Egyptian adventurer Omar Nok on traveling the world and leaving the office behind

⛵ Omar Nok is not your average Egyptian — in fact, he hasn’t been in Egypt for quite some time now, seeing as he’s busy traveling the world on foot, on sailboats, and everything in between — just no flights. In 2024, Nok announced he was headed from Egypt to Japan, a feat that took the internet by storm, earning him fame and over 600k followers on Instagram.

You’d think someone who trekked through Asia on foot would need a break, but Nok simply yearned for a greater adventure. He would go from Egypt… to Egypt — a circular journey around the world, once more without flight. We caught up with Nok just as he safely docked in the Caribbean to ask: How do you do it?

Before taking the world by storm, Nok worked with numbers, until the pandemic showed him that life was too short to be confined to spreadsheets and an office desk — no matter how great the view. If you’ve been looking for a similar escape, and you’re not so sure how you can do it, here’s what Nok has to say…

Edited excerpts from our conversation:

EnterpriseAM: How has this trip been so far? What are some new challenges you’ve faced compared to your Egypt-to-Japan journey?

Omar Nok: The journey has been good; it’s been similar and different in a way. Similar, of course, in style — that I am camping, with my backpack and all, and the spirit of the journey is the same. Different in terms of the things I am facing, because there is a lot of water. This is a new challenge compared to the Egypt-to-Japan journey because that route mostly involved me crossing Asia overland. This challenge involves me crossing two oceans.

So, the challenge was to find a sailboat, find people I click with who would agree to take a crew member they don’t know, and help me with the crossing. The crossing itself was obviously challenging.

E: Could you tell us more about your career prior to traveling the world?

ON: I was a financial analyst. I studied economics and finance, and then I worked at Amazon. I started as an intern, then junior financial analyst, financial analyst, senior financial analyst — five-and-a-half years in total. I also worked in Luxembourg for three-and-a-half years and in Munich for two. I was responsible for the company’s external financial reporting to any external entity — that could be central banks, tax authorities, auditors, EU institutions, statistics offices — in many countries in Europe. That’s the overall big picture.

E: Most professionals see a career gap as a liability. How did you mentally frame this travel sabbatical?

ON: For me, it was a mental reframe. My job was about numbers all day, every day. And I like numbers — I love numbers, and I’m good with numbers. So, I didn't have a problem at all with the job itself, but I wanted to travel. I took a three-month sabbatical first, and after that, I quit. Those three months were like a testing period for me.

I did it first because I wanted to see: Would I miss the routine? Would I get tired after three months? Would I be satisfied and content with three months of travel and then go back? So, I took it step by step. I realized that this is something I want to do longer term, more than three months.

And for me, honestly, there was a bit of — I don’t want to call it burnout. I had just moved to Munich during Covid. I was in a new city, by myself at home for a year and a half or two years, doing nothing but working, and in my spare time, I would stay at home because everything was closed. It took a toll on me. At that time, I needed a break. It all came together. That’s how I looked at it from a career perspective — as something I needed because I felt my energy levels were dropping in terms of work.

E: When you decided to leave, how did you ensure you left on terms that would allow you to return to the corporate world if you ever chose to?

ON: I wasn’t worried because I’m good at what I do. Other than that, I had very good relationships with the people I worked with, because I believe in being friends with the people you spend most of your days with. I thought: Let’s say I take a sabbatical year and want to come back. I didn’t feel there would be any barrier to me potentially returning or making it work somehow.

E: How do you go about budgeting for your travels?

ON: Trial and error. When my trips started getting a bit longer, I would check how much I was spending in total, divided by the number of days, to get the average daily cost on the road.

In terms of budgeting, I have a savings account and a spending account. I can’t spend from the savings account. What I do is that every month — I have a maximum monthly budget — I transfer from savings to spending. I treat it like a salary; it’s an automatic monthly transfer. So, it’s possible that if I spend less than the budget for two or three months, some savings accumulate.

E: How can professionals experience the world without triggering a damaging break from the workforce?

ON: Use the PTO stacking or micro-sabbaticals that are allowed by the company. Of course, every company has its own policy and sabbatical length they allow, if they allow it. This is how you do it without actually quitting work. I don’t think a break from the workforce equals a damaging break, though. I might slightly disagree with that statement.

E: Is it actually possible to maintain a high-pressure corporate job while traveling overland, or does travel require a complete disconnect to be meaningful?

ON: It can be meaningful without being a complete disconnect. I’ve seen many different types of people working different jobs online — digital nomads. Depending on the job and the person, for some people, I see it adds a bit of stress to them, and for some people, they have found the perfect balance.

It comes down to trial and error until someone finds the right balance that works for them. Of course, many things need to be taken into consideration, like where the person is traveling. Sometimes people need to be connected with people in a different time zone, and some people just go about their own thing; they don’t need meetings or calls, so there’s no time zone impact.

E: What is the one insight about the global economy or state of the world you’ve gained from the ground that you never would have seen from an office?

ON: What I learned — this is the mindset that started to develop in me — is that I don’t know anything about a place before I go there. Whatever I hear from the news or from an office, I cannot know how life works there, how people are there, or how their society works.