About Nick and
Circle the Planet
Dear fellow travelers,
I often talk to people about my world travels and how
travel changed my life. Having been born in beautiful
Santorini, Greece, and enlightened in the culturally
diverse wonderland of San Francisco, I sometimes feel
like the luckiest guy in the world. But it was my travels
beyond these places that inspired me to create CircleThePlanet.com.
In 1979, at 19 years of age, I set off from Greece
on a big Europe "stomp". Traveling by car,
train, and bus - - by any cheap way imaginable - - I
backpacked my way around the continent. I slept on army
bases in Germany. I ran with the bulls in Spain and
I came through major car accident in France unscathed.
These and other adventures of that Euro-trip left me
with a wanderlust that hasn't faded, and probably never
will.
In 1984, I took off on the trip that changed my life.
While on the Greek Island of Ios, I met Swen and Maria
from Sweden. They told me about tickets they bought
in Athens, on an Bangladeshi airline I had never heard
of: Biman. They had paid $280 from Athens to Bombay
to Dhaka and then on to Kathmandu to Rangoon to Bangkok.
After two weeks with my new Swedish friends (and many
of rounds of Ouzo), I threw away my return ticket to
San Francisco and join them.
It was on a beach in southern India that I found my
calling. I realized my mission in life is to make around-the-world
travel affordable for everyone. I would do what no travel
agency had done to that point: bridging together a group
of airline tickets to create amazingly cheap multi-stop
itineraries.
The rest is history. I have been able to visit sixty-six
countries in my travels. I consider myself very fortunate
to have seen so much of the world. With this passion
for travel at the forefront of my existence, it's a
true please to assist as many people as I can to experience
the world as I have.
Nicholas C. Kontis
trips@circletheplanet.com
*CEO, Circle the Planet, Inc.* |
