When a Gumtree ad in London sends you to a Tuscan villa, unlocks a life in Rome, and somehow leads to wild‑camping on British cliffs and homeschooling kids in Kazakhstan, you know this is not a standard “how I became a digital nomad” story. In this episode of the Nomad Summit Podcast, host Christoph sits down with British writer and private tutor Danielle Hurren to talk about how a series of “yes” decisions turned into a decade‑long nomadic life.
Danielle shares how she built a global career around the British school system, why solo hiking from Cornwall to Scotland after lockdown changed her relationship with fear, and what it’s like to be flown around the world by families who trust her with their children’s education. Along the way, we get stories from empty‑lockdown Rome, off‑the‑radar Kazakhstan, and India as a solo female traveler – plus how Nomad Summit inspired her to finally take her writing, blog and Substack more seriously this year.
From small‑town England to a Tuscan villa
Danielle grew up in a small town in England with a simple conviction: there had to be more to the world, and she wanted to see it. That desire pushed her into summer jobs teaching English at camps across Italy, where she spent a couple of weeks at a time being sent to different towns, getting just enough of a taste to know she wanted more.
Back in London, she started searching for ways to return to Italy – and stumbled across a Gumtree listing for a private tutor job with a family in Tuscany. They flew her out for two weeks to prepare their children for the 11 Plus exams, then asked her to continue working with them in both London and Tuscany. That one ad turned into a recurring, well‑paid gig and, more importantly, a door into a powerful network of friends and contacts in Rome.
Eventually, Danielle did what many dream about and few actually do: she moved to Rome with the intention of spending the rest of her life there. She learned Italian, built up a client base of families who needed support with the British curriculum, and even started employing other tutors to keep up with demand.
Lockdown Rome and the decision to leave
Rome felt like home – until the pandemic hit. Danielle describes a surreal pre‑lockdown scene: cycling through a near‑empty city, parking her bike at the Pantheon and watching three generations of men play football in a deserted square, the only open business a small butcher’s shop. When the city finally shut down, she spent months locked in her apartment, cut off from nature, community and movement.
When restrictions eased, she realised she couldn’t just go back to “normal”. Instead of returning to her old routine in Rome, she booked a flight to the UK with a radical plan: hike from Cornwall to Scotland with nothing but a backpack and a tent. That journey – her own country, end‑to‑end, on foot – became a turning point and the unofficial start of her fully nomadic phase.
Solo hiking, wild camping and learning not to be afraid
Danielle is passionate about solo hiking, and especially about encouraging women to try it at least once. During that UK trek, she spent a full month walking along coastal cliffs, often with no campsites in sight. That meant learning how to wild‑camp alone, in exposed places, with nothing more than a thin layer of tent fabric between her and the night.
She laughs about her first night of wild‑camping: inviting a fellow hiker to share noodles just so she wouldn’t feel completely alone as she set up the tent, then sitting inside reading as darkness fell and an orchestra of strange sounds started outside. The fear was real – but so was the realisation that you can get used to it. “Most of us are just so used to being inside and behind walls,” she says. With time, the noises become background and the experience becomes deeply calming instead of terrifying.
For Danielle, solo hiking is less about being fearless and more about proving to yourself that the world is often less dangerous than we’re taught. Yes, you bring a map, a compass, water, food – maybe pepper spray. You prepare as well as you can. But at some point, you also have to trust your own ability to handle what comes up.
India, reputation and reality for solo female travelers
Long before she became known for more remote adventures, Danielle traveled India solo at 21. She’s honest that it was not always easy and that the country has earned its reputation as a challenging destination, especially for women. At the same time, she believes that difficulty and richness often go hand in hand.
Her advice to solo female travelers considering India is pragmatic and empowering: do your homework, know where you’re going, and plug into communities. She mentions modern coliving concepts, such as Jungly, as examples of how spaces can be designed to help women feel safer and more welcome. India is vast and varied – chaotic Delhi is a very different experience from the quieter northern regions like Dharamsala, where she attended a Vipassana retreat amidst the Tibetan community.
Rather than writing a whole country off because of headlines or horror stories, Danielle suggests focusing on building community wherever you go. For her, that mindset shift – from “this place is dangerous” to “how do I find my people here?” – makes all the difference.
Building a nomadic career around the British curriculum
The engine behind Danielle’s travels is not a SaaS startup or a YouTube channel, but something much more classic: private tutoring. Over the years, she’s carved out a niche helping students navigate the British system – GCSEs, A levels and IB – whether they’re in England, Italy, Kazakhstan or anywhere else with an international school.
She is quick to point out that she’s not an English language teacher; her specialty is English literature and writing, which she studied at university, plus humanities subjects like history, philosophy and religious studies. Many of her students attend international schools abroad but sit British exams, and their families are willing to invest heavily in personalised support from someone who really understands the system from the inside.
Some of these relationships have evolved over years. One client she first met in Tuscany now flies her to Cyprus every summer. The children are older, but the connection remained – so now Danielle is invited simply to read books and talk about literature over long meals. It’s part teacher, part mentor, part trusted family friend.
Kasakhstan before it was cool (and before “very nice” was a tourism slogan)
One of the most charming threads in the conversation is Danielle’s relationship with Kazakhstan. In 2017, an agency called to ask if she would be willing to spend a year homeschooling two children in Almaty whose mother wanted to keep them in the British curriculum rather than enroll them in local schools. She said yes.
At that time, Kazakhstan was almost synonymous with “Borat” in the Western imagination – a fact that Kazakhs understandably found offensive. On the ground, Danielle discovered a very different reality: a friendly, bewilderingly foreign city where she couldn’t read the alphabet, barely saw any tourists and relied on a local “Indie Travel” app to hire non‑professional drivers to take her to spectacular natural sights like Charyn Canyon and the submerged forests of Kaindy Lake.
Returning years later, she was struck by how much had changed. Tourism had arrived in force. The once‑cheap day trips now appeared as polished, expensive tours and Almaty was buzzing with travelers. She feels lucky to have seen both versions: the raw, confusing early days and the more developed, confident country it has become. Somewhere along the way, even the national tourism board reportedly decided to reclaim Borat’s “very nice” catchphrase for their own marketing.
Scaling tutoring without losing the human touch
From the outside, Danielle’s business sounds like a dream: fly‑in tutoring assignments, long‑term clients, and a skill set that is in demand almost everywhere. But like many service‑based careers, it has a ceiling. There are only so many hours she can teach in a week, and truly scaling would mean turning herself into a manager and agency owner rather than staying close to the work she loves.
She experimented with this in Italy, recruiting other British tutors who knew the curriculum and could step in when she was overbooked. The hard part was finding qualified people in the right city, without the budget to fly them around. She also struggled with the traditional tutoring‑agency model, where companies take a large cut just for making the initial introduction between tutor and family.
These experiences have her thinking about a different, more human‑centered way to scale – perhaps by building a small network of like‑minded tutors (a “Danielle Squad”, as Christoph jokes on the show) and structuring the business in a way that adds real value beyond simple matchmaking. If you happen to be a British‑curriculum tutor listening to this, the episode is basically an open invitation to reach out while she’s in Almaty – or wherever the next client call takes her.
Instagram, Substack and the Elsewhereposts blog
Danielle’s online presence grew out of her hikes rather than a plan to become a content creator. During her UK trek, she started posting on Instagram simply to document the journey through words and images. Over time, that feed expanded to cover remote corners of the world she visited for tutoring gigs and personal adventures – often places that sit far outside the typical digital nomad Instagram circuit.
Eventually, she realised that long‑form storytelling belongs on a platform she truly owns. That’s how Elsewhereposts.com was born, a blog where she publishes travel essays and reflections that go deeper than social‑media captions. In parallel, she launched a Substack newsletter, giving readers another way to follow her writing and behind‑the‑scenes thoughts as her life and work continue to evolve.
If you want a visual companion to the stories in this episode, her Instagram account at @daniellemariehurren is a great place to start. Expect moody landscapes, trails that don’t show up in mainstream travel guides, and a tone that feels more like a personal field diary than a polished influencer reel.
Nomad Summit as a reset button
This episode was recorded right after the Nomad Summit in Chiang Mai, and Danielle is clear about the impact it had on her plans for the year. Beyond the social aspect of meeting like‑minded people, she walked away with very concrete insights on SEO, Pinterest and how to structure content so that her work can actually be discovered by the readers who would love it.
Interestingly, some of the most valuable take‑aways for her were not brand‑new ideas, but the uncomfortable realisation of what she was doing wrong – or simply not doing at all. That uncomfortable clarity has already turned into action: in the days after the conference she began revisiting her posts, fixing past mistakes and laying a stronger foundation for growth in 2026. As she puts it, there are worse ways to start the year than with a boost of inspiration, a clearer strategy and a stack of new friends who understand why she keeps saying yes to far‑flung places.
Why you should listen (and maybe book a one‑way ticket)
If you’re a teacher wondering whether your skills can translate into a nomadic life, a woman curious about solo hiking but nervous to try, or simply someone who loves stories from the margins of the map, this episode is for you. Danielle’s journey is a reminder that you don’t need a perfect master plan to build a location‑independent life – you need curiosity, a portable skill, and the courage to say yes when the unexpected invitation arrives.
Hit play on the episode to hear the full conversation, including Danielle’s advice for young women considering India, more behind‑the‑scenes stories from Kazakhstan, and the practical realities of running a tutoring business that doubles as a global passport. And if her stories resonate, make sure to subscribe to her newsletter, follow her on Instagram, and maybe start plotting your own version of a coast‑to‑coast hike.
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