2007
Freed from slavery (finished high school).
Drove across North America 3 times. Lived in Whistler, Canada.
2008
Lived in Canada and California.
Drove up and down the West Coast of America.
Backpacked Mexico. Lived in Utah.
2009
Traveled through Western US and to Vancouver.
Backpacked NSW & QL, Australia. Lived in NYC.
2010
Traveled to Russia, Netherlands and France. Lived in Switzerland.
Backpacked Italy and Turkey. Lived in Sydney, Australia.
2011
Traveled to NY, Lisbon, Spain and Moscow. Lived in Sydney. Traveled through the middle of
Australia. Backpacked from Bali to Eastern Indonesia. Snowboarded and sailed in New Zealand.
2012
Lived in New Mexico, hitchhiked to California. Visited Baja, Mexico. Snowboarded and
hitchhiked around New Zealand. Lived in Sydney. Backpacked Thailand and Cambodia.
2013
Visited Moscow and Lithuania. Snowboarded Bulgaria. Stopped over in Turkey,
surfed in Morocco. Lived in Sydney. Traveled through Outback Australia.
2014
Lived in the South Coast of Australia and Lake Tahoe, California. Sailed from St. Maartin
to Aruba. Visited Russia. Learned to dive on Gili Trawangan, Indonesia. Visited Malaysia.
2015
Lived on the South Coast of Australia. Backpacked through Sri Lanka. Lived on
Hawaii. Traveled to Moscow, Minsk, Poland, Budapest and Slovenia. Lived in Austria.
2016
Lived in the Austrian Alps. Hitchhiked to Slovenia and Czech Republic. Visited
Munich, Lviv (Ukraine) and Moscow. Lived in a surf camp in Nicaragua. Lived on Hawaii.
2017
Lived on Hawaii. Traveled through the East Coast of the US. Took the
Trans-Siberian Railway across Russia. Lived in Irkutsk, Russia.
2018
Lived in Siberia. Took the railway across Russia two times.
Hitchhiked through Mongolia.
2019
Lived in a small village by Lake Baikal, Russia. Took the railway back to Moscow.
Hitchhiked from Moscow to Spain. Visited the UK and Turkey.
2020
Visited Romania. Locked down in Spain.
2021
Trekked across Spain and Andorra.
2022-2024
Scuba diving (& forever working on my book) in Spain.
I’m Sasha. I spent most of my adult life traveling around the world, usually on a budget of $300-500 per month. I traveled continuously, without coming back to a specific job or place to call home. I learned to view the entire world as my home, and the entire human species as my family. At some point, I took an interest in global problems (climate change, waste, pollution, inequality, etc.) and by chance, I got a degree of International and Global Studies from the University of Sydney in Australia.
This combination of learning about global problems (and how humans are failing to solve them) from a “prestigious” institution mixed with my feet-on-the-ground experience of backpacking the world gave me a unique viewpoint, which I decided to share in a book called “Big World Small Sasha.” I also wanted to share my story, to reveal a detailed and honest account of a Russian immigrant in the US growing up to face the rest of the world, and to explain what it takes to travel indefinitely without being a “digital nomad” or having much of a safety net.
I spent the last few years living in the north of Spain, writing, editing, formatting, and designing this book. For breaks, I walked across the Pyrenees Mountains and spent entire summer seasons “interning” as a divemaster. It took a lot of work and many years to complete this book, but I am very pleased to announce that it is finally out- bigworldsmallsasha.com/book
And you can read it for free!
I believe that if you think something is important, you should want to share it, not only sell it.
Unfortunately, I cannot afford to give out physical copies for free, so those you can buy, if you wish.
On this website, you can also find a bunch of videos: some “activism” videos that I participated in, including the fantastic TROM II documentary, some nature videos, and a very amateur video series I made when I hiked across the Pyrenees Mountains.
Those were my main big projects. Other than that, you can find blogs, photos, “how to travel on a budget” advice, things like that ;)