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Key Points
- Embrace Cultural Exposure
Traveling to different countries can significantly broaden your worldview. Experiencing new cultures, languages, and lifestyles can lead to personal growth and a better understanding of global diversity. - Learn New Languages
Engaging with a new language, as Vagabjørn did with German, can enhance cognitive abilities and deepen cultural understanding, making travel more immersive and meaningful. - Minimalism and Travel
Travel teaches the value of living with less. Adapting a minimalist lifestyle can reduce clutter in daily life, freeing up time, space, and resources for more enriching experiences. - Trust and Vulnerability
Building trust by being vulnerable, like asking for help or staying in strangers’ homes, can lead to profound connections and friendships. Trust is mutual and can open doors to unique experiences. - Flexibility and Spontaneity
Long-term travel often requires an open-ended approach where you’re ready for the unexpected. This mindset can be applied to life to foster creativity and adaptability. - Patience and Persistence
Travel involves waiting, from visas to border crossings. Patience, coupled with persistence, is crucial for overcoming obstacles in travel and in life. - Politeness and Respect
Politeness can make a significant difference in how people respond to you, especially in bureaucratic situations or when navigating cultural differences. - Seek Authentic Experiences
Engage with local life rather than just tourist amenities to get a truer sense of a place. This can enrich your travel and life experiences by connecting you with the essence of different cultures. - The Power of Stories
Collecting stories from different people across the globe helps break down stereotypes and provides a nuanced understanding of the world, promoting empathy and peace. - Appreciate Nature
Travel can reignite or enhance one’s appreciation for nature, which can inspire a more environmentally conscious lifestyle or simply a deeper enjoyment of the natural world. - Overcoming Fear of Exploration
Start small if you’re new to travel, but don’t overthink it. Basic preparations like having a passport and some funds can suffice for many adventures. - Community and Connection
Traveling with or meeting like-minded people can create lifelong bonds. Organizing or joining group trips can be a way to share experiences and learn from others. - Life Is Short – Live Fully
The awareness of life’s brevity can motivate one to pursue experiences rather than material accumulation, focusing on what’s truly meaningful. - Self-Development Through Challenges
Facing and overcoming travel challenges (like language barriers, health issues, or logistical problems) can build resilience, problem-solving skills, and self-reliance. - Curiosity as a Guide
Let curiosity guide your explorations, whether in travel or in life, rather than following others’ narratives or plans. - Success as Personal Meaning
Redefine success not by external validation but by achieving what is personally meaningful, leading to a more fulfilled life. - Letting Go of Traditional Expectations
Being open to changing social dynamics, like friendships or career paths, can lead to more genuine and fulfilling relationships and endeavors.
By integrating these lessons into everyday life, one can live more fully, authentically, and with a greater appreciation for both the world and personal growth.
Transcript
Intro
“To travel is to kind of learn to see things with a different set of eyes.
Open-ended journeys for me is definitely the best.
The world is not just a single story like we perhaps hear from an article or something on TV. It’s like a multitude of millions of stories. If you can try to collect as many of those stories, you can get a bigger and broader understanding.
[I] started to believe that anyone can be your friend.
Perhaps you don’t understand, so giving yourself time to achieve what you want, for the reasons that you have for yourself.
I’ve had an understanding of how short my life actually is.
…That you’re not doing something for someone else.
Get as much out of your own life as possible, without limiting or harming others“
Joachim’s Intro of the Guest
Today’s guest is Jørn Bjørn Augestad.
He grew up on Finnøy, a small island outside of Stavanger, and might be better known by his online moniker Vagabjørn. He is a world explorer, couch surfer, author, speaker and off-the-beaten-path tour guide. During his travels, he has experienced prison time, life-threatening fevers, wonderful authentic cuisine, and the intense flavours of culture at peace and at war.
In 2019, at 29 years old, he became the youngest Norwegian to have visited every country in the world! He’s renowned for his captivating travel photos and videos, and has mesmerized audiences worldwide with his engaging storytelling.
Vagabjørn shares his experiences with a sense of wonder and a passion for discovery, and has written the book “Go Discover – the World might be different than you think”, in which he covers the experiences from his first 30 years.
In 2020, he gave a talk at TEDx Stavanger, sharing travel stories to promote trust in people’s inherent goodness, inspiring others to explore.
In 2023, he published the sequel book “Project Borderless”, that describes the beauty and the unique challenges of visiting unrecognized states.
…and now dear friends, my conversation with Jørn Bjørn Augestad.
The Podcast
[edited for clarity and brevity]
Joachim: All right, welcome to the pod!
You’re the youngest person in Norway to have visited every country in the world. Tell me how it all started. What sparked your wanderlust?
Vagabjørn: Well it’s a longer story.
I grew up on a small island and I stayed there until I was 16 years old. So then at 16, I moved to Austria for an exchange year. Went to sports school there. I think that’s probably the most defining moment in my life because it set me somewhat off course compared to my brothers, who are both engineers and living a different life than mine.
So living in Austria, you have to learn another language, [and the] culture is very different. You make friends [and] you realize that the world is a lot bigger than your small island at home.
Joachim: You learned German while being in Austria?
Vagabjørn: Yeah, I had to.
Joachim: …and you speak it fluently now?
Vagabjørn: Yeah, as good as my English I would say.
Joachim: Oh, wow!
Vagabjørn: Yeah, in school everything was in German, [and] at home because I stayed in a host family. We spoke German, so it was very exhausting at first. You go to bed very early, very tired. But then, eventually it just switches and it becomes natural. You start dreaming in German.
So that sparked the adventure. That there’s something much bigger. The world is big. I need to explore and see more of it it.
Definitely sets the course a different way.
I thought from that moment that I don’t want to just live in Norway, on this small island. I want to study abroad again. I want to work abroad. I want to have an international life, but it was more career focused somehow. When I came home at age 17, I had one year left of high school. After finishing that, I chose to study International Communication and that gave me the opportunity to study in the US, in Costa Rica [and] in South Africa. Then I did a masters online, through a university in the UK. I had my studies abroad, living different places [and] using that as a base to travel around.
[From] Costa Rica there’s [a] very short distance to neighboring countries, and flights are cheap to other places. So, weekends, holidays, everything was used to travel.
Joachim: Which year are we in now, when you’re in [the] US, Costa Rica [and] South Africa?
Vagabjørn: Well, I just turned 35 now. So from 16, that must have been something like 2008-2010. Around [that time].
Yeah, it was semesters abroad. Having been living abroad as well, and traveling, it just sparked the wanderlust and curiosity that I wasn’t ready to just settle in an office, even if it was abroad. I just wanted to travel, move, and see as much as possible.
Joachim: After that study in the US, Costa Rica and South Africa, did you embark on a larger Journey after that?
Vagabjørn: When I finished my bachelors after 3 years at age 21, I decided to sell everything I owned and to go on a journey for however long. Along the way I’ll probably get a job, doing a working holiday in Australia. I could be away for 2-3 years. I traveled one month through Europe on an interrail ticket. Crossing from Aberdeen to Istanbul.
On that journey I had a lot of experiences. I [learned] a lot of lessons. I had a kebab for 40 cents in Istanbul as soon as I arrived. I said: “Okay I’ll take two”. It was so cheap. …and of course that ended with an upset stomach. But all these experiences that went bad, have helped me later on.
Then, after that one month in Europe, I flew down to South Africa. I met a girl there from Norway who had a ticket home. She chose to throw away that ticket, and joined me on my adventure for many months.
We traveled from there (South Africa) to India for two and a half month. Then we went to Southeast Asia for four and a half months. It was in Southeast Asia that the money had run out, so I never made it to Australia to make more money. I remember the moment as well. I was in Ko Pha-Ngan in Thailand.
Vagabjørn: Have you been there?
Joachim: Yes.
Vagabjørn: It’s famous for full moon party. Exactly once a month, when the moon is full, they have this beach party on Haad Rin Beach. That was great! …and the next morning, when I was looking at my bank account, it was yeah pretty empty.
Then I looked for jobs on Finn.no, and I saw a job position as a “travel expert” or “travel consultant”. Something like that. It was in Trondheim for a company called Kilroy, that organizes travels. I flew home and I had been traveling for maybe 30 hours. Planes to Vietnam, and to Russia, and then came to Trondheim with the train the last part. [I] didn’t sleep for pretty much 30 hours and was so tired. Probably white in my face when I came to the interview. They were laughing, but I had a lot of stories to tell, and they just hired me on the spot.
Joachim: Oh, fantastic! I love that story!
Vagabjørn: Yeah! It’s a very youthful and fun company to work for. They organize mostly “Around the World” trips, volunteering work, surfing schools and studies abroad. So, basically for people who don’t want to have a straight highway life, but instead doing a bit of zig-zag while experiencing things.
They (Kilroy) also had high-season and low-season. In the low season, which was almost half the year, I could go on unpaid leave and travel.
Joachim: Great setup.
Vagabjørn: Yeah, really! We were selling tours through suppliers. If you sell enough, they want you to come and try it out for yourselves because that helps you to sell more. Through that work in the low-season, I traveled on the Transiberian railway. I did the Silk Road. All paid.
Joachim: Wow!
Vagabjørn: It’s free travels! This girl I met, was still with me. She joined on these longer trips for up to 4 – 4.5 months at a time. Eventually, those 4.5 months was not enough [either]. That’s the time I quit.
Joachim: How many years were you with the company (Kilroy) before sort of pulling the plug?
Vagabjørn: Well, I pulled the plug three times. It became a thing where I just traveled until my money ran out, and then I called my boss. After one year of traveling, I needed a job again and it was easy to fly back and get back to work. No problem. I had more stories to tell, [and] it helped me to sell better. I stayed with them on and off for probably 4 – 4.5 years.
It was also great because they send you on familiarization trips. Then you have everything covered. You go through many suppliers, testing out a road trip with that company, a skydive with that company and a helicopter tour with that company. It’s very busy [with a] program from morning to evening, but great fun!
Joachim: It sounds amazing!
Vagabjørn: Yeah, it really was! The salary is not great. I mean for the fun jobs you do, but it is a life experience. I was sitting in a system looking at flights for around the world and making tricks to make the flights cost less, and I just found some genius opportunities. As soon as I would find something very cheap, or good, for a customer I would just note it down and save it for my own travels.
Joachim: Fantastic way of planning your own trips as well.
Vagabjørn: I remember one time I had a woman calling me from Iraq. This was at a time when ISIS was moving, and they had come around 30 km from Airbel where this woman was living and working. She said: “I want to get on the first flight home to Norway.” It took me just a few seconds to look up the ticket, and I said that’s going to be 1 700 NOK, or something like that, for a one-way trip. Because it was not a very popular route at the time. I thought: “Okay that’s so cheap!” So. I ended up booking for myself [as well], but going the other way to Iraq.
It was an adventurous journey [during a] special time to be there. ISIS stayed at those 30 km away by a river. I remember the flight was Pegasus Airlines, which is a very low-cost airline. I fell asleep on the plane and woke up not in Iraq. I woke up in Turkey, because they couldn’t land for some reason. So the next morning we made another attempt and landed. I still don’t know why they didn’t land the first time.
Joachim: I think it sounds like a wonderful setup. Working for Kilroy and having all that flexibility, but also the encouragement and sometimes even the payment to go and and travel and explore.
Vagabjørn: I had a lot of young people coming in and they came straight from high school. They had been working anything from 3 – 6 months, and then they wanted to travel the rest. So, I thought if these young people at 18-19 [years old] can work for 3 months staying with their parents and just saving what they make in Norway, and then going on such amazing trips, then I can do it as well.
I kind of have that philosophy still. You just need to make what you need, and then as soon as you leave, everything’s going to be a lot cheaper. A lot of people want to save up for many years [and] think that they need a buffer and safety. But, if you can let go of that need for safety a little bit and maybe travel [for] less… Especially when you go to places like India. I mean people make $200 – $400 a month, and they eat for that. They sleep for that. And, you can do it too.
Actually, I was in India two days ago. On the way home, I spent one day in Delhi, and you can get bus rides for 10 cents going across the city. So instead of hopping in a taxi, just do it the local way and you will be able to live very, very cheap.
Joachim: You also get more experiences by doing it more the local way. More in the shoe-string budget way.
Vagabjørn: Yeah, because if you stay in nice hotels and [only take] taxis you are somewhat sheltered from everything that is going on, on the ground. I like to travel and see all the hustle and bustle. All the grinding of people going to work. Pulling carts. Riding donkeys, or whatever. People being busy working.
Joachim: Yeah, especially in those [kind of] cities. It’s very full of life! People are always on their way to somewhere. There’s so much life, around the clock, in so many countries, which is quite different from Norway. You can see people going around with their business like 4:00 in the night. There’s always something happening. A lot of activity. It’s just so busy with life.
Vagabjørn: Here people don’t want to work more than 7.5 hours a day, because they don’t have to. In India it’s pretty much on your mind as soon as you wake up. You have to go out there. You have to get into battle. Make your living, and might need 14 or 15 hours to make your daily salary. So, they are quite up and eager, and busy.
Joachim: While we’re on this sort of theme of minimalistic living. Very often when you travel, as you are speaking to right now, you realize how few items you actually need to get by while traveling. When you come home, [one tends to] bring that mindset home. Could you speak more to how you feel that, this may translate into other parts of life?
Vagabjørn: Here in Stavanger, which I call my home I have an apartment where I rent out a smaller part at the bottom. Then I have a loft where I live myself. A bathroom, I have a tiny kitchenet and a bed, and that’s what I need. When I travel, I’m out exploring, doing things and the place I sleep that’s just where I close my eyes. I’ve had nights where I just go and find a park bench even to close my eyes for a few hours. Then, I wake up ready for the next day.
It’s kind of the same here. I don’t want to have a big couch and a lot of comfort. When you get comfortable… When you sit down in a nice comfortable chair, you know how difficult it is to get up sometimes. So, if you keep yourself busy. Keep yourself going. That’s the way you can explore more and somewhat get more out of life, I think.
Joachim: Once you accumulate a lot of things, the things start to own you a little bit, rather than you owning them. And, it starts becoming more about adding more to that pile of things, rather than adding experiences which gives you much more back.
Vagabjørn: For sure. I was very afraid of buying an apartment as well. I was thinking: “Then I’ll be stuck for the rest of my life.”
Joachim: In terms of mortgage, or in terms of..?
Vagabjørn: Yeah, basically that you have to work to pay [the mortgage]… But I found that renting it out was actually a good way to have a little bit on the side as well for my travel budget. I was lucky with the timing. I got the apartment in 2020 in midst of covid-19, when I couldn’t travel. [I had ample time to] set it up. It has has set me up quite well now for travels in the future. It’s very minimalistic. Not a lot of space, and I don’t need a lot of space.
Joachim: It sounds like a good setup.
People watching this are probably at different points in their understanding in terms of Vagabonding. Maybe we could speak about the difference between a short trip, a vacation, and a longer journey. It’s typically more than just the duration that separates them. How would you explain the difference between vacationing and vagabonding?
Vagabjørn: I think the biggest difference is that you have a set amount of time. You have a set amount of what you want to get out of that trip, whereas when you’re out traveling for a longer time you don’t know what’s around the [next] corner. You don’t really plan every step. You’re open to the unexpected. For me the unexpected is really a core reason for my travels. The unexpected could be good or bad, but it brings your life up and down. If you are traveling for a limited time there’s probably some element of getting rest or get come back with a fresh mindset and that can be great too. I’ve had to do that as well when I’ve been working. [However], when you go into a big place like India, being limited by time and how much you’re able to achieve, that takes away a lot of the adventure of it. You might meet someone saying: “Hey, [do] you want to come to my village in the mountains, and we can go horse riding, or hiking?” You want to be able to say: “Yes.” For 1-2 week travels you’re more limited in that way. Open-ended journeys for me is definitely the best.
Joachim: One thing is the the feeling of being spontaneous and open to what might happen on a longer journey. It’s more open-ended, but maybe we talk a little bit about the mentality as well. Maybe some of the mentality can also translate into other parts of life, as we talked about [with regards to] the minimalistic way of living.
Vagabjørn: [In a way,] to travel is to learn to see things with a different set of eyes. The way I try to travel as much as possible, is to stay in people’s homes. You meet people and you hear their stories and it can help you to see things very differently. I learned that the world is not just a single story (learn more from the TED Talk: “The Danger of a Single Story“), like we perhaps hear from an article or something on TV. It’s like a multitude of millions of stories. So, if you can try to collect as many of those stories [as possible], you can get a bigger and broader understandings of a lot of things.
Say traveling in Syria for example. It’s a country which has been very devastated by war, and this we all know. This is the number one thing that we think about when we hear [about Syria]. But through my five trips since 2017, I’ve gotten to see a lot more than just that story. There is creativity. There’s culture. There is people who have dreams and careers, relationships and everything. So, everywhere really has something to offer.
Joachim: I think we’re touching on something really interesting. You very often stay in people’s homes, and one of the things that has struck me when I’ve been traveling, is how extremely friendly welcoming and hospitable people are. They will introduce you to friends, to family, offer you to stay in their home, offer you clothes, food, everything. Even when they have very little to offer, they’re still very open to share what little they got. I think that’s just incredible to experience. I believe that you have felt the same many times, and I would love for you to share a few stories to color that.
Vagabjørn: What you said about people who have little [and] sharing [it]… I often find that the people who have [the least] are sharing the most. Especially if you go to places that are not as much visited.
I find that there’s two types of places: those with over-tourism and with under-tourism where basically hardly anyone goes. I you visit places that perhaps haven’t seen a traveler before, you’ll be treated like a king. They want to show you. They want to learn. They’re so curious about you.
Places that I’ve actually felt really welcome have been in Sudan for example, which was very surprising to me. I ended up spending almost a full month in the capital because of connections I made there, and also partly because I had to wait for a Visa, which never really came through. I stayed with a English teacher. His name was Muhammad. He wanted me to come and meet his class. To join in his lecture. I talked to students. I made friends and I decided to just help them as a teacher there for almost a month.
Joachim: Oh, how nice!
Vagabjørn: Just getting to know more people. Hearing more stories. What is life like in Sudan. Being a teacher is a great opportunity for that. They just wanted to speak English. They wanted conversations, and how to you make conversations? You can ask them to tell stories. So, I was telling stories from my journeys, which they were very interested in, and I was very interested in hearing about their lives. How is it different in Sudan, compared to how we are in Norway for example?
Joachim: I think there’s so much beauty in the real connection with the people you meet and being genuinely curious. There’s so many questions to ask: How do they marry? How do they meet? What’s the courtship period? How do they think about food? About funerals and weddings? There’s so many things to touch on. A lot of it is just so fascinating. As you say, they’re often equally fascinated to hear about you.
Vagabjørn: Absolutely.
Joachim: …which is just a wonderful feeling.
Vagabjørn: I think it’s very important to get to know people who are very different from you. First of all, when you travel you are an ambassador of your own country, your values and everything that you believe in. When you get to know other people [who’s] living differently, and thinking differently, you can much better understand why people are living in thinking the way they do in other places in general. I think travel is really a force of peace. It’s also a chance for self-development. To get to know yourself and to learn how there’s always another side to any conflict or issue. To be become more patient and understanding.
Joachim: Couldn’t agree more.
You’ve written the book “Go discover: the world might be different than you think.” You share a lot of your experiences from the first 30 years of your life. In the book, you also talk about the importance of trust and trust between people, and how this can radically reshape our view of the world and ourselves. Could you speak a little bit to that?
Vagabjørn: Trust is something that can go both ways. Actually by trusting, you are taking a step forward and you’re inviting another person to take a step forward as well. I’ve had moments staying in people’s home where… Imagine just me. A man from Norway. 30 years old. Big beard. You know, the kind of scruffy backpacker type. [Imagine] inviting someone like that, into your home. “Who is this person? Will he steal my things?” By trusting that I’ll be safe in their home, they will also need to do so.
For example in Syria, I stayed one week with a girl called Nora. This is a girl I just met, in a taxi, on the way to Damascus, the capital of the country. I couldn’t find my friend. It turned out that he was actually arrested for one week. He was gone. He was [out of] reach. I didn’t know where to go. She (Nora) said that you can come and stay in my home. I live in a small apartment, with my daughter Nastia, and my mother Bilble. They had a very small apartment. It was a tiny kitchen, a sofa, a bathroom and a bedroom. They had one bedroom [among] the three of them, and they insisted that I was the one who was going to stay in the bedroom. They would stay on the floor in the kitchen/living room. That was of course very hard for me to accept, but I learned that they insisted. They wanted me to do that. Whatever they had, they shared.
Nora was a dancer and she was traveling around dancing. She was doing rehearsals and was quite busy. She would leave her daughter with Bilble to take care of her. But sometimes Bilble also had a things she [needed] to do. Meet friends, or go shopping. Then I was the one who was going to take care of that small 9 year old girl Nastia. So, I followed her to school. I was doing homework with her. Learning letters and words in Arabic, which I was just as interested in learning as her.
For me to stay with the only child… I know you’re a father yourself. For you to trust this complete stranger with your child…
Joachim: The most precious thing you have.
Vagabjørn: …that is a high degree of trust.
So, when people call me naive for staying in people’s homes. People I don’t know. Then, I want to remind them, that this trust actually goes both ways.
So far, I’ve never had any bad experiences staying in someone’s home. When they let you in that far, to the core of their life, that’s already showing that they don’t want to fool you. It’s quite the contrary. When I stay in people’s homes, you get to take part of their life. You get to join them on their football practice, or whichever events they go to. Meet up with friends.
Joachim: …and truly connect. I would imagine for you, as well, become friends for maybe the rest of your life.
Vagabjørn: Yeah, yeah, definitely. I have a lot of friends now. All over. That is both a blessing and a curse. I would love to see all of them, but with the time I have in my life that’s very difficult. To go in the same footsteps of the last 10 years of travel, and seeing all of them. But luckily we can stay in touch online.
Joachim: That’s a good thing with the digital age we live in. We can stay in touch more easily with the people we meet.
What would you say has been the the best, or maybe the most, surprising thing that you’ve learned about yourself, or the world, through traveling?
Vagabjørn: I can tell you about one journey, where I’ve really had to look inwards and especially in relationship to others. It was a time when I decided to join a trip [in which we] drove from Europe down to South Africa. That was a 7-month road trip. We were 12 [people] sharing a big van, sitting in the back of a truck. We were sleeping together. We were cooking together. We had to share responsibilities and depend on each other.
On that trip I got sick with Malaria three times.
Joachim: Three times!?
Vagabjørn: I was accidentally in a robbery, which ended up violent, where they stabbed me in the hand. We had traffic accidents. I was innocent in jail. There were so many things happening.
Joachim: Let’s double click on some of those things.
Vagabjørn: It was intense. I had to depend on other people. I needed help to get out of jail, and to get healthy.
Joachim: For how long did you have to stay in jail, and in which country?
Vagabjørn: Five days, in Burkina Faso. That is one of the poorest countries in Africa and the conditions were not very great. We had water and some food. It was me and a friend from the US. Whenever we would complain, they would just take away our water and our food. We had bathroom breaks three times per day. During those bathroom breaks, we had to walk with the others, holding their pants, walking in line. One [person] at the time going into the bathroom. It was a terrible bathroom. It’s the worst place, where people instead of doing it in the hole, a few people did it on the ground next to the hole. So, that was not great. Luckily, as I mentioned, I had these friends who came looking for us after 5 days. As soon as they did, and explained [the] situation, we were let out of jail.
Joachim: What was the charges that you were being held for?
Vagabjørn: I still really don’t fully know that, until this day. It was all in French, and I promised myself when I left that jail [that I would] learn French. If I [had] known French, [then] I could’ve probably explained myself better, and I wouldn’t be in there. The reason [as to] why [they] took us to the side was definitely because we were missing our passports. [The passports] were at embassy to apply for visas for Ghana.
Joachim: Oh okay, which was the next country on the route perhaps..?
Vagabjørn: Yeah, and that was going to take at least one week. That’s the case with visas in Africa, you just have to wait for a week. We had copies of our passport, but we didn’t have copy of the visa, so we couldn’t prove that we were legally in Burkina Faso. They took us to the (police) station. In the station, they were asking a lot of questions, and repeating a lot of questions. [They were] looking through our bags and all our stuff. [They were] looking through our phones for pictures, and among some of those there where pictures of me with guns, having a big beard, like I mentioned and this was with the Turegs, further north. I think they found that quite suspicious, because Burkina Faso is a country that has struggled with terrorism. There are [actually some] people from our countries (Scandinavia) who go there and join (terrorist) groups etc. (to learn more, read this book about a Danish guy (Morten Storm) who joined a terrorist group who did operations in Africa.) So, I think they just found it very suspicious. Why are you here? Why do you have these photos? Who are these people? …and without proper language to explain yourself…
Joachim: …because all the questions were in French?
Vagabjørn: Pretty much, yeah. They had some limited English understanding. I had some limited French understanding. Our friends, who were French, came and explained. They just had a short explanation, and they got us out. Then we wanted to leave. We just wanted to get as far away from that place as possible.
Joachim: Oh, I can imagine!
Vagabjørn: So, we didn’t really get an answer to why we were sitting there for 5 days. But, I remember the burger we had afterwards. The freedom burger and the freedom beer. That was amazing! When you drive yourself really low, when you’re really down, that’s the best. Anything is an upward journey from there.
Joachim: Best meal ever!
Vagabjørn: You can eat what you want. Sleep properly and so on.
Joachim: Quite a life experience to have.
Vagabjørn: Sure, for me it was an experience. If anything, it was more boring, because you’re sitting there [and] there’s nothing you can do. There’s nothing you can look at. It doesn’t help to complain…
Joachim: What about the stabbing? Could you share a little bit around that?
Vagabjørn: That was quite an unfortunate event, because at that time I was sick with malaria. Actually, in that moment I was on the way to the hospital together with two friends.
Joachim: …which country are we in now?
Vagabjørn: Cameroon. We’re staying in a church. We did a lot of camping around churches, mosques, villages and anywhere where they let us stay for free. As soon as I got really, really sick I said “I need to go to the hospital” and we hopped in a taxi. They were accompanying me and suddenly the taxi stopped in a light crossing. Then, from the bushes came 12-13 people, and they had knives. They stopped the cars. There were two cars in front us. They ran and opened the doors. They were running and taking the stuff (from the people in the cars in front of us). I saw this happening before they got to us, and I was getting prepared. I held onto my backpack, and as soon as they came and opened the doors, the next person came. They grabbed the bags of my two friends, who were sitting next to me. When they tried to grab my bag, I was holding on to it and was pulled over the lap of my friend, next to me. I [was dragged] outside.
I was super weak, but somehow I got a lot of power in that moment. I was full of adrenaline. I realized that I had my passport in my backpack. [In my backpack,] I had my computer with the hard drive containing all the memories from four months of traveling. There was not a cloud service to back up anything, so I thought that if I lose this, the journey is over. So, I was fighting back. I was hitting this guy a couple of times, while holding the bag on the trunk of the car. Just pushing it down, so that he wasn’t able to pull it away. Then his friend came from the other side with a knife, which I kid you not, was like this long (showing with hands)!
Joachim: Oh, wow!
Vagabjørn: He was just pulling this up and hitting it on my hand, where I was holding this backpack. I still have a scar on my hand today. Then, instinctively I just let go of the backpack, and they ran off [with it] into the same high grass [from] where they had come. I followed.
Joachim: Oh, you did?!
Vagabjørn: I did. I wasn’t thinking at all. I didn’t feel the pain of my hand, because of all the adrenaline. But, then I kind of woke up to my my senses. Then, I’m hearing my friends scream: “Come back! It’s dangerous! Don’t chase them!” Then, I came back and suddenly [I felt] the pain. [The wound] was pulsating. Blood everywhere. I had to go to the hospital, so the taxi driver took us the last part for free. When I came to the hospital, they asked for my passport. They asked for money. Without this, they couldn’t really help me. I was just holding the bleeding and needed to ask for a phone and ask to call this church, which I remembered the name of. There some more friends could come out with with cash to pay for the hospital bill, so they [could] sew up the wound. They treated my malaria, but all my stuff was gone.
Joachim: Wow! How did that affect the trip? Did you return home? What came next?
Vagabjørn: Luckily I was with other people, so they had cards that I could ask my parents for example to send over some money, that I could withdraw cash from their card. I actually have two passports. I was very lucky. In the car, I had locked away my second passport. That made it possible for me to continue the journey all the way, another three months to South Africa.
That was great, but then I had lost all my pictures from the first four months of the journey. A lot of memories that I wouldn’t get back. With the cash, I bought a camera. Just these compact cameras that we used to have in the 2000s.
Joachim: Yeah, the point-and-click ones.
Vagabjørn: Yeah, I took a lot of pictures for the next three months. When I came to South Africa, I was pretty much broke. I had my tent and I was camping in the garden of a hostel. Since I was staying in the tent, I needed to charge my camera so I left it in the reception, charging. When I woke up [the next] morning, I couldn’t see my camera. It was gone.
Then I found out [that] there was a class of like 30 French school kids [who had] checked out that morning, and someone must have taken it. That was the last three months of pictures from that journey.
Joachim: So all the memories are living inside, but you don’t have them digitally…
Vagabjørn: There was Facebook, so something pictures are shared. I have friends who have taken pictures the whole journey, but my own ones are gone.
Joachim: Yeah, I know that can be quite heartbreaking. I remember back in 2009, we went through Latin America. We we went through so many countries in one stretch using this… How do you say it..? A spiegelrefleks kamera (DSLR). We went to the Galapagos, and we took so many amazing pictures. Not just on Galapagos, but in Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, Costa Rica and all the countries before that. They were all on two memory cards, but mostly on one which was quite big. When we went to Galapagos, we went to an internet cafe, and we brought the camera there and forgot to bring it back. Then, the internet cafe closed. We went back to the place where we were sleeping and the next day we went super early, before the place opened. Knocked on the door and it was gone! All of those pictures were gone!
Vagabjørn: An expensive camera is not important. What’s importance is the pictures. In South America, they have an expression. They say “giving papaya”. If you “give papaya,” you’re giving someone an opportunity to take from you. So, in that case, it sounds like you were giving them papaya. You left it there.
Joachim: We left it there. Yeah, it was careless.
Vagabjørn: I learned not to be too attached to the pictures either, because that’s somewhat a materialistic thing as well. I mean it would be great to have them… to look at them, but it’s not what matters. It’s the memories.
Joachim: Absolutely. I would even say… Maybe this is a bit controversial, but I would even say that sometimes when I’ve been on a trip, taking a lot of photos, and some time goes by. Maybe 6-12 months. Then I want to look at the photos. I look at the photos, and after having looked at them I feel that I start associating the journey more with the photos than [with] the memories. They (the pictures) starts to replace a little bit of the memories. My real memories are sort dissolving a little bit and being replaced by some of these highlights that are on the memory cards. So, I feel sometimes it’s actually not conducive to my memory to look too much at the photos.
Vagabjørn: That’s true. If you have a broad variety of photos, they can probably help you to refresh your memory, but to put too much emphasis on some photos, which might not represent the journey…
Joachim: Exactly. A wonderful thing with photos is bringing out the atmosphere and the feeling, and then maybe the best thing is just putting them aside, and then going with the feeling and closing your eyes to visualize it. But, what often tends to happen, at least with me, is that I get really excited and I start looking at all the photos. Flipping back and forth. Then it starts to sort of take precedence over some of the memories. Maybe it’s just me…
Vagabjørn: No, definitely. When you take a picture, you want to capture exactly that perfect moment, but then there’s so much more to it. Those details of perhaps someone that you met, etc might be in the shadow of that moment with you and a sea lion in Galapagos. Instead of thinking of all the other factors that contributed to that story.
Joachim: The smell. The feeling. The wind you felt in your face at that moment…
Vagabjørn: So, I can 100% relate. For sure.
Joachim: Let’s also talk a little bit about the other book that you’ve written. You released it in 2023, “Project Borderless.” In this book you talk about visiting states that are not recognized by the rest of the world as their own countries. In this last book, you describe the challenges that this presents for both visitors and the people who live in the country (the population). Maybe you can talk a little bit about these sort of challenges.
Vagabjørn: In March 2019 I finished my quest of visiting every country in the Seychelles. I was kind of sad that I would never go to a new country. This thing that I’ve been doing for 10 years. Chasing new countries to visit was just over, I thought. But, later on when traveling and reading up, there’s just so many places that are not UN members. Some examples I can bring up are Taiwan, Kosovo, etc. They’re not UN members. Last week I was in Tibet, which is represented by China in the UN. The experience I got in Tibet last week, compared to traveling East Coast China is black and white! It’s just so different. You have this city life, commercial and capitalist way of living in the east coast of China. Then you have this very old traditional way of living in Tibet. The landscape is different. The food is different. So, I just made it a project to go to these kind of places. To search for places that could have been countries. Where people think of themselves as [being in a different] country somehow…
There’s movements going on and I wanted to find out if there’s similarities between them. What are the chances of these states breaking free and just controlling themselves, instead of being controlled of whoever is representing them in the UN today. In the future, the situation of these exact places could have changed quite a lot.
Joachim: So, there’s a window of opportunity to sort of visit and experience it…
Vagabjørn: Reading this book (“Project Borderless”) in 10 years, and [considering that a] place like Bougainville Island, which has had a referendum where 97% decided that they will be independent, will be independent just like South Sudan became independent. Documenting the time before it became a country ,and then perhaps visiting again once it has become a country.
Joachim:I would imagine that quite a few of these states have their own language. Some of them might have their own flag…
Vagabjørn: A lot of them have been countries in the past as well. Tibet, for example, became occupied in 1950, but before that it was completely self-ruled. Even to this date, they say that they have their own government living in exile in Dharamshala in India. The Dalai Lama is regarded as the leader of the Tibetan people of approximately 6 million people. [Comparable to] the size of Norway. They’re scattered around the world, some living in exile because they cannot have their own way of life, as they used to before.
A farmer in Australia, who didn’t want to pay taxes, made his own country “Hot River principality” where he was a prince. He controlled an area the size of Belgium. The Farms there are gigantic. To go there [and] visit these places and find out the story I thought would be a good concept for a book. Why is Lichtenstein a country, but not Greenland for example.
Joachim: Countries are fascinating because in a sense all the borders are determined by how many people believe that there’s a border there. Maybe there’s not a fence, anything similar. It’s just an imaginary border. It’s the same case for currency. If enough people believe in the currency, or believe that this word means this thing, then that’s what it does. [However], if people stop believing in this country, or this nation state, then it stop being. There’s so many examples of that. Also, looking back in history, so many different borders have shifted and moved over the years. A nation state is a very fluent thing.
Vagabjørn: It definitely is. The title of the book is “…borderless”. There are nations that don’t have their own borders. In Iraq, for example, you have the Kurdish territories in the north where they control themselves completely. They have their own culture, language, etc., but there’s no border that you’re crossing. So, it is a concept made up in the minds of people, and between people. [It due to] shared values that we say this is Kurdistan, and this is Iraq. People from Kurdistan would not call themselves Iraqi, they would call themselves Kurds.
It could have been the same thing for example in northern Norway with our indigenous people, the Samis, if they wanted to have their own country. Luckily, I think for both them and us, they haven’t. But, that’s the case in a lot of places [in which certain groups of people] have lived separated from the other people for [such a long] time that the development of a language, culture and food, etc. [have become distinct].
Joachim: If the indigenous people of Norway were to have their own country, it would span Norway, Sweden, Finland and parts of Russia as well.
You’ve done a lot of solo travels, but also done a lot of group trips. What comes to mind as some of the most fun or memorable moments from traveling, in each category.
Vagabjørn: Traveling alone is giving you the flexibility we talked about. I have to travel on alone, but I also need these group trips because I don’t spend much time living in Norway. I just visit for a couple days, and then I get off. To work on a ship, or to go traveling again. I don’t have a network at home, but I have all these people I know [across the globe]. Instead of asking them to come and visit me in Norway, the few days when I’m in Norway, I invite them to join my trips. So, I get to see a lot of my friends coming on different journeys. Here in Stavanger, we could go for a coffee or we can have a beer together, but the experiences that we get in these group trips is seeing new places and it just makes us bond even more than a cup of coffee or beer would.
One thing is dynamic friendships, in the sense that you meet people and you connect for a short period of time and then you say goodbye. I like that too, but it’s really nice to have people that you [can] say: “Hey I’ll see you in another country.” So, when this trip in Tibet finished last week, a group trip that I put together, I know that I will see most of those people again somewhere else in the world. I’ve really come to love that.
Also, there’s some places that you cannot visit as an independent traveler.
Joachim: Oh, yeah..? Could you speak to that?
Vagabjørn: There are some countries, for example Syria, North Korea and Eritrea. Some countries require you to have a guide and group when you travel. If you want to go there, you’d have to go as part of a group in which there’s a local agency who organize all your details and papers. People can for sure just book their own trip to Syria, but do you really know that the people you’re going with is reliable and the best alternative?
Now that I’ve done a few trips there, I’ve really perfected my itinerary and the people we go with, etc. That makes it worth it for people. [They can] just hop on a trip that I’ve done the research for and I can vouch that this will be a good program. It’s also really great to see that the people who meet on these trips sometimes end up going by themselves somewhere else later.
Joachim: Liberating them..? Fueling their fire?
Vagabjørn: It feels like I’m like a center point, and that people get to know each other through me. That also brings joy. Seeing other people connecting who are similar in their nature and who love to travel has become very meaningful.
I think that places like Croatia, or other places where there’s a lot of tourists, they don’t deserve all these tourist. It just becomes like a transactional [setup]. They just want to make money of it.
Joachim: That’s true. That has a completely different feel to it.
Vagabjørn: Yeah, so I mostly organize trips where most people don’t usually go. It’s so beautiful to see them (the locals) really caring about tourists. Appreciating the groups that come. It feels very meaningful also in the sense that the people [who] actually go to Syria, or e.g. Afghanistan… Right now I have one group in Yemen for example, where I’m not part of it.
Joachim: You organize the trip and they go by themselves, or do you have other people that work for you that sort of [takes care of it]?
Vagabjørn: This year I was in Yemen. I was leading a tour and I made a blueprint. The hotels and every little detail. Then people can book the same package that I did, following the same foot footsteps. They’re in Yemen now, enjoying themselves. It’s so beautiful to watch stories from there and just reliving the memories that I had.
Organizing the trips having people with similar mindsets and being able to say: “Okay we got an idea, should we do it? Okay, let’s go!” For example in Syria, when I was there last time with a group, there was a rave going on in a castle. “Should we do it? Hell yes!” So, we went on a rave in Syria which was a crazy experience.
How it [all] started was that I would buy cars, and I would drive them and sell them somewhere else. On the way, I invited people to join. For example, I would get one friend to join and drive one car, and I would drive the other. I bought the tents, the cooking gear, the camping gear, everything. It was easy for people to just fly in and join for 2 weeks, or two months, however long they wanted. On those trips, it was really like being alone as well. You have this sea of opportunities, and we decide there and then what we should do.
One thing is dinners. We can have a vote etc., but a lot of the time people just trust me. [They trust] that this is a good idea. “Let’s do this! Let’s go to that Rave!” They actually let go of themselves a lot to be more cohesive as a group. Even though you would actually prefer to stay in the hotel, [people tend to] say: “Okay, I’ll join to the rave, and then I can just take a taxi and go to the hotel when I don’t want anymore.” While others [can choose] to stay out all night until having breakfast in the morning.
Joachim: I would imagine that the people who either meet you, or follow you on social media, and get inspired by you… You would also sort of magnetically attract people who are adventurous or want to explore, or want to push their boundaries a little bit. That also selects for people who are more willing to explore and do things that they maybe otherwise wouldn’t. They would probably also recognize you as someone who they can trust in that regard. “This is worthwhile, high-quality, makes sense or is worth the risk, or however they would think about it.”
Vagabjørn: A lot of times when people (on group trips) push themselves out of their [comfort zone] those are the [kind of memories] that you remember.
Joachim: Yeah, for sure.
Vagabjørn: Usually they’re quite glad that they decided to hop on and do it. We have an itinerary of what you’re going to see, because the benefit of that is that you actually get to see a lot. [When] you have set up what you’re going to see, you become more effective [rather than] roaming around thinking “What should we do now?”
Joachim: Yeah, definitely more effective.
Vagabjørn: So, the journey that me and my girlfriend at the time did in Southeast Asia took us four and half months. Pretty much the exact same route through the travel agent I worked for (Kilroy) was for one month. It was something about discovering these things ourselves. Or, at least we thought we discovered ourselves. But, actually we somehow ended up following the same route that the tours would do. They call it “the banana pancake trail” in Southeast Asia. The place where you can find banana pancakes, where backpackers [typically] go. It was great in the way that it was exciting to find this ourselves. A riverboat trip in Laos, pink dolphins or whatever, but we could have also joined this tour which said this is what you’re going to see. It’s just two different ways of travel, and there’s pros and cons of both.
Joachim: I really loved what you touched on earlier in the conversation, when you spoke about how travel or experiences can facilitate stronger bonds between people. I’ve definitely found that to be very true, and it resonates very strongly with with me. Very often if you meet someone for the first time, or maybe you don’t know them that well, and you do an experience that none of you have done before (or maybe just one of you), then that bond becomes so much stronger. Both of you are pushing your limits. This is new and exciting. It will be part of your memory bank instantly, just because it’s this experience. But, we’re also having this shared experience. We’re doing it together. We’re supporting each other in different ways, and it solidifies and strengthens that bond incredibly. Very often, it [will] feel like you’ve known them for 10 years, after going on a trip for two weeks because you had so many first-time experiences with them. I found that it’s almost like a connection hack in a way. It’s just beautiful.
Vagabjørn: Yeah, that’s what I meant with these dynamic friendships. Sometimes, like you said, you meet someone and you’re having these experiences with them, and they become almost closer than people you’ve known your whole life. You trust them by sharing your joint experience because you [truly] know them. You see through the experiences how they behave and get to know people very fast. You’re sharing the space, the food, etc.
Sometimes the people who you travel with can remember certain stories better than you. When I was in Tibet, someone said “I remember that time we were traveling around Algerie together,” or in Socotra in Yemen. Or, they share these stories that I had just forgotten. When I travel as much as I do, some memories get pushed out to make space for others. But, for them it’s the 1 or 2 trips they do a year. Those memories [from rare experiences tend to] stick quite well.
For me it’s also very valuable to relive those memories, by hearing the stories that I had put to the side.
Joachim: Makes them come alive again.
Vagabjørn: Then you have things to talk about in a group setting as well. Around the bonfire. At the dinner. Tey’re sharing these stories to other people, and that also brings brings joy.
Joachim: We spoke about some fun and exciting memories. We spoke about a few grim moments, or moments where things went sideways. I think that [in most cases,] if you’re if you’re patient, flexible, open-minded and can stay calm, most situations no matter how bad will somehow resolve themselves. That that seems to be, at least for me, a learning/takeaway from traveling that you can apply to your normal day life. Unless you’ve experienced something like that, then you can’t internalize it and integrate it into your daily life.
Vagabjørn: There’s these three Ps that I like to use.
Patience, as you touched upon. Patience is very important and you need patience to travel. Actually, travel is a lot of waiting. You’re sitting in buses for a long time. You’re sitting at borders. You’re waiting for things to come through, like a Visa.
Persistence is important. If you keep on doing something. If you’re chasing something. If you say that you want this, it will come [in the end], most [of the time].
Then there’s Politeness. You need to [be polite]. You can’t just say “Give it to me!” You need to do it in a way, which makes people want to give it to you. These things have been very useful especially for borders and visas. A lot of times they don’t want to give you a visa, you need [to give it] time, and have an open mindset, as you mentioned, along with patience and persistence to keep going. As long as you do it in a nice way.
Joachim: It would be interesting [if you could] share a few more of those stories when it went sideways. When it happens, it’s of course not very pleasant, but these situations oftentimes end up being very fond memories.
Vagabjørn: Absolutely. There’s so many stories from these cars breaking down in the most remote places. Then we just pitch a tent, and we wait. Same with borders. I had to wait more than 24 hours at a border before they let me through, but then you pitch a tent. You cook some food, and you wait. We even had a tattoo kit with us, so we were making tattoos on each other on the way. Visa wise, there’s one visa that sticks out, which took me two years to get! For me, it was the hardest one to get among all the 195 countries.
Joachim: Which one was that?
Vagabjørn: That was [a visa] for a country called Equatorial Guinea. When people ask: “Where is that?” I usually pull out my map here (showing a tattoo on his right arm showing a map of the world). It’s here, in the armpit of West Africa. It’s a tiny country, with a lot of oil and gas. But it’s very poor and people are illiterate and don’t have clean drinking water, etc. So, it’s very corrupt obviously and they don’t want people to come and see that. They just make it very difficult for people to get visas. They don’t need tourism, just like Angola, so they just decided that they’re going to stick to their oil business and tourism can wait. I went through six embassies trying to get this via. Most of them in Africa. I remember one of the interviews I went to. They said they wanted to see proof of a vaccine for cholera. I told them that there’s no vaccine against it. There’s the sachets you can drink.
Joachim: Yeah, dukoral.
Vagabjørn: You can drink that, but that’s not a vaccine. They told me: “No, no. You need to get the vaccine. Okay, how do I do this? I can’t get go around it.” So I took the batch from my malaria medicine, because this was right after Cameron when I was sick with malaria. This is a number of the treatment, just like the number of a vaccine. I put that number in my vaccination card and signed [it] off.
I come back to the embassy and the guy looks at this. Really studies it. “Okay, so you have the vaccine for cholera. Well, then we want a letter from your government saying that you are a nice person. You mean a police certificate that shows that I haven’t done anything wrong, that I haven’t been to jail? No, no. We want something from the government saying that you’re a nice person. That’s something I couldn’t get. It’s not like the King or the Prime Minister will write anything personal to me. That’s one way of doing business in some of these countries, you just get someone powerful to vouch for you and then you can do anything. But fortunately that’s not how it works in Norway. So, I had to move on and eventually I’m able to get the visa in the same place I went the first time. In London. They had changed their policy.
A lot of countries are opening up to tourism now. Saudi Arabia was the same. They had their oil. They didn’t need tourists. It was completely closed off. Now they’re promoting it. They’re investing into tourism.
Joachim: Yeah, that has really changed. I’ve read a few articles about that.
Vagabjørn: Yeah, it’s really changing. The world is changing, and mostly for the better. It becomes easier to go to every country. There’s forums [for] people chasing this quest. When I finished, it was less than 200 people [who had] visited every country. Now there’s around 400. But, I think in 5 years there’ll be 1,000 at least. There’s so many resources online now. If you look for information about Myanmar, you can find 5-6 travelers who are there [right] now, or who were just recently, who can share up-to-date information on visas, safety, logistics, everything. That has made it a lot easier.
Also, more people hare aware that you can actually visit every country. I’m part of a group online now with like 15,000 members, who are chasing the same goal.
Joachim: Is it like a Facebook Community, or how do you communicate?
Vagabjørn: Yeah, there’s many Facebook communities, where you’re sharing experiences. When people complete their quest, some of them come up with new lists of places, countries or territories. There’s Most Traveled People and Nomad Mania. Nomad Mania also verifies that you have been to every country. You send them pictures of your passport stamps and visas, and they go through it and verify that you have been to every country.
They also have divided up the world in UNESCO sites, national parks, etc. There’s so many lists now that you can go through. I will never run out.
Some of these people are chartering boats and planes to go to islands. It’s a different kind of travel budget than mine. Sometimes thye also invite others [in the travel community to come along]. Basically some have a lot of money, and they just charter a boat for week and go. I’ve also been invited on a trip where they just paid for everything.
Joachim: Oh, really? Where di you did you go then?
Vagabjørn: I went to a breakaway state in Azerbaijan called Arak, or now it’s called Nagorno-Karabakh. They had support from the military, so I got to drive a tank myself. Shoot with grenade launchers and everything, with the military and staying in the military camps.
Joachim: That sounds amazing!
Vagabjørn: Yeah, it was a very special trip. They managed to get, usually through payment, their way into places where few people have been before. There’s this one guy. He founded the Most Traveled People website. His name is Charles A. Veley, [and he is] from the US. He sold the company for, I think like, 400 million USD or something like that. That was in 2008, and since then he’s traveled on that money. They do spend a lot of money on their travels to for example just to get to rocks in the middle of the ocean, where no one has been before. I know him and have traveled with him.
I think chartering boats is more useful than chartering planes, because there’s so many remote places without airports. Islands by Antarctica, in the Pacific, all over. But, it’s not my goal to visit all of those. That would be too expensive.
Tuvalu is the least visited country in the world. It’s the same size as my island (Finnøy, where he grew up). You can go up and down the country 20 or 100 times in a week. When I was there, there was only one flight per week. I kind of understand why islands are prisons. You can’t get anywhere. It’s not my favorite way to travel.
I like this one-way [mode of traveling], without backtracking. Just continue to the next [place] overland. I have a big wooden map in my apartment with lines in different colors for the distances I’ve traveled with bus, trains and boats.
Joachim: So, each mode of transportation is a different color.
Vagabjørn: Yeah. Right now, I want to connect all these dots. I’ve done these long journeys for example from Norway to China by train, and then back also only by train except for one leg through the Silk Road. I have traveled overland through most of Asia and Eurasia etc., and driven all the way down to South Africa. But, I want to connect the dots, for example from Norway to the Americas [by] sailing across, to kind of have it as a one-go, even though [it’s through] separate journeys. Traveling overland is so different from flying. Flying is expensive and you’re skipping all the experience on the way. You know how people say it’s the journey, not the destination. It becomes more and more true, the more you travel. It’s wonderful for instance to travel by train because you get to see all the land. Everything really. A couple of days ago, we did a 3-day train journey from Chengdu to Lhasa in Tibet. You’re going up passes of 5,000 m, and the landscape is changing so much. You see people getting on and off the train. People are changing. Food is changing.
When you do the Trans Siberian railway, you have to adjust your watch, one hour, every day (when you wake up). There’s so many different time zones. The first stretch from Moscow to Irkutsk was 5 days. That’s more than 100 hours in a train. When we came out, we didn’t want to get off because you get into a rhythm. You get used to waking up and go to bed whenever you feel like, and there’s always someone you can hang out with. You [can] go to the restaurant cart. Fall asleep to the rocking train. It’s actually quite comfortable to sleep in a train because of the rocking all the time. It’s easier to fall asleep, and you look out the window and can spend hours looking. Much better than watching a TV.
Joachim: So much of traveling has to do with appreciating nature and landscapes. There’s all these other things as well like monuments, culture and all that, but there’s so much natural beauty to see. Being reminded of how beautiful nature just in and of itself can be. I would love for you to speak to the significance of nature to you. I would imagine that, it’s changed over the years.
Vagabjørn: If you’d look at my map, you’d see that I’ve covered a lot of distance overland. I’ve seen these landscapes changing, so when I travel and see a landscape it usually reminds me of somewhere else. I always have this element of comparison, which perhaps isn’t the healthiest. If you’re traveling [through] Southeast Asia and you start [by] seeing Angkor Wat, then everything will compare to it.
Landscapes are definitely a big part of travels. You can really find peace, especially when you go camping on a mountain top, by a lake, or a river. It really feels freeing. It’s like it belongs to you somehow. If you stay in a hotel, cramped into a small room, in the middle of a city, it’s not at all the same feeling.
Joachim: It feels more transactional doesn’t it?
Vagabjørn: Yeah. Part of being free, is being in nature. There’s some places where there’s not a lot of people. Tibet would be one of them, or Australia, where you’ve been studying. It’s a lot of land for not a lot of people. They have cities, but between the cities it’s a lot of emptiness. Just having a 4×4 and driving onto the beaches and setting up your camp completely alone. If you want to be naked, you can be naked. Whatever you want to do… No one cares. That is freeing.
There’s an island in Yemen called Socotra. This island is 120 km by 40 km in size. I would dare to say that the diversity of landscape on this island is almost comparable to Australia. There’s deserts, red rocks, canyons, beautiful turquoise waters, white sandy dunes, camels and these unique type of trees called “Dragon Blood Trees.” When you cut them, they’re actually bleeding red color. That’s how they got their name.
I’ve been organizing four trips there (to Socotra). We just go with tents and camp in the nature. Waking up to sunrises. Watching the stars. Seeing the sunsets. Cooking on bonfires. It’s really one of the most beautiful places I’ve been.
Joachim: I need to take a note of that.
It also reminds me of [that time in] 2008, around Easter, we went to Fraser Island in Australia, and that also felt like a scaled down version of Australia. There’s so much different landscapes.You go by 4×4. There’s the beaches, desert, tropical forest, cliffs, dolphins, shipwrecks, dingos. It was like a miniature Australia. I was just flabbergasted by how many things, different sceneries and experiences you can have in such a small island. I just got that association when you spoke.
Vagabjørn: Yeah. This kind of beauty with for example the beaches, and the turquoise waters. You would find that in e.g. the Maldives. It’s incredible. One of the most beautiful places in that way, but it’s a little bit dead. Especially if you go to resort islands. It’s just made for tourists, so there’s beauty in so many different ways. It depends what you’re searching for in your travels. Is it the hiking trip, where you want to be climbing mountains? Or, you want to be lying by the beach? A lot of times when people are asking: “What’s your favorite country, and favorite experience?”, etc. It’s very hard to choose, because it depends on what you’re searching for, your time of life, the category, etc.
Joachim: For me one of the countries that surprised me the most, to put it into a context, was Bolivia. It was so spectacular in terms of nature, which I wasn’t fully prepared for. I just thought it was amazing. Spectacular. So beautiful.
Vagabjørn: Yeah. Peru also is incredible. When you go to for example Machu Picchu, as soon as you arrive there they know how to overcharge. They’re used to tourists. But, when it comes to Bolivia they’re not. The crowds are much smaller. It’s just one of the places where, for some reason, fewer people choose to go to. [Especially,] compared to Ecuador, Peru and Colombia. There’s beauty in that too. Feeling that you’re discovering things for yourself. A beautiful feeling isn’t it?
They don’t have new people coming every day. That’s when it becomes transactional. It’s the opposite there, in which they’re actually interested in you. I also really love Bolivia.
Joachim: I seem to often come back to that (the beauty of Bolivia). Maybe at night, just before I go to bed. I imagine some of the landscapes that I saw. The mountains and the sky. Maybe lake, a green emerald lake. Some of those images flash before my eyes, and I come to appreciate how truly beautiful [it was].
Vagabjørn: Yeah, the biggest salt desert in the world.
Joachim: Salar de Uyuni.
Vagabjørn: Salt hotels, and just drive for days. But, it’s so much more than just a picture of white and salt. The colors of the ground change so much at different altitudes. There’s geysers and flamingos.
That’s perhaps one of the examples where you have a picture of just a salt desert, but then there was just so much more…
Joachim: …so much more to offer. Yeah, that was basically it. I had seen some pictures from La Paz, and a few other cities, and I was very familiar with Salar de Uyinu before going there. But, then there was like this buffet of things to do, see and experience. Just overwhelming!
What would you say drives you today? You’ve seen quite a lot. Had so many experiences. You’ve written two books about it. What fuels your fire today, and what motivates you on a day-to-day basis?
Vagabjørn: I have these lists and the map that I can draw. But, it’s not the [quantifiable metrics] anymore. It’s really become more of finding smaller moments that I appreciate. More about quality. A place where you may camp, or a moment that you have with someone. [I] really need to focus more on that, but in order to do so I just need to be on the move. Then those moments will come. I’m not necessarily planning as much. Sometimes I’m drifting, just to drift. I can divide up if I go for one month, that I have two weeks where it’s more or less planned, and then two weeks where I’m open to to travel around. Both are great in their own ways, as we discussed.
I think the driving factor is that I’ve had an understanding of how short my life actually is. I could have died in some of these experiences that I’ve talked about, and others as well. Realizing that this (death) might happen at any time. You don’t know. You can get sick, or other tings can happen. That really drives me to just see as much [as I can]. I have big degree of FOMO (fear of missing out). I know there’s still so many things I want to see, and I just want to get out there and see it. It’s okay if I get disappointed, or love it. But it’s an experience, and I would know. The only way I can know, is to go there. I can read up all I want on e.g. Tibet online, but it doesn’t compare to going there and getting this multitude of experiences, or realizations. That you can’t get from for example limited written sources.
Joachim: Yeah, you have to go there. Have to be there. Have to feel the sensation of being there and take in all the sensory input.
I think it [would be] fascinating to also hear where you find inspiration these days. You talked a little bit about these [online travel] communities. Are those sources of inspiration? I would imagine listening to stories of people you meet on the road [could give inspiration]… How do you think about inspiration, or how do you get excited about a new place to go to?
Vagabjørn: Actually, I try to [avoid] consuming [information in which] other people paint a picture for me. I can walk by a map, stop and look for an hour. Just like some people maybe stop and look at their mirror. Just looking at the map. Looking at mountains. Looking at roads, and how everything’s connected. [This] can make me drawn to an area where I don’t know much. For example, I was in Caucasus where I’ve traveled a lot before. I hadn’t crossed the border out of Russia. When you go to Georgia, Azerbaijan, Dagestan, Chechnya, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic. They are very different. So, looking at this map that I had drawn up, and seeing where the black spots are.
I haven’t been to the four corners of the world for example. I haven’t been to the South Island of New Zealand. I haven’t been to Patagonia. I haven’t been to Alaska. I haven’t been to Kamchatka in Northeast Russia. These are blanks. I know that they are some of the most beautiful places in the world. I’ll always find spots that I haven’t [been to]. Going to those places is really what is guiding me.
If you go to really remote places on the country side, that’s where you find the real culture. That’s where you find the traditions, because in the cities everyone is becoming more and more alike. Consuming the same McDonald’s, smartphones, etc. That’s true travel. [Travel] was more [about] getting lost, and then suddenly I realized [after having read an] online article about the first Norwegian who did it (visited every country in the world) in 2013. I looked at the map thinking that I’ve been to [some of] the hardest place in the world. That means that I can do it as well. That’s kind of [what] got me on the track of visiting every country. But, also the looking at the map and seeing that I’ve been there, but I haven’t been there and wondering how it’s different. From the start, that has really been my guidance.
I [was] curious about Central Asia first, then India, and then Central America. It’s just [been about] going to places out of curiosity, rather than having ideas put in my mind. Basically having a lot of time and freedom, [being] able to book a one-way ticket and then figuring things out while on the road. Except for some places like the Pacific Islands for example. It’s just so expensive to travel to those islands, so you need to really perfect the route [to avoid] spending lots of extra money on flights, etc.
But otherwise, for road trips driving from Europe to South Africa, it’s just day-by-day. I wanted to reach the goal of coming down there, but we didn’t know the route that we [would] take. That would depend on a million factors, like visas and weather, what was possible, safety, etc.
Joachim: How do you plan the solo trips as opposed to the group trips? I would imagine that the approach would be slightly different. When you do the the group trips, how do you start start out? Do you start out with a lot of people requesting to go to a certain place? Or, have you decided that it would be wonderful to go to this place? Or, that you would like to show all these people a particular place that you love? There’s so many different ways to approach it. How do you think about it?
Vagabjørn: It can be either [one] of those [approaches]. For example for Tibet last week, I hadn’t been there myself. I wanted to go for over 10 years, but for 10 years Norwegians weren’t allowed to go.
Joachim: How so?
Vagabjørn: It’s political. Because we gave the Nobel Peace prize to Liu Xiaobo (“for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China”) who was working for freedom of press, and we have hosted the Dalai Lama yearly in Trondheim for students, having presentations, etc. [Thus,] we (Norway) have somewhat [sided] with the Tibetan cause, which of course Beijing and China doesn’t like. So, they have restricted Tibet for for Norwegians.
That trip (to Tibet) was more of filling in the blanks. I knew that I wanted to go there, and I had talked to people to hear experiences and plotting together. When you plan group trips, you need to know the details, etc.
In the case of Caucasus, for example, I just knew the general area. I had to plan. I had to find out where I would need the permits, and how to get those, etc. But, the actual details of the experiences is something we did along the way. I had my own car. I was sleeping in the car. Then I was following my map, stopping to have a look at the GPS, and even following signs to e.g. take off right for this mountain, etc. That was more [on a] day-by-day basis.
It was similar on my last trip to China, 1.5 months ago. I also went to Japan and just rented a car in Hokkaido. While driving you can spot signs of hot springs and make camp there. I slept in the car. 7 out of 8 nights I just slept in the car. Woke up and went to a hot spring in the morning. I saw lot of deer around. Did a lot of hikes. But, I knew almost nothing about those things before I went there.
Joachim: …and that was a solo trip, the one to Japan?
Vagabjørn: Yeah, I was also quite unlucky. I had rented this car and I was driving in the night. Then something happened that I didn’t really think could happen to me. I was just in my own thoughts and then I blinked. That’s how it felt like to me. Then I woke up in the forest, crashed into a tree! I fell asleep behind the wheel, while being in my own thoughts. That was really scary because you don’t see it happening. You can feel that you’re tired, but you don’t feel the moment where you’re falling asleep. Then waking up, it was like a blink.
That was really scary. That was an expensive experience. I had to pay $1,700 for the damages on the car. But, it’s also a very important lesson. It could [have been] a lot worse, both financially and with my health.
I’ve been in some traffic accidents. One really bad in Iran, where I broke my femur (largest bone in the leg, the thigh bone). It is the biggest and strongest bone in your body. I’m still recovering.
Joachim: How many years ago was that? Three years?
Vagabjørn: Almost three years.
Joachim: How did that happen?
Vagabjørn: I was on a road trip with a friend, where she [got] scared when we had a truck coming towards us. So, she pulled out to the far right of the road. A bit outside of the road. When she pulled back in, she pulled too far, so she pulled into the wrong lane where the truck was coming towards us. That was a front-to-front collision!
The car was completely wrecked, and my leg was up by my shoulder. That was four surgeries and a lot of time in hospitals both in Iran and in Norway.
Joachim: These things can happen [unfortunately]. I mean no matter how safe you are, suddenly it can just happen. It’s coincidences.
Vagabjørn: …but they’re they can be life-changing. I have a life before that happened, and [another] after that happened. I’m waking up every morning thinking how my leg feels, and going bed thiking about how it is feeling. You need to start working out.
Joachim: It sounds like a tough recovery process. Quite dramatic.
Vagabjørn: When I was sent to a hospital I didn’t know where my other friends were. I didn’t know if they were alive or not! To be in a hospital… One thing is the pain, but the anxiety that comes from it (not knowing what happened to his friends). I had no clue. I’ve never felt anxiety in that way before that moment.
Joachim: (imagining him laying in the hospital thinking:) “Are your friends alive? Are they..?”
Vagabjørn: They’re good now, but one person spent more than a month in a coma! It could have been another outcome.
Joachim: Those things definitely shape you. Both in a positive way, but also it can be shattering or devastating!
Let’s shift gears a little bit.
You’ve experienced a lot. You’ve seen most of the world. You’ve met a lot of people, and you’ve heard a lot of stories. I would be curious to know how you define success. What does that word mean to you, and has that definition changed over time for you? Maybe there’s a moment in time that changed your perspective completely on the meaning of that word?
Vagabjørn: I actually would compare the word success with the word meaning. To find a meaning. What is success? Is it how you’re measured among people around you? Is it how you measure yourself? Doing what’s meaningful to you, in my opinion, is the definition of success. It’s not the amount you have in your bank account, or the status. It is achieving what you want to achieve, for the reasons that you have for yourself.
Joachim: Has that changed for you throughout the years, and if so, in what way?
Vagabjørn: Yes. I’ve gone more from this quantitative way of traveling, to this qualitative [way] where I really start appreciating the smaller moments more. I think that’s a maturity process that most people go through in life. You have all these things you want to explore. You hop around, but to slow down and see the smaller things, perhaps that comes a little bit with age, and experience.
Joachim: When you were on the quest of visiting all the 195 countries, and you completed that, did you feel a sense of “Now I can relax, or now I can take it easy?”. Or, how was that [for you]?
Vagabjørn: That’s how I imagined I would feel. But it really wasn’t. [It was an] anticlimax. I didn’t have my future set out. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do. It was so much easier [to] just follow a track, than being in that moment and having everything open. I pushed that forward. I have all these things I want to do, but I’m really looking forward to not doing those things as well. I look forward to actually retiring from travel at some point.
There’s a lot of things I missed out on [such as] relationships, career or whatever people are doing mostly. I’ve just been so focused. So on track for these travels all the time. It will be nice to kind of… I like writing. [Maybe] do some more writing. It makes you process experiences and digest them. To put words into experiences, is also very meaningful.
Joachim: Would you imagine yourself writing fiction, non-fiction, or poetry? Which direction do you lean towards?
Vagabjørn: I would share more about for example life philosophy. The whole aspect of minimalism, for example, can help a lot of people. It doesn’t necessarily have to be about travel.
Joachim: I would imagine that there’s quite a lot of life lessons that you’ve picked up during your years that could be very interesting for others to hear, in a different context maybe than what you’ve done so far.
Vagabjørn: Being a traveler is being an observer. Coming to China 15 years ago, and coming to China, India or anywhere now, you would see a lot of changes. Maybe even I’ll pick up some work where those experiences can be useful to project the future. Think about in which direction things are going.
Joachim: Yeah, so of future studies.
Vagabjørn: If it’s in a diplomatic [role] or [similar].
Joachim: It’s definitely useful experiences.
Have you ever thought about what important truth very few people agree with you on?
Vagabjørn: I find it challenging sometimes to talk about places where I understand that the truth is much bigger than what people already know. It can be challenging, just like we talked about, the experience in Syria, or Afghanistan, etc. It’s just that people want to say: “No, this is how it is.” They have heard so many stories, but all the stories they’ve heard are from the same angle. It’s a little bit of a curse to talk to people and knowing that they’ve already taken a stance on [the matter], and they would not be open to hearing about anything else that’s not confirming what they’ve already heard.
Joachim: In the last 5 years, what new belief, behavior or habit has most improved your life do you think?
Vagabjørn: I don’t have a lot of friends around in the place I’m from (Finnøy, in Norway). I have started to believe that anyone can be a friend. If you just try and are willing to take those steps. So, [I have a new belief] on friendships. I’ve realized that I don’t have that much need for security. To have the same people around all the time, compared to when I see them once in a while on trips, etc. That’s changed the whole social dynamics. I grew up with friends, and I still have those friends, but we are you know living very different lives. Therefore growing a lot apart. I just realized that that’s okay too. To let go of some things, to open yourself up to other things.
Joachim: Let go of some traditional expectations.
Vagabjørn: Yeah.
Joachim: I also subscribe to this saying that I know you’ve talked about in the past, which is: “A stranger is just a friend that you haven’t gotten to know yet.” That has been something that I felt for many, many years. It really resonated strongly when I heard you mentioned this as well in some context. I think that it speaks a little bit to what you’re saying now. That anyone you meet can basically be your friend.
Vagabjørn: When you travel as well, when you are alone, you need the help of people around you. So, you have to ask. By doing so, you’re opening yourself up and becoming friends can be in a moment. Very quickly. You both realize that you can trust each other. It’s like: “Hey! Do you want to come stay at my place?” Like Nora did. “Yeah.”
Joachim: By being vulnerable, you sort of invite someone to trust you. Because I’m showing something that I usually don’t show to other people. Or, now you see me in a situation where I’m not so confident. I’m giving you like a hand of trust, and if you lean into that and trust me as well, then the path to becoming friends are shorter.
When you ask someone for help, you put yourself in a vulnerable position, which then disarms the other part very often. It creates trust, and then suddenly you can become friends, or you can have some connection.
In this society that we live in now, a lot of people are afraid to ask for help. They think it’s like a sign of weakness. People will Google or do all kinds of research, rather than just asking someone, because they don’t want to appear weak or vulnerable.
Vagabjørn: Yeah, for sure.
Joachim: …which is a pity, because then you’re shielding yourself from that potential connection.
What would you say is the most important skill that you’ve developed so far in life, and why?
Vagabjørn: Patience is just a very large part of the travel. It can be patience in so many ways, not just the waiting part. Realizing that perhaps you don’t understand. Giving yourself time to kind of see things differently, instead of just jumping to conclusions.
Joachim: If we circle back to your main focus area of traveling, is there some advice you could give to a novice traveler, or someone starting out by traveling outside of Europe for the first time or planning their first major journey? How would you advise someone like that?
Vagabjørn: Not to think as much. It’s different if you go into a war zone, but if you’re just going to travel in Southeast Asia etc., you can figure out things on the way. If you have your passport and credit cards, that’s the most important. Things are very affordable, so you can find solutions [along the way]. If you didn’t pack right, that can be fixed. If you didn’t plan where to find a place to stay, that can be fixed. Just (kindly) ask for help/advice, and it will be given.
Joachim: That’s sound advice.
Vagabjørn: People often tend to overcomplicate things. If you have a strong passport and you have bankcards with some money on it, then you’re good. You can get out of any situation. You can always go back home if it doesn’t work out for you. People tend to wait too long, and overprepare. They want everything to be right. Often, the exact right time doesn’t come. You have to take the steps yourself. That means asking for leave from work, or quitting.
Joachim: Analysis paralysis seem to be a very real thing.
What’s next for you as an avid traveler and author? Do you have some concrete plans for the next let’s say 3 to 6 months, or next year?
Vagabjørn: Yes, the next three months I have a lot of adventures planned. I haven’t been to every continent. There’s one continent I haven’t been to. It’s Antarctica. Now, I will be spending Christmas on a boat in Antarctica going to Falkland Islands. I haven’t been to Easter Island. Just scratching those surfaces, where I haven’t been before, off the map.
At some point, I think I can say that I’ve seen pretty much what I want to see. I thought I would do the same in 2019, when I finished every country. [Perhaps] that thought is just pushed further ahead until I don’t live anymore, or that [I] actually find a time where I say: “Okay, not that I’ve seen it all, but I’m happy with what I’ve seen.”
Joachim: I always wanted to go to Antarctica. I find it mesmerizing. I’ve read a few books about different expeditions, so I would love to go there. I remember when I was a kid, I went to Stavanger City Center (at Arneageren), and there was a a person standing there selling all kinds of stones. One of the stones was shaped like the heads of the statues at the Easter Island. The Moai. I think I was maybe 6 years old or something like that. I was really fascinated by it. My parents bought it for me. Maybe 50 NOK, or something. I had it next to my bed. I haven’t been to the Easter Island yet, but ever since that moment, I always wanted to go.
Vagabjørn: A seed has been planted.
Joachim: For sure, yeah. So, that sounds really exciting for me personally as well.
Vagabjørn: It’s also a very remote place. It is one of the most remote places in the world. There’s something really thrilling about going to this continent of ice (and stone). When you sit there, all you have between you and the rest of the world is just a ship. [It’s] like being in outer space, landing on a foreign planet. If that boat breaks down, if that spaceship breaks down, that’s where you’re going to stay. That’s a thought I’ve been having. That it’s just so remote and isolated. You can’t drive there. It’s just by this multi-day boat ride that you get there.
Joachim: I’m also fascinated by these mountains there, at Dronning Maud’s land.
Vagabjørn: The tallest Norwegian mountains are in Antarctica.
Joachim: It’s a fascinating place, and a place that’s also very often not shown on maps. So, you tend to not think about it that much.
I think let’s zoom out a bit and focus on the big picture. If you could get one short message, or image, out to the world what would it say, or show, and why?
Vagabjørn: Stop fighting. I want people to realize that we’re all the same, regardless of our religion, beliefs, etc. For people to understand that, and for wars to stop. It sounds naive and everything, but when you go to countries and realize the destruction of war, all you wish for is this not to happen again. Any message that can make people understand that.
Joachim: The world definitely needs more love, compassion, understanding, and [for people to] put themselves in the shoes of another person.
Vagabjørn: It has to do with understanding. Get to know your neighbor, and the people who are different to you.
Joachim: Do you ever think about the end of your life, and what will be after you? Do you think about legacy, or what you would leave behind?
Vagabjørn: I’m an existentialist and when I’m [gone], I’m [gone]. I understand that whoever was the biggest, most important, person 50 years ago, most people don’t know about him. You can try to achieve everything you want in life, but when it ends, it ends. There’s something freeing about that as well. That you’re not doing something for someone else, you should just do it for yourself. Enjoy your life as long as you can.
Joachim: At the very end, I want to hand you yet another seemingly impossible large question. When it all boils down to the core essence, what is the meaning of life, as you see it?
Vagabjørn: An existentialist thinks that you make meaning to your own life. It’s so individual. Based on what everyone believes in. Get as much out of your own life as possible, without limiting or harming others. I will keep collecting experiences, keep tasting new foods and meeting new people. Try to get new understandings of things for as long as I can. That doesn’t necessarily have to do with travel. You can get it through so many ways. You can host travelers in your own country. You can learn in so many ways. Especially with these digital opportunities that we have today. To be hungry for knowledge and understanding.
Joachim: Beautiful! It’s been a pleasure.
How can people reach out to you online, and where can they find you?
Vagabjørn: Well, online I go by Vagabjørn, this name I have crafted between Vagabond and Bjørn my name. Bjørn means bear in Norwegian. I have a website. I have my books, and they’ve been translated into some languages such as Arabic, French, English and Norwegian. Let me know if someone have a question. I’m always answering messages from people, and always enjoy getting in touch with people.
Joachim: Excellent! All right, thank you.
Vagabjørn: Thank you.
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