Arimo Travels is a half-flightless travel blog that focuses on sustainable long-term travel. This page tells more about myself, this site and the idea of half-flightless travel.

About Me

I am Arimo, a former journalist and a current psychologist from Lappeenranta, Finland. Although I had already done lots of backpacking in the past, my 2-year trip around the world was by far the longest and most ambitious trip I’ve ever done. I started the journey in May 2016 and returned to Finland after 777 days of travel on July 2018.

In total, I have traveled in 66 countries on six different continents. Out of all those countries, I’ve entered 48 without flying.

As a sustainable traveler, I follow my own principle called half-flightless travel. In other words, I make sure that I cover over half of my travel kilometers without flying. And whenever I do fly, I compensate my CO2 emissions with Atmosfair.

Besides being a half-flightless traveler, I’m also half-deaf. After finishing my 2-year trip around the world, I was diagnosed a non-cancenrous brain tumor (acoustic neuroma). The tumor damaged my auditory nerve to the point where I’ve lost all my hearing on my left ear. In October 2019, I had a successful brain surgery where the size of the tumor was significantly reduced.

However, the tumor cannot be completely removed because of its difficult location, so the growth of the tumor is monitored every two years.

Best RTW long-travel blogs. Arimo Koo sitting on the Pyramid of the Moon in Teotihuacan, Mexico.

Visiting the ruins of Teotihuacan, Mexico (November 2017)

About Arimo Travels

Arimo Travels started as a travel blog for my 2-year trip around the world. I wanted to show what full-time travel felt like, so I wrote honest accounts about my travel experiences. However, I never wanted this site to be all about myself. Because of this, I focused more on long-term travel tips.

After finishing my adventure, I shifted the focus of this site once more. Now Arimo Travels focuses on sustainable travel tips. My worries about the environment reached new heights while I was traveling, so I want to spread awareness about sustainable travel.

Below are short descriptions about the differenct sections of Arimo Travels.

Destinations

If you’re looking for information about a certain country or region, my Destinations page is the best place to start. The page also lists all the flightless travel routes (such as Europe to Africa) that I’ve written about.

Some of my favourite destination posts:

Flightless Travel

The Flightless Travel page focuses on freighter travel guides and flightless travel routes. I traveled as a passenger on a freighter from New Zealand to the United States, and I support freighter travel as a sustainable mode of transport. The Flightless Travel page includes all my guifes for traveling on a cargo ship. The page also gathers my flightless travel routes such as How to Travel from Europe to Africa without Flying.

Trans-Mongolian Railway

Mongolia, 2015

Guides

The Guides page lists all the travel guides that I’ve written. These include my sustainable travel guides and older guides for long-term travel that I wrote during my 2-year trip around the world. Some of my guides are based on my personal travel experiences, while others are based on extensive research.

My top picks:

Random Generators

Listing Random Generators on the menu of a sustainable travel blog can seem a bit… yes, random. However, I have a long history with random travel. During my first InterRail trip back in 2012, I chose my destinations by throwing darts on the map of Europe. And for my 2-year trip around the world. I picked a completely random destination anywhere in the world! 

To help others embrace randomness in their lives, I’ve created multiple random destination generators. The most popular one picks any country in the world, while others focus on specific regions such as US States. During the COVID pandemic, I’m also going to create random activity generators for those who are stuck at home.

Stories

Even though Arimo Travels focuses on travel guides for sustainable travel, I have also written about my personal travel experiences in the past. You can find these more traditional blog posts in the Stories section. I wrote most of these posts during my 2-year trip around the world. Expect bad jokes and honest accounts about the life of a solo full-time traveler.

My favourite stories:

Ancient alien UFO at the Pyramid of the Sun, Teotihuacan.

Bad jokes are part of the DNA of Arimo Travels.

More

Under the More button, you’ll find pages about other categories of Arimo Travels. The first one is called Hiking and focuses on hiking destinations all over the world. Next, I’ve gathered all my articles about Meditation on one page. These include some of my most popular blog posts that took literally – yes, I mean literally – years to write. For example, I wrote review of mindfulness app Headspace only after I had used the app every day for a full year.

On the More submenu, you can also find a comprehensive summary of my 2-year trip around the world. And last but not least, I’ve collected all my posts about the psychology of travel on the page Psychology. As a psychology student, I am interested about the mental side of travel. These posts describe the psychological factories of full-time travel.

Contact Me

Do you have any questions about traveling in general or something more specific? Or do you want to make an offer? I’d love to hear from you, so don’t hesitate! Hit me up on Facebook or Instagram or send an email to [email protected]