As a traveler and digital nomad, there is a problem with travel research that I’m facing over and over again.

It started with this exact (dumb) spreadsheet from 3 years ago when I was planning my one year nomadic adventures through Southeast Asia.

Just like many other travelers, I find gathering knowledge about new places and preparing for the journey as exciting as the moments of serendipitous discovery on the road. It’s the preparation that gets my imagination flowing and my heart beating faster in anticipation of new adventures.

While there were hundreds of sources of inspiration about WHERE to go and what to see, the situation was different with the question of WHEN to go. I had to dig through tons of online climate data resources, blog posts and travel forums to gather bits and pieces of information for my spreadsheet. Needless to say, it was exhausting and often what I was looking for simply was not there. The fact that the available information about WHERE to go outweighed WHEN to go so dramatically seemed unreasonable to me. After all, WHERE to go is only part of the equation.

A year later, the same thing happened with planning my 10 months in South America. There was ridiculous imbalance between the amount of quality insights: WHERE to go kept outweighing WHEN to go.

Back then most of my own knowledge about WHEN to go I got from fellow travelers on the road. I learned that December to March is a good time for seeing rock formations in El Nido, Philippines, that Bolivia salt flats turn into a huge natural mirror towards the end of the wet season and that learning to surf on Colombia’s Caribbean coast in December is not a very good idea. Over the years of traveling I heard numerous fellow travelers sharing with me their own luck and frustrations:

“I wish I knew there was this festival happening in August!”

“Bummer, we missed the blooming of the world’s largest flower by one freakin’ month!!!”

“I couldn’t believe my luck — I got to see whale sharks which happens only once a year!”

Absence of reliable, meaningful and easily discoverable information about WHEN to go seemed like a genuine problem to solve. I wanted to fix this annoying blind spot in travel research.

But how would I cover the entire world — country by country? How would I share the knowledge about WHEN to go with others — blog posts? What would be the basis of my suggestions about when to go — just climate data? This was not good enough to become truly useful and meaningful. I had to think harder.

It was January 2014 on Colombia’s Caribbean coast when thinking harder led to the first paper sketches of What’s It Like — research platform that helps travelers figure out WHEN to go.