HHow to live as a global nomad. Tynan tels his story in Life Nomadic, how he sold all his stuff and started living most of the year somewhere on this globe.
His stuff fits into a 28 liter backpack. He wear silly toe-shoes, in which his feet almost freeze where he walks through the Canadian snow with them.
He lives of writing about his nomadic life.
Life Nomadic is full of tips for living a nomadic life.
Live where the locals live, eat where they eat, make friends with them, and take their advice. Before visiting a new country, I try to at the very least read the Wikipedia entry on it to get a sense of what the country is like and how it got that way.
HE does no ban all luxury from his life.
Living as a nomad should raise your quality of living, not lower it. The key concept to understand is that a high quality of living doesn’t mean spending a lot of money.
We live in an exciting time, and it’s important to me to stay part of the internet age. I carry a laptop, photojournalist-grade digital camera, and HD video camera with me at all times. My watch and phone both have GPS receivers in them to help me navigate and avoid getting lost. I’m never far from the internet.
Nomadic life is a means to a meaningful life:
When you finally get off the beaten path, you’ll find two things. First, you’ll reconnect with the sense of discovery and exploration that you had when you were a child. The act of blazing new trails and taking full responsibility for your life is exhilarating. You gain a new quiet confidence from knowing that you’re capable of driving your life, not just riding along in it. Second, you’ll find that it’s not as hard or scary as you expected.
If you’re going to spend the time to read the rest of this book, make sure that you can accept that sometimes things that sound too good to be true aren’t.
Experiences. Usually travel. No one ever regrets spending money on travel, and I think the reason why is obvious. Possessions come and go, but experiences change us as people.
But the nomadic lifestyle does not mean a life of 365 days of vacation. In fact, this one means imposing more discipline on yourself. To have a different philosophy of life.
Becoming more emotionally resilient and disciplined is almost involuntary when you become a nomad.
Our brains have been trained to believe that traveling equals being on vacation, which equals not working.
There’s this misconception that luxury is sitting on the beach doing nothing. It’s not. Luxury is having the ability and lack of encumbrances to do whatever you want to do. In that way, a minimalist nomad has the ultimate luxury. He has his time and his choice and can make of them whatever he pleases.
Tynan begins by encouraging us to jettison all unnecessary clutter and pursue a minimalism. This is a prerequisite for a nomadic life.
There’s no way to become a minimalist without just jumping in head first. And there’s just no way to become a nomad without being a minimalist.
This is not only to get rid of physical superfluous stuff, but also the psychological hang-up of stuff.
If you have stuff lingering back home then you have roots and you will never feel the true freedom of being a nomad.
How do you plan your life as a nomad? Actually, you want to plan nothing and keep complete freedom, but that can become costly.
The biggest downside of planning ahead is that you will invariably want to change your plans, but will either be unable to or will have to forfeit a ticket you’ve already purchased. The former ruins some of the versatility of traveling and the latter negates the potential cost benefits of planning ahead.
Tynan tackles this rather practically, make a list and prioritize it.
Create a list of every place you’d like to stay for a month or two. Don’t worry about how much time you’re going to be gone for, just make the list.
How do you decide which ones to remove? I tend to place an emphasis on developing countries rather than developed countries.
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The comfortable and familiar can be evaluated in just a few days, and the unknown and mysterious are given enough time to be fully appreciated.
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Even more important than the weather is determining which major events you want to experience in each place.
And then just do it.
Check the visa requirements for your first country, get the visa, and buy a one way ticket.
Travel light, live light.
Twenty Eight Liters is All You Need
If you bring something that is not making your trip better, it’s making your trip worse.
No travel bag other than a backpack. And in it the most necessary, and nothing more.
The reasons for choosing a backpack are as numerous as they are obvious. Any terrain can be crossed, they compact when they’re less full, they don’t stick out, and they are designed to be waterproofed.
Sticking with our minimalist nomad philosophy, here’s the clothing packing list: • Two pairs of socks • Two pairs of underwear • One pair of convertible pants • One bathing suit • Three shirts • One bra (if you’re a woman, or a crossdresser)
All clothing made of wool.
Wool does an amazing job wicking sweat away, dries quickly, keeps us warm even when wet, and smells great.
Also of underwear you need only two, if you have good ones, of wool, and of shirts 3.
Underwear falls in basically the same category. Get two pair and wash them every day in the shower.
… pack three shirts, which occasionally feels like one too many. Wool is, of course, the fabric of choice,
Other stuff: The stuff you need to document your travels.
For this reason, I say to take what you need to document your travels and share them with your friends, family, and maybe even the whole world.
Camera … A micro four-thirds: compact and quality. Laptop. Cell Phone. Charging your gadgets: All USB.
For all its travel gear, tenant creates a new web page every year: tynan.net/gearyyy. For example: http://tynan.com/gear2018.
Find a credit card company that doesn’t charge a conversion fee. There are.
Recommend about sending and receiving physical mail. Is a bit outdated.
Also, calling abroad is outdated. These days Skype is the Go-To facility for this and you can make calls all over the world for a few cents a minute.
Language learning: Pimsleur.
Immersion is the only real way to learn a language. Pimsleur immerses you in your new language for half an hour a day, but it will take more than that to gain real fluency.
Reasonably detailed picture of his expenses, as an example to show that life does not have to be expensive.
I spend somewhere around $1500 per month, which is broken down approximately as follows: • $500 for lodging[1] • $265 for plane, train, ship, and cruise tickets • $500 for food • $50 in fees for phones, remote mail, faxing • $185 in gear replacement and miscellaneous expenses
Traveling as cheaply as possible yet comfortably. Practical recommendation of which days to travel, one-way instead of round-trip (or return as this is cheaper in some cases), fly via major hubs, use AirAsia and Southwest as examples of cheap airlines.
Use your credit card to get lounge access. Lounge is resting, but also free food and sometimes showering.
Lots of references to useful web sites. This one for trains was really all new to me:
I could go on and on about trains, but the truth is that I get all of my information from one place, Seat61.com.
Where do you want to stay: location is most important.
My typical modus operandi is to land in a country with no plans at all, find a hostel, and stay there for a couple days as I make friends and get the lay of the land. It usually doesn’t take long to familiarize myself with the different areas of town, which helps me make a good decision on where I want to live.
And then of course make money to pay for everything.
I will, however, condense some of the best advice I’ve read and absorbed over the years:
- Do work that you’re passionate about. Let the money come second.
- Create something remarkable that provides real benefit to your customers.
- Work harder than anyone else and hold yourself to higher standards than everyone else.
- Be ruthlessly persistent. Most people aren’t.
Where to go: it actually comes down to preparing yourself a bit and widening the tourist traps.
We discovered Yakushima through the free online catalog of UNESCO World Heritiage sites…. What I particularly like about the World Heritage Sites is that there’s usually a lot of substance and few fellow travelers.
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Wikipedia and Wikitravel. Neither is as comprehensive as a guidebook, but they’re generally written by people who really care about the area they’re writing about. Amongst the standard hotel recommendations and
The crux.
Travel with an open mind. Accept invitations and extend them as well. Indulge in other cultures and appreciate the best in them.