Anybody out there living the life of a nomad?

[arebelspy]

I recently worked out that I spend more than half the year traveling - does that make me a nomad? I thought I was a stay at home!

I always nomads didn't have homes, but continually moved, so "vacationing a lot" didn't qualify, but I'm sure there are a million definitions, and it fits under some.  It's not like there's a badge or anything.  :)

Oh great...Now we have the "Nomad Police"...

I'm not sure how that is nomad police?

She asked, so I gave her what I thought of as a definition, and then said there are a bunch of definitions (so mine isn't "right") and her situation would fit under some of them (so she is a nomad).  Wouldn't the "police" do the opposite, and tell her no, she doesn't count under any reasonable definition, etc.?  :)

Apparently we have the police police though, insisting people are policeing something.  And now I'm the police police police.  How deep does this go.  ;)

Hopefully not as much as the buffaloes!  And big kudos to my linguistic nerds who get the reference.  :D

[SailorGirl]

I recently worked out that I spend more than half the year traveling - does that make me a nomad? I thought I was a stay at home!

I always nomads didn't have homes, but continually moved, so "vacationing a lot" didn't qualify, but I'm sure there are a million definitions, and it fits under some.  It's not like there's a badge or anything.  :)

Oh great...Now we have the "Nomad Police"...

Fortunately they move along quickly.

[deborah]

I recently worked out that I spend more than half the year traveling - does that make me a nomad? I thought I was a stay at home!

I always nomads didn't have homes, but continually moved, so "vacationing a lot" didn't qualify, but I'm sure there are a million definitions, and it fits under some.  It's not like there's a badge or anything.  :)

Oh great...Now we have the "Nomad Police"...

Fortunately they move along quickly.

Because they are nomads (and fit all the definitions)

[TheFrugalFox]

lovely thread and those pics from EJ - excellent.

I retired a couple of years ago @40 and have now got the wife on board to sell up in five years and then travel for a few years. For starters, 1 year in SE Asia, then a year in Central America. We will eventually settle down somewhere but probably not in our current country, south africa, which is slow going down the drain.

Will be travelling on a serious budget though - currently, selling up we could probably get around $1200 p/m - probably not quite enough. So planning on having some part time jobs - you make a bit of cash on the road. My wife is a graphic designer and she probably could keep a few of her customers, but looking at ideas in her field. I am looking at trading - and have had a idea for a range of books aimed at teenagers.

On my bucket list too is taking a camper van around europe...

Also a biker - old 1100 shadow - have thought about the technicalities of touring around - but wife would be pillion, and think it's a bit difficult 2 up with gear. I guess a bike trailer could be an option. But for me, the camper van looks good - maybe with a 250 on the back!

[Joan-eh?]

Following

[Arktinkerer]

I recently worked out that I spend more than half the year traveling - does that make me a nomad? I thought I was a stay at home!

I always nomads didn't have homes, but continually moved, so "vacationing a lot" didn't qualify, but I'm sure there are a million definitions, and it fits under some.  It's not like there's a badge or anything.  :)

Oh great...Now we have the "Nomad Police"...

I'm not sure how that is nomad police?

She asked, so I gave her what I thought of as a definition, and then said there are a bunch of definitions (so mine isn't "right") and her situation would fit under some of them (so she is a nomad).  Wouldn't the "police" do the opposite, and tell her no, she doesn't count under any reasonable definition, etc.?  :)

Apparently we have the police police though, insisting people are policeing something.  And now I'm the police police police.  How deep does this go.  ;)

Hopefully not as much as the buffaloes!  And big kudos to my linguistic nerds who get the reference.  :D

Not sure I get the buffaloes reference.  My initial thoughts veered to "Its turtles all the way down!"

[arebelspy]

Not sure I get the buffaloes reference.

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo!

That is a linguistically correct, and sensical, sentence.  There are explanations on Wikipedia and YouTube.

Plus it's just fun to say out loud. :)

"Police police police" was the simple sentence I used to explain this idea to my 4th grade students.  That some policemen will watch other policemen--and the middle "police" is the verb in this sentence that makes it make sense...then we'd get to the 8 buffalo sentence. :)

[deborah]

Not sure I get the buffaloes reference.

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo!

That is a linguistically correct, and sensical, sentence.  There are explanations on Wikipedia and YouTube.

Plus it's just fun to say out loud. :)

"Police police police" was the simple sentence I used to explain this idea to my 4th grade students.  That some policemen will watch other policemen--and the middle "police" is the verb in this sentence that makes it make sense...then we'd get to the 8 buffalo sentence. :)

As Australian English (and UK English) doesn't use "buffalo" as a verb (the Cambridge dictionary says this usage is "North American informal"), this is not a linguistically correct English sentence in other than American English (and possibly not even there as it is "informal", so not "linguistically correct"). Which begs the question about how Canadian English differs from US English, since US English broke away from UK English several centuries ago.

[arebelspy]

A sentence doesn't have to be gramatically correct in every language and dialect to be correct.

The point is how ambiguous words can be manipulated to do clever things with language.  Did you look at the other examples in the video?  (Feel free to skip the first half, or so, of it.)   :)

[deborah]

Well, I sort-of liked the video - it was good but irritating. The person doing it used American English where he could have used more international meanings (for instance the "can" verb he used was the American version and the international version could equally well have been used), and the "can" part of the clip (amongst others) didn't even use the correct words when he expanded it - he used "dances" where he should have used "dancers". I know I am being pedantic, but this IS a grammar clip and he IS being pedantic himself.

I REALLY like Police police police - especially as that leads to graft and corruption.

[Kerowyn]

I got the buffalo reference ;)

[mandy_2002]

If you are a nomad,  what have you done with your cell phone numbers? I'm a little attached to my number, but would rather not pay monthly to keep it while serving with the Peace Corps.

My only option now is to port it to Google Voice for $20 and link one of my sister's phone numbers while not using their forwarding service.

[arebelspy]

If you are a nomad,  what have you done with your cell phone numbers? I'm a little attached to my number, but would rather not pay monthly to keep it while serving with the Peace Corps.

My only option now is to port it to Google Voice for $20 and link one of my sister's phone numbers while not using their forwarding service.

I use Google Voice.

[bobechs]

As Australian English (and UK English) doesn't use "buffalo" as a verb..., this is not a linguistically correct English sentence in other than American English (and possibly not even there as it is "informal", so not "linguistically correct"). Which begs the question about how Canadian English differs from US English, since US English broke away from UK English several centuries ago.

Jeez, now we've got the buffalo police on the job...

Czech out the less-than-fully-starched use of the phrase 'beg the question.'  It's a dog whistle to sticklers for formality anf linguistic correctness.

I mean, someone has got to police the buffalo police, nicht wahr?

[shadowmoss]

RE:  phone number

My usual plug for Consumer Cellular.  $10/mo should hold your number, another $10 for minutes if/when you want and as little as $2/mo for some data.  Turn the amount of minutes and data on or off at will.

[flyingaway]

Just came back from one week vacation in Costa Rica. Brought umbrella, rain coat, plastic bags, etc., but did not see a single drop of rain there.

[Ozlady]

I have booked my airticket from sydney to check out Penang in July...i want to see whether it's possible to have an extended holiday home out of Penang from which to explore the region: think Thailand, India, Vietnam, Singapore, China, Sri Lanka etc

I have this sniggering feeling that doing that, i will actually come out net positive compared to living out full time in Sydney...

(I don't want to die wondering....)

Also have been sounding my ideas out to mainly a bunch of naysayers and doubters in my circle of friends....only here in MMM is "abnormal " ......."normal"!!

[flyingaway]

I have booked my airticket from sydney to check out Penang in July...i want to see whether it's possible to have an extended holiday home out of Penang from which to explore the region: think Thailand, India, Vietnam, Singapore, China, Sri Lanka etc

I have this sniggering feeling that doing that, i will actually come out net positive compared to living out full time in Sydney...

(I don't want to die wondering....)

Also have been sounding my ideas out to mainly a bunch of naysayers and doubters in my circle of friends....only here in MMM is "abnormal " ......."normal"!!

I have been in Penang twice and did not see a particular reason for be attracted. I also stayed more than a year in Queensland. The living standard of Penang cannot be compared with that of Australia, I my opinon.

[Ozlady]

DH and i haved lived in South East Asia for 7 years and begged to differ.....

What attracts you is different from what attracts us:))

[Wekeeprollingdowntheroad]

Nomadic exister here! 42 and my wife is 33, we are currently in cleveland Ohio, on an in depth look at America 😄 I'm a retired professional photogrspher, she is a retired dental hygenist.
Im not on facebook or instagram or the web anywhere public but I did start a journal on mmm  recently

I shoot with an iphone only- and not super often. Keepin it simple!


Pic- our first view of Lake Erie

[Daleth]

My post FIRE dream is to travel. Like permanently. Just me, no SO. Obviously, I'd settle down for months or even years at a time in low COL areas. SE Asia. Central and South America. Backward ass places in Europe and North America. Probably eventually return in old age when I couldn't do it anymore and I was collecting SS.

Wondering if there's any others here living a nomadic existence? How do you like it? What are you spending? It's difficult to reconcile what I'd spend on the road vs what I spend here in Los Angeles but I've always been frugal compared to my peers, and I enjoy...nay prefer traveling cheap (meet more people and characters at that). On some of the ex pat forums I read, it looks like for most of the low COL countries that many Americans retire to $3,000 per month seems to be about the "live like a rockstar" threshold with plenty doing it on less.

Check out the website transitionsabroad.com. They are geared towards that lifestyle (although much of their info is how to work in XYZ country). It's a good resource.

[Wekeeprollingdowntheroad]

I suspect the lifestyle would be hard if you have other interests that require equipment. 

While my DW and I both love traveling, seeing new places and meeting new people it would be difficult to completely give up our other passions.

I had to read this a couple of times to figure out that the question you're really asking is "Why Nomad?"

Why full-time travel? Why not keep the home and all the toys? Travel extensively for a few months, then come back to pursue all your hobbies that require equipment, a larger chunk of time and other people to do it with? Then continue traveling again in installments?

I think the answer is going to vary by individual. But I think for a lot of nomads, the answer might be something like, "I just want to xxx all the time" (get your mind out of the gutter! :) )

For us, the one grand passion we have is motorcycling. I'm not sure if you know any motorcyclists, but if you do, you may know a few of them who have said, "I just want to ride all the time. Every day". Or, I'd love to ride from the top of Alaska, to the bottom of Argentina".


Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah

So some nomadic journeys are quests. Especially the overlanders who measure their progress with squiggly, red continuous lines beginning from the last place they ever called "home", through all the points where they've since laid their head to rest for a single night, a week or a month. But it's never those points that are the raison d'etre for the journey. Instead, it's about all those experiences that happen in between those points.

Those kinds of quests take time. And if you're not independently wealthy, it's cost-prohibitive to maintain a permanent residence waiting for you for the months or years it takes for you to complete the journey.

But that's overlanders, which is a very niche segment of nomads. Back in our old life, we'd go out to Whistler to snowboard at least once in the season. On the slopes, we'd meet so many young people who abandoned a stationary life to chase the endless winter. They'd do this for many years - migrating from one hemisphere to another, Switzerland to New Zealand to Canada. They'd find a job teaching skiing or snowboarding or working for minimum wage in the chalet in return for a free lift pass. Living with six other people in a cramped apartment because: "I just want to ski all the time. Every day".

And then the rest of the world looks at that kind of lifestyle and thinks, "Yeah, I like skiing/motorcycling/travel as much as the next guy. But not *THAT* much!"


Snorkeling with giant turtles in San Pedro, Belize

Choosing nomadism to pursue motorcycling, snowboarding or full-time travel for the sake of travel itself is a fringe lifestyle. Not many people pursue a passion with such single-mindedness, especially to the exclusion of other hobbies that require a more settled life. But we weighed it out and came to the conclusion that it was worth it. Not everyone reaches the same conclusion.

It's an interesting process, selling, giving away or throwing out all your possessions except for what you can fit in your backpack, or the panniers on your motorcycle, or the back of your van. I'm a packrat, and I wanted to keep everything. I wanted to rent a storage locker, have my old life waiting for me when we finished traveling. But due to finances, we couldn't afford a storage locker that big (it would have had to be basically the size of our home), so we went through the (painful for me) exercise of sell/donate/toss.

Everything that passed though my hands during that process, I thought, "I don't want to get rid of this. I'm going to really miss this". But it didn't take very long on the road to realize that I didn't miss 99% of my old possessions. They were just distractions; stuff I filled my life and closets with just because I had the money and storage space.


Hiking in the Tatacoa Desert, Colombia

But back to your question, what about the hobbies and activities we used to do? We discovered we only went snowboarding because there's very little else to do during the harsh Canadian winters. Once we were on the road chasing our own endless summer on motorcycles, we found that we didn't miss our snowboards at all. Nor our rollerblades, or ice skates, or mountain bikes, or the 20-piece crock set. Those things weren't as important to us as we thought they were. And the hobbies that we wanted to continue pursuing turned out to be very portable and mobile.

Neda loves yoga. Her yoga mat rolls up real small on the bike and she's able to find drop-in yoga classes anywhere that we anchor down for a while. She loves hiking and we make sure we hit all the exotic hiking destinations all over the world, national parks in Southwest USA, deserts of Africa, jungles of South America, the jagged fjordlands of Norway, etc. We both love motorsports, and traveling around the world has given us the opportunity to catch international motorcycle races live that previously we could only have watched on TV. I just picked up tickets for the World Superbike races in Buriram, Thailand next month!!!! Very excited! We've played beach volleyball on three different continents. I've rented a guitar when we've stayed for longer than a month in some places. There is no shortage of ways you can fill your time with entertainment and leisure.


View from the grandstands, World Superbike Race, Assen, Holland

Gene, you touched on this briefly in an early blog post where you talked about Neda taking up cross stitch because it gave her something to do during down times.

Yes, but this is something entirely different. As you can see from above, it's dead easy to fill our lives with entertainment and recreation. What I was trying to convey earlier, by referencing some on MMM exclaiming that they were bored of their post-FIRE life, is that some people are so driven that they need a past-time that's competitive, or stimulating and satisfying on a physical or creative level. An activity that develops a quantitative skill so that you can measure yourself getting better at it with each passing day. Or a project that has an end-goal, that becomes something tangible that you can admire with self-satisfaction, as opposed to just filling in the hours with unchallenging, yet still pleasurable activities between travel.


Yoga retreat, Vilcabamba, Ecuador

For me, it's writing and taking pictures. It stimulates my brain and having the last decade of our travels on record, I can see the progression in my writing and photography. Neda gets excited every time she comes back from yoga classes and she's mastered a new pose. And she *loves* cross-stitching, sometimes I think more to admire the progress than the actual process...

The bottom line is that you don't have to have a permanent address to enjoy most of the things you did when you had a home. There are some things that do require specialized equipment and a place to store it, rigidly scheduled time and a fixed community to participate with (I miss the regular Thursday night jam sessions with my old band), but as you yourself said:

I guess everyone needs to find their own balance and while one lifestyle may be alluring it may not fit when balanced against other passions or commitments.

Right now, this is the balance. This makes sense to us.

Nomads represent such a minuscule segment of the population. The sustainability of this kind of existence is fragile, apt to be disrupted by lack of funds, boredom and wavering dedication or just plain loneliness.

And it's probably not forever. It's rare to see people on the road for longer than a year. I only know a handful of overlanders who have been out for over a decade. Nomadism for most is merely a brief episode in their life, but one that has provided the most intense experiences, fraught with the kind of adventure and discovery that can only be experienced without the safety net of a full-time job or a permanent address.


Road never ends, even when it does. Outside Panajachel, Guatemala

Nomadism is a perpetual free-fall through the world, as opposed to jumping down to the next ledge below, going home for a while, stocking up on more climbing supplies then coming back later to rappel down to the next ledge. Instead, it's unbroken inertia, ceaseless velocity, it's improvising on a budget, thinking on your feet, changing plans at a moment's notice, then getting those plans smashed to bits and having to discover new ways of doing things in new places, as opposed to always doing things the old way but in new places.

It's not for everyone, but for some, it's the dream of a lifetime.

(I wrote a lot again, so added more pictures for illustration)

Really great post, hope to run across you guys sometime.
We've been at it a year, and can't imagine stopping. In fact, sometimes it registers that we may have a really hard time settling down anywhere again. We went "home" for two weeks at Xmas and after about a week, we were itching to go. Time will tell! . 
For us, none of the things we loved most required us to be in one place and now we can do them in a variety of settings.
We also hit the "experience overload" from time to time and just putter around in the same town for a while and continue on :)