What happens when you hand a microphone to a sound‑obsessed nomad, drop him into Chiang Mai, and ask him to redesign the entire sonic identity of the Nomad Summit? You get a theme track built from crosswalk beeps, street chatter, and a shy little “Welcome to Chiang Mai” that somehow makes a grown man cry. This episode with Diveakssh “Divi” Schae is part origin story, part sound‑nerd deep dive, and part manifesto for a new kind of nomad life.
Hit play on the embedded episode while you read; you will appreciate the music a lot more once you have heard how it was made.
Meet Divi – The Audio Nomad
“My name is Diveakssh Schae, or Divi the Audio Nomad for short,” he laughs, admitting that even by Indian standards his full name is “quite a mouthful.” For three years, Divi traveled through Australia and India, making music in “beautiful places” and recording everything from jungle ambience to city traffic.
“I grew up in the jungle,” he explains, “so I love sounds of nature, sounds of even city, conversation, traffic, things that other people might take as everyday ordinary sounds. I find that they can actually be quite musical.” That obsession turned into his debut album Moments of Clarity and a series of Instagram “sound hunting” clips where he turns everyday noise into beats.
Sound Hunting in Chiang Mai
To create the new Nomad Summit theme, Divi spent days roaming Chiang Mai with his microphones. One of the most emotional sounds for him is surprisingly mundane: the pedestrian crossing button. “It’s when you hit the button to cross the road and it goes ‘beep… beep’,” he says, the same sound that was “the soundtrack” to his life when he first moved alone from India to Australia at 16.
Sound was his friend when he felt lonely and homesick, and that same click now opens both his debut album and the Nomad Summit track. “It’s like a rave while you cross the road,” he jokes, describing how he plays with the “wait” and “cross” phases of the signal as rhythmic material.
The Little Girl Who Broke the Room
One of the episode’s standout moments is the story of a young girl he met near Weave Artisan Society, a co‑working space in Chiang Mai. He asked her parents’ permission to record her saying Thai phrases like “Sawadika,” playing with the musicality of “ka” for women and “kap” for men.
Then he asked her to say, “Welcome to Chiang Mai.” She did it shyly, with a small hand gesture and halting English, and Divi wrapped it in echo in the final track. Host Christoph later listened to the piece on headphones while reading a heartfelt Telegram message from a Nomad Summit attendee and admits, “That girl was in front of my eyes and in my ears saying ‘welcome to…’ and I had tears in my eyes. Tears of joy.”
Music, Noise, and the World’s First Audio Gallery
Divi’s relationship with sound goes way beyond making catchy intros. “Music is just sound’s most popular child,” he says. “Noise is the other child. No one talks about noise, but I love noise as much as I love music. Music is organized sound and noise is disorganized sound.” His mission is to make people listen differently to the world around them.
He is now planning what he calls the world’s first “audio gallery” in an abandoned factory his great‑grandfather built in 1955 in South India. The vision is a permanent home for immersive, technology‑driven new media art, with projectors, speakers, sensors, lasers, and interactive installations instead of framed canvases. After talking to artists in cities such as Bangalore, he realized their biggest pain is spending months building an installation only to show it for a week and then pack it into storage.
From Ferro‑Alloy Factory to Jungli: The Nomad Village
This is where Jungli – The Nomad Village enters the story. Divi’s great‑grandfather, a freedom fighter, built what became Asia’s first ferro‑alloy factory, with 5,000 fellow freedom fighters living in tents to construct it in the middle of the jungle. For 60 years it operated and at its peak employed 3,000 people, until the economics collapsed in 2001 when government agreements around power and ore access changed.
“For 24 years, I’ve seen a place which now has industrial expenses without the industrial income,” Divi says. His father has been carrying the weight: court cases, liabilities, overheads, and an upside‑down balance sheet. Meanwhile, Divi was learning operations at Uber Australia and New Zealand, handling podcast and community management, then selling everything to build a camper‑van studio and backpack India with a 15‑kilo pack and a microphone.
The Email That Changed Everything
On the road, he kept seeing a gap. “There was no such place in India for nomads like us, people that want access to lifestyle in nature, upfront monthly discounts, high‑speed Wi‑Fi and a handpicked community of legends around them.” At the same time, he had 5,000 followers on Instagram and 500 people on his newsletter.
“So I just connected the two and sent an email. I said I want to convert my family’s ancestral land into a Nomad village. I don’t want to build it alone. Do you want to join this WhatsApp group and build it with me because I love to build in public?” The next morning, 70 people had joined. Today, there are roughly 450 in the WhatsApp group and around 450 guests have already stayed at Jungli.
Where on the Map Is Jungli?
Jungli sits three hours inland from Goa, near a town called Dandeli, with the nearest airport at Hubli. Guests land at Hubli, get picked up, and then it is a 1.5‑hour drive “into our secret location in the jungle” where, as Divi puts it, “we live our best lives out there.”
The plan is to grow capacity to around 100 residents; at the moment they can host up to 50 people in what is very much a year‑round village, not a pop‑up festival. There is no minimum stay, partly because it is such a mission to get there, and partly because Jungli sits perfectly on the emerging trail between Goa and Hampi, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Nomads riding that route sometimes message, “I’m going from Goa to Hampi. I need a place to break my stay. Can I come stay with you?” They might arrive for one night on motorcycles, but they tend to come back once they have experienced this “family‑owned, community‑driven” jungle playground.
Not a Party House: Who Jungli Is For
Jungli is intentionally not a party co‑living. Divi frames it as a place “where people come with goals to leave as a better version of themselves,” especially those who get “two hours back in a day and want to do something productive or wellness‑oriented with that.” The four main tribes he sees are nomads, artists, nature lovers, and entrepreneurs.
It is also very much a family project. Divi and his father act as co‑founders, and he even made his dad sign a document at the start to formalize roles: his dad handles tax, finance, and legal, while Divi takes care of brand, community, marketing, and operations. Around them is a 55‑person team, including long‑time factory staff who know the land’s history, a growing younger and more female crew, plus 20 to 25 security guards due to the sheer size of the property.
Numerology, Past Lives, and Hot Chocolate
Everyone at Jungli seems to love Divi’s dad. He is deep into numerology, hypnosis, and past‑life regression, a big hit with what Divi calls the “spiritual or wellness‑oriented nomads.”
His mother adds another delightfully unexpected element: chocolate. “My mom is one of India’s best chocolatiers,” he says proudly. The family runs a chocolate factory in Bangalore, and Jungli guests can sip her hot chocolate and try treats at the on‑site store, often enough to seal the deal for hesitant visitors.
“You Don’t Shed Identities, You Graduate from Them”
One of the most memorable parts of the episode is Divi’s reflection on identity and nomadism. When he sold his beloved camper van after a year of living and producing music in it, he cried “like a baby.” “I realized I wasn’t crying because I was losing a home,” he says. “I cried because I was losing an identity. I thought being the man in the van with no plan would be the coolest person to be.”
A friend, Malcolm, guest number three at Jungli, gave him the line that stuck: “You don’t shed identities, you graduate from them.” Divi realized he was not “not van‑life” anymore or “not an audio nomad” but a composite of all those stages.
Nomadism as a Mindset
Today he says, “Nomadism for me is a mindset and that mindset for me is to not be attached to places or things. If you have the ability to pick up, go and make home anywhere and thrive anywhere, then I think you’re a nomad.” Hosts Christoph and Palle bounce off that definition, comparing it to their own experience of having bases in Madeira or Chiang Mai while still living nomadically.
The big line Divi lives by now is “Minimalism enables spontaneity.” He has seen people in Sydney trapped by their expensive couches, unable to move apartments because of a piece of furniture. For him, staying light means he can pick up and go, or build a village in the jungle when the opportunity appears.
Christoph connects it to one of his favorite YouTube channels, Sailing Uma, whose long‑term cruising slogan is “Don’t buy a couch.” They even have T‑shirts with the phrase, and for years he has followed their small sailboat adventures as a fellow sailor.
A Playlist on Shuffle
Right now, Divi spends about 80 percent of his time at Jungli and 20 percent traveling, usually when the trip supports both business and fun. His invite to Nomad Summit came via a call on a train from Jungli to Bangalore, “Are you the Banh Bao guy?”, and turned into what he calls a dream combination of work, travel, and play in Chiang Mai.
He describes the guests he has collected over the past years as “people that have become a playlist,” and Jungli as “that playlist on shuffle.” Nomads from different stages of his journey now turn up together in one place, co‑creating something that feels like the physical version of his audio art.
Why You Should Listen to the Episode
If you care about travel, creativity, community, or just want to feel differently about the sounds around you, this conversation is worth your time. You will hear behind‑the‑scenes stories of the new Nomad Summit music, including the crosswalk rave and the little girl whose “Welcome to Chiang Mai” now lives in everyone’s ears.
You will also get an intimate look at how a struggling industrial relic in the Indian jungle is becoming a nomad village and audio‑visual playground, built publicly with a WhatsApp community and powered by a family whose talents range from numerology to chocolate. Along the way, you might question your own definition of what it means to be a nomad.
Listen, Watch, and Go Deeper
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- Listen to the full episode above on the Nomad Summit Podcast.
- Watch the new Nomad Summit music video: Instagram Reel
- Explore Jungli – The Nomad Village: junglithenomad.com
- Meet Pavi “the Digital VO‑mad” in Episode 27: nomadsummit.com/episode-27
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