Sandalsand Norge >>
In 2015 I visited five foreign countries. Somehow I managed to spend 33 days travelling, and was able to add six new World Heritage Sites to my own list. That was the statistics for 2015.
Explanation of images in the collage above: New York, Fjord Norway, Bhutan and Thailand
Destinations
Readers of this blog may read stories from New York in May, a wonderful week in the Big Apple. I went to Bhutan and Nepal for a couple of weeks in September/October, with stops in Bangkok and Qatar on the ways in and out (introduction).
Publishing
I would surely have liked to travel more than this last year, and will hopefully add more destinations in 2016. Still, some of the places I went in 2015 had been on my bucket list for decades (see more below). My travels home in Norway were on the other hand more extensive than for years, I believe. They resulted in a few stand-alone articles on this website, and many more on the Norwegian language sub-domain.
I have yet to describe my travels in Bhutan and Nepal, still I managed to publish 42 articles in 2015. I am not a full time traveller, and definitely not a full time writer – so 3-4 posts a month is not really bad. Obviously I have in the last 18 months spent more time building content on the Norwegian daughter site (189 new posts in 2015).
I find it satisfactory that my articles get read. In fact, the Sandalsand Global Travelling website had more than 11,000 users in 2015, clicking one post or another 43,000 times. (The Norwegian site has almost twice those numbers, making it far more popular despite a smaller universe of potential readers.) My Twitter account increased from 3,041 followers to more that 4,200 during 2015, and the Instagram account increased from 200 followers to 500. Sandalsand’s videos have been watched 317,000 times over the years, up from 190,000 a year ago.
What about 2016? When it comes to travelling I have no idea. My bucket list is long, my dreams are many, and some of them will be accomplished. Check my list further down this page.
This is almost a guarantee for 2016: This website will in the following year be completed with all recent trips, as mentioned, as well as finally signing off articles from old travels. Hopefully I will find the time to add a regular series of quiz competitions.
Happy New Year!
Read more
Year-end reviews: 2013, 2014, 2015.
Wishes for the coming year(s): 2014, 2015, 2016.
