Horizontal vs. Vertical Travel – The Mindset Shift Most Nomads Miss

What if being a digital nomad is not really about moving from country to country?

What if the deeper question is not where are you going next? but who are you becoming – or unbecoming – along the way?

In episode 51 of the Nomad Summit Podcast, Palle Bo and Christoph Huebner sit down with Ilona Vinogradova, a former BBC journalist, documentary filmmaker, media consultant, and long-term traveller who has been living without a permanent home for years.

But do not call her a digital nomad. At least, not without expecting a thoughtful answer.

“Any Identity Is a Limitation”

Ilona has lived in London, the US, Holland, and many other places. She works remotely, moves between countries, and has created a location-independent career. So technically, yes, she fits the definition of a digital nomad.

But that label does not sit comfortably with her.

“Any label. Any identity is a limitation of who you are.”

For Ilona, travel is not about adding another identity to the list. It is about removing them.

“Travel is about getting rid of as many identities, as many labels as possible. Travel is about freedom. Freedom is basically unbecoming.”

That sets the tone for a conversation that goes beyond laptops, visas, and coworking spaces. This episode is about a much deeper kind of movement.

From BBC Journalist to Life on the Road

Ilona spent 15 years at the BBC before leaving London and giving herself one year of freedom. No plan. No bucket list. No fixed idea of what came next.

The plan was simple: buy a one-way ticket and see what happened.

But after six or seven months, former colleagues began reaching out. They needed help with digital storytelling, audience engagement, and newsroom strategy. That became the foundation for her company, LovinFilms Pro.

Today, she consults newsrooms around the world on storytelling, audience engagement, and AI implementation – not to create more content, but to understand audiences better.

“We don’t need more AI created content. We actually need more human.”

Never Start From Zero

One of the most useful lessons in this episode is for anyone wondering how to build a location-independent life later in life.

Ilona is not a fan of the idea that people “start from zero” after 40.

“Come on after 40. You never start from zero. You always build up. You build on something you have.”

That is an important reminder for anyone thinking they need to throw everything away and begin again. You do not. Your skills, your experience, your network, your curiosity – all of that travels with you.

So What Is Vertical Travel?

The central idea in this episode is Ilona’s concept of vertical travel.

Most of us, she says, travel horizontally. We move across borders, but socially we often stay in the same circles. We meet people with similar education, similar class backgrounds, similar values, similar lifestyles.

Even when we travel far, we may never really leave our own social world.

“Most of us, we travel horizontally. Whenever you go somewhere, who do we spend most time with? We spend time with people from our own social strata, from our social circle.”

Vertical travel is different. It means moving through layers of society, across age groups, social backgrounds, professions, and perspectives.

“Vertical travel for me is first of all the transcendence of the social stratums.”

For Ilona, this is where travel becomes truly eye-opening.

Curiosity Opens Doors

So how do you actually become a vertical traveller?

Ilona’s answer is beautifully simple.

“Be curious. Curiosity is the key.”

She tells the story of visiting the Viktor Frankl museum in Vienna, discovering that his second wife, Ellie Frankl, was still alive, and eventually arranging to visit her. That encounter happened because Ilona followed her curiosity instead of staying in the role of passive tourist.

Her point is not that everyone should knock on strangers’ doors. It is that people are often more approachable than we imagine.

“People are so happy to open up and I think we are forgetting this.”

Can You Build a Real Connection in Two Weeks?

For digital nomads, this is a big question. If you are only in a place for a short time, can connection still matter?

Ilona says yes.

“We kind of undervalue the relationship, which can last for two weeks, but that can be super intense and super valuable.”

Not every friendship needs to last forever to be meaningful. Some encounters are brief, but they stay with you for years.

“I might never see this person again, but this person touched my heart and maybe I touched his or her heart.”

That may be one of the most important takeaways from the episode: travel does not have to produce permanent relationships to produce real ones.

Getting Rid of “Us and Them”

As Christoph points out in the episode, long-term travel often changes your sense of what is normal. The more cultures, lifestyles, and choices you encounter, the more your old assumptions begin to shift.

Ilona describes this as getting rid of dualities.

“We live in this kind of dualistic world, right? Wrong, white, black, good, bad, us and them.”

For her, the most dangerous of those is “us and them”.

“I realize more and more us is them. We are the same.”

The Language of Silence

The conversation also moves into one of Ilona’s most poetic ideas: silence as a language.

After weeks of silent group meditation in Sri Lanka, she began to understand silence differently. Not as distance. Not as punishment. But as connection.

“I realized that silence is language.”

She describes sitting, walking, eating, and working silently with others – and feeling that she knew them deeply without needing words.

“Without any words, I knew more about those people. They became in way my family. Silence is a beautiful language.”

And she does not only practise silence in peaceful places. She now intentionally seeks stillness in noisy environments too – traffic, irritation, chaos, even karaoke.

Life Is the Work

Near the end of the episode, Ilona shares one of the strongest lines of the conversation.

“Life is my work. Life is my work.”

For her, ambition did not disappear when she left her prestigious job. It changed form.

“Imagine that you are the CEO of the most important company in the world, and that is your life.”

That thought lands hard – especially for anyone trying to design a freer, more meaningful life.

Listen to the Episode

This is not a typical digital nomad episode. It is not about the best apps, cheapest destinations, or how to work from a beach.

It is about identity, curiosity, belonging, silence, and how to travel in a way that actually changes how you see the world.

Listen to episode 51 of the Nomad Summit Podcast: Horizontal vs. Vertical Travel – The Mindset Shift Most Nomads Miss.

Relevant Links

Ilona on Substack: https://ilonavinogradova.substack.com/

Ilona on LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/ilonavinogradova

Ilona’s company, LovinFilms Pro: https://lovinfilms.com

Nomad Summit: https://nomadsummit.com

Episode produced by RadioGuru: https://radioguru.co.uk