Nomadic Spirit is a weekly newsletter for travelers who care as much about the why as the where.
In this issue
This week in The Dispatch, a note from a reader on Instagram leads to a look at kindred spirits, the strangers we recognize on the road, and why travelers trust people like themselves. A Chosen Place goes to Plovdiv, Bulgaria, a city two travel writers compared to Paris 30 years ago, where locals have a word for taking your time. In The Journey, Allyson Domanski gets a call from the Indian family that took her in 40 years ago and goes back to Ahmedabad. And Further Afield brings five stories worth taking with you, from the case for joining a club to why some people thrive when they retire abroad.
The Dispatch
Where Travel and Life Intersect
The Travelers Who Smile Back
Kindred spirits are everywhere
The Travelers Who Smile Back
Kindred spirits are everywhere.
This summer, a reader I had never met wrote about Nomadic Spirit on Instagram. Peter T. called me a kindred spirit. Reading the newsletter, he wrote, sent him back over his own trips to ask why he had taken them.
I've heard the term kindred spirit numerous times, but I still looked it up. A kindred spirit is a person whose interests, values, or outlook are so close to your own that you feel an immediate connection. "Kindred" originally meant your blood relatives, your kin. Today, the phrase describes someone who feels like family even though you aren't related.
Most of us want to belong to something. We find it at work, in a congregation, in the neighborhood where we raised our kids. Jeep owners leave rubber ducks on each other's cars and line them up on the dashboard for other Jeep drivers to see.
Across the room
I think I can spot Nomadic Spirits when I travel. They are savoring their meals and conversation, and the phone stays in a pocket. A late train or a waiter who forgets the order doesn't rattle them. They are in no hurry to check a site off a list and move on to the next "must-see."
When I catch someone's eye, I smile, and more often than not they smile back.
What ties us together
We have a lot in common, no matter where in the world we are or where we are from. The tie is curiosity about other places, other cultures, and the people who live there. We want to learn and connect. When it happens, it's the best part of the trip.
Nomadic Spirit readers are already a community. Most of us haven't met yet.
Whether we're taking more time to travel or have stepped back from the work world, our numbers are increasing. By 2030, one in six people in the world will be 60 or older, about 1.4 billion, according to the World Health Organization.
People like us
Today, Nomadic Spirit has more than 35,000 readers worldwide, with more signing up each day. When new readers join, we ask what they most want from Nomadic Spirit. Many have chosen the same answer: "experiences and insights from people like me."
That phrase is familiar to me. Years ago, I wrote a book, Highly Recommended, published by McGraw Hill, about why people recommend things and whose advice they follow. Over and over, people trusted the advice of someone like themselves. Edelman, a global public relations firm that surveys trust worldwide every year, has found that people rate "a person like yourself" about as credible as a technical or academic expert. When we asked our own readers who they trust most when deciding what to do in a place, friends who have been there came first.
The inbox
Thirty or forty emails come in to Nomadic Spirit on a typical day, and we read every one. Many of you describe yourselves as part of something, a small movement of people committed to traveling with more meaning and intention.
In late July, we asked readers what they would want from a Nomadic Spirit community. Nine in ten of those who answered wanted something from it. Most of all, they wanted to hear from other readers who had already been.
We are building that community now. It opens soon, and we will share more in the coming weeks. In the meantime, look for and smile at the kindred spirits you see on your travels. I bet they smile back.
by Paul M. Rand, founder and editor of Nomadic Spirit
A Chosen Place
Destinations worth traveling to and understanding once you arrive.
Chess in the park, Plovdiv. Photo: Photo Beto / iStock.
Plovdiv, Bulgaria
Paris, 30 Years Ago
For many of our readers, Bulgaria has rarely ranked high on the list. Plenty have traveled through Greece and Turkey on either side without ever crossing the border.
Time Out disagrees. The city-guide publisher, whose earlier picks included Albania and Montenegro, put Plovdiv, Bulgaria's second-largest city, first on its 2026 list of Europe's most underrated destinations and called it Europe's most underrated city. Writing for International Living magazine, Mary Charlebois and Kevin Scanlon said that a sunny Sunday on Plovdiv's main pedestrian street felt like Paris 30 years ago, with couples and families at sidewalk cafés over coffee and pastry.
Plovdiv is about two hours southeast of the capital, Sofia, and most visitors notice the unhurried pace right away. Locals have a word for it: aylyak.
The word comes from the Turkish aylak, meaning idle, but in Plovdiv it means taking your time and enjoying it. A morning coffee can turn into a long lunch with wine.
The main street
Plovdiv's main pedestrian route runs a little over a mile (about 1.75 kilometers), from Central Square to the footbridge over the Maritsa River. On warm evenings, it fills with people walking, shopping, and sitting outside at cafés. The pastry on the tables is banitsa, flaky layers of filo filled with cheese, sold by the slice from small bakeries.
Near the north end, you'll come to the curved marble seats of a Roman stadium built under the emperor Hadrian. It held up to 30,000 spectators, and most of it still lies beneath the shops. We like that it isn't set apart from daily life. People walk past it on their way to coffee.
The Old Town
Uphill from the main street is the Old Town, with cobbled lanes lined with 19th-century merchants' houses painted in bright colors. Many are now small museums and galleries that charge a few euros. Kuyumdzhioglu House holds the city's Ethnographic Museum, and its garden is a good place to sit.
At the edge of the hill is a Roman theatre, one of the best-preserved anywhere, that still hosts open-air concerts. Check the schedule before you go.
Goldsmith Street
Below the Old Town is Kapana, a few blocks of narrow lanes where craftsmen worked for five centuries. The street signs still say what was made there: Goldsmith Street, Furrier Street. Today small workshops sell leather goods, jewelry, and ceramics, often made by the person behind the counter.
In the evening, Kapana is where the city goes out, and it's where aylyak is easiest to understand, since nobody seems in a hurry to clear your table.
The cellar in Brestovitsa
Wineries surround Plovdiv, and the local red grape is Mavrud. Order it. In 2025, a European Best Destinations poll named Plovdiv Europe's best wine capital.
About 11 miles (18 kilometers) southwest, the village of Brestovitsa has one of Bulgaria's densest clusters of wineries. Bendida, a family winery there, made its first wine in 1936. Production stopped after the communist takeover in 1944, and the founder's grandson later rebuilt the cellar. He now makes the wine with his daughter, Elizabet Porteva. Book tastings ahead, especially in autumn during the harvest.
Finding your way
Bulgarian uses the Cyrillic alphabet, so street signs can be a puzzle outside the center. Menus in town often come in English, and younger people usually speak it. A translation app handles the rest.
One thing to know on your first day: traditionally, Bulgarians nod to mean "no" and shake their heads to mean "yes." Shop and restaurant staff often switch to the international gestures with visitors, but it can still catch you off guard.
Plovdiv has a reputation as one of Bulgaria's easiest, most relaxed cities, including for women traveling alone.
Getting there
Bulgaria is part of Schengen, Europe's passport-free travel area, so you won't face routine border checks arriving overland from Greece, though coming from Turkey you still cross a border. The country adopted the euro in January 2026, and buses from Sofia take a bit over two hours.
Give it three or four nights, with a day for the wine country and another for Bachkovo Monastery, about 18 miles (30 kilometers) south in the foothills of the Rhodope Mountains. If you are already going to Istanbul, Plovdiv is about seven hours away by direct bus, or overnight by sleeper train.
We want to hear from you
Two ways to be in Nomadic Spirit
Ally’s piece this week (below) is a reader submission. The Journey is open to readers who want to write about a trip that mattered, in 400 to 600 words and in your own voice. We edit lightly and leave your voice intact.
Fork First: One dish, one place, one reason to go. 200 to 300 words. The test: Would you go back for this dish? Would you tell everyone heading to that city to find it? If yes, write it up.
If you are interested in sharing your story with our 35,000+ readers, please write us at [email protected], and we’ll send along submission guidelines.
We read everything that comes in.
The Journey — Voices of the Nomadic Spirit
Stories from travelers changed by where they went.
Ally and Devendra in Ahmedabad. "This is your home."
The Call From Ahmedabad.
Forty Years Later, Still Home.
By Allyson Domanski
A New Year’s Day call came from India. “Allyson,” the voice from afar crackled, not from distance but quavering from agedness. “Do come visit,” urged Devendra with the same paternal affection he’d always shown me. “This is your home.”
His son Taral had handed him the phone after I said I’d try my best to come on the return leg of our upcoming Asia trip. Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Indonesia are hardly next door to India, but I promised to try and talk Gary into stopping in Ahmedabad. Then and there I began working on my husband, once the tears that had welled from Devendra’s entreating had subsided.
Forty years earlier, I arrived at Ahmedabad’s living room-sized airport after flying two days, steamer trunk and boxed bicycle in tow. As Canada’s 1986 Commonwealth scholar researching homelessness in India for my master’s thesis in city planning, I was initially placed at a Ladies Hostel where I, aged 26, faced the same smothering 8pm curfew as all its teenaged charges under our warden. I’d heard about “paying guest” arrangements, met prospective householders and soon moved in with the first of “my families.”
They took in an English speaker to improve their then-teenaged sons’ language skills in exchange for 50 bucks Canadian per month for room, board, love, care, nurturing and the lifelong familial connection that grew out of it. Now in their eighties, their offspring’s offspring are university graduates. Despite being half a world away for four decades, we’ve never lost touch.
Living with them for a year I wore sari or salwar kameez, a stud in my pierced nostril, a forehead bindi for special occasions. I sat cross-legged on the ground. Ate with my right hand. Went full vegetarian. Learned enough Gujarati to get by. Travelled Second Class rail. Studied with nose to the grindstone when April temperatures reached 43 degrees Celsius (110°F) and endured nights with but a dampened sheet and a lazily whirling fan above to cool me. I explored Ahmedabad – and India – from the seat of my “foreign cycle” as they called it.
The tall blond Caucasian girl would never blend, but embracing assimilation open-mindedly did get me accepted. Culture shock on return to Canada was harder than arrival in India.
A month after Devendra’s New Year’s call, we departed Canada on one-way tickets. Every so often I’d butter up Gary. “It’s not that out of the way,” I’d plead. “They’re getting on. We haven’t been there since 2009. With our folks now gone, Devendra and Hema are the only ‘parents’ I have left.” Gary understood but couldn’t yet commit.
We were in Hanoi when the US and Israel struck Iran. Flights cancelling, airfares skyrocketing. This complicated my task.
In Bali a month later came another call. I put it on Speaker so Gary could hear.
“Allyson, are you coming? We are so wanting to see you and Gary,” beseeched Devendra. “Remember, this is your home!”
Gary heard it as plainly as I did. Home needn’t denote birthplace. Home is a feeling that can transcend origins.
We booked flights. Ahmedabad in April.
Because I’d come home, the extended family came to dinner. We were 26. I knew all but a few from the third generation but knew who they belonged to.
Our five days sped by, joining one family member or another for dinners, outings, visits or drives to see how Ahmedabad had changed. Its sprawl endless, its new airport gleamingly massive to host the 2030 Commonwealth Games and bolster Ahmedabad’s 2036 Olympics bid. Cows gone from the city. Poutine now available. Skyscrapers, highways and flyovers abound. The Sabarmati, so bone-dry in the 1980s that its riverbed was populated by the impoverished and utilised by textile mills to sun-dry dyed bolts of unfurled fabric, now flows with water flanked on both sides by bike paths.
We spent quality time with everyone at home, basking in the love-in. My goodbyes to those in their eighties were not without tears.
Allyson Domanski, who once bicycled around the world with her husband Gary and has visited 94 countries, is retired from work in Ottawa but never from traveling.
Further Afield
Reading worth your time.
The New Social Club
Healthy Aging
More adults are making friends through shared interests, from walking groups and book clubs to classes and travel. The piece cites the Survey Center on American Life, which found that one in five Americans with close friends made one through a club or organization, and notes that friendships formed on a trip are often among the parts people remember most.
Why You Should Join a Club
Join or Die (documentary)
Political scientist Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, has spent half a century studying what happens when people stop joining things. The film is set in the United States, from an Odd Fellows lodge in Texas to a bowling alley in Maine, but its case holds anywhere: belonging comes from showing up regularly with people who share something.
Why Some Retire Abroad and Thrive
Sixty and Me
James Swaby opens with a confession: he reads hotel reviews even after booking, fascinated that two guests at the same hotel in the same week can describe completely different stays. He applies that to retiring abroad, where the relaxed pace that charms you on holiday can become the slow service that wears you down. The people who thrive are the ones who find their people, whether that's a club, volunteering, or the same friends every Thursday evening.
Could Bulgaria Be Home?
International Living
Mary Charlebois and Kevin Scanlon weigh Bulgaria as a place to retire. This is where a sunny fall Sunday in Plovdiv reminded them of Paris 30 years ago, and they also make the case for Bansko, a relaxed mountain town in the Pirin range.
48 Hours in Plovdiv
Euronews
The writer of this July guide had one of the best-preserved Roman theatres in the world nearly to herself, with a friendly cat for company. She also covers the Old Town and evenings in Kapana, with practical notes on getting there.
Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It's splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.
L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables (1908)
