We know that some of you are huge Series fans and so you perhaps also with a small review of what has been added to the Series.
The biggest additions have been with Top of the Tops, which has now grown to reach 2901 items – just 100 short of our ultimate goal of 3001 items. The top of the tops is meant to note the ‘unmissable’ in each Series category and country. We urge you to recommend those that you still believe is missing so that we include them in the final cut. A museum you loved? A cave that you feel is truly exceptional? A lake that everyone should see? We aim to finish this completely by early next year so have your say!
Milestones, initially 101 items, were increased by 10 more. While perhaps not a traditional Series, this is where you can tell the ‘men from the boys’ to use a slightly inappropriate expression – probably the most challenging of all our categories. Who, we wonder, will ever complete all Top of the Tops in the Castles, forts and Palaces Series?
The mountain series, proposed by Geri Winkler, was introduced and then also counted in the cumulative series. In almost every other Series category, we have added items, especially for Northern and Western European countries and Australia; we will be working on more additions gradually next year with the aim of reaching a total of 70,000 Series items overall. That means 70,000 ideas for things to see and do around the world.
Azerbaijan – Special Trip to Kalbajar Corridor | Biggest Travellers | NomadMania
This year was the inaugural year for our YouTube channel. We launched it mainly because of the 2021 Awards live stream and later on we did not pay too much attention to it. We are aware we cannot really compete with professionals who produce YouTube content for a living, but we still hope to offer you occasionally offbeat, interesting and amusing videos.
The only way that you stay up to date is to subscribe to the channel, so if you haven’t already, please consider doing it now. It will help us reach you faster with some interesting travel videos next year.
While today we are officially presenting two new videos on our channel, allow us to remind you about all the previous ones that we provided throughout the year.
After the inaugural video which was our Awards Show and then presenting our conference in Sao Tome and Principe, we continued our cooperation with Gus Rosted. He prepared the videos Which Country Do You Love?, followed up by Which Country Do You HATE? where some of the biggest travellers state their opinions.
Next, February came and we suddenly were forced to adjust our approach, so we offered our platform and voice to someone who needed it the most in that moment. Orest Zub, a traveller and our operational partner for many years, from Lviv, Ukraine, decided to go back to his country and to face the war that was coming. He gave us an insight into the Situation in Ukraine from a local perspective by a NomadMania member in a live stream that is still available for anyone interested to watch.
Later on we tried reminding you of our first Awards and we added a few videos that were long ‘shorts’ of our Awards panels. After all, they featured some very interesting travel chats. So if you are too busy to watch the full 3-hour Awards stream, now you can hear from The most travelled WOMEN in the World or check Who visited ALMOST ALL countries of the world in only 10 minutes or less.
There is always an interesting video about Men who visited ALL countries (of UN 193) where you can hear some much-needed wisdom about where to start and end when you want to achieve this goal.
Later on, our founder Harry sent us some interesting short clips from his personal travels and we tried using it for your benefit. If you haven’t already, we really recommend that you join him in his visit to the Communist Consumer Museum in Timișoara, Romania after which you can have a morning stroll in three countries while searching for a morning coffee and breakfast in this Triple border – Switzerland, France and Germany video.
Finally, there is our second NomadMania Travel Awards 2022 on November 27, which shouldn’t be missed.
Today we are also presenting a newly released video called Azerbaijan – Special Trip to Kalbajar Corridor, which was actually filmed in February in Azerbaijan. We had an intensive and interesting trip with a group of about 25 other travellers and we got to celebrate Harry’s 50th birthday in the most glamorous way possible – with a nationally recognised star from Azerbaijan. Though we went gladly as travellers, let us stress once again the importance of establishing permanent peace in the region and for everyone.
We thank our member Mehraj Mahmudov for inviting us and also here’s a big shoutout to Gustav (@gus1thego) who makes really great travel videos.
Stars of our Community – UN Masters of 2022
We started off in March when our dear friend Peder Zetterberg visited Saudi Arabia which marked his last out of 193 UN countries. Little did he know at the time, but he definitely paved the path for another 15 travellers to finish their big goal this year. And they all celebrated in the most unusual ways.
Flavio Ferrari Zumbini ended with South Korea and celebrated in the DMZ zone with some local friends including one former North Korean citizen. Somewhere around the same time, Ciprian Enea became the first Romanian to visit all UN countries.
One of our wonderful travelling couples – Ursula and Jürgen Hacker finished in Syria and rushed to pass an additional verification step with our Thomas Buechler, just to confirm the last three countries. Though he is not our member (yet), Garret Gravesen and his infamous celebration that lasted 5 days didn’t go unnoticed, since so many of the travelling community attended this ‘monstrous’ party.
Alessandro Gerevini also finished in Syria, so that’s two for Italy this year, while Thomas Casswall became the second Swede to finish UN 193 this year by visiting Honduras.
Thomas Beck was the third German, finishing in the lovely Bahamas, which is fairly close to Antigua where our dear Romaine Welds was one day late to join his family and friends in his celebration for making Antigua and Barbuda his 193rd country, due to a hurricane. This made him the first Jamaican and the first person from the Caribbean to achieve such an accomplishment.
Another first this year was David Yang, who became the first Taiwanese to cross his 193rd country by stepping into Venezuela. Asian forces were strong this year and we got another first when Odette Lourdes Ricasa became the first Philippine traveller to reach all countries of the world thus becoming one of the first women to mark this milestone for an entire nation.
Paul Couniotakis marked Libya as his final country, while we all cheered and observed Martina Sebova and Rachel Davey waiting for their Eritrean visa to arrive. This wasn’t their final country, but it was the final country in Africa which prevented them from then finally finishing in the Pacific, in Samoa.
Sweden dominated this year’s UN Masters list, as we have a total of four travellers who travel on a Swedish passport. Hans Ollongren marked the third Swede and our latest tip was Jian Kang who also considers himself Chinese. These days Jian lives in Singapore and he made Eritrea his final country on December 14.
One of our latest entries to the list was David Langan becoming the third Irish person to accomplish the goal with Laos as his final country. Just two or three days ago we received the news that a Swedish citizen Kang Jian made Eritrea his final country and while doing the final edits of this letter, we were waiting for the final post about the final UN Master of 2022.
Even though he didn’t make it official yet, we’ve been waiting to send our congratulations to Ilir Morina who should’ve become the first person from Kosovo to visit all countries of the world. We know that he was waiting for that aeroplane a day ago and we honestly hope that he had made it to Eritrea as well. Though he doesn’t travel on a Kosovan passport only, this is certainly a great accomplishment and he is a unique traveller. Congratulations to him and to all of the amazing travellers who marked 2022 as their year!
We remind you that we also have our special part of the UN Masters list devoted to the travellers Very close to the goal and we know that there are several travellers there who are still waiting for some countries to open for them. Hopefully, we see them all complete the UN list in 2023!
Finally, we managed to gather some of the 2022 UN Masters in our first panel of the Travel Awards Show. One of them finished way back in 2020, but this was a unique chance to get him to talk about that accomplishment. See the image below and don’t forget – we are always welcoming new tips and messages about new UN masters, so please let us know if we’re missing someone!
