Andrew Ingersoll is well-known to readers of Rick Ingersoll’s common weblog, The Frugal Journey Man, for the pictures of individuals, locations and cultures he is captured all over the world. At age 29, Andrew has already visited 47 nations and, armed with all of the free and frugal journey strategies he is realized from his father, he isn’t about to cease.
“The guidelines I’ve picked up from ‘Pops’ have allowed me to proceed touring at affordable costs and to share my experiences by way of my images,” Andrew mentioned not too long ago.
Rick Ingersoll is a retired mortgage banker who grew to become a “journey hacker” as a pastime in order that he and his spouse, Katy, may spend his retirement years touring the globe. He started running a blog about his suggestions and strategies for gathering frequent flier miles and different free-travel strategies in 2007 (his present “bankroll” of frequent flier miles is as much as 1.5 million) and authored the ebook The Frugal Journey Man Handbook in 2010. The pastime grew to become a enterprise as readership grew and the journey trade started promoting on it.
It wasn’t lengthy earlier than Rick’s total household joined “the sport,” as he calls it — together with Andrew, who rapidly realized that “the world is a captivating place, and I need to have the ability to share a few of its glories with others who will not be capable of decide up and go.”
He makes use of his images to try this – images whose high quality defies Andrew’s “beginner” standing.
“It will be nice if I may encourage others to journey by way of my pictures,” he mentioned. “Touring and experiencing cultures and customs opens up minds and challenges the ignorance and prejudices portrayed by the media.”
Rising up in Traverse Metropolis, Michigan, Andrew graduated from Michigan State College with a Bachelor of Nursing diploma in 2004. He began touring to Europe in holidays and through summer time breaks whereas he was in class.
“That is after I found that the world was a lot bigger than white, center class America,” mentioned the slim, sandy-haired photographer who’s at present ensconced in Antarctica. “This impressed me to soak up as a lot from different nations and cultures as attainable.”
Andrew started his photographic journal with a “level and shoot digital digicam,” he mentioned, and picked up a Nikon Coolpix in a Malaysian market, “principally as a result of the value was proper.” However when he made the choice to go to all seven continents earlier than he turned 30, he knew an improve was so as.
“I obtained an amazing deal on a Nikon D5000 at Costco this final December and Antarctica was my trial backdrop.”
He moved to Seattle, Washington, after he graduated from Michigan State. “It was at the moment after we, as a household, began discovering the true advantages of frequent flier miles,” he mentioned. “My first journey to Asia was on a United Mileage Plus reward ticket that took me from Seattle to Tokyo to Singapore. My eyes have been now fixated on cultures so totally different from Northern Michigan, I used to be hooked. And to this present day, I really like Asian tradition.”
On a 28-day Intrepid Tour of Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, Andrew met an Australian man who gave him the thought of pursuing a postgraduate diploma abroad.
“After I returned to Seattle, I discovered the Masters of Worldwide Public Well being program on the College of Sydney,” he mentioned. “Calculating the associated fee profit evaluation of attending a college in Australia versus America, I used to be prepared to leap ship. I made the dedication to pursue Australia, however not with out ticking off one of many issues on my ‘bucket listing’ first.”
Andrew’s “bucket listing” – which he insists he made lengthy earlier than the film “The Bucket Listing” got here out — was really a High 25 listing {that a} pal advised he make. She may see he was battling what course to go in his life after he’d obtained his undergraduate diploma.
“So she had me jot down the highest 25 experiences I needed out of life,” he recalled. “I nonetheless have that listing at present.”
The listing impressed him to hitch a medical mission to Mali, West Africa, the place he labored alongside native Malian docs and nurses at a hospital for girls and kids. His job was a part of a reduction staff that assisted native employees with high-risk childbirth.
“Once more, my eyes have been opened and my thoughts raced. I used to be so grateful for the alternatives I had been granted,” he mentioned. “So after some very emotional occasions in Mali with among the most superb individuals, I joined one other Intrepid tour to spend 15 days in Morocco. That was my first style of Arabic and Muslim tradition. And I needed to expertise it as unbiased as attainable.”
In February 2008, Andrew moved to Sydney, Australia, the place he obtained his MIPH diploma and infrequently labored as an evacuation and repatriation nurse — nurses who deliver sick and injured individuals to Australia from South Pacific islands for remedy they could not obtain in any other case.
“That is nice enjoyable and really rewarding — flying off into the South Pacific to select up somebody and convey her or him to Australia for remedy,” he mentioned. “I’ve gone to New Caledonia, Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Kirabati, Tahiti, Norfolk Island, Tonga and Vanuatu.”
Andrew is now working half time in scientific analysis earlier than he begins pursuing a Juris Physician diploma on the College of New South Wales in February, a three-year postgraduate regulation diploma designed for professionals coming into right into a profession in regulation. “I am assured The Frugal Journey Man weblog will proceed to offer me with the mandatory instruments to permit me to meet my private objectives of journey,” he mentioned.
What’s subsequent on his agenda? “Caving in Malaysian Borneo and camper-van journey in New Zealand,” he mentioned. “And I am nonetheless within the planning strategy of visiting the Nice Wall of China with pricey outdated Dad.”
Additionally on his want listing: Nepal, Ghana, Bolivia, Mongolia, Croatia, and Maldives. Nobody doubts that he’ll fulfill his needs, least of all his father.
“I want I had the braveness to undertake among the adventures Andrew has been on,” Rick mentioned. “Not solely does he see the world at costs he can afford, he does it at occasions in essentially the most fundamental of native lodging. He actually will get within the tradition greater than I’ve ever been able to. I am only a vacationer after I examine my travels to Andrew’s. He’s a real world traveler.”
Andrew posts his journey pictures and humorous commentary on The Frugal Journey Man weblog each Wednesday and Sunday. To see an archive of his posts, go to http://frugaltravelguy.blogspot.com.