Dimitrios Fanourios was born and grew up in the Greek island of Euboea, the county’s second largest island, north of Athens.

As he writes on his blog variouscuriousstuff.com, after secondary school he quit his education to “set off in a quest of thrilling adventures and profound excitement”.

He has been in about a third of the world’s countries and works in order to be able to continue its adventures. While he is travelling, he takes touching and sometimes raw photos of what he encounters.

 

Q: I see you have been to many places and had quite a few adventures. Out of all of them which one would you say was most memorable or thrilling?

Difficult question. My life has indeed been full with so many thrilling adventures that it would be highly disfavoring to all the rest picking one out. For the sake of giving you an answer however, one of the most intensely carved in my memory would be the first time I climbed my islands highest mountain (Dirfys). That was my virginal mountain conquest, when I was still a little kid. It was a toilsome and terrifying ascent for me back then. And completing it, I had just got introduced to that new world up there, got the cognition that the earth ought to be my playground.

 

Q: Do you believe that people who do not choose to go to the destinations you have been to and opt for more touristic spots such as Paris or Berlin miss out on some important experiences?

They definitely do miss. Paris, Berlin or any other major touristic destination is just too easily accessible to anyone. And they are often not much different to each other in any substantial respect. Hotels and resorts, also, are identical to each other all over the world. It’s out there, throughout the random vastness of this planet, where the real treasures lie hidden. The ones which will render one privileged having witnessed them.

Q: Where do you get the money for traveling? Do you think it is the best way of spending money?

I improvise. Have been an adventurer all my life and have come with a great multitude of different ways to earn my living and fund my adventures. In work also, variety is of vital importance for me. There is always a way, it only needs imagination. Traveling is surely the best way to spend my money, for me. That of course does not apply to everyone. Different people like different things. What is important is to spend them, in anything one may like. What is pitiable, is to see people making money for the sake of making them alone, perceiving money as the ends in themselves, rather than the means to something more sublime. That is sad.

 

Q: You take a lot of amazing photos during your trips, which one is the most meaningful to you?

Same as in 1st question goes here, too hard to choose. By far more valuable than my physical pictures are though surely my mental ones. Some random images awaking in some random instance, depicting a place and/or a situation dug out from somewhere deep inside my memory’s caverns, coming forth veiled in mystery and interwoven with subtle emotions.

 

 

From his blog we can tell that sometimes travelling in these places is not always safe or easy. Like the many attempts to find an accommodation in Tambacounda, in the Senegalese Hinterland. Every hotel or guest house they would find on the map turned out to be abandoned locations, sometimes even just empty land. The only hotel they had found was at an unreasonable price, so he accepted an offer to live in local’s house for a cheaper price. Think of squat toilet and a water bucket for showering.

 

From reading other anecdotes on his blog, his curiosity is clearly a constant.

When encountering scammers in India, he did not avoid them once he had figured out what they were, instead he played the game, trying his best to appear friendly and naïve, as he wrote on a post. He summarised their conversations and explained the scam they wanted to put in motion, the common “jewellery scam”.

Also, even if he had measures in order to make the bears move away from his tent in the Carpathian Mountains, he still couldn’t resist to go outside with his torch just to see the bear. How many people would do that?