that’s probably enough.

Katrin: Yes, that’s how we started. And we were like, well, the rest about tourism, you can learn.

Nermin: As well, I have to say, we had a couple of good, but also a couple of bad experiences when travelling, and we said, oh, we definitely don’t want to do this to our guests. It was this kind of mass tourism, trying to sell us something on the way that we weren’t interested in, and still needed to wait half an hour until the other ones did their buggy show. So that happens, so let’s not do this, let’s do that. We know what is quite appreciated. So maybe when you read my CV, it’s a lot of technicals, but in the end I was studying economics, working in marketing and sales all my life, customer perception and how to create it, and maybe this is my strength, and the storytelling, also what Katrin is really strong at. So I did my travel guide license, but then, to have the perspective how to attract somebody, how to create packages, what to offer, I think this is the perspective that we brought into the industry in Bosnia, I think. And that was the fun process also, that made working easy together in the beginning, because we had the same plans and the same ideas, we knew what kind of tours we wanted to create.

And then working together, we just realized each of us needs their own responsibilities. So even if we live together and work together and see each other every day for work, you just need to know, okay, Nermin is doing this, I am doing this, we need to have a proper meeting for things, so you don’t have an idea over dinner, and then you’re like, oh, by the way, I have this idea, and the other person is annoyed because they just want to eat dinner and chill.

Katrin: That’s mostly me, and Nermin is like, I have this idea, before we even eat.

Nermin: The German needs order, right? You have to compartmentalize in some ways, otherwise you can’t be working.

Katrin: And departmentalize, yeah.

Nermin: So we know that if it’s something for sales or networking, that is mine, otherwise, you know, I thought you will answer this and I thought you will do this. So we needed one day to sit down and say, okay, we are a company, we need to know who is who. So that helped, that helped. But it still, it was a long way.

The Meaning of Ćejf

Jason: Well, we’re going to get into this list. But I love cultural concepts, and I had to look up what your website name was about, which we’re going to link to in the show notes. And I read it’s pronounced Chayf. And it sounds like it’s a cultural concept that encapsulates the ethos of perhaps your personal lives, and also the tours you run. So I think that’s a good place to start, because I feel like that’s going to inform the sort of curated list you brought us today. Would that be accurate?

Nermin: Yeah, I think so.

Jason: Okay, so is it Chayf, am I pronouncing that?

Nermin: Chayf. Chayf.

Jason: Okay, tell us about Chayf.

Nermin: So it’s an idiom that is not translatable into one word. It comes from an Arabic word that means to enjoy, but here it’s more of a lifestyle. We translated it as to enjoy the small things in life that make life worth living. The everyday life that makes your life special, that you don’t, without that, your day is kind of ruined. Very often here, this is a coffee, or coffee and a cigarette. It can be, you know, beer after you work, or it doesn’t have to be even to consume anything, it’s just something you really like, and if you don’t get it, it makes you a little bit grumpy.

Jason: Okay, that’s a good way to put it.

Nermin: But the easiest is to connect it with food and drinks. So each of our tours has something, and it’s very cultural here. Food is the epicenter of everything, and coffee as well, the backbone of the society. The first coffee bar in Europe was, after Istanbul or Constantinople back then, was here in Sarajevo, only 150 years later in Vienna, and then it spread across Europe and the world. So this has a big cultural importance here, and as well historical. So each tour that we do, even if it’s a three-hour hike, we have a local lunch with the local farm-to-table food, and we enjoy it, and we don’t rush from one place to another. Unless obviously if somebody is waiting for us so that we can meet some other vendor, then we might rush, but otherwise we take our time to explain and to sit with the people, and we want that they feel like they are visiting friends, and that’s the goal.

Hidden Gems One and Two: Wilson’s Alley and Ambassadors Alley

Jason: For the list that you brought today, what was sort of the thought process behind the places or experiences that you chose? And then we’re going to dive right in.

Nermin: It’s just there’s a few super interesting cultural things here that people maybe don’t think about when they visit. And then we were thinking also about what we, or people from Sarajevo in general, like to do, or places they like to go, so that when somebody comes here, they just get a more local experience, because they are mingling with Bosnians in those places.

Jason: Great, okay, let’s dive in, what do you have for us first? I don’t know if you have these ranked as your number one, seven to one.

Nermin: No, just how they came to mind.

Jason: Okay, all right, great.

Nermin: And it’s a combo of nature and culture. Some viewpoints, because we are here surrounded by mountains in the valley, so viewpoints and sunset views are obviously important.

Jason: Perfect, all right, where do you want to start then?

Nermin: So the first one is Wilson’s Alley, so Wilson, like the US president during the First World War. So this is outside of the old town. Most of the people stay within the old town borders, don’t take the time to explore more. And Sarajevo is much more than other cities, and it’s constructed different than other cities. So the old town is actually the beginning of the city. So the more you go in direction west, the more you can see how the city has been developed, since it’s in a valley, and it started, it was founded at the beginning of the valley, so it could only stretch in one direction. So on this Wilson’s Alley, it is every day closed for traffic, for motor vehicles, after five p.m. and on weekends. So that part next to the river becomes very alive, it changes totally when there are no cars. As well, in summer, stretching the whole alley, there are cool bars, but as well, sometimes events, food, there’s a food market, there are concerts or day events, electronic music events or something like that. So it’s a nice place to check out. And as well, it goes next to it, or when you pass it, you will see the national museum, the historical museum, and soon the conceptual art museum. So it’s a place that most of the tourists don’t visit, but it’s very nice for at least for a stroll, even if there is no events at that moment. So I think that people are missing out only staying in the old town.

Jason: Yeah, that’s great. I mean, anything that gets you sort of out of the central area, like you said, a place to hit on the way, and then I love stumbling on those local events when you’re in the city, then you’re just like, you won the day if you stumble into that. So giving us the opportunity to kind of have that chance is always good.

Nermin: Always a good thing.

Jason: Yeah, I agree.

Nermin: So people are missing out, because the old town is very interesting, it has this Ottoman part, in some parts bigger than many, many cities in Turkey, I think. Because the city is so long-stretched, people also sometimes just don’t think there’s more. They’re like, ah, there’s the old town, okay, now I have seen everything. And then because they would have to walk along the river, they kind of forget that, ah, there’s more to see.

Jason: Yeah, go ahead, give us the second one.

Nermin: That’s also a walkway. People here just like walking in general, people like strolling around. So the second one is also, it’s called Ambassadors Alley, and you also leave the old town, and a lot of people don’t go there because it’s basically just like a walkway and the biking lane, but it goes along the river Miljacka. So it’s a really nice walk. And if you walk to the end of it, you get to the Goat’s Bridge, which is an old Ottoman bridge. They used to cross into Sarajevo, all those centuries ago, where the delegation would be waited for and then taken into the city, and you actually enter a canyon of this small river. It’s very rare that you have five minutes from the old town you enter, and it’s an old bridge, but it’s not as impressive as the one in Mostar, right? Everyone wants to go and see the bridge in Mostar, but you have an old Ottoman bridge right there, just outside Sarajevo, and people don’t know about it. So it’s a really cool spot to go to. And from there you can take the old train track with a bike, and go to the whole part of the Miljacka Canyon, which is also very unusual for a bigger city to have it five minutes from the old town.

A Viennese Coffeehouse and a Thousand Years of History

Nermin: So the third one would be the Viennese coffee place. It’s in Hotel Europe.

Katrin: Because it’s in Hotel Europe, many people, it’s in the hotel, so many people don’t visit it or don’t know it.

Nermin: Yeah, or think they cannot enter because it’s the hotel. Looks fancy, like Viennese coffee places look like, maybe that is also a thing that people don’t go inside. But it is preserved during the Hungarian times. It’s a big contrast to the Ottoman part. So being in the Ottoman part, drinking a traditional Bosnian coffee from a džezva, this copper pot that you have, and then you go to this Viennese coffee place, and it’s like a 180-degree change. And we were in Vienna just a year and a half ago, and it really looks exactly the same, like the cafes in Vienna, there is no difference.

Jason: But it sounds like, in this case, it’s not necessarily like they just wanted to create this experience, this is sort of a part of the cultural blend of the city, isn’t it?

Nermin: Yes, exactly.

Jason: Can you talk a little bit about that, so people can get a better understanding of why you mentioned the four religions living side by side? Now you’re talking about walking into a Viennese cafe versus an Ottoman bridge. How are all these things coming together in this one place?

Nermin: Let me try to give you a very quick overview, a thousand years of history in one minute.

Jason: All right, give us your elevator speech on a thousand years of history.

Nermin: Okay. It is an elevator speech, at the beginning I wanted to make it shorter, but now that you told it like that, I’ll give it. So a thousand years ago, there was a Bosnian king, first of all it was something like a duchy, and later on it became a kingdom. When the Bosnian kingdom was at its peak, on the west it was until almost Istria, the whole Dalmatia was under Bosnia, and then southern Serbia, northern Montenegro, in today’s borders. So this was when the Bosnian kingdom was at its peak. As well, a thousand years ago, the church split into the Eastern Byzantine Orthodox Church and the Western Roman Catholic Church. Where the church split, very often it’s referred to be Bosnia, the border, or even the river Bosna that is here, ten kilometers from where we are sitting, as well.

So that is where it split, and here a so-called Bosnian church started to emerge, since Bosnia is very mountainous and a lot of forests are here, so it’s been kind of neglected from both of the churches. So when Bosnia, the Bosnian kingdom, started to spread as well, the Bosnian church started to spread, it was also Christian, but more nature-connected church. And then when it started to spread, we are talking about the fourteenth and fifteenth century, years of Crusades in the churches. So they started to threaten with Crusades to the Bosnian church and to the Bosnian king, so that it should stop practicing. Mid-fifteenth century, the Ottomans come here, at that time the biggest world power, they beat the last Bosnian king, and they founded the city of Sarajevo, so they founded it in a valley, next to a river, within a fertile land. And a lot of those that were part of the Bosnian church, that was weakened because of the Crusades and everything, throughout the time converted to Islam. So for that time, the Ottomans were quite progressive, so you could keep your religion, but since the Bosnian church was very weakened until then, a lot of them converted, and that’s why you have Muslims here, and not in Croatia or Serbia, for example, they have been on the whole Balkan Peninsula, but that’s why you have them here.

And the Ottomans stayed here for around four hundred years. In 1878, at the Berlin Congress, the Austro-Hungarians received the management of Bosnia from the Ottomans, and then later on they annexed it. They stayed here for forty years, until the end of the First World War, which also started here in Sarajevo, it was ignited here with the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. Then during the Second World War, the Partisans fight a so-called guerrilla warfare against the Nazis, and the leader of those Partisans, his name was Josip Broz Tito, they found here in Bosnia, in the city of Jajce, where the last king was beheaded, the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia, consisted of six republics, all of them today independent countries, so Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, and Macedonia, today North Macedonia. Tito was a lifelong leader, a dictator light version, I would call him, some of them loved him, still love him, some of them don’t. He was ruling Yugoslavia until his death in 1980.

Just a couple of years later, the blessings of our mountains around us, we were the first winter Olympic country, first Communist country that held the Winter Olympics. And then, just a couple of years after that, the curse of our mountains, we were the longest besieged city in modern history, so from April ’92 till the end of ’95, when the peace agreement was signed, there was war in Bosnia, but only in March ’96, when the last neighborhood, Grbavica, was reintegrated into the city, was the end of the war here in Sarajevo. And then we have the post-war time. So a lot has happened here, a lot of influences, from our own church and kingdom, to something totally different from East and totally different from West, and a Communist country with totally different borders, war, and this, and this all translated into the architecture, the food, the people. The people are here very great hosts, they love to be hosts, and all of these influences from Ottomans and Austrians and everything, you will see on every step you make, kind of, and every food you eat.

Jason: Yeah, okay, yeah, thanks. That’s a comprehensive breakdown, and I think we’re getting off the elevator now.

Nermin: You did it, that’s incredible.

Jason: Well, I mean, and to your point, you know, this is all infused with the experiences and the vibe and the things that you’re going to come across there, so I just thought it’s helpful to kind of understand a bit about where a country came from and where it is today, and some of those influences that are surrounding you. I think it connects you deeper to the place while you’re there, so a bit of history is important. Okay, we’re going to leave the cafe at Hotel Europe and go on to number four.

Hidden Gems Four and Five: The Trebević Observatory and the Hotel Hecco Rooftop

Katrin: Yeah, that’s another Austrian spot, basically. A lot of people go up the Olympic mountain, Trebević, to see the abandoned bobsleigh. Nermin said the Winter Olympic Games were here, and there’s a really cool lost place here up on Trebević. You can go by cable car, it’s super easy, and you can walk along the bob track for a kilometer and a bit, kilometer and a half, which is really nice, and most people do that, so that’s not the secret. But once you reach the end of it, most people just head back to the cable car and go back down. But there’s actually an old Austrian observatory that you can visit, it’s a little bit hidden in the mountains, and you have a great view of the city. And we actually just learned this weekend that it’s now being renovated, so for now it’s another lost place, it’s in ruins, but they will renovate it. So you have that cupola thing, again, to look at the stars, I don’t know how you say that in English, and there will be a cafe. But yeah, it’s a hidden place that most people don’t go to, but if they are already on the mountain, they shouldn’t miss it.

Jason: All right, I love that, it sounds like, yeah, it’s some place that people are going to probably check out anyway, so just go a little further, basically, to find this. Okay, great.

Nermin: As well, a lot of people just go with the cable car to just a smaller stop, and then they go back, they don’t even see the whole bobsleigh, even though the graffiti is getting better and better the more you go down the hill.

Katrin: So the next one would be also, again, a view. It would be the Hotel Hecco rooftop. So you get, it’s in the old town, the Austro-Hungarian part, next to the eternal flame. You go on the ninth floor, and there is a cafe, coffee and sweets bar, where you get a 360-degree view of the city, towards the old town, towards the Olympic mountain, but in all the directions, like I said, the terrace is all around the hotel. It’s really nice, so you can really just walk around the entire building and see every angle of the city.

Jason: What’s the name of the hotel again?

Nermin: Hecco, but with a double C, H-E-C-C-O.

Katrin: Should we just send the list of all those Bosnian names?

Jason: Yeah, yeah, awesome. So I mean, I love that coffee is a big part of the culture there, I’m a big coffee drinker, so go up there, have a coffee, walk around the terrace, get a view of the city, could be a great way to start the whole trip, or maybe even end it after you’ve been around.

Katrin: With a nice sunset.

Jason: With a sunset, yeah, pair it with a sunset. Done. What do you have next?

Hidden Gems Six and Seven: The Sarajevo Haggadah and Bakery Imaret

Katrin: The next is a cultural one, because a lot of people, of course, want to visit some museums, learn more about the history, and the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of those a lot of people go to. But many people don’t know that they have a very valuable artifact in the National Museum, it’s a Jewish Haggadah that actually moved from Spain all the way to Bosnia, during those times of the Crusades that Nermin talked about. A lot of Jewish people from Spain and Portugal moved here to Sarajevo, and they brought this book with them. And it’s here in the National Museum, and you can see it every Tuesday and Thursday. Of course it’s very old, very valuable, so you cannot go there every day and see it, you can request a private visit, but that’s costly. But if you just go to the museum on Tuesday or Thursday, between twelve and one o’clock, the room is open and you can see the book, and it’s really special. We did the tour, we saw the book, and it’s worth having a look at it.

Jason: Yeah, okay, amazing, small windows of time to see it.

Katrin: Yeah, since it’s the best preserved Haggadah in the world.

Nermin: So they flip the pages every day, here and there, and then it is in a glass.

Katrin: Yeah, they need to air it out or something, I don’t even know.

Nermin: Yeah, yeah. So, and then, having a private tour, then you can learn a lot about it, what makes it so special, but as well to have a look at it, and then in between, in this time, somebody is there to explain a little bit more. Yeah, but just one hour, between twelve and one. And otherwise, I mean, you need a group to pay, but this is also not too expensive, I really have to say, for this kind of explanation.

Nermin: And the last one would be a bakery, it’s called Bakery Imaret. Like I said, we will send it to you, but it’s the oldest bakery probably in the country, but for sure it’s in Sarajevo. It has been built since the city of Sarajevo has been founded, there has been some neighborhood before, but at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the biggest constructor of Sarajevo, Gazi Husrev-beg, started to build a whole complex of a mosque, and a school, and a library, and a monastery. And as well, he built the first public toilet, but also the bakery there, for the workers, but also for those in need, so that they could have food. So the first public toilet was the first public toilet in Europe back then. So, like I said, at that time the Ottomans were, you know, at the peak of civilization, so they brought the water pipe system and all the things that we take today for granted. And as well, this bakery still exists. So it’s a five hundred year old bakery, it’s a hidden gem, you need to know through a passage where to get through. And yeah, five hundred year old bakery, used to be for those in need, now you can go there and buy some great food to go.

Jason: That sounds amazing. All right, when I come to visit, I want to go to all these places with you guys.

Katrin: Sure.

Nermin: Yes, it’ll be our guest.

Where to Find .Cheyf

Jason: Well, speaking of which, you should, I mean, I’m going to ask you a couple more questions about the country as a whole, I want to talk about some of the maybe the nature spots and some day trips and things, but really quickly here, if you want to just share a little bit about where everybody can find your stuff, and what you guys do, and how to get in touch, basically.

Nermin: From the beginning we tried to build a big online presence, so that people find us before they actually come here, because, like you said earlier, Bosnia is not on the radar for a lot of people yet, so they have a lot of questions before they come. So you can find us on our website, of course, or on Instagram, and we just started with YouTube this year, and we hope that we will bring a lot of interesting content to YouTube, introduce the city better and the country, introduce some people also that have really cool projects here, or that started their own business, just to mix culture and sightseeing a little bit more, so that people can see what to expect.

Jason: Yeah, okay, great. Yeah, so, and I’ve noticed on the socials, yeah, you’re just really showing people around, giving them a taste of what they could see. We’ll link up to that, and I know you guys run the tours and everything, so people can find everything there.

Day Trips and Nature Around Sarajevo

Jason: You know, we focused on Sarajevo for this list, but I wanted to hear a little bit more about perhaps, you know, it sounds like there’s, like where I live in Norway, there’s a lot of nature within reach, which is always a nice thing. I think those are some of my favorite cities, when you also have the option to get out of the city, do some nature-based stuff, or day trips, whatever. I just wanted you to highlight a couple of things in and around that might be worth, even if it’s a bit further and you can go somewhere, spend a couple of days, or even just a day trip, whether it’s nature-based or something else. What are a couple of the experiences that you guys treasure as locals that you might recommend to travelers, where they’re going to get the authentic type of experiences that you give them in the city?

Nermin: I haven’t been to Norway, but I would say it’s probably very similar to Norway, but without the fjords, but with better weather.

Katrin: Definitely better weather.

Nermin: But it’s very close to, so look, an hour from here is the second deepest canyon in Europe, and two hours is the deepest canyon in Europe, here in Bosnia, that one is between Bosnia and Montenegro. One hour from here you can do white water rafting. We are surrounded by Olympic mountains. And all of this that I’m mentioning right now is already something that has been recognized by National Geographic, was it for 2025, or this year, that it’s been recommended as a city you should visit, for that year, because of this proximity to an incredible nature, but still you have everything that a city can offer, it’s still the capital city, a lot of cultural events, a lot of food events and so on. So it’s quite a lot to do.

Katrin: Yeah, I think what we like doing on the weekend, if we are not working, because we are working on the weekends a lot, but the mountains are just so close, and I think that’s really a luxury. Now you live in Norway, you probably feel the same, like of course I can go hiking in my lunch break. But that’s something that we really appreciate, and there are just so many restaurants on the mountains. You have hikes in all different kinds of, you know, different difficulties. So sometimes we just do like a half an hour, forty minute hike, and then we have a really nice lunch at a restaurant, and other times you do a proper hike. I mean, there’s Lukomir, it’s one of the highest villages in the country, the highest village in the country actually, at 1,500 meters, and there’s a really nice hike taking you there, it’s on another of the Olympic mountains. But there are other hikes in that area that we really like, to other peaks that are maybe not so crowded, not so popular, Visočica is one of them. We can write all of this down because they are hard to pronounce. But yeah, so basically you just hop in the car, and you drive forty-five, fifty minutes, an hour, and you have like five, six different trails to choose from, and I think that’s a real luxury.

Nermin: What a real luxury is also, what we discovered, like me again, since I wasn’t living here, so taking the cable car up to the mountain Trebević, that is in the city, and from there you can hike up to the top of the mountain, it takes, depending on your fitness level, let’s say like an hour and a half, and going back to the city and to your work then in one hour again. And that is something that we’ve done last year quite often, when we want to just go quickly into nature but not drive anywhere or something. So you’re like in ten minutes up there with the cable car.

Katrin: Since you were asking about day trips, what we do not recommend people is to just take a day trip from Sarajevo to Mostar, because I know a lot of people want to do that, and it’s very beautiful, take the train in the morning and then take the afternoon train back. And Mostar is a small city, so it’s doable in a day, but we don’t recommend it, because it’s really magical in the evening and in the early morning, like Mostar as a city, and there’s also a lot of things to explore around, so like don’t just go with the train for a day and come back, stay longer if you can. It’s also our wine lands, so like a lot of wineries that you can visit there, and a lot of waterfalls, so like don’t stay just for a day.

Jason: I love the wine, it’s always nice when you can spend a night in those day-trippy type places, I find that, yeah, when everybody leaves, then you get those experiences, and hiking, when you can go out and sweat a bit and get some awesome views, and then earn a delicious lunch, a drink, whatever, that’s always a nice thing.

Must-Try Local Food

Jason: The food, speaking of which, what would you guys say are the things that are must-tries when people are visiting? You’re like, all right, yeah, there’s all this different food, but you can’t leave without trying this traditional dish or whatever.

Nermin: So there are two of them that everybody knows who knows a little bit about the Balkans. One would be ćevapčići, so it’s like little minced meat sausages. So that comes from the word kebab, became ćevap, and then ćevapčić, to make it a small kebab, with a flatbread. So here it’s a lot of, you would see a lot of maybe familiar food that looks exotic, but then it’s quite European. It goes into a flatbread, and you eat it with onions, raw onions, but they are soaked in water, so they are actually not super spicy, because a lot of people are like, what, raw onions, no, but they’re actually really tasty. And then it goes with kajmak, which is kind of like a sour cream, because otherwise it would be a bit, you know.

Katrin: Right, right, to just have the minced meat and the bread.

Nermin: Yeah, no, it’s not really a sour cream, you have to try it, it’s delicious, it’s very fatty, creamy, buttery spread.

Jason: Yeah, you had me at buttery.

Getting Around Bosnia

Jason: What do you recommend to travelers who, okay, they’re in the city and maybe they want to get out and explore some of these places you’re talking about, and you can mention the cable car and things like that, but if they want to go to other places, do you recommend the public transportation, or do you recommend them renting a car? Is it pretty affordable to rent a car? What’s your advice there, and other general advice for travelling around the country, if you have any?

Katrin: It depends on how much time they have. If they have five days, it’s maybe better to stay in Sarajevo and base yourself here, and do day trips, maybe even do guided day trips, so you don’t have to worry about renting a car. But if you have more time, we definitely recommend renting a car, so that you can explore the country, so that you can stop along the way if you discover some new viewpoints, there are nice restaurants. But if someone doesn’t feel comfortable driving, it’s completely fine to take the bus, the bus system here is good, all the cities in the country are connected. So if somebody doesn’t want to drive, but in general if you’re just staying in Sarajevo, you don’t need a car.

Nermin: Yes, we have very narrow streets, it’s very steep here as well, being in a valley, so a lot of people that are not used to driving this kind of streets will get nervous.

Jason: Especially, yeah.

Nermin: Yeah, so we have public transportation, you know, you can take the tram, you can, I mean, from the airport as well. I think what’s just good to know for people, when they want to drive in Bosnia, is especially for someone from the US or other countries, it takes a long time to get from A to B, so really the road is the destination, because they are very windy, you know, you have a lot of little villages that you cross through, we don’t have a lot of highways, which is in the end nice, right, because when you’re on vacation, you want to see something of the country. The drives are very, very beautiful, wherever you go. It’s not flat land, it’s like all the time some views, so it’s not a highway.

Jason: So you will need a little bit more time, but the drive is one of the most beautiful, wherever you go, it’s going to be really pretty.

Final Travel Tips and Bosnian Hospitality

Jason: Okay, a couple more things before we go, I just want to, did we miss any major travel tips, like things that you think are worth mentioning to anybody listening who wants to come visit, are coming to visit, any sort of last ideas that you think are important to highlight?

Katrin: People need to drink the coffee, even if they don’t like coffee, they need to try the Bosnian coffee.

Nermin: I would say, come for a minimum of seven days, and then you will figure out that you need to stay even longer. It’s so, like Switzerland is not big, but it’s bigger than Switzerland, it has three times less people. Nature is beautiful, food is beautiful, and since people don’t know a lot about it, it’s not so crowded. So obviously in summer, Sarajevo and Mostar will be crowded, the other cities, nothing similar like else in Europe. I would say now is just the right time to go.

Jason: Okay, because people start discovering it.

Nermin: Yeah.

Jason: Well, there’s always a sense of urgency around that, I always encourage people to revisit their, whether they call it a bucket list or the places they want to go, whatever, prioritizing them sometimes by how popular they are can be an important way to kind of look at it, because some places you do want to get to before it’s exploding in some ways.

Nermin: And people here are very excited still about tourists, and they are curious, that’s a nice thing. If you visit, people will want to talk to you and ask you how you like it, maybe invite you for a drink. They’re not shooting the tourists with water guns yet.

Jason: No.

Nermin: They’re inviting you into their home very often.

Jason: Well, that’s an important thing to highlight, that’s why I kind of brought this up, because I feel like, yeah, there’s some other things we haven’t quite discussed, and that’s a, yeah, that’s a huge thing, being able to connect easily with the locals, or the fact that they’re still receptive to having conversations with tourists. I think it says a lot about where it is in terms of tourism.

Nermin: I think so, yeah. They also do not accept no when they invite you, like you have to go, that’s it.

Katrin: And you will have to eat, you will have to eat, and if you say you’re full, it doesn’t count.

Nermin: Being a host here is something very important, it’s uploaded into our consciousness from day one of being born. I know when I lived somewhere else, I realized how it is engraved into each atom of my body, I think it’s every Bosnian. We have sometimes guests telling us how does it pay out for them, they gave them the, like some tip, and then he gave them wine, and they like, no, no, no, then they gave him something else, and then he, they started to fight who’s giving.

Katrin: I think this is a good example of Bosnian hospitality, we have friends, they travelled with the camper van, and they stayed at a camping spot, and it was ten euros per night, and the host brought them a huge bowl of fruit, and gave them free breakfast, and then he also gifted them a bottle of wine, which costs like twelve euros in the store, so he spent more money on them than they actually paid.

Jason: Oh, that’s sweet though, the fact that that doesn’t happen every time, not that people come here and, like, where’s my line.

Nermin: Yeah, but the fact that that hospitality, when it’s baked into a culture, that is a beautiful thing, it’s a beautiful thing to experience and soak in as a traveller, you feel welcomed.

Jason: That’s a good thing.

Business Lessons From Running .Cheyf Together

Jason: Business lessons, you guys have been doing this for a little while now, what are your sort of one or two biggest lessons you’ve learned running this business together?

Nermin: You always want to do more than you can, ain’t that the truth. There are so many ideas, and so many different things, and everything takes so much time, you know, like I’m just going to make this quick, and then five days later you’re still sitting on the same thing. But I think we also learned that when you want to make something work, you can. Like when we started the business, a lot of people told us, ah, you will not succeed if you don’t offer a war tour, that’s what people want, they want to learn about the siege, they want to learn about the Bosnian War. And we said, no, we don’t want to, we want them to learn about food and the culture and the music. And it worked, in the end it worked out, it was the longer way, so we don’t ignore that period of our history, it’s just like, I don’t think that should be the focus. Croatia had as well four years of war, and nobody’s talking about that, obviously people should educate themselves, history is repeating itself, but it’s not everything that this country has to offer, and this is what we want to change, and this is going quite well now, so other people are doing that as well.

Jason: Yeah, there’s a sort of, you have to feel connected in that way too, if that’s something you don’t want personally, and you’re not going to have fun with it, then that would obviously, just doing it just for the opportunity, sometimes that’s not always the best way to, people can kind of pick up on that, right? Rather just be your authentic selves and share the things that are close to your heart. And it sounds like that’s exactly what you guys are doing. So people can go check it out, you can follow all the socials if you want to get visuals and learn more about the country, and we’ll link up to the website, of course, .Cheyf, which is C-H-E-Y-F dot B-A, and it seems like you guys are doing a great job out there. So I want to say thank you for coming on the show and giving us a little hint of what there is to see and do, and I think coming out of this one, maybe this is another addition to the bucket list, a new addition to the bucket lists out there.

Nermin: Thank you for having us, for your bucket list, I hope as well, and mine too, absolutely.

Jason: So see you soon, thank you so much, there is now a direct slide from Norway.

Nermin: All right, we keep track of those things.

Katrin: Thank you, thank you, thank you for having us.

Nermin: Thank you.

Closing

Jason: There you have it, thank you to Nermin and Katrin Numic. Again, their website, .Cheyf, it’s C-H-E-Y-F dot B-A, if you want to learn more about some of the tours and experiences they offer, with that focus on the in-between places, which I love. Now, fun fact on Bosnia and Herzegovina, it’s a country that apparently, according to the internet, has more waterfalls than Italy, Germany, and France combined. So if you’re a waterfall junkie, I mean, who doesn’t love a good waterfall, you have 202 waterfalls to pick from in this area, so I’m sure you’ll find something you’d like. And we’re going to parlay that into the quote I’m going to leave you with, which is waterfall related, from one of my faves, a guy that I grew up watching, I’ll leave you with that in a moment.

First, just a quick reminder, we have a newsletter, zerototravel.com/newsletter, sign up if you haven’t done so yet. And we’re a part of the Airwave Media Podcast Network now, if you want to check out some other great podcasts, go to airwavemedia.com to check that out.

Okay, this quote from Bob Ross, if you don’t know who he is, you can look him up, he was this painter on PBS, the public access station in the United States, and he always had this calm, sort of mystical, I don’t know, I can’t explain Bob Ross, you know him if you know him. And I have some Bob Ross magnets here in my office, I always loved watching the dude, he just gave me a sense of calm. Anyway, here is a quote from him, he said, “Just let go and fall like a little waterfall.” I love that. Thanks for listening, I’ll see you next time, peace and love to you and yours, cheers.

This podcast has been brought to you by ZeroToTravel.com. Ideas and advice to make your travel dreams a reality.

Welcome to the Show

Jason: Hey, Jason here with ZeroToTravel.com. Thanks for letting me bring a little travel into your ears today, and for being a part of this listening community. If you’ve never been in touch before, feel free to reach out. It’s Jason at ZeroToTravel.com, my email. Get in touch anytime. I love to hear stories and share stories from the listening community. I want to give a quick shout-out, by the way, to Ann, who came through Oslo. She sent me some pictures. We weren’t able to meet up, unfortunately, but it sounds like she had a great time here, and it’s always a joy to hear from people who listen to this show. I want to make this a two-way conversation. As we come out of the summer and enter into the fall and winter, I want to share more community stories here, so please get in touch and share yours, because it inspires other listeners in this community, and it inspires me as well. I just love sharing stories like that.

Jason: Speaking of incredible stories, we have Oscar Scafidi here today. We’ll link up to his YouTube channel, and Kayak the Mangoky is the website for the adventure you’re going to hear about today: the kayaking trip, the first-ever source-to-sea kayaking expedition along Madagascar’s longest river, the Mangoky. It’s a wonderful story. Enjoy it. Stick around at the back end, I’ll leave you with a quote to wrap this one up. Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you on the other side, my friend.

Meet Oscar Scafidi and the Meaning Behind “Ozymandias”

Jason: Oscar Scafidi, welcome to the Zero to Travel podcast, my friend. Good to see you.

Oscar: Thank you very much for inviting me, Jason. Congrats on all of the things.

Jason: I couldn’t help but notice, we were trading emails, and then you had a moniker in the email. I’m not even sure how that works with Google: Ozymandias.

Oscar: Yes, that’s correct.

Jason: What does that mean for you? Because that’s a couple of things. That’s a character in Watchmen, which is an incredible graphic novel if you haven’t read it. It’s also a poem. Do you have a connection with Ozymandias? I’m just curious.

Oscar: Yeah, I think the original connection is the poem. Growing up, my mother always used to read that to us. I’m not sure what her interest was in it originally, but I’ve just kind of been interested in that ever since. That’s been my online moniker for the past 30 years or so.

Jason: I read the poem, because I was thinking that’s what it was, and I can link up to the Wikipedia page so people can read about it. But what is it, outside of having the connection with your mother reading it to you, what is the deeper connection you have there? Or am I overthinking it?

Oscar: Yeah, I haven’t really thought about that much recently, to be honest. It is a poem about travel, which is something that’s very dear to me. I suppose it’s also a poem about staying grounded and avoiding arrogance, which I guess is always a useful reminder to have in your life. And also, the guy who wrote it, Percy Bysshe Shelley, is also a very interesting historical character, and I am a historian by training. So it’s got three different angles that interest me.

Staying Grounded in Expedition Writing and Filmmaking

Jason: Interesting. Well, I do want to talk about your transition, not a full transition, because you’re still educating in many ways, but your move from educator to travel writer and expeditionist. But you hit on this grounding aspect of the poem, that idea of staying grounded, and how that can and cannot match up with the expedition adventure travel world. There’s a certain level of hubris you have to have to say, “All right, I’m going to go do this.” Like a guy recently who swam and cycled and ran to Mount Everest and climbed it. There’s a certain level of confidence, and maybe necessary ego, that you have to have in order to pull off some of these bigger expeditions. We could talk about some of the ones you’ve done, and we’re going to talk about your source-to-sea kayak along Madagascar’s longest river today. How does that grounding, and that philosophy, fit into your framework for the world, your mindset, whether you’re writing a guidebook or approaching these bigger adventures, which do require you to put yourself out there in a certain way?

Oscar: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I think it’s a bit of a balancing act, to be honest, and in my writing I have sometimes struggled to get the balance right. I think there’s a whole sub-genre of travel writing, especially when it comes to expedition travel writing, that’s very much on the hyping-it-up side, talking up the danger, either directly or indirectly bigging yourself up and saying how amazing you must be to have been able to do this extremely dangerous thing. That’s something I work quite hard to avoid in my writing and my filmmaking. But at the same time, I do get pushback from my editor sometimes, who says, “Look, could you please be a little bit more explicit about how difficult this was, or how dangerous this was?” Because at the moment it’s not particularly obvious. That’s something I found I had to make quite a lot of edits to the Kayak the Mangoky book for, just to clarify the level of difficulty of what we were doing, because in the first draft I’d kind of touched upon it but hadn’t been too explicit. So yeah, I think it’s a balancing act, definitely.

Oscar: But the whole staying-grounded thing, when it comes to writing, is that I always have to be aware, when I’m writing guidebooks to countries, that I’m an outsider. I’m coming into a place that is a home for many people, but it’s not my home, and I’m trying to talk about it authoritatively, having been there a lot less time than many of the people who are going to end up reading the finished product. So I always think of my guidebooks as quite a collaborative process, because I try to get as many other voices in as possible, especially when I’m talking about stuff I don’t really know about. I’m particularly interested in certain aspects of the tourism offerings of countries, like the archaeological sites, the outdoor activities, those kinds of things. I’m less of an expert when it comes to the food scene or the art scene, so I always try to get local voices in, because I recognize they’re probably going to say something much more useful and insightful than me.

Jason: Yeah, that’s a great approach. You’re essentially, as a writer, filmmaker, or adventurer, you’re curating, right? On a high level, your job is to curate. If you’re able to identify your quote-unquote weaknesses, like, “I’m not going to be as good in the food and art scene, okay, let me pull some people in whose opinions I trust,” that’s a great approach.

The Hippo Attack and Balancing Danger in Storytelling

Jason: It’s interesting to hear. So in the book, for example, because I know you had the encounter with the hippopotamus.

Oscar: Yes, that’s true.

Jason: That would be an example of you underplaying it, like, “Yeah, this hippo attacked us, but we got around it.” When actually you have to lead into the fact that this is a very dangerous animal that can kill you, something like that.

Oscar: Yeah, absolutely. I also find that this is where we get into an issue with storytelling between filming and writing, because I often find that some of the most exciting elements of these expeditions, by their very nature, end up not getting filmed. For example, the hippo attack: I was not waving a GoPro at the hippo while it was trying to get us. “Hold on hippo, you’ve got to get this shot, man.” I was kind of busy trying to get out of the way. That was our Angola expedition. In our more recent Madagascar expedition, I wasn’t waving a GoPro around during some of the most difficult times, when we were both getting super sick, because we really weren’t in the mood to be in front of a camera. So you end up with very different material for the film than you do for the book. It’s another balancing act, deciding whether you’re going to try to tell the same story in two different ways, or end up telling a slightly different story.

Balancing Teaching and Travel Writing

Jason: Right, that makes sense. Staying on that for another moment, from a meta perspective, there’s this blueprint of building a career as an adventurer. You go and do some crazy thing, then write a book about it, then do talks about it, and it becomes a career. That is a part of the deal, but you’re also trying to balance all these other things. Is this your full-time job, to go on adventures and do travel writing, or are you also doing risk consulting in Africa? Where are you at with the balance of Oscar’s career right now?

Oscar: I would say my two main jobs are, I’m an international school teacher, so I’m a historian, and I teach within the International Baccalaureate system, and I’m also a travel writer. Those are the two things I focus on. Which one of those is my full-time job is an interesting question, it kind of varies. Right now, I’d say my full-time job is teaching, and I spend some of my free time doing travel writing. But at times when I haven’t been on a full-time contract at a school, I’d say my full-time job, and most of my income, comes from travel writing and everything associated with that world, and I’m not doing so much of the teaching and education side of things. So it varies from year to year, basically.

Jason: Is the ultimate goal to go with one fully, or the other, or do you have an equal passion for both in different ways? I’m just thinking from a lifestyle design perspective, that’s a big topic on this show. A lot of people are crafting a lifestyle or a business around their love of travel, and it looks different for everybody. I’m wondering, in the coming years, how are you thinking about that, or are you thinking about it?

Oscar: Yeah, I think about it quite carefully. Luckily, I love both. I love travel, and both of the career paths I’ve chosen give me extensive opportunities to travel. I think I do both because I’m passionate about both. I think doing both certainly has its drawbacks, but I’ve had periods of three-plus years at a time doing just travel writing, and then I’ve missed the teaching. So I’ve tried to design things and find a way of having that balance, where I can do both, essentially.

Jason: Some of those guidebooks, it doesn’t look like a thing you can necessarily just whip out on the side of full-time teaching.

Oscar: Well, again, I’ve done both. I have whipped it out on the side while doing a full-time teaching job.

Jason: That must be intense.

Oscar: It is intense, and it’s not ideal, to be honest. My last guidebook, to Tunisia, was published, I think it was summer 2023, and that was the result of three years of full-time work while in Tunisia, exclusively doing that. I wasn’t teaching at that time, and I’m very glad I wasn’t, because prior to that, I did a guidebook to Angola while also teaching, and it’s two full-time jobs stacked on top of each other, essentially, which is not ideal.

Teaching in Ethiopia and a Passion for African History

Jason: What do you love about teaching, and what are you doing in Ethiopia, and how long have you been living there?

Oscar: I’m teaching at an international school here in Ethiopia. I moved over here in August with my partner, for the beginning of the academic year. I teach humanities, like I always do, in the secondary school. What do I love about it? I love interacting with children and young adults. I think they’re fascinating, they haven’t made their minds up yet, you can see them grow and develop as you’re working with them, and you get sort of immediate feedback on what it is that you’re doing. I also like that I get to teach humanities, because it links beautifully to my other passions, especially working in Africa. I get to talk a lot about the stuff I’m interested in, because it happens to be directly relevant to the curriculum we’re working on.

Jason: What are those things you talk about a lot that you’re passionate about?

Oscar: I’m passionate about Africa broadly. I’d say the history of Africa, all the way from pre-colonial times through colonialism, looking at decolonization. I talk a lot about the Cold War, these were focuses for my master’s studies, and they’re also focuses for a lot of the curriculum I teach. I’m also interested in development, the way Africa is changing, or is going to change, now and in the near future, and who’s going to play a role in that. I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding around what Africa is like, the diversity in Africa. I always laugh when we say “Africa,” people say Africa is a country. There’s actually a whole excellent website called Africa Is a Country, designed to break down that stereotype. So getting to work on this continent with people from all over the place is fascinating.

Jason: Can you think of where that interest in Africa and that passion came from? Was there anything growing up you remember that drew you to it, or did it just evolve over time? Because you’ve spent quite a lot of your career and travel time in Africa.

Oscar: I think at this stage it’s accurate to say I’ve spent the majority of my adult life in Africa. I moved to Africa in 2006, and since then I’ve spent most of that time in various countries on this continent.

From Job Rejections in London to Teaching in Sudan

Oscar: The original genesis of that was very random, a complete accident, in fact. I graduated from university in 2005 and struggled to find a job. Originally, I don’t know where I got this idea from, but I wanted to work in marketing and advertising, and I wanted to work in London, which looking back is a bit bizarre. I applied for lots of different jobs at fancy advertising agencies and just got rejection after rejection after rejection, which I found kind of surprising, because I’d gone to quite a prestigious university, and I was like, “Why won’t these people give me a job? I don’t understand.” But I think it ended up being one of the best things to happen to me, because very randomly, after a year of rejections, a teaching English job came up in Sudan on the university alumni notice board. I mentioned it in passing to my mom, who’s herself a teacher, almost as a joke, “Oh well, if things don’t work out, maybe I’ll just move to Sudan.” Obviously, at that time, back in 2006, Sudan was having a fair amount of instability, as it sadly still is today. But she encouraged me to go for it, said I wasn’t really achieving anything particularly useful in the UK, so why not take the leap and see how things went? That was actually the first time I’d set foot outside Europe. I was in my early twenties, and I’d only ever, and not just Europe, I’d narrow that down even more, I’d say Western Europe. So I went from having seen nothing but Western Europe to moving to Sudan.

Jason: Pretty incredible experience.

Oscar: Yeah.

The First Weeks in Khartoum

Jason: What was that first week like?

Oscar: It was a bit of a culture shock, as you can imagine. I was thrown in at the deep end, in more ways than one, in the sense of being in a completely new country and culture, and also in a relatively new role, in a new school. So it was pretty hard work. Luckily, I got dropped in at the deep end with two other guys who seemed to have very similar backstories to me, and are now very good friends of mine, called Nick and Frankie. So we kind of made it work together. Our salary was very low, so we weren’t really part of the very limited expat scene that existed in Khartoum at the time. I remember we used to joke that there was the tier-one international school, which was where the actual ambitious and well-qualified teachers ended up, and they got very well paid. Then there was the school below that, which was still a relatively good school, but it wasn’t where we worked. And then there was a whole series of other schools that paid more local salaries. So we weren’t able to afford to fly out of the country for holidays or do anything fancy. We had a much more, I suppose, Sudanese lifestyle: smoking shisha, drinking tea, going to local football matches, traveling domestically, that kind of thing. I think that was fantastic.

Jason: Was that the gateway to opening up your curiosity about Africa as a whole, and all of the countries and the diversity that come with that?

Oscar: Yeah, I think so. I think after a few months there, I realized this was the part of the world I wanted to be in. I realized I wanted to continue in this career path too, in terms of teaching, because firstly, I was very passionate about it, and secondly, it also gives you fantastic opportunities to travel around.

Finding Angola Through a Book

Oscar: I randomly selected my second African country to move to within a few weeks of getting to Sudan. My friend Nick, who’s a Pole, was reading a book by Ryszard Kapuściński called Another Day of Life. He’s a famous Polish conflict journalist who happened to be in Angola in 1974, just as Portuguese colonial rule was coming to an end. All the Portuguese were fleeing, there was a civil war going on at the time, and he was basically the only foreign journalist in the entire country. He wrote a very short book about his experiences there during those few weeks. I remember reading it and thinking, “That sounds amazing, I need to go to Angola.” That was the plan I came up with in 2006, and that’s exactly what I did in 2009. I moved out to Angola.

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Jason: I wanted to get some of your travel recommendations in Africa, you’ve been around to many places. We can get some of those hidden gems for independent travelers, some of your favorite spots. We can earmark that, because we’re going to talk about your adventure a bit, but be warned, I’m going to come back to that, so start gathering your recommendations.

Oscar: I’ve got plenty of recommendations, don’t worry.

Africa’s Rapid Development

Jason: I wanted to ask you about the development and future of Africa, which you brought up, and something you’ve had a keen interest in, studying academically and teaching. What are your thoughts on that?

Oscar: I think your average person in the West would be extremely surprised at how developed large parts of Africa already are. I think a lot of the stereotypes we associate with certain parts of the continent don’t really apply anymore. I’m here in Addis, the capital of Ethiopia. I’ve actually traveled around Ethiopia quite a lot in the past, but my last time here was in 2014, and now, ten years later, even I’ve been amazed by the pace of development here. The cosmopolitan nature of the city, the roads, the streets, the cycle paths, the electric cars zipping all over the place, I’ve been very impressed, and that’s from someone who has a fair amount of experience around here.

Oscar: I think the level of technology on offer is also quite impressive. In a lot of African countries, they’ve completely embraced the fintech revolution, smartphones. In some ways they’ve bypassed some of the inefficiencies of traditional banking and gone straight for mobile banking. I lived in Mozambique, and it was much easier and simpler for me to pay for things digitally in Mozambique than it was back in the UK or Italy.

Jason: Really?

Oscar: Where I’m from. Across Mozambique, everyone just has M-Pesa. As long as you’ve got a phone number, you have a way of transferring money to each other. It doesn’t even need to be a smartphone, you just text each other, and the exchange has happened. That’s the same across a lot of this part of Africa, so I’m always very impressed by that.

Family Roots and an Adventurous Mother

Jason: Which part of the UK did you grow up in?

Oscar: I was born in Rome, in Italy, my mom’s British, my dad’s Italian, but we moved to the UK when I was quite young. I spent most of my time and studies down in the southeast of England, kind of in between Brighton and Gatwick, that’s probably the best reference point.

Jason: Kudos to your mom, by the way, encouraging you, sometimes it just takes that one person to say, “Oh yeah, you should go for that.”

Oscar: The older I’ve gotten, and the more curious and the more questions I’ve asked, the more I’ve realized that we’re actually quite similar, and she also had quite an adventurous spirit, but she never told me many of these things growing up as a child, so I didn’t realize this. When I think, after university or during university, she tried to hitchhike from Algiers all the way through the Sahara to Nigeria with her friends, which is kind of amazing, this was in the 1970s I think, and I think she managed to get most of the way there, which is very impressive, and certainly not something you could do these days.

Jason: Wow, I guess it’s in your blood, in some ways.

Choosing Madagascar and Learning to Kayak

Jason: The connection to Madagascar, we’re going to talk about your kayaking journey. You have a whole smorgasbord of potential adventures to choose from when you take on something like this, and you know it’s going to be a lot of work from the logistics to the preparation, the documentation, all the things involved. What drew you to the kayaking adventure? Maybe you could give us an outline of the trip, so people can get context, and you can tell us what drew you to that.

Oscar: Yeah, sure. So Madagascar, the reason I chose Madagascar is because that’s a country I used to live and work in. I lived and worked there from 2017 to 2019, teaching in an international school, and I think that gives you a huge advantage when it comes to planning an expedition. I don’t think I’d be enthusiastic about planning a big kayaking expedition in a country I hadn’t spent significant time in, because you get a much more nuanced understanding of how a place works, how the bureaucracy works, if you’ve actually been there. Also, you just have a local network, you have people you know who to speak to, people who can help you find the right person, you know how to source supplies, you have an understanding of travel time, safety, these kinds of things. So the reason for Madagascar is because I already knew quite a lot about it, having lived there.

Oscar: The reason kind of why kayaking, again, is another random one. My first big kayaking expedition was in 2016, I kayaked the Kwanza River in Angola, that was a 33-day, 1,300-kilometer expedition. I went on it with my friend Alfie Weston, and the reason we did that is purely down to Alfie, nothing to do with me. He just suggested it, he was already quite an enthusiastic kayaker, and he just suggested it to me, we both lived and worked there at the same time, and he knew I was probably the only person stupid enough to say yes. At that stage, when I did say yes, I had essentially never kayaked as an adult before. I’d gone on a couple of kayaking day trips as a child, but that was it, so I knew nothing about kayaking. Over the next nine months, I had to come up with a very rapid progression in terms of my kayak skills and understanding, in order to be ready for that expedition. After that 2016 expedition, it just turned into my thing. It’s an excellent way of exploring a country independently, you can travel a lot faster than if you’re just hiking, it’s much more independent than if you’re trying to go on a motorbike, where you have all sorts of other issues when it comes to sourcing fuel and breaking down and those sorts of things. So I think if you want to see the most remote parts of a country, there are a few better ways than kayaking through it.

Jason: Was it the challenge of the overall thing, or was there something inside where it was like, “Oh, kayaking sounds like a sport I could get into, that sounds fun,” or was it more that you learned to love it after diving in and trying to acquire it as a skill?

Oscar: I think I learned to love it, and I think it’s a very useful skill, especially when it comes to wanting to explore these remote places. I was just excited to go for another kayaking adventure, having had, what, a big gap between the first one and the second one, that’s a solid six and a bit years.

Advice for Aspiring Kayakers

Jason: What’s your best advice for somebody who’s coming out of this, maybe they’re not going to go down Madagascar’s longest river, which we’ll talk about that adventure next, but maybe they just want to try like a three-day trip, they’re interested in kayaking as a way of exploring and traveling. What’s your best advice for that person?

Oscar: I’d say start off with a safety course. It doesn’t necessarily matter if you’re going to do whitewater or not, but it does make sense to understand the basics of kayaking safety, because you’re near water, and there’s always that risk of something going wrong. You can find centers that offer those courses, whether on lakes, reservoirs, or even artificial rivers. For example, I went and did my kayak safety course at Lee Valley, in London, it was the London Olympic whitewater course they built specifically, and I found that really fun. They threw us into rapids and taught us how to use ropes, how to flip the kayak back over, how to navigate without smashing your head on rocks if you’re in the water, these kinds of things. I think I’d start there, and then after that, there’s plenty of relatively safe bodies of water, especially, I imagine, for a lot of the people listening, they’re going to have access to those. Just find a kayaking club or a rowing club, go and speak to them. I was really surprised when I took on the Angola mission, I had nine months to get ready, I was living in London at the time, and obviously London has the River Thames, so I found a kayaking club on the River Thames, but they were generally doing sightseeing tours for tourists, very simple, because the Thames is very tidal, they just float down the river with the tourists, past Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament and things. But when I spoke to them about what I was doing, they were super supportive, very excited about it, like, “Yeah, we can absolutely get you ready, do a kayaking fitness course,” and those kinds of things. I think most clubs are going to be very welcoming of new members.

Jason: Okay, that’s cool to hear, I’m sure it lit them up, like, “You’re not just going to be another one of the people floating down the scene. Wait, what are you doing? Hold on a minute, all right, this is a challenge we can take on.”

Oscar: Absolutely, and to a larger extent too, I think that whatever thing you choose, there’s always going to be that community there you can connect with.

Jason: I’m sure, with you experiencing that with the kayaking community, it really helps. I’m sure you had some anxiety around, “What am I actually getting into?” But to have this group of people preparing you, but also kind of cheering you on, I’m sure that was very helpful.

Oscar: Yeah, I think that really helped, and in some ways I got lucky, because I know the owner of the company who helped me out in London, I only found this out afterward, after I’d approached them and started training with them, I think he holds a world record for being the first person to sea kayak around the entire island of Ireland, which is pretty incredible. When you look at some of the surf and the cliffs around Ireland, that’s a pretty incredible achievement, so I kind of understand why he was particularly excited about that trip.

Jason: Well, that’s another small world, the world of expeditionists, you have a whole other community there to tap into. What other parts of expeditions do you need a little mindset to fall in love with? Some people maybe just hate logistics, but it’s a necessary part of the thing, and you just have to learn to power through. What parts of the whole expedition experience do you really enjoy, and what parts are you just like, “All right, whatever, I just need to get through this,” and how do you get through it?

Oscar: I think I’m okay when it comes to logistics and planning and dealing with bureaucracy, I think just from years of experience I understand it as a sort of necessary evil. I used to have an issue with training, especially in the buildup to the Angola trip, I really wasn’t very enthusiastic about going to the gym, actually going kayaking, these kinds of things. In fact, I think I was quite lazy, and we found out very quickly what a poor decision that was on the actual expedition, because it was extremely difficult. I only had to learn that lesson once, I think, now I take things a lot more seriously. Before the Madagascar expedition, we were much more scientific when it came to our actual physical training, and tried to be a bit more robust in our approach, because I’d rather train hard and have the expedition be slightly easier than the other way around.

Jason: Right, right, no, that makes sense.

Oscar: Yeah, I think probably the thing I struggle with most is the whole monetizing side of things, I would love to just be a millionaire and not have to worry about the financial side of things at all, because I find it a bit frustrating, the marketing, the contacting potential sponsors, persuading people to part with their money in order for you to be able to do this thing, and all the associated work that comes with that. I don’t think that comes very naturally to me, so that’s probably the hardest part. But again, I understand why it has to happen, because the trip needs to be paid for.

The Mangoky Expedition by the Numbers

Jason: I think this goes back to what you were saying at the beginning, about staying grounded, if you want to just do your thing, but you need to drum up enough interest to actually fund it. You guys had a charitable element to this trip too, let’s talk about the trip and the charity tie-in, and also, how many kilometers did you go, give us a number of days you were out there, just so people can understand. I got background on it because I’ve read about it, but for those listening, give people an idea of what this entailed, because saying something like, “Oh, we kayaked down the Mangoky,” okay, but when you actually look at the map and see the things you actually have to do to make that happen, it paints a whole different picture of the reality of that.

Oscar: Yes. So the trip ended up being about 750 kilometers, it took us about 28 days, and we started in the center-east of the country, just to the southeast of a big city called Fianarantsoa, and made our way westwards towards the Mozambique Channel, so the west coast of the island of Madagascar, facing Mozambique. But in doing so, we had to pass through a series of mountain ranges, which meant a lot of carrying the kayak, or portage, as we say to be fancy.

Jason: Yeah, pretty brutal.

Oscar: It was a lot more than we were expecting, actually, because it’s very difficult to get accurate satellite photography or on-the-ground information from such a remote part of Madagascar. I don’t know what we were expecting originally, the plan changed so many times. Perhaps we were expecting to carry the kayak for maybe 60 or 70 kilometers, which is bad enough, because the kayak itself, it breaks down, it’s a Klepper kayak, Klepper, our sponsors, gave us the kayak, it’s a fantastic piece of kit, but it does weigh about 40 kilos. It breaks down into wooden components and a skin you can pack up and put on your back, but that’s 40 kilos you’ve got to carry, in addition to all the other stuff you have to carry to stay alive, like your water, food, medical supplies, tent, cooking gear, that kind of thing. We ended up hiking over these very rugged bits of terrain, carrying very heavy equipment, for much further than we expected, I think we ended up doing over 200, maybe even 220, 250 kilometers of carrying that ridiculous kayak. Very hard work.

Running Out of Water in the Mountains

Jason: I can only imagine the conversations between you and Ben on the mountain range where you guys ran out of water, can you talk about that? That’s a very scary situation to be in, was that a situation where you felt, okay, this is exhausting, but I’m not going to die, versus, I could actually die? How many “I could actually die” situations have you had? You could say in general, but on this trip, did you ever have that feeling, this is actually getting pretty bad here?

Oscar: I think we certainly had the feeling of things getting pretty bad. When we started trekking over that mountain range, even our guides who were with us had never done that before, so essentially the mountain range is completely abandoned, there’s no reason to go up there, because there’s no water up there, and if there’s no water, there’s no good grazing for cattle, so no one takes the cattle up there, and obviously you can’t farm, so no one farms up there. We were heading into the unknown. But the local guys, we picked up some guides in a place called Ikalamavony, they agreed to take us, and looking at the map, we came up with some very unrealistic projections of how long it was going to take, we thought, “Oh, easy, just do 20 or 30k a day, and then four days later we’ll hit the river again and we’ll be fine.” But obviously you can’t walk in a straight line through a mountain range, because that’s impossible, because of the topography. We ended up getting, there are two kinds of lost, I suppose, there’s lost where you have no idea where you are, and there’s lost where you know exactly where you are, because you have the GPS coordinates, but you have no idea where you’re supposed to go next, or how you’re going to get to your actual destination. We were very frustrated, because we had a satellite communicator, we had our exact location, but we had no idea where to go. I think we had one day where we trekked, we followed the only trail we could follow, trying to head west, and by the end of the day, when we checked again, we were further east than when we’d started, we’d gone in a big dog-leg, but we had to do that in order to go past the mountain. What we thought was going to take three or four days ended up taking nine, which pushed us to the very limit of our food supplies, but also, we did not carry large amounts of water with us, we were reliant on, we have a fantastic water filtration system from a company called Water2Go in the UK, so we were just using that, you can drink anything, you can drink filthy groundwater, mud, whatever, but you have to find it, and we really struggled to find sources of water up there.

Oscar: I think if it had just been Ben and I, we would absolutely have run out of water on about day two, but luckily the guys we were with were absolute experts at looking at the landscape and the topography and understanding where the water sources were going to be, so we have to thank those guys for keeping us alive.

Jason: Wow, literally keeping you alive, that’s a scary situation.

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The Biggest Lesson: Relying on Local People

Jason: For you personally, what were the biggest lessons you learned coming out of this one? Anything different from other expeditions you’ve taken, that really hit you in a different way?

Oscar: I think there were probably fewer surprises on the Madagascar trip than in previous expeditions, I guess that’s just from trial and error and experience. I think a lot of the takeaways I mentioned at the end of the book and the end of the film are almost exactly the same as the ones I mentioned in 2016, having kayaked the river in Angola. I guess the biggest takeaway is how reliant you are on the local people when you’re on a trip like this, and I don’t just mean the guides. We had a fantastic guide, we had Max, Rodia, Razozi, Ramam, they were our five main guys, and I’ve got to give them all a shout-out for keeping us alive, thank you very much. But not just them, everyone we bumped into in some way contributed to the success of the expedition, there were people giving us directions, people warning us about certain hazards, offering us shelter, these kinds of things. This comes back to the question we were talking about earlier, when it comes to staying humble. I think one of the things I don’t like in a lot of these expedition films is the idea that it’s sort of man against nature, that it’s one badass, or a pair of badasses, coming in from outside and conquering the unforgiving landscape they find, with nothing but their muscles and their guile. I don’t think that’s the case at all, I think it’s very much a team effort, and I’m at pains to emphasize that all the way through the book and the film, because there’s no way we would have got this done had it not been for the help of all the Malagasy people, right from the start to the finish line.

Conversations About Colonialism

Jason: Yeah, I love that. Do you get into conversations on the ground, being from the UK, about colonialism and those types of issues, and things from the past?

Oscar: I have those conversations all the time. That’s a topic I’m very interested in from a historical perspective, but I’m also interested to hear people’s opinions now, and the way those past events are viewed, and the way they’re taught in different cultures and societies. Madagascar is a former French colony, they have a rather difficult relationship with the former colonial power, I would say. Those conversations were happening all the way along the trip, basically. Yeah, very similar to when I lived in Tunisia, I was having similar conversations about French colonialism when I was there, or in Angola, talking about the Portuguese, or that kind of thing. I’m now in a very interesting, different context, I’m in Ethiopia, the only country in Africa that didn’t suffer from European colonialism, barring a very short period of time when the Italians were here.

Jason: Times have certainly changed, and I appreciate that you take the time to point out the local involvement, and how essential that is, because in the old school, you think about the British explorers going, and like you said, it’s either man versus nature, or “I’m going to go conquer this and that,” and that’s just not the world right now anymore, you know what I mean?

Oscar: Yeah, I think that’s right, it never really was, people just didn’t talk about it. I kind of try to avoid that orientalist framing whenever I’m talking about a place. Having said that, when I look back at some of my earliest writing, when I was first getting into things in the early to mid 2000s, I do kind of cringe, because I can see how my own views on this have changed over the past 20 years, and how my approach to telling stories has changed.

Jason: Yeah, I guess that’s a wider change in the travel writing zeitgeist. The film, I guess, shares all of this. So everybody knows where to go, and they can, you’ve got the book, you’ve got the film, people can dive a little deeper and learn more about the expedition, and even some of the charities involved. Please share here.

The Film, the Book, and the Charity

Oscar: Yeah. So we have an official website, kayakthemangoky.com, and on there you’ll find links to the film and the book. The film we just released on YouTube, essentially, so it’s free for anyone to see, it came out a few weeks ago, we’ve also entered it into a bunch of film festivals, so we hope it does well. It’s quite short, only 41 minutes, that’s very deliberate, because I’m trying to get it into the short film category for a lot of these festivals. It tells the whole story from start to finish, Ben and I, it’s very much guerrilla filmmaking, we’re just carrying a bunch of GoPros, we had a drone, that was about it, and we put that story together. That takes you all the way through, from training in Tunisia, where we were living at the time, to flying to Madagascar, to driving to the source, to starting the trek, to getting all the way to the Mozambique Channel.

Oscar: If people want to know more, there’s also a book, the ebook is available on Amazon, also called Kayak the Mangoky, that requires paying for, I’m afraid, although we are donating 25% of profits to the charity, the same charity we raised money for with the expedition. This is a charity called Our Kids, Our Future Madagascar, which is essentially an educational charity. Sadly, because Madagascar has quite a lot of poverty, a lot of children drop out of school at the primary level because of the cost of materials, you have to bring your own materials to school, and it’s kind of shocking how difficult it is to get those materials and pay those fees to get the kids back in school. I really like it because it’s a grassroots charity, I know the people who run it, and it’s super effective, because all you have to do is come up with a certain amount of dollars, and that’s one more primary school student straight back in school immediately, which is fantastic.

Oscar: We’re still working on the paperback, I’m hoping it’ll be out by Christmas, just in time for everybody, and we’ll be donating profits from that to the charity as well, so I hope it does well. As I said before, the book is slightly different, in terms of the story, to the film, because the book is my memory and my notes, whereas the film is only the things we managed to capture. There’s a lot more information in the book, for example, Ben and I both got super sick on the expedition, none of that was captured in the film. Ben actually got bilharzia, which is a disgusting parasitic disease, from a snail that crawls into your legs and then reproduces in your internal organs, and makes you very sick, so there’s a whole breakdown of that if you’re interested. Then we had a couple of run-ins with the authorities that weren’t captured, because obviously I wasn’t about to point a GoPro at a corrupt official trying to shake us down for cash, so that stayed out of the film, but it’s in the book. Definitely plenty of adventures to read about in the book, if you want to go deeper.

Tips for Avoiding Bribes and Corruption

Jason: What’s your best advice, you mentioned earlier having a lot of experience with bureaucracy, which is something travelers can run up against all over the world, in various places, whether it’s visas or officials or things like that. What’s your top-line advice for dealing with those situations on the ground?

Oscar: I’d say, put very simply, getting angry doesn’t work.

Jason: Or how about, getting angry or impatient makes things worse. There you go.

Oscar: So I think being patient and having a good sense of humor about it is probably the best mindset to approach things with, because otherwise things can go south very quickly.

Jason: Yeah, everybody appreciates a sense of humor.

Oscar: Absolutely. In fact, I wrote, in my guidebook to Equatorial Guinea, which came out a long time ago, I think 2016, I remember before I went, I was told that Equatorial Guinea had a reputation for being one of the most corrupt countries in the world, when it came to the police forces and the way they’d interact with not just foreigners but also the locals. That kind of rang true when I was traveling around, I certainly had a lot of issues with police forces, but I made it my personal mission to not pay a single bribe for the entire time I was there gathering information, which wasted a lot of my time, but I did manage to achieve that without putting myself into too much danger. When I got back, I did a two-page spread in the guidebook called “Avoiding the Shakedown,” a guide to not paying bribes at checkpoints, some tips for people, and obviously they’re not just applicable to Equatorial Guinea, I’m sure they’d work in a lot of other contexts.

Jason: Sure, can you share one or two you think are the most impactful, outside of what you shared, staying patient, sense of humor?

Oscar: Making some sort of local connection immediately, so I’d have some sort of football team paraphernalia on the dashboard of my vehicle.

Jason: Oh really, okay.

Oscar: There’d be a local football team, and sometimes they’d mention it, and I could say, “Oh, we’re both supporters of the same team, so maybe you shouldn’t try and rob me right now, because we have something in common.” Another one I had was having a ready supply of disgusting Chinese cigarettes, that seems to go down a storm no matter where you are. People don’t often outright ask you for bribes, sometimes they’ll ask you, it’s a euphemism, different in different countries, they’ll ask you for a drink, they’ll ask you for a cigarette, that kind of thing. If you interpret that literally, you can be like, “Oh, well, actually yes, I do have a cigarette, here you go, here, take the whole pack.” But I never actually gave away any of my cigarettes, because I bought the most disgusting Chinese brand I could find, and I remember their faces would always sink when they saw that I had this kind of $1.50-for-200 Chinese cigarettes, rather than Marlboros or something slightly better tasting. So we ended up in a sort of unusual situation, where the police felt a bit awkward refusing my gesture, and they’d just shoo me along, because they’d feel they’d been rude in some way, that I’d kind of acquiesced, and now they were refusing to take the thing I was offering to give them. So maybe a bit of reverse psychology, I suppose.

Jason: Yeah, I don’t smoke, so I would have been perfectly happy to hand over those cigarettes, but that’s great, and I’d love to see your football paraphernalia collection one day, that’s not something you thought about, a traveler carrying around, “Let me just get out my briefcase full of local football paraphernalia.”

Oscar: Well, it doesn’t always have to be local, because obviously the Premier League and various other European leagues are massive all across Africa. Even here in Ethiopia, I’m constantly sitting around listening to arguments between people over whether it’s Man U or Man City.

Jason: Yeah, you’re usually safe with a couple of top teams from La Liga or the Premier League or whatever. Okay, there you go.

Oscar: Yeah, you don’t want to have the wrong team that they hate.

Jason: Well, exactly, at least it’s a point for debate anyway. Spirited debate, no, that’s helpful, thanks.

Travel Recommendations Across Africa

Jason: Give us your travel recommendations for Africa right now, obviously it’s changing rapidly, so many places to go, so many things to do, so many experiences to be had. Just for the typical traveler, who may not be going to kayak down Madagascar’s longest river and end up in really remote mountains without water, what are some of the places you’d like to highlight for our listeners?

Oscar: So I think my list of favorite African countries is kind of directly linked to how long I’ve spent in each of those countries. I think my favorite country on the continent is by far Angola, I lived there for five years, I absolutely loved it, I’ve been back there many times since, obviously I did this kayaking trip there. Angola is following the pattern of a lot of other countries on the continent, which is, I think they’re realizing that diversifying their economy is a good thing, and that tourism is a potential stream of income that would be useful to have. Angola is now visa-free for a lot of nationalities, which is a massive change. When I lived there, I moved out in 2009, I don’t think there was even such a thing as a tourist visa, it was a very, very closed country, you were either working there or you were Angolan, those were your two options. Now you can just show up, get stamped in, and go explore. I really want to highlight Angola, people have got to go and visit, and that’s not just because I wrote a guidebook, it’s a fantastic country, it’s massive, it has a huge coastline, so all sorts of water sports, some of the best surf in Africa, but also, because it’s so large, and because of where it is, it has some of the biggest geographic diversity on the continent, you’ve got the edge of the Congo rainforest in the north, all the way down to the Namib Desert in the south, and everything in between. I love that place, and it’s also a lot cheaper than it used to be, I’m still battling people on social media who post old stories about how Luanda, the capital city of Angola, is the most expensive city in the world, it used to be, it isn’t anymore, they devalued the currency, and now it’s actually quite a reasonably priced African city, I don’t think it’s even in the top 20 most expensive cities, so I don’t think people should be put off by seeing old news about that.

Oscar: One other place I’d like to highlight, actually I’ll go with two more. I’ll go with Tunisia, I lived in Tunisia for three years, got to travel around the whole country, did about 30,000 kilometers in my four-by-four, writing the guidebook to that country, absolutely love Tunisia. I’d say for a lot of the English-speaking audience, they’ll associate Tunisia with package holidays on the Mediterranean, which isn’t that exciting to be honest, it’s just a cheaper version of the south of Spain or the south of France, but I think Tunisia has much more to offer than just the Mediterranean coastline. I think the government is really getting behind this push to expand their tourism offering, so there’s a lot more eco-tourism, independent tourism, they’ve got some incredible niche things, a lot of World War II sites unique to Tunisia you can go and explore, they have a bunch of Star Wars filming sites, completely unique to North Africa, it’s super safe, super cheap, obviously fantastic climate for where it is, and extremely easy to reach, especially from Europe, so that would stand out.

Oscar: Then another one, which I went to visit for the first time last year, again following the pattern of making their visa processes easier, is Algeria. I went and explored Algeria last summer, and I fell in love with it for a lot of the same reasons as Tunisia. Super cheap, super safe, everyone’s very welcoming, you’ve got incredible historic buildings, it’s not at all filled with tourists, so most of the archaeological sites you’re going to go to, you’re going to have to yourself, likewise with a lot of the historical sites in the cities. I was only there for a week, I did about 1,300 kilometers in my hire car, some of the cheapest fuel in the world, I think I was paying eleven euro cents per liter for diesel, so basically borderline free to drive around, which is incredible. I’d really encourage people to jump on the Algeria bandwagon before it fills up.

Jason: Wow, okay, love those recommendations. That’s a clue anytime you’re saying these countries, you spent time in them, like you said, Angola pretty closed off and now just starting to embrace tourism, this is a thing in a way, seeing things like, “Oh, you’re going to visit an archaeological site in Algeria and you’re going to be the only one there,” that’s music to all our ears in a way.

Jason: Yeah, absolutely, there’s so many places to see, but you need to get the recommendations from people like yourself who’ve actually spent quality time in these places.

Oscar: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I’m not a big fan of big crowds of tourists, so I go out of my way to avoid that wherever possible. To have a UNESCO World Heritage Site to yourself is quite something, certainly not something you’d get in a lot of other countries.

What’s Next and Closing Thoughts

Jason: Incredible. What’s next for you, Oscar? What do you have going on over the next year or two?

Oscar: So my expedition partner, Ben, who I did the Madagascar trip with, he and I have been talking, and our plan is, I do believe, to kayak the longest river in Indonesia, which is called the Kapuas River, that’s on Borneo. That’ll be our biggest challenge yet, because it’s a massive river, about 1,200 to 1,300 kilometers, and that’s just the river, so when you factor in sections where I imagine we’d have to portage, it’s going to end up being longer than that, which would make it even longer than the Angola trip back in 2016. Originally we were going to do that this past summer, June, July, but various work commitments, both from me and from Ben, meant that couldn’t happen, so that’s possibly going to happen next June, July, or the one after that, that’s kind of what we’re working towards.

Jason: Nice, he didn’t have enough with the snails inside his body, that wasn’t enough to put him off.

Oscar: We managed not to put him off, Ben still wants to hang out with me, and he still wants to do these things, so we must have done something right. Actually, we’ve got some other good news, I spoke to the CEO of Klepper recently, the German brand that makes these incredible folding, collapsible kayaks, and he said he’s quite keen to work with us on engineering something specific to us, which would be fantastic, because then we could bring the weight down, and when it comes to these portage sections, maybe we could be carrying 20 kilos worth of kayak rather than 40 kilos worth of kayak on our backs.

Jason: Amazing, the fact that you’re, after hearing just a touch of some of the experiences, which would be enough to probably make another kayak trip their last one, you’re after it again, planning another venture, which is super exciting. Thank you for your time, for sharing a bit about your expedition and your story here today, I really appreciate you coming on the show, and I will definitely link up to all of the things in the show notes. People can find the documentary, the book, some of the charity tie-ins, of course kayakthemangoky.com, which was the main site for this particular expedition. Is there anywhere else, if people want to follow you on social or anything like that, that we should link up to?

Oscar: Let’s have a think, I have a Twitter, or X, account, Scafidi Travels, that people can follow along on if they want to, and I have a YouTube channel, actually, maybe that’s what I should be pushing, I have a YouTube channel called Scafidi Travels, and that’s where you’ll find the Madagascar kayaking expedition, and the Angola kayaking expedition, and various other stuff. If you want to follow me, please follow me on YouTube, because that’s where you’re going to find the most.

Jason: We can link to that channel. I imagine these projects also scratch some kind of creative itch, right, is that more film or writing for you, or what, creativity-wise, what fills you up as part of your work?

Oscar: Probably I’d say writing more than filmmaking. The reason I started a YouTube channel is actually because I wanted to include some videos in my Tunisia guidebook, because I wanted to make it slightly more interactive, so now there are like 100 videos of tourism sites QR-coded into the book, and through that process, between 2019 and 2022, I kind of learned how to do the editing and the filming and those sorts of things. But I think that’s more me moving with the times than being particularly passionate about filmmaking, I still find the writing process a little bit more engaging, so I’m a bit more passionate about that side.

Jason: Do you keep a journal every day when you’re out traveling?

Oscar: Yeah, when we’re kayaking, or even when I’m traveling around for guidebook writing, I tend to keep notes in the evening, just for stuff I’m going to forget, that sort of thing, I take a lot of photos too.

Jason: Thank you, man. Do you want to leave us with, we mentioned the poem at the beginning, maybe to bookend this, do you have a quote or a little phrase you’re living by, or anything like that, what can we send everybody off with?

Oscar: I’ll end with a quote from Ben, on the finish line of the Madagascar expedition, he said, I’ll try to get this right, I think his exact words were, “Guinness had better give us that bloody world record, otherwise we’re just two idiots who carried 40 kilos of wood over a mountain range in Madagascar.”

Jason: Well, you did, in fact, get the Guinness World Record.

Oscar: Well, I got the Guinness World Record for the Angola expedition.

Jason: That was a different one?

Oscar: That was a different one, so we still don’t have it for the Madagascar trip, we’re still discussing with Guinness whether or not what we did constitutes a record, so fingers crossed it does.

Jason: Well, you know what, I think that even if it doesn’t, this is such a great quote that you guys should just put it on a plaque and give yourselves your own damn award, I mean, why not?

Oscar: Yeah, maybe we can just say it’s a record, no one else has done it, it’s a record.

Jason: It’s a record with that quote, that’s fantastic, that’s travel in a nutshell, right, you do it just to do it.

Oscar: Well, yeah, exactly, the external recognition is nice, but it’s not really the motivating factor.

Jason: Right, love it. Thanks, Oscar, appreciate your time.

Oscar: Thank you very much, Jason, take care, bye-bye.

Wrapping Up

Jason: There you have it, thank you to Oscar Scafidi. For me, this one was also a great reminder of the fact that quote-unquote regular people, with full-time jobs and careers and things like that, can still make some pretty incredible adventures happen. This brings me to the quote today from Walt Disney, who said, “All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.” It takes a lot of work, it takes a lot of persistence, I would say, it takes help, and all of those things. One of the big threads, and one of my biggest lessons learned in this podcast, recording all these episodes over the years, for you and for myself, it’s definitely been an education for me, is just a reminder that regular people can get out there and do things, you just take it one step at a time, you’ve got to figure it out, and there’s bumps in the road, and all those cliches, but it’s so true. When you hear the behind-the-scenes stories, I think it’s very easy to look at some of these incredible adventures people go on and see just the end result, “Okay, yeah, they did it, they must have had all this experience, or funding, or whatever.” Then you realize, when you dig into these stories, that these are just people out there planning these adventures one step at a time, dealing with the issues when they arise, and making things happen, and that’s something we’re all capable of, and I think that’s inspiring, at least for me, to remind myself of the fact that hey, we can do hard things, we can do hard things as humans.

Jason: I love that. So anyway, that was the quote I wanted to leave you with, from Walt Disney, I’ll say it one more time as we sign off: “All your dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.” Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you next time. Peace and love to you and yours. Cheers.

Welcome and Post-Trip Life

Jason: Mia Kercher, welcome to the Zero to Travel podcast, my friend. How are you doing?

Mia: Thank you. I’m happy to be here.

Jason: Are you tired from your journey? You were just on a pretty epic journey, which we’re going to talk about today. Are you in post-travel, “I just need to lay here and not think too much” mode? What’s post-travel mode for you after a journey this big?

Mia: I have been a bit tired. Not quite as active as I typically am. So I’m just doing a lot of catching up on work stuff, and also writing and things like that.

Jason: Okay, cool. Do you write for yourself? I know you write for work, which we’ll talk about a bit. But do you journal? Do you write for yourself?

Mia: Yeah, I’m writing a book about the trip, actually. I’m writing the whole trip. And yeah, I also write lots of creative stuff, poems and things like that.

Jason: Okay, cool. Maybe you’ll share one of your poems with us at the end?

Mia: I don’t know. We’ll have to see.

Jason: Maybe.

Mia: Maybe. I don’t know.

The Decision to Drive from Serbia to Vietnam

Jason: Well, you just finished traveling overland with your cat from Serbia to Vietnam. And you had a great overview on your Instagram, which we’ll link up to. I don’t know how you made this thing, but you were talking about how you just changed modes of transportation along the way, and why you couldn’t go into this country or that one. It was really cool. But you’re here, so just give us a quick overview of what you did, so people can get a full understanding, timeline-wise. Like, how long ago did you finish? And then we can dive in, because I have a ton of questions about the journey itself. And then we can obviously talk about some of the mindset stuff. And I know you have some other things you do, like you’re a hypnotist, I believe. I want to talk about that. So, a lot of stuff to unpack. But let’s get into the travel stuff first. I want to hear the overview of this journey, which sounds a bit insane on the surface. I’m sure some insane things happened, since you’re writing a book about it.

Mia: Yeah, for sure. So the goal was, I really wanted to drive my car from Serbia to Vietnam.

Jason: Yeah. Why?

Mia: Just for the adventure. I kind of decided I’m done with Serbia. I was living here as an expat, actually I’m back here now, but I wasn’t expecting to come back. And then I was just like, yeah, I’m just going to leave. And I didn’t know where I wanted to live or what I wanted to do, so I was like, why don’t I just drive? You know, I’ve explored a lot of Europe and not a ton of Asia. Well, now I’ve explored quite a bit, but at that point hadn’t seen much of Asia. And I was like, why don’t I just drive east and see if I can make it all the way to the opposite end of the continent.

Meet Cleo the Cat

Jason: Okay. What’s your cat’s name, by the way?

Mia: Cleo.

Jason: Cleo. Okay. So it’s short for Cleocatra?

Mia: Sure.

Jason: I like Cleocatra. I mean, I’m a sucker for a good cat pun, Mia. I did a couple of stints as a tour manager driving the Meow Mix mobile, which was a giant cat mobile with whiskers and ears on the car. Those were speakers. We had this whole thing, and people loved it. People were flocking to this thing. So we were full of cat puns, you know, we were just purring down the highway. I won’t, I’ll spare everybody, this isn’t a stand-up comedy show.

How Mia Ended Up in Serbia

Jason: All right, why were you and Cleocatra living in Serbia in the first place? What were you doing there?

Mia: That was where I ended up settling after a two and a half year backpacking stint.

Jason: Before that. Wow.

Mia: I ended up, that was also when I got kind of tired of traveling after two and a half years. And I was like, I think I need a break from traveling. And I wanted to start my online business, because at that point I didn’t know about online business, so I was like, oh, let me start this copywriting thing. And cost of living is cheaper in Serbia, then I don’t have to go home. And I just ended up living in Serbia.

The Genesis of the Two and a Half Year Backpacking Trip

Jason: Okay, we have to go back further now. What was the genesis of the two and a half year backpacking trip?

Mia: That was basically, I graduated from college and I was like, I don’t want to get a job.

Jason: Yeah, well, I mean, who wants to get a job?

Mia: Right. Yeah, I just worked so hard for this degree, I don’t want to go and work now.

Jason: Makes sense. And this is in Oregon, right?

Mia: Yeah, yeah.

Jason: Okay. So you finished college and you’re like, did you have student debt, or?

Mia: No, actually I had saved a bunch of money at that point, or, you know, a chunk of money. Not to go too far back in my past, but I ended up having this random, older, rich lady who hired me as her personal assistant. And she ended up, we became great friends, and she paid for my college.

Jason: What, really?

Mia: Yeah, it was amazing.

Jason: Well, that’s not something that happens every day.

Mia: No, completely random. Her lawyer found me online and was like, hey, you can come and work full time for us, and it’s full benefits.

Jason: They approached you and said, hey, will you come and caretake for this woman?

Mia: Yeah, I didn’t even apply.

Jason: But how did they find you? Did you have some kind of online presence, or why did they choose you?

Mia: I was on a random housekeeping platform. Like, people can pay you and you clean their houses. And they found me on there.

Jason: Wow, isn’t that great? Online, even before online business was much of a thing. One minute you’re housekeeping random houses, the next minute you’re getting your college paid for and you have a job with full benefits. That’s the twists and turns of life.

Energetic Copywriting and Spiritual Evolution

Jason: Okay, so you were doing this, you didn’t have the debt coming out because of that. And then, well, I’m curious. Okay, we’re going to talk about the backpacking trip in a minute, but I know at the heart of a lot of your copywriting work you have this energetic, I don’t want to call it a twist because it sounds like a core value for you, but it’s blended into your work, and you say you do energetic copywriting. It’s a blend of psychology, linguistics, and hypnosis techniques to market to the subconscious mind. I’m just quoting your website here. But because you have this forward-facing thing in your business, I imagine that, I don’t know how to say this, but the energetic sort of energy, let’s say we all know the world is made up of energy, that’s just a scientific fact, is very much infused in the things that you do and the decisions you make. Do you think that was in play when you landed in this gig where you got your college paid for, and in the other things that have happened in your life? Was that something that was a core value of yours that you tried to infuse in the things you did early on? Or is that more of a newer type of thing in your life, in terms of your own spiritual evolution, if you want to call it that?

Mia: You could say it’s more newer, yeah. I actually started getting into hypnosis and energy work and stuff like that when I came to Serbia.

Jason: Yeah, okay.

Mia: Before that, everything felt very random.

Jason: Right, okay. I mean, in hindsight, do you think it was random, or do you have a different perspective on it now?

Mia: No, I think, that’s a big question. I don’t know. I think a lot of things are random, but then they sort of randomly work out to something that you needed them to work out to. Whereas maybe there was some kind of, and I don’t know, I believe in all kinds of gods and goddesses and spirits and all this kind of stuff, but at the end of the day I don’t know what’s real. So it’s like maybe something was guiding me and saying, okay, you get this job and then you’ll go and travel. And at the time I was just like, you know, my whole first backpacking trip was complete chaos. I didn’t follow any of these travel influencers online, I didn’t know anything about backpacking, and so I was just running into a series of obstacles and, okay, I guess I’ll do this now, I guess I’ll go here. And yeah, I then ended up in Serbia, and I think everything sort of piles into some kind of chaotic order in some way.

Traveling Without a Plan

Jason: It’s very easy to get information nowadays, as we know, right? So I’d say the majority of people, if they’re going to embark on a, I don’t know if you knew the trip was going to be two and a half years at that point, or was it open-ended?

Mia: Completely open-ended. I thought I was just going to move to Spain and teach English. And as soon as I got there, I was like, oh, I kind of like this travel thing, I’m just going to keep traveling.

Jason: Okay, so you had a gig and then, okay. Because most people, I would say, in that open-ended situation would probably do some research. Was that an intentional choice, or was it just kind of like naivety, if you will? Like, I’m just going to go into this and see what happens and go along for the ride? Or were you like, you know what, I’m not going to look at anything, I just want this to be completely fresh? I think there’s a lot of advantages to that, by the way, even if you’re going to make more mistakes.

Mia: The idea of research didn’t even occur to me. I don’t know, I think it’s just my personality, because even this last trip to Asia, people are shocked at how little research I did. And that’s why I ended up having to ditch my car. I don’t know, I think I’m just not really wired to do a lot of research. I’m more wired for just, oh, I have an idea, let me just go and then figure it out along the way.

Jason: Yeah, I mean, I think that’s really cool, because you’re going to get a totally different experience than if you set yourself up with expectations. And obviously that can work to your disadvantage if you run into some logistical paperwork issues, for example, for visas and things like that, which I know you did on this recent trip. But then again, that leads to its own set of experiences, right? You wouldn’t have had those other experiences if those things didn’t happen. So there’s no real right way or wrong way, using air quotes, to travel.

Mia: Yeah, well, I think also I wouldn’t have done it if I had known all the random challenges that would come up.

Jason: Too intimidating.

Mia: Yeah, or I’d just be too lazy, I’d be like, oh, that sounds like a lot of hard work, I’m just going to pet my cat and relax at home.

Jason: No, that makes sense.

Life on the Backpacking Trip: Chaotic Order

Jason: The backpacking trip, you were in Spain, you were teaching, how long did you teach, and what did that trip look like for you?

Mia: Actually, I didn’t teach. I didn’t have a gig, I was just thinking I would walk around to different English schools with my resume and see if I could get a job.

Jason: I love it. Did that work out?

Mia: Not really. I mean, I didn’t really try that hard, because really I just, I got to Barcelona and then I was like, I just want to keep going. I don’t know, why do I want to work?

Jason: Yeah, okay. So what were some of the chaotic order moments on that trip?

Mia: Chaotic order, meaning my 90-day visa expired, or it’s not really a visa, but the 90 days you get in the Schengen zone expired. And then it was kind of like, okay, so now I have to think of some other region to go to. And I was thinking to go to South America, but then, I don’t remember why I changed my mind, for some reason I started to look up countries outside the Schengen zone. And that’s when I discovered Serbia for the first time, and was like, oh, people said there’s great hiking there. And I was there in the winter and I was hiking in the mountains, having a great time. And then I started to do a little research, and I found out about Workaway. So I did some volunteering, and I was in Albania, and where else was I, Italy, in the mountains. And then I was supposed to go to Vienna after I finished in Italy, but my accommodation fell through right at the last minute, and nothing else was as cheap as that. So I was like, well, now where do I go? I was like, I haven’t seen Serbia in the summer, so I went back to Serbia for the summer. I thought that I was going to stay in Novi Sad, which is the other big city in Serbia other than Belgrade. And then I just accidentally booked the wrong accommodation and ended up in some small town outside of Belgrade. Ended up making a bunch of friends, kind of fell in love with somebody, so I stayed for a while for that. And it was just like everything sort of happened, and then I just react to whatever happens and choose the next thing after that.

Jason: Yeah, okay, no, I mean, that’s living life.

Mia: Yeah, you know.

Jason: That’s just really living, you know? I think many things are so calculated nowadays. With travel, that’s one of the things I love, that you’re able to create the physical space and the mental space to just live life in a way that feels more natural, in some ways I would say, than the sort of structured daily thing, which isn’t always the case, of course. It’s not a black or white thing, it’s many shades of gray.

Lessons from Two and a Half Years on the Road

Jason: The lessons that came out of that trip for you, what were some of the big things that stuck with you? Because you said you didn’t do a lot of research, everything was really fresh, I’m sure you were taking in a lot of experiences along the way. And then, of course, learning about yourself on a journey like that, when you’re coming up against challenges and all of the things travel throws at you. What were some of the things for you personally that came out of that two and a half year backpacking experience?

Mia: I think the biggest thing was really becoming more confident in myself. I was always a very outgoing person who easily made friends and stuff like that, but there was always some level of comfort zone involved in that. You’re in your country and people are speaking your language, so you can do these different things, but you have this element of being in your comfort zone. And then to be in these other countries and languages, new ways of getting around and stuff like that, it was a little intimidating. So it took me a little while to find a rhythm of, how do I want to just randomly meet people, being outgoing. And there were some people I met along the way who were super outgoing, and I kind of observed how they interacted with other people. And then I was like, oh, okay, I can just walk up to a random person in the street and say hello. So I started to do that, and that made the trip way more fun, because then I’m just meeting random people, basically my line was always just walking up to someone who I thought looked interesting and saying, hi, do you speak English?

Jason: Yeah, okay.

Mia: And then we go out to lunch, we have a drink, we do this or that. And it just ended up making the trip so much more interesting. So I think that was a huge life lesson, to just be able to learn to get over whatever self-consciousness we have about randomly talking to strangers.

Jason: Yeah, that’s amazing. Just kind of learning to put yourself out there in a way where you’re willing to do it, despite the discomfort. It’s powerful.

Solo Travel and Life Before Serbia

Jason: What about the solo travel aspect for you? Was that intimidating at all going into it? Had you done a lot of solo traveling before? Are you somebody that spent a lot of time on your own? I know that can be intimidating for some people.

Mia: I do have a lifelong history of just doing things that I want to do without, just going for it. I did a lot of road trips in the US when I was, because I actually went to college later, when I left my parents’ house I kind of moved to North Dakota during the oil boom, and I was there hanging out in the Midwest for a while. And yeah, just driving around the US a lot. So it never bothered me to be alone. No, it never has.

Jason: Okay, were you digging for black gold? It sounds very old school.

Mia: I mean, it was kind of like a modern day gold rush, the way it was in North Dakota, because it was 2010. So that was right in the middle of the recession. Plus I had no, I was just fresh out of my parents’ house, I had no actual skills or anything. And my sister was actually in the military, based in North Dakota, so she was like, why don’t you come here for a summer? So I went there for the summer, because basically the oil rigs were the only place where everybody was like, jobs, jobs, jobs. So all these people from all over the country were coming to work in the oil rigs, and if you had no experience or anything it didn’t matter, and you could get paid much more than making minimum wage somewhere else in the country. So I didn’t go to work in the oil rigs, I went to be a waitress, because they were all saying, oh, waitresses make more than strippers in Las Vegas, and in North Dakota, which I think was true.

Jason: Really? Wow, okay.

Mia: Yeah, I remember, now I wouldn’t think it was that much money, because I do make more in my business now, but at the time it felt like I was just, thank you for piling my table with cash. It felt like I was really making a lot.

Jason: Wow, okay. Well, after this, don’t be surprised if there’s an influx of Las Vegas workers to North Dakota now. Who knows?

Planning (or Not Planning) the Overland Route

Jason: The car trip, or the multi-transportation trip we should say, that you just finished. How long ago did you finish the trip from Serbia to Vietnam? This is very fresh, right?

Mia: It was at the beginning of summer.

Jason: Okay, yeah, so some months ago at the time of this recording.

Mia: But not that long ago, really. It’s not like it was years ago.

Jason: And you mentioned the lack of research thing, which is interesting because you’re talking about going from Serbia to Vietnam, and I know you went through Russia, I mean, you’re American, there’s a war going on, you drove into Afghanistan, all kinds of things that can happen in remote areas there. I’m not even sure what remote areas you can go into on your own and whatnot. These aren’t small things, there could be life and death type of things. And, you know, I’m a huge proponent of, we hear it time and again here, that the world’s a much friendlier place than the media makes it out to be and all that stuff. But there is a reality of some of these places. What did you do to prepare going through Russia as an American citizen right now, could be something that’s a problem, into the ruined areas of Afghanistan? And then also, if you’re not researching some of the cultural stuff when you get into the Middle East and stuff like that, certain ways that you may want to present to fit in. How did you manage all that going into the trip? Or did you at all? Was it another one of those, all right, I’m going to throw my cat in the car and go?

Mia: A little bit of both. That’s such a good question. I wasn’t planning on going through Russia originally. Originally, I thought I would go from Turkey into Iran, and then maybe into Pakistan after that, or maybe Afghanistan, I wasn’t sure. But that’s when I found out about this document, the Carnet de Passage, which for people who don’t know is a very official kind of insurance document that you have to get to be able to enter a lot of countries in Asia.

The Carnet de Passage and the Route Through Russia

Jason: Okay.

Mia: A lot in Africa as well. I don’t think any European countries require it. But yeah, they won’t let you into the country if you don’t have this document, because it basically proves that you won’t import your car into their country.

Jason: Oh, okay. Yeah, that makes sense.

Mia: So that was a big one. Yeah, that ended up being my downfall.

Jason: Oh, really?

Mia: Yeah, so I didn’t have that one, and you couldn’t get into Iran without it. Plus Iran’s complication was that Americans can’t go into the country without a certified travel guide with them at all times. And that was really a negative for me, because that’s not the way I like to travel at all. So basically I spent a ton of time in Turkey researching how to get through, because it was so complicated. You couldn’t get from Turkey to, I’m mixing up these countries now, Azerbaijan, is that the next one? I wish I had a map open. There’s a little cluster of countries, there’s Azerbaijan, I think that’s the one right above Turkey, but they have their border closed in between them. But then if I wanted to go through Georgia and get to that country, they have their land borders closed. You can fly into the country, but you can’t drive in by car. Then there was the next one, which was completely closed for vehicle entry because they’re still closed because of COVID, actually.

Jason: Really?

Mia: Yeah, that’s technically what their official website says, that they’re closed because of COVID, or it said that a year ago, I haven’t checked it since then.

Jason: Okay, yeah, yeah.

Mia: So then I thought, well, maybe there’s a ferry I can take across the Caspian Sea. I was looking at from Georgia, but then I was contacting this ferry I found online, and they said, no, we’re not running anymore, it’s closed. So basically in the end it ended up that the only way to get around was to go through Russia and go all the way around.

Jason: Wow, okay. How many countries did you end up going through in the end? You can give us the quick overview and then we got onto a whole other topic, but just so people have some context.

Mia: So my route ended up being Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Georgia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan. That is when I got denied entry into India, and I ended up having to fly to Thailand. And then it was Thailand, Laos, Vietnam.

Jason: And you did some biking, you did some walking after you got over to Thailand, right? You tried some different things that weren’t for you, it sounded like, after some days. But I think that’s cool, you know, you went for it. Like, you tried the biking thing, it sounded like it wasn’t, you said in the video I watched it was a bit too tough, and then you did some walking and you got blisters. It sounds like you just kind of adapt on your own, you’re listening to yourself as you’re on the road and figuring out what you need. Sounds like a pretty epic trip. So since you’re writing a book on it, and this is fresh, I imagine that the experiences you’re writing about are the ones that are book worthy, let’s say. I’d like to hear about some of those experiences.

Mia: Yeah, absolutely.

Arriving in Afghanistan

Jason: Let’s see, top experiences.

Mia: I mean, Afghanistan, it’ll just forever be in my mind, like the most life-changing, one of the most life-changing countries I’ve ever visited, because there was so much hype around it. I literally had my friends back in Serbia messaging me like, Mia, don’t go to Afghanistan, we don’t think it’s a good idea, calling me concerned, saying not to go. In terms of your question about doing research about that beforehand, there is an Afghanistan travel Facebook group, and so I did find some other women who have driven through Afghanistan on their own. There were a couple of them in the group, and I reached out to them, and they told me, no, no, it’s going to be fine. So that was the research I did, I said, instead of looking at what’s in the media or looking at the travel advisory notification on the US.gov website, I’m going to talk to actual women who were there alone, even one driving a car, and ask them. And they said it was going to be fine.

Jason: Okay, and so what, you just followed the route that they suggested, or was it?

Mia: I mean, everybody has different routes, because different people are traveling different ways through their overland journeys. Mine was just, I needed to get from Uzbekistan to Pakistan basically, so I visited the main cities along the way for that route.

Jason: How long was the trip through Afghanistan? And tell us about your experience on the ground. Who did you meet? What stood out? Why is it so memorable and life-changing for you personally?

Mia: Yeah. I ended up being there for five weeks, because that’s where I was trying to figure out what I was going to do about this Carnet de Passage. So I had tried to apply to figure out if I could get it long distance, which it ended up turning out that I could, but they charge you 12,000 euros to be able to go into Pakistan.

Jason: Wow, okay.

Mia: Yeah, which they said, oh, it’s a refundable deposit, but of course my car is a 2006 Megane, I don’t know if it’s going to make it out, so I was like, I don’t want to take that risk. So, yeah, I was basically killing time in Afghanistan while I waited to find out that response. It was like, at first, the biggest shock, I mean, just literally going into another world, completely different than any place I visited. You know, the clothes and the way people act and interact with each other, it was all completely different. At first it was shocking, because I got so much attention, it was very overwhelming. Your nervous system goes into this fight or flight mode, like thousands of people are literally watching me, pointing at me. It was very overwhelming for the first several days. But then I met some people, because it’s impossible not to meet people. They kind of took me around, they were local people and they started translating. And what I realized is everybody was just asking, oh, does she need anything, is she okay, does she like Afghanistan, can we do anything to help her? And so once I realized those were the things they wanted to say, I was like, oh, this is absolutely just, it gave me some reassurance to be like, okay, literally it’s just curiosity, they haven’t seen a foreigner, they’re curious. And that ended up making it really fun, because then after that I was just, hey everybody, hi, salam, salam. It was completely fun after that. Then it’s nonstop, people are just, come to my house, have some tea, come to my house, like they’re begging you to stay the night at their house, and just so much fun meeting everybody and going into these different houses and meeting families, and people give you really special treatment. There was one government building you could go in and see, it was kind of like a museum, and then the actual architects of the building came out of their office and gave me this private tour around, and told me everything about designing this, it was an old palace from a king in the past. So they’re giving me this private tour and telling me all this insider information, showing me rooms that are usually closed off to tourists, but they’re with me so I get to see them. It was like this amazing, it was like, I don’t want to say I was treated like royalty because that sounds conceited in some way, but they really did, I mean, everybody pulled out all the stops with their hospitality.

Advice for Women Traveling to Afghanistan

Jason: What is your best advice for women who want to travel there? Did you have to dress a certain way, or I know there are certain rules, or I don’t know if it’s different for foreigners. What’s the protocol?

Mia: They’re not strict about the rules with foreigners. I don’t think I would have had to, I’m sure I would have had to cover my head, I did that right before I crossed the border. And you could just wear modest clothes, loose fitting, covering the skin and stuff. But I wore the black gown just because I wanted to, and people really liked it. They were saying, oh, you look so good in our clothes. And I wasn’t doing it for the Taliban, I was doing it for the people who really enjoyed seeing me wearing their clothes.

Conversations About the Current State of Afghanistan

Jason: Did you have any conversations on the ground about the current state of affairs there, with the government and everything?

Mia: Yeah, so there was one day when I first arrived, and I was at this mosque with a guy I had met, and there was apparently a modesty police who was there. He asked my friend, what’s her deal, what’s up with her, and then he translated for us, and I actually asked this guy, because his job is to sit at the mosque and make sure women are dressed appropriately, so I was asking him, what’s the deal with the schools being closed? And he said, well, we’re doing it because there were some professors who were abusing the women, and so we had to take the women out of the school to protect them from these guys who are abusing them. And I asked him, well, then what are you doing to those men, are they getting punished? Why punish the women? And he said, no, they are getting punished, they’re getting punished according to what the Quran says has to be done to them. And then I said, okay, so if they’re punished, then can the women come back? And he’s like, well, maybe, maybe next year. So, yeah, it’s interesting to hear his perspective on that, because they do say that it’s for the women’s protection that they’re keeping them out of the parks, out of the schools, this kind of stuff. So that’s their reasoning behind it. I talked to a lot of guys who weren’t in the Taliban who were like, the Taliban are actually doing a good job with this country, the only problem is what they’re doing to women. But a lot of people have a lot of positive things to say about the Taliban, because they’re repairing the roads, they’re repairing the country ever since all the destruction from war there. Now it’s actually safe to be there, whereas when the Americans were there, you would just get shot in the street, it was really dangerous. Now they have all these checkpoints, they have guards everywhere, so people are actually safe, so a lot of people see it as a positive thing. But then when you go to Kabul, in the capital city, and you meet young women, they’re like, oh yeah, it’s a great country if you have rights, and they’re pissed about it.

Jason: Interesting. So just interesting to hear the conversations on the ground, and really hearing it from the people, the different perspectives, and how people are feeling about the situation, who’s in charge, and all of that.

American Identity on the Road

Jason: And you didn’t sense any animosity for being American? I’m always curious, I know you ended up in Vietnam, and maybe there, the Vietnam War was quite a long time ago, but even still, when I was in Vietnam specifically, I felt like there was still some animosity in some places about that. And maybe that was just me projecting, I don’t know. But it’s totally understandable, right, like some country came in and killed their relatives, you know. So you didn’t get any sense of that in Afghanistan, which is way more recent?

Mia: I didn’t get animosity. I definitely had a lot of people who would say, the Americans did this and this to us, the Americans did this and this to us. And then you sit there and you just listen to what happened, and you have to say, I’m really sorry.

Jason: Yeah. How does that make you feel, hearing those experiences?

Mia: It feels horrible. I hate that the country that I’m from did that, of course I know it’s not my fault, and I think they know that it’s not my fault, because they’re not trying to accuse me of something, but I am the first American that they’ve met who’s not a soldier. So they actually have a chance, it’s like, one day in the mountains, kind of up a hill somewhere, I met a Taliban guy, and he was like, oh, my dream is to be an American actor. So I turn on my camera, I’m like, what would you like to say, if you’re in America and you want to be an actor and stuff? And he was like, I would want to say that the Americans who came here, they left, and then they were just gone, and they had no accountability, and now we’re repairing everything, and okay, they’re gone, but now we have to fix everything. But the funny thing is, he said this, then he invites me over to his house, because he has a pomegranate farm, and he’s giving me pomegranates, and I’m meeting his wife and all these people. But then his wife had her hand, what’s the word, like a birth defect, or, no, no, it was deformed. I know that’s probably not the right word to say, it’s not. She had like a birth defect or something.

The Pomegranate Farmer and the Fundraiser

Mia: And they said that she had gotten shot by an American soldier.

Jason: Oh, okay, gosh.

Mia: Yeah, so her hand was ruined because of this. And I was telling my Afghan friend who was with me about this later, and he was like, you know, the Red Cross fixes things like that for people, they’d probably do it for free if she could just get enough money to go into Kabul, this was way outside the city, and go to the Red Cross, and maybe they could fix it for her. So I said, well, how much does it cost for that? He’s like, I don’t know, a couple hundred dollars. So I just posted on Instagram, I was like, hey, does anybody want to donate, and we can get a couple hundred dollars for this lady. And people donated. So I ended up going back there, which was a whole adventure on its own, because we hadn’t actually marked the location of the place, we didn’t have the guy’s phone number. But this old guy we were with wrote it down in his little address book, he had written down the guy’s number, but it turns out he wrote down the wrong number and the wrong name. So we’re driving through this village where I’ve just seen the village, and I’m like, I think it’s that one, even though they all look the same, but somehow I found the right one, and we’re driving through and asking everybody, do you know where Arfanola is, because that’s the name the guy had written down, and everybody’s like, we don’t know Arfanola, we don’t know Arfanola. And then this guy drives his car opposite direction of ours, he rolls down the window, and the driver up front is asking, do you know who Arfanola is, and he shows the guy my picture of the guy on my phone.

Jason: Yeah.

Mia: And that’s the guy.

Jason: Oh, really? Wow.

Mia: He’s like, well, my name’s not Arfanola, it’s Izetula, but it’s me.

Jason: Wow. And then you gave him the money then? How did that go?

Mia: Well, he just, you know, he said, thank you so much. And he took me back to the house to have tea with his wife and all the women who live in the house. Yeah, then we just left after that.

Jason: Wow, okay. Hmm, so many experiences.

Mia: Yeah, but like I said, it really was such a different world in Afghanistan. It’s like you just step in, and all of a sudden it’s like everything is different, because people there are so isolated. Afghan people can only go to three, or no, it’s only two, I think, countries in the world right now, Pakistan or the UAE. And nobody can afford to go to the UAE, so they can go to Pakistan, which is pretty similar to Afghanistan. But essentially people can’t travel, so they’re completely isolated in this country, and their culture is so traditional and so old-fashioned that you go there and it’s incredible. It’s unlike any other country I’ve been to.

Jason: Amazing. No, thanks for sharing, it’s cool to hear the on-the-ground experiences there. And I’ve talked to other people who have been there and heard a variety of different things, but generally having good experiences. And again, the on-the-ground, person-to-person experience as a traveler is much different than when we’re talking about governments, and we all know that from living in the world, right? The government’s a whole different entity than just the people you meet. But I know they’re famous for their hospitality, to the extreme, in that area of the world in general, I feel so much about the hospitality. That’s the one thread that’s come up a lot on this show.

A Tense Moment in the Mountains

Jason: What about, were there any other times in the trip where you felt like things were dodgy, or there were moments of, oh gosh, what have I gotten myself into, this is dangerous, what was I thinking, anything like that?

Mia: Not too much. There was one incident in Afghanistan where I want to say, the Taliban guys were all so nice to me overall, they were just like any regular guy, oh, do you need any help, do you need anything, they were super nice. But there was one incident where I got my car stuck on this mountain, and I couldn’t push it, because I’m actually really not good with driving a stick, because I am American.

Jason: So why not just drive a stick from Serbia to Vietnam?

Mia: Sure. Well, yeah. I did get stuck on this hill, and this car full of Taliban guys pulls over, and this guy is like, do you want me to drive it up the hill for you? And I said, yes, please. And so he just jumps in and drives it up the hill. Then he keeps going. And I’m like, man, what are you doing? And he says, to Kabul. And I was like, well, Kabul is a long way away, it’s hours away. And he’s just driving my car and driving and driving. And I’m like, at first I’m like, well, I guess it’s fine, we were laughing, and he didn’t speak any English, so we were just saying a few Farsi words. And then he starts to make a symbol, like he’s asking for money, with his fingers. And I was like, man, you can’t ask for money, you have to arrange that beforehand. And then we make an agreement, and he says, no, and he pulls out his wallet and tries to hand me some bills, and then he was grabbing my leg, and I was like, this is not a good situation. So I was just like, get out of the car, but he doesn’t speak English. So I had a brief moment of, what did I just get myself into? But I just started to yell, I was like, stop the car, stop the car. And I’m making all these gestures with my hands. So he ended up pulling over the car and getting back in with the guys. But I think that was really the only situation where I was like, this is not good, you have no control, you’re in a car, somebody else is driving.

Jason: Right. No, it’s scary.

Two Flat Tires in Russia

Jason: What about any of the other places along the way? What was it like going through Russia?

Mia: Russia was also quite safe. I only got a two-day visa, they gave me a two-day transit visa, so I had to drive through as quickly as possible. And of course, that’s the country where I get not one, but two flat tires, and one of my tires actually fell off the car.

Jason: Oh, wow. Yeah.

Mia: So I spent my entire two days in Russia fixing the tire that fell off and another one that went flat. Basically I didn’t do much interacting with people, I did tell everybody I was Serbian, because I was in a very rural area, and I know that a lot of times people can watch TV when they’re in rural areas and get ideas, so I was just telling people I was Serbian and really didn’t interact with a lot of people. Mostly I was interacting with the guys who were fixing my tires, and a couple of people in hotels I drove through, and that was really it.

Traveling with a Cat

Jason: How did your cat hold up on this trip? You know, I was amazed.

Mia: Sorry, I’m just plugging in my computer.

Jason: No worries. Yeah, I mean, I guess that having a pet, that’s a whole other wrinkle to this. For the pet lovers out there, they may be feeling inspired now to hear you can do some crazy trip like this with your pet, but there are some logistics around having a pet, of course, you can’t leave them in a hot car for hours and all that kind of stuff. Do you have any tips for people who want to do a big adventure like this with a pet?

Mia: Yeah, I mean, I had two bags. One was like our stealth mode bag, which is like, we don’t really want people to know that I have a cat in some hotels and stuff like that, so I would put her in that one and kind of cover it with a piece of fabric if we needed to sneak in somewhere she wasn’t supposed to go. And then I had one, like a front backpack, and she can just sit in it, she chills, and her arms and legs and her head are out. So basically we would just walk around the city with her chilling in front of me.

Jason: Oh, that doesn’t give you any intention at all. It’s like you said about the Meow Mobile, people just flocked to me. I’m sure that’s a sight many people have never seen.

Mia: Yeah, it doesn’t matter where you are in the world, that’s a crazy thing to see.

Jason: I’m sure that led to a lot of fun conversations.

Mia: Yeah, absolutely. It honestly ended up being such a great perk, it was so easy to meet people. It’s like, even if you go to the touristy places, everybody wants to take a picture, everybody wants to talk to you, you’re like a celebrity.

Jason: Yeah, I know. Do you find that, I know you’re pretty fresh off this trip, I don’t want to say, well, no traveler will say this is just a one-off, I’m never going to do a trip like this again, but do you find that this only further inspired you to do longer types of excursions like this with your pet, or was this kind of like, this was enough for a big one right now, you need a break?

What’s Next for Mia

Jason: So you just finished this epic trip, now you’re working on the book. At this point, do you feel like, not that you’ve had your fill, I don’t think any traveler listening to this show has ever had their fill, but are you going to plan a bigger adventure like this anytime soon? Or are you more like, what’s kind of your thought process now? Are you entertaining any ideas to go back to the States? What’s next for Mia, I guess is the question.

Mia: I have not had my fill. Actually, I think this is my lifestyle now, just driving the car and traveling and visiting these countries and stuff. So at the moment, I’m working on getting another car and getting all the right documentation for it this time. And then the next goal is to go through Africa after this.

Jason: Wow, awesome. Okay, so, what advice do you have? Because you also mentioned, we haven’t talked too much about the business stuff, but that you stopped in Serbia for a while, you wanted to build this business online so you could make this lifestyle sustainable, I’m guessing. And also it’s nice, sometimes after a lot of travel, maybe you’re ready to get to work. Was it maybe a little bit of that too? So what is your advice for building something up while you’re on the road? Because it comes with its own set of challenges.

Building a Business on the Road

Mia: Yeah, building something up while you’re on the road. I think you have to be creative with the way that you make sales. It was different to run a business from my apartment in Serbia, obviously, than to run a business where I’m off grid a good portion of the time. So I really enjoyed doing flash sales. That was my main strategy that I did to make money while I was traveling. It was like, okay, I’ll be in a city where I have a good Airbnb for the next three or four days, so the week before that I’d run a flash sale on sessions with me, and be like, hey, I have two days available next week, you can book a session with me at a discounted rate. And then those would fill up, and I would just do back-to-back sessions with people for two days, and that worked really well, because it was a good chunk of income for the month. And I sort of balanced that with, you know, I am a copywriter, so I also had done-for-you copywriting that I would do for people, which you really don’t need a lot of wifi for, you can just do that on a Google doc and you don’t need much. So I think in terms of building something up, if you’re new and you don’t have anything built at the moment, what would be my advice? My advice would be, maybe stay put for a few months first, get yourself established, get some actual recurring income, and then travel and maintain it. So, at the moment, I am in Serbia again, I ended up coming back here, by the way, because I realized how difficult it is to buy and register a car when you don’t have residency in a country. So I’m back in Serbia, and now I’m building up again, so all last year I was just going off of what I’d already built up, and now I’m working on growing that audience, improving my funnels, things like that, so I can have some passive income for the next time I travel. So it is difficult to really build something when you’re that much on the road, so I do think a little sabbatical of a few months is nice.

Jason: Yeah, okay, I think that’s great advice. And it doesn’t dissuade travel, certainly, I mean, you built it up in Serbia, you could do it from another country you want to spend time in. And, you know, the idea of just, sort of lifestyle business 101, hey, let’s structure this product I’m selling in a way where it’s going to fit into my travel schedule, instead of trying to fit everybody else in, revolving it around them, you revolve your schedule around you and your lifestyle. And if you do it in the right way, like you said, clients know the deal, they know they’re getting on this call, you show up, you do your stuff, and everybody’s happy, but you can still batch it in a way where you have the off-grid time too. So good stuff.

Copywriting in the Age of AI

Jason: How’s the copywriting business going? With AI, are you using AI for any of that stuff? Do you think this is going to be a tough business going forward? For those who aren’t familiar with copywriting, can you give a quick overview of what it is? And I’m curious on your thoughts on that.

Mia: Sure. Yeah, so overview of what copywriting is, it’s basically for people who want to sell things online, you’ve got to have all these written materials in order to sell it. You’ve got your ads, your sales emails, your website and landing pages and things. So those are the things I’m writing as a copywriter, basically selling stuff for people. And then, of course, a lot of people are using AI instead of copywriters, but I think there’s always been, oh, you could get this cheaper on Fiverr, you could get this cheaper on Upwork, on these different freelancing platforms, so I think there’s always that element. And I know that some of my clients, well, some of my clients did cancel, and they were like, yeah, we’re just going to put your copy in and make a, you know, make our own GPT out of this, which I couldn’t stop, because five years ago I didn’t know that I needed something like that with a contract in place. I do still have clients who want their copywriting written by a human, especially people who have really personal brands that aren’t just trying to funnel people through so much. I work with a lot of coaches and people who want that personal touch.

Jason: Yeah, okay, yeah, that’s good to hear.

Standing Out as a Copywriter

Jason: How do you stand out in this day and age?

Mia: I think it’s really about, it’s like nowadays, it used to be everybody was like, don’t talk about your political beliefs, don’t talk about your spiritual or religious beliefs or anything in your business. And I do exactly the opposite. In my marketing, I’m always like, I want clients who are really progressive socially, and they like to talk about political activism and their content, and that’s something I’m passionate about. So I’m really good at combining that with your sales copy, and I think that’s what makes me stand out, and that’s why people hire me, because they are people who share those really strong values.

Jason: Yeah, yeah, there’s something with the alignment there too, you get a much greater experience as a business owner if you’re working with people you want to work with. And when you share values, it’s generally going to be easier to get along in different ways.

Hypnosis and the Subconscious Mind

Jason: The hypnotism thing, can you talk about your experience with that? I’ve talked to a trained hypnotist before.

Mia: Oh yeah, well, I got into it, I sort of stumbled upon a shaman at one point, and this shaman, basically it was an amazing experience, because I had been to therapy, and the therapist would kind of ask these questions like, oh, what do you really want to do with your life, or what do you need, with whatever circumstance, and it’s always like you kind of hit up against a wall when you’re just talking about something, at some point there are no more answers. And then this shaman did this meditation, and I just, the sort of answer that you get when you ask your subconscious mind a question, it really hits different, it’s like this inner light bulb turns on, and you’re just like, oh, I know this is true, it feels like a thump in the chest, like, yeah, this is true. And so, like even with my backpacking trip, the previous one, the two and a half year one, I remember feeling so stressed out a lot of the time, because a lot of the times when these circumstances come up and I’m faced with decisions, it was always like I don’t know what the right thing to do here is, I can just choose something, but I don’t know. And then when I got into hypnotism, that’s when I started to get this thump in the chest kind of feeling of, should I do this or that, and I choose that, and I feel really good about it.

Jason: Why do you think that is?

Mia: I think because our subconscious minds, there’s so much more available to us than just what we see in front of us. I don’t even mean that in a spiritual way, I just mean that in a scientific way. For example, any habit that we do lives in our subconscious mind. It’s not like we have to think about how to walk, how to ride a bike, how to speak our native language, for example, all those things live in the subconscious mind. So the thing that gets in the way is when we think about everything, should I do this, should I do that. It’s like, I hypnotized somebody just the other day who was struggling to play the drums, because she could keep the beat with one hand, but then she would get stressed out when it came to introducing a second beat with her other hand. And as soon as we just got her into more of a relaxed state, so she’s not thinking, okay, now I hit this, now I hit this, she was keeping two beats with her second hand, so she was keeping three beats at the same time. So it’s really just a way of relaxing your usual mental faculties and opening up to whatever the brain is holding.

Jason: Getting your thinking mind out of the way.

Mia: Yeah.

Jason: Interesting.

Where to Find Mia

Jason: Well, best of luck with the book. If people want to check out your copywriting services, of course we’ll link up to it, Evoke Writing. Where else do you want people to go to connect or check you out?

Mia: Yeah, also go to my website. That’s also where I have a lot of stuff about my travels, about the hypnotism. There’s even a free hypnosis you can get. So there’s lots to check out on there as well.

Jason: Cool. Well, it was a pleasure chatting with you. I’m looking forward to the book whenever that drops, good luck writing that, and then the next adventure, I can’t wait to hear all about it. So let’s stay in touch, I hope we can chat again.

Mia: Yeah, please. I thought of a poem that I could read.

Jason: Oh, great. Yeah, I want to wrap it up with a poem, let’s do this.

Mia: Okay, at first I hesitated, because I didn’t know what would be good for this, but I think maybe this one will be.

Jason: All right, the stage is yours.

Mia: Thank you.

Closing Poem

Mia: I don’t want a life of comfort. I don’t want instant gratification for all my desires. I want to know disappointment intimately. I want to be taken by the tense uncertainty of waiting. I want to wake in the morning, huddled close to longing. And when I’ve had all I can take and am ravished and exhausted by the delay of my desires, I want to bite into the sweetness of receiving more than I could possibly imagine. I want to feel the wealth dripping down my chin in all its sloppy ripeness. I want to lick my lips with the tangy aftertaste of gratification. I want to lap up the leftovers of rich pleasure till there isn’t one drop left. I want to gurgle the juices of justification and suck the marrow from the bones of bounty. No, I don’t want to pick and choose my experiences. I don’t want to trim them down, organize them neatly, put some on display and others hidden shamefully in the cellar. I want them all up front for all to see. I want the flavors to simmer and boil and blend together, wafting an aroma so sweet yet so bitter, so salty yet so sour, so crunchy yet so smooth. I want to swirl them all together to be tasted, chewed, swallowed, digested, so I can breathe deeply and see clearly, so I can be fully alive while it is my time to live.

Jason: Wow, goosebumps here. Oh, the power of words. Thank you, Mia, thanks for sharing that, and thanks for sharing your time today.

Mia: Of course, thank you so much. This has been amazing.

The Bourse Jackie Scholarship Fund

Jason: Barry Hoffner, welcome to the Zero to Travel podcast, my friend, and good morning. Thank God you’re an early bird.

Barry: Good morning, Jason. Yeah, as long as I have my coffee, I’m good. Whatever time, it doesn’t really matter.

Jason: Nice. We’re going to talk about the book, Belonging to the World, A Journey from Grief to Connection in Every Country on Earth, which, by the way, this is awesome. 100% of the profits go to your scholarship fund. I just want you to share a bit about that right off the bat, the scholarship fund and where all the proceeds from the book are going, because people should know when they get this awesome book, which it is incredible and has your incredible life journey. Just so people know after this conversation, if they want to pick up the book, let them know about the organization and where the money’s going.

Barry: Yeah, sure. Well, thank you for having me, Jason, first of all. I definitely hope people will enjoy the book. I think they will. But aside from that, a big benefit is all the proceeds go to scholarships for young women all across West Africa, and not just to scholarships, but for leadership, development, and empowerment. We have three separate programs, and we cover all the countries in West Africa, including French and English speaking. And that’s under my foundation, Caravan to Class dot org. This particular program is called our Bourse Jackie initiative, the Jackie scholarship, named in honor of my late wife. So it’s a program very dear to me.

Jason: It’s really incredible to see some of the things that have come out of this tragedy for you in your life, with the passing of Jackie, which we’re going to talk about. I want to get your advice on working through grief and travel as healing. Those are some big themes I know in the book and in your life as well. But I want to start where your wanderlust began, because it seems like to me it began with a coin flip in some ways, with your buddy Steve. Can you boil this life of travel down to a coin flip?

The Coin Flip That Started It All

Barry: Yeah. You know, it’s funny when you get to be my age, 66, you kind of have the time and reflection to look back on your life and understand where certain themes came from. And certainly travel did come from a coin flip. I grew up in a very middle class background in Southern California, although my parents, I’m a first generation immigrant. My mother was born in Baghdad, Iraq. But still, travel wasn’t a big part of our life. A buddy of mine, Steve, and I had been working all through our high school years. We decided we were going to take a trip before we went off to college. I was going to college at UC Irvine, which is near Newport Beach, California, the big waves of Newport Beach. I wanted to get better at surfing. He wanted to travel through Europe and backpack. We couldn’t agree on which direction we’d go. So we flipped a coin, and he won. I say that coin flip changed my life for sure, in all the good ways.

Jason: That’s kind of one of those coin flips where you really can’t lose either in some ways.

Barry: Yeah. I mean, I guess I’d be out surfing now, more regularly or whatever, which would be okay, but I would have missed a lot. So I’ll take the world over the waves, I guess, is what I’d say.

Jason: Yeah, nice. It’s one of those sliding door moments in many ways, right? Like, you could have been a surf bum somewhere. I was reading through your book, and you started talking about your journey through Europe. Early on, right in the trip, you had this situation on Las Ramblas in Barcelona, where you got scammed a bit. If you want to share that story, it’s a good one. But it was funny because I felt a kinship to you, because my first big trip that really got me hooked on travel was a solo backpacking trip through Europe, and my second stop was Barcelona. I also got into a situation there as well, which kind of woke me up and made me realize, yeah, I almost got jumped and robbed and all this stuff. Anyway, it’s a separate story. But it made me realize, oh yeah, I kind of got to be on my toes a bit with this travel thing. I was out till four in the morning, on a notoriously dodgy time for this area of town. So I better get my wits about me here. But yeah, do you want to share that story?

Getting Scammed in Barcelona

Barry: Yeah. So we were planning to travel for three months. We had a thousand bucks to our name, and that was it, which was a little bit more than $10 a day, including everything. We had our year rail pass, and the first two places we hit, London and Paris, were just budget busting. We said, we better get our asses out of here, otherwise we’re only going to be able to spend about 30 days in Europe. We went to Spain, which was in those days much cheaper. I’m talking 10 cents for a beer. We were walking around in Barcelona, on Las Ramblas, at night, and this man comes up to us. I spoke some Spanish, but not necessarily good enough to get ourselves out of a problem. I was trying to show Steve my Spanish skills. He’s like, I want to take you to a bar and buy you a drink, because I’m getting married. We’re like, sure. I mean, what 18 year old doesn’t say yes to a free drink? We get inside the bar and we order a drink, we have another. Then all of a sudden the guy’s not around anymore. After a while, we were ready to leave. Hey, can we have the bill? We’re thinking, I don’t know, 40, 50 cents for a few beers. It was, I guess, the equivalent of about twenty dollars or twenty five dollars, which these days is not that much, but in those days that was a couple days of traveling. When we said, no, we only had a couple beers, they said, no, you bought drinks for the whole bar. That’s when we knew we were scammed. We negotiated down a little bit, but put our tails between our legs and walked out of there, really realizing we needed to learn a few things.

Jason: Well, what did that trip teach you overall?

Barry: I was so naive. I didn’t even understand, when I got there, the idea of different, how to change currencies and stuff like that. This was really my first trip overseas, and all the different languages and places you could travel to, and cultures and sites you only heard about. It’s definitely mind blowing at that age, and either you kind of reject it, which I don’t think many people do, or it’s just something that takes over, and you kind of have this voice in your head saying, I want more of that. I think that was the case for me. So I went to college with this idea, like, I want more of that, both in the courses that I took and in the idea for what I wanted to do in future summers, but also to build a career out of being able to get back overseas somehow.

Jason: Yeah. I mean, you managed to do that. I think you’re speaking to the right crowd here, the “I want more of that” crowd. It’s interesting how in this podcast community, at least I feel like that extra calling of, yeah, okay, this could be like a multi-month journey or whatever, trip of a lifetime. But this is more of, I want to create a lifestyle around travel. That’s a deep need for it. You certainly did that. I know that you started working abroad pretty early on as well. Your first experience working abroad, in Buenos Aires, sounded like another sort of transformative time for you in terms of your travel journey. What was that like?

Working Abroad in Buenos Aires and Wall Street

Barry: Yeah, sure. So after undergrad, I went off to business school. Big move for me, to go from Newport Beach to New York City, especially where Columbia was located, up in northern Manhattan. I started to do a little bit of traveling. But after I graduated, I decided I didn’t even attend graduation. I had gotten a job with J.P. Morgan. Before starting work, I was going to head down to Argentina, where I have some relatives, and then just do this overland trip. While I was down there, I ended up hooking up with the head of the J.P. Morgan office, and he offered me a job to work there before even I was starting employment in New York City. I took that. It was supposed to be three months, turned into six months. But what it did, it gave me a lens for how I wanted to live my life very early on, right at the start of my career, working overseas and conducting business in a different language, and just learning a lot that set the stage for what I wanted to do.

So when I finally got through my training program in New York and ended up on the trading floor at JP Morgan, foreign currencies, I kept bugging my boss, I want to go to Paris. I’d been to Paris before, and that was my dream. Eventually, just a year into my career, I was transferred to the Paris office. That started a run of 16 years straight overseas, in, I think, seven different countries over that period of time.

Jason: Of course, in corporate America and finance, there are these opportunities to work overseas, but not everybody is able to take advantage of them, or takes advantage of them, or is offered them. It feels like to me, in some ways, you were just destined for life on the road. I don’t know if you believe in destiny or fate or anything like that. What do you believe in when it comes to that kind of stuff?

Barry: I don’t know. I think there are a lot of forks in the road, and opportunities kind of come in front of you, and some of those we grab and some we don’t. But definitely that first trip set the stage for what really interested me. Of course, you want to build your career and stuff, but we all have these side interests, whether it’s music or some kind of sport, and mine really was just this sort of curiosity, I guess, about the world. So I think it’s a marriage of your deep interests with opportunities that come in front of you.

Jason: Were you passionate about the career, or was it more that you could do it, make a good living, and also travel? Maybe I’m fishing a little bit for advice for anybody looking for a travel-based career like that.

Barry: I was excited to work on Wall Street, no question about it. When you stand on your first trading floor and see all these different currencies, in those days there was no such thing as a euro, so being shouted out and traded, and understanding what’s behind the movements, that was exciting for me, no question about it. But I don’t think I would have survived 16 years in finance in New York, on Wall Street or in London. So it was that first move overseas, marrying the idea of, I really did like what I did, but I also love living overseas. It was a marriage of those two things. Quite honestly, the more senior I got, the less I enjoyed it, only because then I was further away from the actual action, and my focus was really more on being in that country. My last four years were in Russia, in Moscow, 98 through 2002, and that was an incredibly exciting time to be there. If it was just for the work, I don’t think I would have been there. I wanted to stay four years, but I really did enjoy being there.

Jason: Yeah. Okay. So the travel aspect kind of helped you extend the career, perhaps, in some ways. Seven different countries, you must have had some pretty incredible experiences. What were some of the standout moments for you in terms of the career abroad?

Career Highlights: Japan and Russia

Barry: Just from a career standpoint, well, for sure being in Japan in the late 80s, at the peak of Japan’s economic power. As we talk about today, China sort of bypassing us at some point economically, those days it was Japan, the miracle place where my boss used to say, look at that building in front of us, in Ginza. He said, well, that building’s worth the state of Wyoming or something like that. Prices were just astronomical. That was certainly an exciting time to be in Japan. The culture was so strong, you felt like you were in a foreign place. That was the first real experience I had where, wow, this is just completely different. That was exciting, and the business with the Japanese, being an economic power, was exciting.

But I would say Russia was my best assignment. Four years in one place, I hadn’t been four years in one place in my career, building relationships in a country where we just didn’t know which way it was going to go, leading up to the elections in 2000, where Yeltsin, before Yeltsin stepped down in favor of Putin, who’s still there, we weren’t sure whether it was going to go back to communism or not, and we didn’t know whether the whole business was going to implode. Those were just really cowboy days in finance in Russia. It was a very exciting time, seeing them introduce a stock market and a bond market, and being part of that was certainly exciting.

Growing Up as an Iraqi Jew

Jason: You mentioned your mom being from Iraq, born in Baghdad. You have a really unique background. I’m just curious, were you exposed to Iraqi culture early on? I’m not sure where your dad was from, but were you exposed to these different cultures growing up, or was it, you know, you hear different stories from somebody raised in an immigrant family, sometimes it’s really just trying to fit into the culture they’re in, and not so much the culture they came from, versus, of course you have the whole spectrum, but full immersion and just trying to hold onto that. Were you exposed to that culture?

Barry: Yeah, it’s a great question. I think definitely I carry a lot of pride from my background of being an Iraqi Jew. But I would say I grew up pretty much middle America with a slice of culture. I say that because my mom was the only one, and she moved to the States when she was about seven. She was the only one of her siblings at that point to not marry an Iraqi Jew. She married an Eastern European Jew. She was also the only one to get a divorce, relatively early on. So while I had a lot of culture, it wasn’t the same as all my first cousins, who were 100% Iraqi Jew. But I carried a lot of pride with that culture. My grandmother didn’t speak English, she spoke Arabic and Hebrew. So it’s in me, I guess, that culture, but it’s not that I lived it.

Jason: What is the percentage roughly of the Jewish population in Iraq? Do you have any idea?

Barry: Oh, today?

Jason: Yeah, or even at that time.

Barry: Oh, at that time, I think Baghdad was the second largest Jewish city in the entire world.

Jason: Oh, really? Okay.

Barry: Yeah.

Jason: So it’s interesting, because you’ve traveled a lot in the Middle East, which, I’m speaking in generalities here, of course, but I’d probably imagine the average traveler with a Jewish background may avoid certain countries for certain reasons and perceptions. How has it been for you, bringing that background into all of these places, making these connections? I know you wrote an article for People Magazine about your time in Iran. You’ve been all over the Middle East, and I’m sure you’ve had a lot of really incredible conversations and cultural exchanges. What’s been the experience for you, traveling through that part of the world?

Returning to Iraq and the Middle East

Barry: I mean, the biggest thing for me, for travel, really, if we let it, it helps us explore our narratives. I don’t know, as you get older, you search, at least I do, a lot more for the truth, and I think travel exposes you to that. For me, growing up as an Iraqi Jew without really experience in the Middle East, I definitely had one narrative. Jews had to leave Iraq in those days, so it wasn’t necessarily a departing for them, just like it’s not these days for a lot of people in, let’s say, the West Bank, living in difficulties.

I had only been in Egypt, in Cairo, and maybe one night in Dubai, before I decided to travel to every country in the world. I didn’t really have any exposure. But if that’s what I was going to do, I needed to dip my toe into that part of the world. To be honest, I wasn’t necessarily scared to go to Iraq, and that was in April of 2022. But I was more worried about how I’d be received, because my identity was so tied to Iraq in such a weird way, a place I didn’t even know anything about, that if I were to be received poorly, I think it would kind of shake my identity a little bit. But just the opposite happened. That kind of led me to really want to explore more of the narratives that I’d been brought up with. Honestly, the Middle East turned out to be one of my favorite places. I’ve been studying Arabic for the last seven years. I’ve been to obviously every Middle Eastern, every Muslim country. The work we do with our foundation is on behalf of basically mostly Muslim cultures in West Africa. So that’s something that travel does. It just sort of helps dissolve a lot of the narratives that we have built up in our minds, if we let it, and see places and people for who they really are.

Surviving a Plane Hijacking

Jason: You were in a hijacking at one point. I was kind of surprised to read that story.

Barry: Yeah, it’s that kind of idea where something happens and you just have no idea how you’re going to react. Your brain just takes over. It was an old girlfriend of mine, she was going with me to a wedding. I was living in Switzerland then, in Zurich, working at JP Morgan, and going to a wedding of a French friend in Marrakesh. Flying there, and I remember looking out of the plane as it crossed into the Mediterranean, and normally it’d be just due south, but it started veering east. I kind of thought that was a little weird, but didn’t really think much of it. When the plane landed, it landed on a dark terminal, a dark runway. There were no lights, and we didn’t taxi. All of a sudden I hear this voice in the back, after the plane stopped, this stewardess. I hear this guy speaking in a very harsh voice, and I knew it was Arabic, just from my mom’s background, that the steward has translated: all people of Arab nationality are free to leave, everybody else remain on board. I kind of saw he was holding a gun to her neck. Fortunately we were sitting in the front of the plane, and I told my girlfriend, we are not staying on this plane, and grabbed her and pushed her, and we ran off down the stairs, which had been unfolded on the tarmac.

As we were going down the stairs, all these military people with guns and camouflage were storming the plane. We were walking right past them. We still didn’t even know where we were. We weren’t sure, we thought maybe we were in Libya. It turned out we were actually in Casablanca, and the pilot made some kind of maneuver to make the hijacker think we were heading east, probably to Libya, I guess. But anyway, yeah, that really did happen. Again, like I say, you just react. You don’t really know what you’re doing.

Jason: What happened? Do you know what happened? Did they get those people off safely?

Barry: Those were the days of no internet, and we were so excited the next day, after getting through that experience, looking forward to finding out what happened, looking in the newspaper, and there was nothing. Nothing. We were taken to this room, this holding cell, for like an hour. There were a bunch of Moroccan police, and we asked a gentleman what happened. He said he thinks that there was a Moroccan citizen who was being deported by Switzerland, who didn’t want to go to Morocco for some reason.

Jason: Yeah. Okay. That’s wild, man.

Barry: Yeah. As they say in travel, afterwards it’s just a good story.

Jason: That’s true. The best is when you can say that in the middle of when it’s all hitting the fan. If you’re able to step out and be like, this is going to make a good story one day.

Barry: Well, the biggest disappointment was we couldn’t find anything about it, the next day.

Jason: Right. Yeah. I don’t think in the middle of a hijacking, though, I can, you know, it’s one thing to be waiting hours for a late bus or something. It’s another thing to be in a plane hijacking.

Barry: Yeah. Oh man.

Year Zero: Losing Jackie

Jason: You have a wonderful love story in the book, of course, with Jackie, and you can share where your first kiss was and kind of where all that happened, that’s pretty incredible. I wanted to get into the topic of grief and healing, and how you’re sort of, I don’t know what chapter you would call this in your life of travel, but certainly travel played a huge part in your recovery from the loss of your wife. I know you called that year zero. Maybe that’s a good place to start. You can give some people context and explain what that means and where you were at, at that point, so we can hear a little bit more about your experience. Also, there are a lot of different ways to heal, I guess, and a lot of reasons why us here in this community might choose travel. I think that’s something that probably resonates with a lot of people listening. So I think this is a very important topic for everybody listening. We’ve all used travel in some ways, I wouldn’t say to heal us, but just, you know, it can be used in different ways. It can be a tool, I guess, it can be an intentional tool. I just wanted to dive into that part of the conversation. Is it hard for you to talk about that? Now you’ve written the book, I guess you know you’re going to put yourself out there to sell this book and, you know, so you can promote your work. That all goes hand in hand, like you said, 100% of the profits going to your foundation. But in some ways you have to keep showing up and not reliving this time in your life, but keep revisiting it. Is it hard?

Barry: Yeah, I think these days, no, to be honest. Five years ago, yes. I think when you decide to write a book, you know that you’re putting yourself into that realm, and writing a book itself just intensifies the experiences that happened. Obviously, I continue to think about Jackie and have love for her every day, but that event is sort of in the past, in terms of stirring up the emotions that it stirred up back then. So which shows me, I guess, that I’ve healed. You go through different phases. In my case, no loss is a good loss. My loss was with so much shock, that even before, normally people lose someone, they grieve, then they start to heal, then they are healed. In my case, it was shock, which took a long time before I could even start really grieving in a way, and then sort of the pathway towards healing.

So now I feel like I really am healed, and I put that whole experience in the past, and feel like, when I say that, I mean it just allows me to move on and continue with my life. I feel like I’m at that point. Certainly the travel helped, and writing the book helped a lot.

Jason: Yeah, you’ve done the work and you’ve processed it, of course. What a wonderful thing to be able to say, you know, I feel like I’m healed to the point where I can talk about this and you’ve kind of moved on. That’s a beautiful thing. I think everybody grieves their own way for sure, and I don’t think there’s really any blueprint, because sure, different people recommend different things, but inside us, we carry our own way to do it, if we really look deep inside.

Barry: Mine was just really

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