INTERVJU / INTERVIEW
KRISTIJAN ILIČIĆ, a travel blogger and the founder of travel agency Nomadik Travel
There’s So Much Kindness in This World,
in People’s Hear ts!
“THROUGH MY TRAVELS I WAS ABLE TO ERASE ALL THE PREJUDICES WE HAVE ABOUT OTHER LANDS, CULTURES, AND CUSTOMS” Interviewed by: Elma Zećo / Photo: Private Album
O
ne trip to Asia before starting university was enough for Kristijan Iličić to realise that travelling is what he is most interested in. Before becoming a world traveller and travel writer, he worked for years at a publishing house in Zagreb, but once he opened the doors of the world and had a taste of foreign lands, and by that time he had travelled across Southeast Asia, had gone off on a road trip across the United States, and had explored the African states that changed his life, he could no longer just go to work, sit in an office, and spend precious time on corporate matters. He figured out that he would never be able travel the world this way and decided to open a new chapter in his life.
GETTING ENGAGED IN THE SEYCHELLES You became the most famous tra‑ vel blogger in the region after you threw a birthday surprise for your girlfriend Andrea in America a few years ago, flying 10,000 km on that occasion. Both foreign and regional media wrote storied about it. People 84
are happy to follow you. What is the secret of your success? - That just might be it—what you said. Nothing’s hard for me to do. I do it from the heart and without faking it. I’d drive twice as many kilometres for Andrea, she is very important to me and I never thought that I shouldn’t do what I did. I just sought a way to do it. As for my stories, which people love to watch, I post raw material, so whoever likes it, they’re welcome to watch. I don’t feel like editing video stories. I always speak my mind, present things as they are—if I think something is beautiful and touching or if I don’t like it and it makes me angry, I say so. I don’t hide anything. I’m honest. I don’t try to mystify things. When I was in Varanasi where dead bodies were being burnt, I wasn’t retelling the mystical history of India, I was showing a man drying wet trousers next to a funeral pyre where the body of the deceased was burning. What do you remember about the first location you headed out to? - Andrea and I went to Madagascar
and spent 20 wonderful days exploring all parts of the island. Travelling through Madagascar turned out to be a real adventure, driving on the worst roads in the world, traveling without any kind of plan. We then flew to the Seychelles. I chose the Seychelles because I always knew that one day, if I found the right girl, I’d get engaged in the Seychelles. I did find her, so I remember the Seychelles because that’s where Andrea and I got engaged. You’ve travelled to a lot of places, more than a hundred. What’s the criteria for adding countries to your travel list? - I set myself the goal to visit every country in the world, so for the time being the criterion is to visit the countries I haven’t been to before. Of course, at times I’m still quite happy to return to places that have left a strong mark me or impressed me in one way or another. That’s why I always go to Thailand and Ethiopia again and again, and I believe that I’ll make a road trip around the USA at least a few more times.
