Hi Everyone,

I’m thrilled to announce the launch of Pangea Trips.

Many of you know I'm on a mission to visit every country in the world, and after 121 countries, it's becoming harder and harder to find groups heading to the places I want to visit.

That's why I've teamed up with Caroline Lupini, a fellow digital nomad and extreme traveler with 130 countries under her belt to launch Pangea Trips.

Caroline & I met this month during our Pilot Pangea Co-Working Community Month in Almaty, 🇰🇿 Kazakhstan, and quickly realized we shared a vision for making adventurous travel more accessible.

As a moderator of Every Passport Stamp (a leading community for extreme travel) and the Managing Editor at Forbes focused on Points & Miles, Caroline brings a wealth of travel expertise to our team and will be a fantastic resource for anyone joining our trips.

Together, we're building a new way for adventurous travelers to experience the world in 3 formats:

Think of these as remote work chapters, but in destinations that are far less explored than the traditional nomad circuit.

They’re not for everyone, but should all be viable hubs to work from for anyone with a little flexibility, plus great jumping off points as we explore the surrounding regions on the weekends.

We’ve aligned our calendar to our partner, WiFi Tribe, making it easy for people to integrate some of these destinations into their plans without conflicting with other WiFi Tribe Chapter plans.

We’re tentatively planning the following Co-Working months for 2027/8. Based on interest in the chats, and as our partners formalize their schedules, we’ll share more details about how to book.

Our Gap Week Expeditions are 3-10 day trips to destinations which are not remote work friendly, and where going alone would genuinely be difficult.

We ran our first Pilot Expedition to 🇹🇲 Turkmenistan last month, and have lots of ideas for new destinations which we’ll start to open up ~8-12 months ahead so people can plan their year.

We’re intentionally making these easy to join if you’re already in the region, by aligning dates to logical flight options and program calendars of WiFi Tribe, Outsite, Nomad Cruise & Noma Collective to ensure these are a seamless transition for traveling with our Verified Partners.

To indicate your interest, and stay in the loop for updates, join any chats for destinations where you’re potentially interested in joining below.

We’ll continue to share information about potential dates as we begin planning and open up booking as we get closer.

I sat down with Caroline Lupini for drinks at the world famous Ayul Restaurant before our Community Dinner to get to know her a bit better and share her story with the community as part of our Trips launch!

Where are you from originally, and what made you decide nomad life was right for you?

I'm from Michigan — grew up there and studied materials science at the University of Michigan. The nomad life wasn't a plan. In 2014 I went through a breakup and booked an extended trip through Southeast Asia to get some distance, and it never really ended. I'd already been traveling and getting deep into points and miles for a few years, and the trip made it obvious I didn't want to stop, so I started building a freelance writing and editing business.

You've been to 130 countries so far on the road to 193. What inspired you to visit them all?

It wasn't really a goal at first because when I was still in my engineering career it didn't feel like something that would ever be feasible with only 10 days of vacation per year. But I was always motivated to see new places, so once I started traveling full-time the count grew fast — at one point I thought I might break the record for youngest American to visit every country. Lee Abbamonte had set it at 32, but it kept getting pushed younger after that, and eventually I realized I much prefer traveling more slowly and returning to places I love, while still working toward every country on my own timeline.

After 12 years of nomading, what do you wish someone had told you at the beginning?
That you can't chase novelty forever — you have to build in real rest, even when there's a long list of places you still want to visit. I still struggle with that one. The nomads I've met who burn out usually don't focus on building a sustainable version of the lifestyle. What's kept me going is the agency to keep reshaping my life into what I want — the movement was never really the point.

What has full-time travel taught you about yourself?
That I'm more adaptable than I'd have guessed, and more of an introvert than the lifestyle makes me look. I can drop into almost anywhere and figure it out, but I also need to actually rest to keep doing it — holding both of those at once took me a while (and I still don't always get it right). The harder lesson came from a really lonely stretch in Mexico over Christmas 2020: things get better, then worse, then better again, and that's just how it goes. Knowing that changed how I handle the low points.

How do you manage full-time travel, full-time work, and building content across multiple platforms?
Systems, mostly — I'm an engineer at heart, so I treat it like one. The biggest external lever is travel speed: my partner Kevin and I pick a region and stay a while instead of bouncing between continents, which cuts the logistics way down and leaves more room for work and play. On content, I'm realistic about what part-time creating allows — the same short-form edit goes to TikTok, Reels, and Shorts instead of optimizing each one, and I lean on AI for first drafts of the higher-volume stuff so my real time goes to the pieces I care about. It's less impressive than it sounds; it's mostly refusing to do everything at full effort at once.

You've spent years mastering points and miles. What's a tip most people are still sleeping on?
A lot of nomads write points and miles off as too complicated, and that's the thing I'd push back on. You don't need 50 cards and a spreadsheet — that's my version, and it's overkill for almost everyone. With even a minimal strategy, you can meaningfully increase what you get back on everyday spending and pick up real travel protections at no extra cost. The low-hanging fruit is genuinely low, and it's gotten even lower over the last few years (even for people without access to the U.S. credit card market).

What's the most memorable redemption you've ever pulled off?
It's not exactly a redemption, but it might be my best travel rewards win. A group of us found a fifth-freedom Emirates promo fare and optimized the routing to fly from Vancouver to LA to Dubai to Milan — Emirates First Class the whole way, around $3,000, and I earned 100,000 Alaska miles back on the booking, so the net was closer to $1,000. Emirates includes a chauffeur to your final destination, so we got driven out of Milan in a luxury car straight to a $15-a-night hostel on Lake Como. That contrast — first class to a hostel, back to back — still makes me laugh. It's also a great example of not needing access to US credit cards to win at the travel rewards game.

After 130 countries, what keeps you traveling? Do you get nervous going somewhere new?
Curiosity, mostly — there's always somewhere I haven't seen, and the places left on my list tend to be the ones people skip, which are often the most interesting. I don't really get nervous anymore. In my experience there aren't dangerous destinations so much as places that call for different precautions, and a lot of what gets labeled unsafe — much of the Middle East, for instance — turned out to be where I met some of the most hospitable people I've encountered anywhere. The sensationalism is usually just wrong, and I've been there to know.

What's coming up on your travel plans, and is there anywhere you'd love to explore with the Pangea community?
Next up is two months in Bansko, Bulgaria, then the total eclipse in Palma de Mallorca in August, then back to the States and Canada for our annual trip home to see family, then Bangkok for the Extraordinary Travel Festival. With the Pangea community specifically, I gravitate toward the off-the-beaten-path places — it was such a fun surprise to meet up with the Pangea crew in Almaty when I was expecting to have a quiet month! I’m excited for the trip that we have up our sleeves for next year that I've wanted to do since my first visit: a co-working month in Somaliland, built around connecting with the local entrepreneurship scene.

Who do you most want to connect with in the Pangea community?
The people drawn to the non-typical destinations — the ones who'd book Almaty or Somaliland over the usual nomad hubs. That overlap is rarer than you'd think, and it's exactly who I had the best conversations with in Almaty. I'm also always happy to talk points, miles, and travel optimization with anyone who wants to get more out of how they're already traveling.

Anything else you'd like to highlight?
Two things, briefly. I'm hosting the kickoff of Pangea's new Summer Series in Bansko, Bulgaria during Nomad Fest — it's the first of the community get-togethers Matt's putting together this summer. And on the random side: I got my pilot's license and my Dive Master certification, both in 2021 — neither is core to what I do, but they're the kind of thing this lifestyle makes room for.

Meet the community at our Summer Meetup Series Kickoff Event in Bansko, Bulgaria on Thursday 25th June!

Pangea is proud to be sponsoring the Extraordinary Travel Festival in Bangkok from October 22–25, 2026.

I'll be speaking on a panel discussing the future of travel technology, social travel, and how communities are changing the way people discover and experience the world.

Caroline and I will both be there, alongside many of the world's most accomplished travelers, country collectors, explorers, and adventure seekers.

If you've been curious about joining future Pangea Trips but want to meet the community first, ETF is one of the best opportunities you'll have all year.

Use discount code PANGEA for $100 off your ticket.

My goal with Pangea Trips is to bring the broader community closer together by adding a new layer of possible destinations.

By coordinating with the amazing programs Outsite, NomadCruise, WiFi Tribe and Noma Collective are already putting on, we help increase network density across communities, and make it easy for people to discover new destinations, together. If you run a Nomad Community, we’d love to partner with you.

As always, be sure to follow us on Instagram for the latest updates on new trips

For those of you new to our community, from Flaire, Nomadago, or Overlap, we hope to meet you at one of our upcoming Summer Meetups with the Kickoff in Bansko on 25 June, ETF III in Bangkok (22-25 Oct), NomadWeek in Cape Town (17-20 Feb 2027), or the 2027 MTP Summit in Chengdu, China (7-10 Oct, 2027).

And, if there’s anywhere you’re dying to go that we didn’t mention yet, just let me know and we’ll add it to the list!

As for me, I’m off to the Pamir Highway in 🇹🇯 Tajikistan this weekend for our 2nd Community Expedition before heading back to the US as we continue to ramp up Pangea!

Safe travels,

Matt Gray
Founder & CEO of Pangea
121/197 Countries + 7 Continents Traveled
Follow me on Instagram or LinkedIn