Bakari Akil left New York City and visited a new country each month. Instead of finishing his trip, it's still ongoing.
Courtesy of Bakari Akil
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Bakari Akil, 37, a private equity investor from New York. Akil grew up with no international travel experience and, three years ago, set out to visit 30 different countries each month. He finished his list, but is still traveling around the world. The following has been edited for length and clarity.People I knew were traveling around and out of the country, and doing all this really cool stuff, and I was just like, "How are people pulling this off?" I just couldn't figure out how people were living these cool lives.While I was at the Equinox on 67th Street in New York City, one of my gym friends had just come back from a trip internationally.I said, "Yo, how do you travel like that?" He said, "I've been doing this since I was a kid." I didn't have any international traveling under my belt at all.He told me to look into this program called Remote Year. I looked it up. The program takes other digital nomads, people who don't have to be locked into whatever location, on month-long trips.Remote Year would find your housing, they'd find stuff for you to do inside the country, and they'd introduce you to people who were there. They even covered the flights between the countries as you were going to the next country. The only thing they didn't cover was food.
