We would like to thank Voyageurs Sans Frontieres for the Liebster Award Nomination! I had so much fun writing this blog since it brought back many good travel memories. The Liebster Award is given/received between bloggers and it is said that it was created to recognise or discover new bloggers. It starts with 11 random facts about yourself and 11 questions sent by the blogger who nominates you. At last you nominate 11 bloggers yourself and ask them 11 questions back. Below you can find our answers.
2. Our strangest similarities: same strength glasses, duck mole on the left side of our bellies , both ASMR sensitive, birthdays almost on the same day & the fact that most people think we are siblings because we look alike :/
3. In these 8 years we have travelled to 30 countries together.
4. Good&Bad Characteristics; Mursal: Caring, adventurous, Funny, Go-with-the-flow kinda girl, rebellion, impatient, stubborn & Farhang: Caring, curious, goodwilling, responsible, perfectionist, bossy, autistic at times
5. Three things Mursal can’t live without: dancing, Ben&Jerrys & Friends
Three things Farhang can’t live without: Nutella, watermelon, Ryan Gosling
6. Three things Mursal hates: insects, any possible noise at night, people who smack & cut nails in public
Three things Farhang hates: technology failure, bad service, littering tourists
7. Our favorite food: 1. Afghan/persian, 2. Indian, 3. Italian
8. Our coolest adventures together: wedding proposal during skydiving, hiking & mountain biking in the Caucasian mountains & Himalayas and sleeping in Thar desert
9. Mursal is notorious for Asian baby kidnapping
10. When Farhang is looking forward to good food, he is serious. He will not stop walking, cycling or driving around until he is sure he has found the best food possible. In the meanwhile I am dehydrated, super tired, half dead, became a zombie, etc.
11. For some reason people never know to which country we belong. Untill now we have heard the following: Spain, Israel, Dubai, Lebanon, Iran, Pakistan, India (especially Farhang), Turkey, Italy, Tibet and many other countries where they mistake us for locals.
Farhang: Flexibility is the next big thing!
Mursal: Music my passion, dance my expression and travel my destination.
2. What’s your best travel memory?
See number 8 in ’11 things about us’
3. The worst?
Spending a whole day in Singapore searching for accommodation with our heavy backpacks because everything was full.
4. What do you miss the most while traveling?
Rest, healthy food/cooking & sports. Which may be a weird answer to you guys since it seems like we have all the time/freedom to take care of that, but believe me it’s difficult. We are getting sick A LOT (especially Mursal). It’s really a challenge to take care of your health when you’re constantly on the run.
5. If you could relive the adventures of one explorer (real or fiction) which one’s would it be and why?
Don’t know about reliving, but we are big fans of Bear Grylls and wouldn’t mind joining him on his survival adventures 😉
6. What made you become a travel blogger?
We don’t like to call ourselves travelbloggers actually since we are no professional writers. Many of our blogs aren’t informative but more about how we EXPERIENCE our travels. We are just lively people who want to enjoy life to the fullest while capturing and writing everything. And we hope to inspire others to do the same.
7. If you could do it again, would you? What would you do differently?
What precisely?
8. What’s the most important lesson you have learned while traveling?
See less, do more. It’s NOT about ticking off a bucketlist of highly recommended touristy spots straight out of Lonely Planet. It’s about engaging with local people, taste their food, do activities you are not able to do so at home (like diving, paragliding, kayaking, etc), etc. There is a difference between a tourist and a traveler.
9. What’s the story behind your blog’s name?
There is no special story actually. We are just two awesome people who wanted to do a trip around the world. So there you have it.
10. Tell us 5 things that are on your bucket list.
– Take selfies with penguins on Antarctica
– Shake hands with Lisa Kudrow/Ryan Gosling
– Hug panda bears/koala bears
– Join a start-up in Sillicon Valley
– Travel around in Africa
11. Tell us a time where nothing truly went as planned.
Our stay in Koh Tao in Thailand; Mursal got an ear infection which totally ruined our diving plans. That sucked.
We have decided to nominate the following travelers because we love to read their stories & stalk their pictures:
– www.voyageurssansfrontieres.com
– www.journals.worldnomads.com/wanderandshare
1. Who are you exactly?
2. When did you fall in love with traveling?
3. Favorite country, people, food? Do you see yourself living there forever?
4. What was your most awesome experience during traveling?
5. And worst?
6. Life lessons/ little secrets you want to share with us?
7. What are your biggest challenges during your travels?
8. Do you believe it’s possible to start up a new life somewhere else far away from your family and friends? Why?
9. If you could wish for 3 things regarding traveling, what would that be?
10. Traveling is not ALWAYS fun, what can be really annoying?
11. Why should people follow you or subscribe on your website? What makes you more special than others?
3 Comments
Nathalie @ Borderless Travelers
March 31, 2015 at 05:10Sorry, this is going to be long ^^. It’s very nice to read your answers guys! Glad to see you also chose to display your answers using toggles, those thing come in pretty handy since Liebster Awards post can be pretty long :p. I wish I could use them right now!
Fun similarities : we also got together 8 years ago but your strange similarities are much more fun 😉 Oh and we’re also big fans of Bear Grylls, that guy is awesome! We stumbled upon an episode where he took a regular guy on his journey and we were like “we WANT to do that!” haha! The one with Jake Gyllenhall was pretty fun too ;). We also believe there is a huge difference between being a tourist and a traveler and we think the latter is way more interesting :p.
Pretty nice bucket list you guys have!
The #7 is a follow-up of #6, would you launch a travel blog if you could do it all again?
Mursal, I’d like to know more about this Asian baby kidnapping, care to elaborate? :p.
And now, to answer your questions:
1. We are Nathalie and Sébastien, a French couple that live in Avignon, in the South of France. We met 10 years ago in high school and got together 8 years ago. We recently decided to plan a round the world trip for 2016 and the idea to launch a blog came in pretty naturally, with Nath being a tv shows blogger and all. We’ll talk about our trips planned for 2015 and we have some pretty exciting stuff coming up! It’s a great experience so far and it allowed us to meet (virtually or IRL) some pretty nice people, including Farhang and Mursal! We’d like to become professional travel bloggers but there’s A LOT to do and especially learn in between and the journey seems pretty scary but fun too
2. It clicked when we went to Cape Verde 2 years ago. The capeverdean lifestyle is so peaceful, people are so nice and we got to meet some pretty amazing people and see amazing things. We’d like to see and do it all now!
3. Already answered on our Liebster
4. Taking a guided tour of the Freemason’s Hall in London. Fascinating, inspiring, intriguing, amazing!
5. That time we went snorkeling with a group that was scuba diving in the ocean. They spotted sharks and manta rays while we only got to see some small colorful fish at the surface, pretty frustrating!
6. We got the nice surprise to discover we were pretty compatible travel mates!
7. Relax! I (Nath) am a bit of an organization freak, I like everything to be set up so it’s sometimes hard to be spontaneous but Séb is there to help me
8. Absolutely! But come back after our RTW trip, maybe we’ll have a different perspective on things. For now, we’d love to experience living away from France, at least for a few months, to try new things and open our minds to different cultures.
9. Do it til the rest of our days to be able to see it all! Nothing else comes to mind right now 😉
10. Being jetlagged !
11. Because we’re a fun relatable couple that likes to discover new things and we always look for something odd to do while travelling. You’ll get to read about some stuff you might not read elsewhere (an authentic native American Pow Wow for instance!).
Mursal
April 7, 2015 at 21:03Haha wow loved to read your comment 😀 You guys seem really fun to hang out with! We wish you two all the luck with your preparations for your big traveladventure in 2016. I’m sure it’s gonna be awesome. Can’t wait to see where you guys will be heading to! Hmm considering Mursal’s obsession with Asian babies, well they are just extremely adorable. Just like living dolls you know haha and you just want to squeeze their cute chubby cheeks 😛
Nathalie @ Borderless Travelers
April 10, 2015 at 17:39Thank you for your kind wishes and let’s hope we’ll get to hang out IRL sometime 😉