I Still Look at the Map First

Travel Was Never Just About Counting Countries

I grew up in Greece, so perhaps it was inevitable that I would become obsessed with how geography shapes travel. In Greece, an island that looks close on a map can be awkward to reach, two neighboring island groups can feel completely different, and the right ferry connection can change the shape of an entire trip.

I have been traveling around Greece for decades, from the obvious places to islands and mainland regions that receive a fraction of the attention. That background still shapes the way I think about trips today. I rarely see a destination in isolation. I see the roads, ferries, mountains, history, and neighboring places around it.

That is why my Greece content does not stop at “best islands.” I am much more interested in questions like which Greek island-hopping routes actually work, or which quieter Greek islands make sense for travelers who want something beyond the usual circuit.

The Best Parts of a Trip Are Usually Hard to Put on a Checklist

I have been to 70 countries so far, but the number itself does not mean very much to me. What I remember are individual scenes: drinking coffee in an Armenian kitchen, walking through the blue-tiled streets of Khiva, spending time with Berber families in the Atlas Mountains, arriving on islands where daily life still moves at its own pace, or finding a place that suddenly makes the history of an entire region easier to understand.

Those moments are why I keep traveling. They are also why I am skeptical of itineraries that reduce a country to a string of famous sights. Sometimes the “minor” stop is the place that gives the rest of the route meaning.

In Armenia, for example, the appeal for me is not simply a collection of monasteries. It is the way mountains, villages, Soviet history, ancient Christianity, food, road conditions, and distances interact as you move through the country. That is why my Armenia road trip was built as a journey rather than a list.

I Like Journeys That Reveal How Places Are Connected

The trips I enjoy most have some kind of continuity. A landscape changes, a language shifts, one empire gives way to another, a trade route becomes a railway, or a modern border cuts across something much older.

Uzbekistan makes more sense when you think about the Silk Road rather than treating Samarkand, Bukhara, and Khiva as three unrelated city breaks. China makes more sense when the train journey, regional differences, and changing landscapes are part of the story. Tunisia becomes richer when Roman ruins, Berber villages, Mediterranean towns, desert landscapes, and the south are allowed to connect instead of being planned as isolated day trips.

That way of thinking is behind my Uzbekistan route, 4-week China itinerary, and 3-week Tunisia itinerary. They are different trips, but the underlying question is the same: what sequence helps the traveler understand the place better?

I Like Ambitious Trips. I Just Do Not Want Them to Feel Like Work.

I am not a particularly slow traveler. I often build trips with a lot of movement because I enjoy seeing how one region turns into another. But there is a point where an ambitious itinerary becomes a succession of checkouts, transfers, and alarms — and then the route starts defeating the reason for traveling in the first place.

So I spend a ridiculous amount of time thinking about bases, travel days, ferry schedules, train times, road distances, and whether a stop actually earns the effort required to include it. I would rather remove one place and enjoy the rest properly than keep everything because it looked good in the original plan.

The Azores are a good example. The islands are close enough to look simple on a map, but the rhythm of flights, ferries, weather, and island changes determines whether the journey feels wonderful or unnecessarily fragmented.

That same thinking now runs through almost everything on Unusual Nomad: where to stay, how long to stay, what to combine, what to skip, and what can go wrong when a route that looks neat on paper meets the real world.

I Built the Site Around the Questions I Keep Asking on My Own Trips

Over time, I realized that the information I most needed was often buried between the obvious travel articles. I did not need another paragraph telling me that a famous square was beautiful. I needed to know which neighborhood made sense for an early train, whether a ferry connection was realistic, whether a detour deserved two days, or which mobile network I would actually be using once I landed.

That is why Unusual Nomad now covers more than itineraries. I write where-to-stay guides, transportation explainers, practical trip-planning articles, and eSIM comparisons because those are all parts of the same problem: making an independent trip work smoothly enough that you can concentrate on the place itself.

Connectivity became a bigger part of the site for exactly that reason. On a modern independent trip, your phone may be your map, translator, train ticket, hotel confirmation, payment method, ride-hailing tool, and emergency backup. So my travel eSIM guides are not a separate tech hobby, but another piece of practical travel planning.

Some articles contain affiliate links. They help fund the time I spend researching and updating the site, but the site only works if the advice remains useful enough that I would still give it to a friend planning the same trip.

Help You Leave With a Better Route — and Come Back Understanding More

I do not expect every traveler to like the same places I do. That would make travel writing pretty useless. What I hope Unusual Nomad can do is give you enough context and practical detail to make your own decisions with more confidence.

Sometimes that means convincing you to add a place you had overlooked. Sometimes it means telling you that a famous stop is not worth bending the entire route around. Sometimes it is simply explaining the transport clearly enough that a destination that looked intimidating suddenly becomes manageable.

And if you enjoy doing most of the planning yourself but reach the point where the route has too many moving parts, I also offer personalized trip planning and route reviews. The idea is the same as the site itself: I help with the difficult decisions, while you remain in control of the trip.