Meet the Nomads – Mark and Steffy of Born 2 Travel

Born 2 Travel is one of the latest blogs that I have been reading that I also recommend you book mark and check out if you have some time. This blog is own by an Italian couple named Mark and Steffy (Stefania). Steffy is an educator who works with children and people with disabilities while Mark is an air force personnel.

Both Mark and Steffy are passionate travelers and have been to various countries in the seven continents. They created the site to document their travels and to share the insights and learning they acquire in their journeys.

Get to know more about Mark and Steffy and join them in their adveture at Born 2 Travel.

Before you leave this page, check out my short interview with Mark and Steffy.

How did you discover your passion for travelling?

Mark: “When I was a child I used to listen all the travel tales of my Aunt Anne, a travel agent, who lived many great experiences everywhere in the world. At 6 I already knew all the capitals and all the flags of the world. I used to play with my father with the Atlas. When I was teen I began my inter rails experiences, every summer a different part of Europe, from Turkey to Norway, from Portugal to Scotland…everywhere… A few years later I jumped toward more exotic places till when I landed in South Africa and I met Steffy. From that moment we have become inseparable.”

Steffy: “I have always been fascinated by the world, by the different cultures, religions, traditions and luckily I have started travelling since I was a child, first with my parents and then backpacking with friends and now Mark.”

What’s the most horrible experience that you’ve had on the road?

Maybe I can tell you two different experiences.

– “When I was teen I was travelling with a friend of mine backpacking on a very strict budget. W got in Cardiff; for some unlucky reason my friend was caught by police and arrested while I was looking after our two huge backpacks… luckily a few hours later he had been released after solved the misunderstanding but for a few hours I felt lost, without money and without the chance to move around with these two backpacks. Maybe because I was very young but I lived it as a very bad experience.”

– “Last year, in Phnom Penh, Stefy fell from the stairs slipping ‘cos of her flip flops. We had to spend a few days in great worry for her health… she has risked a lot and we had both been very scared.”

– “Actually there would be also many others happened to me in Afghanistan… but maybe this is another story…”

What’s the best travel experience that you’ve ever had?

“No doubts. For sure our six months backpacking around all Far East. We have lived some of the best moments of our entire life… We have departed from Kathmandu and after India, Myanmar, Indochina, Malaysia, Indonesia and so on we have ended up to Philippines. You can read plenty of it here.

What’s the biggest realization that you’ve got out of travelling?

“Well we have realized, one more time, that we have only one life and this only life we have to, we MUST, live it as more intensively as we can, trying to realize all our dreams and in love. Our biggest dream is to travel around the whole world and get as much as we can from all the meetings, from all the adventures that can happen to you day by day.”

What keeps you going? What keeps you motivated?

“Travelling has become a reason of life for us now, a real aim of life. Many times our friends or our parents suggest us to invest our time and money in realizing something more “touchable”, a family for example… but, on one side, we don’t care, actually we feel sorry that they don’t understand this big passion of us.”

This is a silly and hypothetical one. If you would be given a chance to travel with a popular person or a celebrity, who would it be and why?/span>

“I would ask the famous Italian actor and starring Roberto Benigni (“Life is beautiful”) to travel with us. We are sure that we would have a great time thanks to his humor and his great culture… above all if we travel in Tuscany.”

Where’s your favorite place in this planet and why?

“This is the classical question that all the people asks us but our usual answer is: there isn’t! Each single place leaves you inside something that you will keep forever in you heart, in your mind, in you eyes and nobody will never be able to steal… I can tell you thousands unforgettable moments but I can’t tell you a single place! If you ask us a recent country that we have lived intensely we can answer you: Myanmar… but as we said… this is the most difficult question!”

What’s your best tip for newbie traveler?

“Try to unplug your routine life when you travel. I mean: forget about updating your facebook account or twitter; switch you phone off and travel with your heart. Be careful but don’t create a wall around you that protects you but at the same time it doesn’t allow you to live properly.”

What’s the funniest and silliest thing you’ve ever done while travelling?/span>

“When I was a teen, during an inter rail with my Portuguese friend Pedro, we traveled one month around Scandinavia… I ran out money and, even if I had inter rail ticket, I had to buy a very expensive ticket to reach my parents on holiday near Sicily… I was in Switzerland, i.e. I had to cover the whole Italy without money… that’s why I borrowed Pedro’s ticket (who, being foreigner needn’t have to pay the train) and I pretended to be Portuguese for two days… not only with train controller but also with Italian people I met, in order to seem real!

How do you keep yourself safe on your travels?

“e simply try to use our common sense and we try to adopt all the most common and basic tips to travel safe…i.e. moneybelt pocket to keep our money, try to give the right confidence to strangers and so on.”

What do you think about yourselves?

“What do we think about ourselves? Hard question. We are just two simple people in love who, luckily, share the same great passion toward adventure and life.”

“This site was born to keep all my travel experiences. First of all it is a way to keep on travelling even with your mind, your fantasy and imagination. Every time I read what I wrote, described or photographed I re-live the feelings I lived again and that’s way I want to share them with the others every single wonderful moment I lived… …travelling is to have a star in front of you and a path to walk, it doesn’t matter if the star is unreachable, the important is: “go ahead”. All the life is a continuous journey… all journeys are a grown up.
Of course the site is in continuous development because I still have so much to explore in this world…” -Mark and Steffy of Born 2 Travel

Editor’s Note: All pics are provided by Mark and Steffy.

Next: Dan and Casey of A Cruising Couple Previously: Clelia Mattana of Keep Calm and Travel For more interviews with travel bloggers, check out the archives of Meet the Nomads.