After two years of planning the trip began. Three friends landed in Chile with a plan to buy a truck, drive to Alaska, climb the highest mountain on both South and North  America, and volunteer in every country they passed through along the way. They would document it all for on video and after finishing the epic journey, make it into a movie.

Last year the product of the friends’ efforts, Between the Peaks, won the Best Documentary Feature award from the Mountain Film Festival in Mammoth, California. The trip had not gone as planned. Cameras had been lost and stolen and they’d had to abandon their truck when a paperwork mix-up prevented them from crossing a border with it.

The extra expenses meant that their trip would end in northern Guatemala, far short of their goal to finish on the peak of Denali in Alaska. The movie that resulted, however, is a great story of three friends on their first trip through South America with big dreams and the world in front of them.

I caught up with Jonathan — who directed and edited the movie —  on Skype last week to talk about winning an award for his first film, the crew’s misadventures on the road, and their plans for the future. Watch it below.

You can watch Between the Peaks here.

The post Between the Peaks: An Interview with Adventure Filmmaker Jonathan Ronzio appeared first on XpatMatt.

Dave Cornthwaite is a British ginger adventurer. He’s also likely one of the kindest and humblest people you’re likely to meet. He’ll be the first to emphatically explain to you why he’s no different than anyone else, despite the fact that he’s completed nine (soon to be 10) non-motorized expeditions of over 1000 miles, such as skateboarding across Australia, swimming the Missouri River, and stand-up paddle boarded the length of the Mississippi, which are not things that normal people do.

These expeditions are part Dave’s Expedition1000 Project, which is to complete 25 journeys of 1000 miles or more using non-motorized forms of transportation. The reasons behind these journeys are simple: 1) to raise money for the breast cancer charity CoppaFeel, and 2) to inspire other people to get off their fannys and do more of the things that enrich their own lives through his “Say Yes More” campaign.

On the evening of April 21st, 2014 Dave and his riding partners pulled into Calama, a mining village in northern Chile, as the sun set marking the end of his ninth expedition: crossing the Atacama Desert by whike (a recumbent tricycle with a sail on it). The following morning we hopped on a Google Hangout for our second interview (you can see the first here) to talk about whiking across Chile, how it compared to his other trips, and what he has planned for his next trips.

Below is an abridged Q&A with Dave. For the full interview, check out the video or grab the podcast below.

Matt: Good morning Dave. How are you feeling after finishing your Atacama Desert whike trip? You finished last night, is that right?

Dave: That’s right. I’m in Calama, a little mining town in the heart of the Atacama Desert. We crossed the 1000-mile mark last night just as the sun set around 8pm. We rolled into town in the dark, got to sleep in a proper bed, and feel awesome.

M: So, this was trip number eight, right?

D: This was actually trip number nine. So, only 16 to go now.

M: Just 16? That’s nothing. The whike is a pretty unique mode of transport. How was this trip different from others?

D: The whike has always interested me because it couples two ways to travel. You can pedal because it’s a recumbent tricycle, and it also has a sail so you can be wind-assisted when the conditions are correct. I chose Chile for this journey because the prevailing winds run from south to north. Ironically, most of the winds were prevailing in our face throughout the trip. We actually only ended up getting about four hours of sailing in and the rest was superbly hard pedalling. In 19 days we climbed over eighteen thousand meters—more than twice the height of Mt. Everest.

Some people have said that whikes can’t go up hills. They can go up hills. We proved it.

M: You were with a friend on this trip weren’t you? Who was that?

D: I was traveling with a couple of mates. One was Ned, who was one of the inventors of the whike who is just 21 years old. The other was my buddy Jamie who runs a startup called Only Bloody Human and is an amazing filmmaker and photographer. He came along to capture everything that happened and turn it into a short film.

M: You’re pretty used to doing these long trips. But how did your friends hold up?

D: I’m definitely used to doing these things now. I’m fairly good at plodding along and measuring everything. If I need to eat I eat, but not too much. If I need to sleep I sleep. You get into the mindset of getting through the slow menial process.

Ned and Jamie hadn’t really done anything like this but they fared brilliantly. They’re both superb guys. I haven’t always had the best luck with my expedition teams. It’s difficult when you’re in an intense fatiguing environment, but we’ve all ended up good friends.

M: It sounds like you put this trip together really fast. How was it logistically compared to others?

D: It’s something that gets better over time. It took me nearly two years to organize my first expedition. I think I had the idea for this one in January and by mid-April we were away.

It’s just a case of making a quick list. We want to do an expedition in Chile? OK. We need to get the whikes there. So, work out the shipping. But after that, let’s get some food and just peddle.

It doesn’t really take a great deal. Once you’re out there the costs are really low.

M: You had an accident right at the beginning of your bike-car trip. How was it being back on the highway for the majority of this trip?

D: I try to take control of almost every aspect of my life. When you do a trip on the road you cede some control to the drivers that you’re sharing it with. Getting hit is always my biggest fear.

Getting hit at 80mph four hours into that bike-car trip right outside of Memphis in 2012 was a massive shock. Luckily I walked away with nothing more than a slightly aching shoulder and completed the trip.

South Americans have a reputation for being, let’s put it bluntly, bad drivers. But Chile was the best country to do a road trip. I was blown away by the hospitality, awareness, and support. Every other driver tooted their horn at us. I felt safer on the roads here than any other place in the world.

Dave hasn’t chosen the modes of transport for all of his trips yet, and I’m thinking of joining him on one.

What do you think we should do? Dogsled the arctic? Cross-country ski Siberia?

Tell us in the comments below and maybe we’ll just do it!

The post Dave Cornthwaite on Crossing the Atacama Desert By Whike appeared first on XpatMatt.

Dave Cornthwaite is not as well known as other adventurers who take on challenges of similar calibre. This has always confused me. His Expedition 1000 project, which will take him on twenty-five 1000-mile human powered journeys is about as ambitions as they come. At 32, this gentle ginger lover of long distances has skateboarded over 3000 miles across Australia (setting a world record in the process), kayaked that country’s longest river, broken the world record for the longest stand up paddleboard journey on the Mississippi, and, most recently, swum the length of the Missouri River.  He’s done all of this while receiving surprisingly little attention from the press, getting very little help from sponsors, and raising awareness for the breast cancer charity, CoppaFeel.

I just got off the phone with Dave. We talked for over an hour about his project, personal life, and goals. It has become clear that the main reason he’s received so little attention is that he maintains the highest of standards for his expedition. For him, it’s a personal journey. He turns down sponsors and documentary offers if he feels that they’ll restrict his ambitions in any way. Without financial support, Dave is left to handle hs PR himself and, no matter how ambitious he may be, there’s only so much one man can do.

After talking with Dave it’s easy to see that he’s an adventurer of the highest integrity. He also reminds me of my good friend Jeremy Taws I’m going to do what I can to help Dave receive the attention he deserves. Here is a brief first interview with Dave. I’m pitching several more to different magazines, so keep an eye out for them in coming months.

Your first trip was from Perth to Brisbane by skateboard. How did you feel at the beginning of that journey? 

I felt like the world was at my feet. The distance and challenge ahead was incredibly daunting but I’d already leapt the biggest hurdle; by quitting my job, doing the UK warm-up, putting together a team, logistically preparing for the 5 months across Australia. All that was left was to do it and in many ways that was the easy part. There was no turning back. All that said, I had no clue what would come afterwards, I was just focused on getting to Brisbane, one step at a time…

Were any of the trips more intimidating than the others at the outset?

I’ve had fears about everything I’ve done. I’m a naturally cautious person but realised early on that my habits were very geared towards being comfortable and saying no a lot in order to maintain my utterly banal status quo. Since 2006 and taking the skateboarding journeys I’ve purposefully and gradually reversed my habits, so now I live in the moment, I say YES even if what it leads to terrifies me. I’m constantly aware of how fragile I am, my own mortally is linked intrinsically to these journeys I do. The swim I’ve just completed down the Missouri, and the Bikecar trip from Memphis to Miami both had hugely inherent dangers but I was prepared to face the prospect of dying or becoming extremely sick because had I not taken on the challenges I would have been lying to myself.

Of your seven journeys so far, do any stand out as being particularly difficult mentally, physically, or both?

The swim was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Towards the end the water had become uncomfortably cold, I was in it for twelve hours a day, never on land during daylight hours, shivering and approaching hypothermia on several occasions. Psychologically travelling so slowly and with such a narrow vantage point makes 1 mile, let alone 1000 so vast. The Bikecar was mentally exhausting because my life depended often on chance and was almost totally in the control of other people who had no awareness or inclination of what I was doing or my vulnerability. The skate across Australia was stressful and to a smaller degree the swim, in that I had to manage a large team at the same time as accomplishing my goals. On both occasions there were immense problems that completely took away from the enjoyment and satisfaction of the expedition.

Do you train in between expeditions to keep in shape? Or do you just let the expeditions themselves take care of that? If so, how?

I don’t train at all. I prepare mentally, in that I say I can do it. I get logistics together, find sponsors and do it. Never any doubts. Physically, the first days and sometimes weeks of an expedition are the training. You do something all day every day and it becomes what you do, no matter what you’re up to. Take the swim for example. I hadn’t swum solidly for more than 300 metres in my life before I jumped into the Missouri for the first time. Five days later I was front crawling 2 miles non-stop. A 10 mile day in no current became commonplace within a week. The human body is astounding as long as we allow ourselves to believe.

Swimming sounds to me like the most physically difficult way that you’ve tar 1000 miles so far. How did you train for this?

I opened up a Christmas present from my parents, some swimming goggles. I looked sideways at them and said, ‘you know what you’ve just done!’ I had a five mile float down the Thames, swam for about ten minutes that hour in small stages. Then two weeks before the journey I went to a lido in London and swam a kilometre in a 50 metre pool. I needed three minutes between each length to get my breath back. I couldn’t even get my breathing right because the ‘waves’ from the people in other lanes were catching me out. I knew it would be hard, but that my proper training would be in the first few days of the journey. I just believed I could do it and I wanted to continue to show that no matter how strenuous – and it doesn’t get harder than swimming – that anyone, no matter their ability, can achieve anything they want. It just comes down to a decision and the will to see it through.

How far were you swimming in an average day during this trip?

It took half of the expedition’s allotted time to complete the first 180 miles, 125 of which were in a lake system with no current at all. Average day was about 7 miles. Then we completed 820 miles the second half of the journey, once we were below the last dam and had between 2 and 3mph of current with us.

Can you give us an idea of approximately how much time each day you spent using different strokes?

First of all, I was towing a raft behind me that had all the basic things I needed to survive. In the lake system this took about 1 mph off my speed. In the river the pull was a little less and of course the current helped. It’s physically impossible to swim 12 hours a day for two months, so I rested on the raft at the same time as eating or when sewage deposits were high. To roughly break it down – 75% front crawl. 13% raft. 2% floating in water. 5% breaststroke. 4% backstroke. 1% butterfly (but that’s because I’m a showoff!

Did you see anything nasty in the river that made you want to jump out of the water?

There’s something about floating by a pipe that is literally gushing human faeces and urine straight into the river that makes you long for dry land. Most of the toxins and other chemicals in the water are invisible, thankfully. No big animals with teeth made themselves apparent, for which I was grateful!

Have you ever had a moments where you felt like giving up and getting a regular job? Do any of those moments stand out as particularly poignant?

Never. Never. Never. I gave up my job because I’m not built to live someone else’s dream. I needed to be my own boss, be passionate about life, say yes again and again and develop myself through challenges. Comfort kills ambition and the idea of going back to a world where I work simply so I can earn money terrifies me. However hard these journeys are, they are beautiful and I’m living my life to the very limit. I’ll never go back, I’ve found something that ticks every box for me.

Depression has been a bit of a recurring theme in discussions of your trips. In your recent interview on NPR you mentioned that before becoming an adventurer you were depressed with your workaday life. You recently wrote on your Tumblr blog about post-adventure depression. Do you feel that that you deal with depression more than the average person?

Oh goodness me, no! I’m just honest! We all have ups and downs. My highs are few and far between, but they’re sky high. My average state of existence is about halfway between my highs and how I used to feel when I was living a more conventional life. My lows now are incredibly rare, but they tend to come straight after expedition and sit a little lower than what used to be my median. I’m always happy to share how I feel, that’s what really counts and makes us who we are and through the past few years I’ve become very familiar with who I am and the states I go through. It’s important to share this.

I’m a bit of a bipolar person, and I think that is definitely liked to my propensity to take on epic and arduous adventures (not quite as crazy as the ones you choose, but still pretty tough). There are more than a few endurance athletes who have this personality trait. Do you feel that this applies to you as well?

Perhaps. I don’t consider myself an endurance athlete, I just do stuff rather than collect it. I’m not someone who lives in the gym (I hate the gym), I don’t like routine, I love my freedom and ability to take an opportunity even at the last minute and I’ve shaped my life as such. I like a challenge, I like my downtime, I’ve just cursed with not wanting to waste any time so I’m not sure I’ll ever have another holiday!

Like many adventurers, you’re also a writer. Hemingway often noted the difficulty of maintaining discipline in writing. How does the mental challenge of writing compare to the physical and mental challenges of your expeditions?

It’s different in that a written goal is so open ended. You’re done telling your story when you’ve exhausted all angles and once you start writing a book there’s no telling when that might be. For all the challenges and discipline one needs to complete a large expedition you’ve set yourself a goal in distance and perhaps time, and you just need to make it. It’s much easier to break down logically. The key with writing is to switch off all distractions, don’t have a view, affix ones arse firmly to a seat and start to write and don’t finish until your done.

Have you written any pieces that you’re particularly fond of?

I have two books on the shelves at the moment as well as hundreds of articles online about topics ranging from living an unconventional life to following your dreams to preparing for a skateboarding expedition. I suppose my favourite piece so far is called DATE, a book about finding a girlfriend by trying to date 100 women in 100 days. It’s out on Kindle and 10% of proceeds go to the breast cancer awareness charity CoppaFeel! for whom all of my adventures raise money, too.

You’ve mentioned that you’re taking six months off to write. What are you going to work on?

I have two books partly completed that need finishing off, about journeys down The Murray and Mississippi Rivers, and I’ve just started work on ‘Are You The Swimmer?’, which you might guess is about this most recent Missouri River expedition.

Do you know what expedition you’re going to do next? Or do you have an idea?

The only distraction I have from writing for the next few months is a small speaking tour around the States. I’m taking bookings now and will be speaking through November and December about my story, adventure and the importance of saying yes more. It’s a wonderfully feeling that beyond this year I have nothing planned for the rest of my life.

Which of the remaining expeditions are you most looking forward to?

I have 18 remaining of the Expedition1000 series. I think rowing the Pacific Ocean solo is the hardest endurance challenge left to humankind and I’m thrilled to be taking on that challenge in a couple of years, but every journey will have a place in my heart. I just don’t have them lined up yet!

The post Dave Cornthwaite of the Expedition 1000 Project appeared first on XpatMatt.

They travel to places like Afghanistan and Southern Sudan. They’ve fallen of cliffs in the Zagros Mountains and slept in Kurdish jails (but not on purpose, of course). Right now they’re planning to cross Iceland on cross-country skis. When I heard about this company I had to learn more.

How long has Secret Expeditions been operating?

We started the company in October 2010, but really ramped things up in October 2011, and 2012 is our first year of full operation. The planning and preparation that goes into expeditions means that we are always planning over a year in advance.

What was your first expedition?

Our first expedition was to Lake Zorkul, one of the claimed sources of the Oxus river in the Wakhan Corridor, Afghanistan. Lev and I had both served in the military in Afghanistan. It was somewhere we both wanted to go back to, and we didn’t want to wait 30 years to do it. It is a fascinating region, culturally very diverse with a real sense of history; it was part of the Silk Road and hd a number of high profile Great Game explorers visited the area, including Lord Curzon and Francis Younghusband.

How did you find your first clients? For that matter, how do you continue finding them? There can’t be that many people willing to spend thousands of dollars to endure conditions that most creatures instinctually avoid. 

Our team members are diverse and multinational. We have had Canadians, Australians, Americans, Norwegians, Indians, and an Egyptian. What unites them all is their adventurous spirit and urge to get a little bit more out of life.

What was the most difficult challenge that you faced on an expedition?

Physically our expeditions are tough, but they are achievable. The biggest difficulties are organizing the logistics and fighting the bureaucracy in areas where people have never been to before. In South Sudan, we helped the government set their permit rates since no travellers had ever visited the Imatong Mountains. Often, local politics and power struggles combine and you get embroiled in disputes between bickering small time officials. So, negotiation and patience are greater attributes than endurance!

What kind of training did you receive in the military that has helped you to learn how to deal effectively with extreme situations? What kind of situations did you used to deal with in the military?

In the Army you are subjected to high levels of stress under difficult conditions in training to prepare you for operations. On operations you become highly attuned to high levels of risk and very good and analyzing that risk and creating and applying mitigation measures to reduce it. Both of these elements are critical for expeditions.

Were there any times on expeditions that you got that sinking feeling in your gut, like  “holy shit, we are in serious trouble here.”

There have been a couple of occasions where your pulse starts rising slightly, but to put the question into perspective, I have never been shot at on an expedition, and so I am pretty relaxed about most situations we find ourselves in! A solution can always be found!

How did you deal with these kinds of situations?

We always ensure we are prepared to deal with likely (and unlikely) situations and we have plans in place if everything goes seriously wrong. This gives you a process to deal with situations of high stress and allow you to think clearly. The most important things are relaxing, not panicking, and thinking clearly.

Are there any trips that you’d like to attempt, but think might be beyond your abilities?

I think many people over the years have proved that nearly everything is within someone’s abilities if they want it and train hard enough. Our limiting factor is that we try and keep expeditions to three weeks so they are accessible for most people. There are lots of options available in that timeframe.

Which upcoming trip are you the most excited about?

I am excited about all our expeditions, that is the key benchmark for having them! Our next expedition, to Mount Mabu in Mozambique, will be pretty awesome. We’ll be pioneering a route through the largest rainforest in southern Africa which has only just been discovered!

Secret Compass has been mentioned by several media outlets and appears to be doing well. What goals do you have for the future?

We have been humbled by the support we have received so far for what we are doing and it really motivates us to carry on and develop more awesome expeditions. We have some pretty exciting ideas for next year in Burma, western China, the Darien Gap and DR Congo.

Do you have any big ideas in the works that you’d like to mention?

We are looking at taking this concept and applying it to mountain biking and ski touring, mainly because they are passions of mine! Mountain bike Afghanistan anyone?

The post An Interview with Tom Bodkin of Secret Compass Expeditions appeared first on XpatMatt.

Lev Wood is a co-founder of Secret Compass Expeditions. According to their website they clients on “pioneering and exploratory expeditions to the world’s last undiscovered places”.

From the from what I’ve heard about this company, that’s gross understatement.

They led what they called “the first commercial expedition to have ventured into the Zagros Mountains in Iraq,” under the protection of a mildly-frightening AK-47 toting local guide. They’ve also lead expeditions in South Sudan, Afghanistan, and recently completed the first coast-to-coast crossing of Madagascar on foot.

When I found out about these guys I had to interview them. So, I tracked down co-founder Lev Wood to find out more about how the company got started, the obstacles they’ve run into along the way, and the kind of people that actually pay to join these absurdly difficult expeditions.

Me: How long has Secret Expeditions been operating?

Lev Wood: SC has been operating since October 2010; there was a lot of planning, preparing and getting set up to do for our first expeditions.

MG: What was your first expedition?

LW: We wanted to go back to Afghanistan since both Tom and I served there during our time in the army, so we organized the first group expedition to travel to lake Zorkul in the Wakhan corridor of Afghanistan. It is an incredibly remote and beautiful area.

MG:How did you find your first clients? For that matter, how do you continue finding them? There can’t be that many people willing to spend thousands of dollars to endure conditions that most creatures instinctually avoid.

LW: Our team members tend to be seasoned travellers, often professionals who, because of work, now don’t have the time to organize their own adventures. Our clients come from a range of backgrounds from around the world. Sometimes though we get the occasional complete novice — on the last expedition we took an Egyptian guy who had never been camping before — but he had the right attitude, he wanted to push himself harder than ever before.

MG: What was the most difficult challenge that you faced on an expedition?

LW: Usually, it isn’t the physical challenge, it’s the bureaucracy. Because of the nature of the places we go, many of the local police/ army/ militia/ tribal chiefs have never seen a tourist or even a white face, and they get confused as to why anyone would want to visit their lands. Because of this there are often delays whilst the local authorities try and find out what protocol needs to be adhered to (or how much a ‘permit’ will cost). This can be very frustrating. That said, hacking for 3 weeks through thick jungle isn’t easy either. Neither is surviving off Afghan flat bread for a month.

MG: What kind of training did you receive in the military that has helped you to learn how to deal effectively with extreme situations? What kind of situations did you used to deal with in the military?

LW:My time in the army was useful in a number of ways. It teaches the practicalities of living in austere environments, survival, and so on, but more importantly it gives you a sense of perspective you can’t get taught anywhere else. You learn about leadership under stress and encouraging a team to push themselves beyond what they thought was possible.

MG: Were there any times on expeditions that you got that sinking feeling in your gut, like  “holy shit, we are in serious trouble here.”

LW: A couple of times things got close. A group was once detained in Iraq and we all had to spend a couple of nights in a Kurdish Jail, but the police were actually very nice. In the Zagros mountains our mountain guide fell off a cliff. Luckily he performed a technically perfect ice axe arrest and climbed back up. On the Nile in Sudan one of the team fell into some rapids and broke a couple of ribs. Luckily he didn’t get eaten by crocs. We were arrested there too — at gunpoint by a local militia who thought we were spies. Frostbite in Nepal was quite painful. I was arrested twice in Egypt.

MG: How did you deal with those situations?

LW: A level head and sense of perspective. Smiling when dealing with armed men and looking them in the eye makes them realize you’re a human. Being as prepared as possible minimizes the chance of these things happening.

MG: Are there any trips that you’d like to attempt, but think might be beyond your abilities?

LW: I’m of the opinion that anyone can train to bring goals within their grasp, so no, not really. However, we have to keep SC expeditions within a sensible timeframe — usually 3 weeks max — because that’s how much time most people can take off work. There are loads of exciting expeditions that can’t be done in that time.

MG: Which upcoming trip are you the most excited about?

LW: If I’m not excited about an expedition it doesn’t even get through the planning stages! So all of them. Mt Mabu in Mozambique will be incredible in September — totally virgin forest, completely untouched by man and undiscovered until 2005 — now that is exploration!

MG: Secret Compass has been mentioned by several media outlets and appears to be doing well. What goals do you have for the future?

LW: At the moment we’re concentrating on getting a really exciting portfolio of expeditions lined up for 2013. We want to be able to do as many amazing trips as possible!

MG: Do you have any big ideas in the works that you’d like to mention?

LW: There are some big ones — not necessarily client trips — which I can’t mention right now. We’re working in conjunction with some big name media broadcasters to make some incredible documentaries, so watch this space!

The post An Interview with Lev Wood of Secret Compass Expeditons appeared first on XpatMatt.

On March 25th Andrew Badenoch will be embarking on a journey unlike any I’ve ever heard of; he will travel from Seattle to the Arctic Ocean and back over land and water one a fatbike (a bike with super fat tires that can handle terrain that renders a normal mountain bike useless, like snow) and a packraft (small inflatable boat). He will use no fossil fuels to propel himself, or even to cook. His goals? To show the possibilities of sustainable travel and, of course, to have an incredible time.

I interviewed Andrew via email yesterday to find out more about this trip and how it fits into his larger 77Zero project.

What is the 77Zero project?

77Zero stands for “7 Continents. 7 Seas. ZERO Fuel.” On one level, that refers to my goal to explore all seven continents by sailing between them and without using any fossil fuels or biofuels for transportation, heating, or cooking. Overall, the project is about completely phasing out such fuels and making them a relic of the past.

Your first expedition is called FatBikeRafting the Arctic. What do you expect this trip to be like?

I hope I’ll stay on the razor’s edge between the gruelling and the sublime. A lot of it will be long, cold, wet days. On the other hand, summer that far north brings 24-hour daylight and warmer days than many assume. I’ll travel through a lot of ecosystems so I’m mostly just expecting a huge range of experiences.

Are you going to wear your kilt while you do that? (Andrew is fond of wearing kilts.)

No! But not for the reasons one might think. As a practical matter, you can’t stuff yourself into a drysuit while wearing a kilt. I’d have to pack it for many of the water sections, and replace it with another layer of something else. That would effectively double the weight I’d carry in the pants/skirts category.

Kilts do pretty well in a relatively wide range of weather conditions. They’re not great when it’s really wet, but their main failure is in the modesty department. Bikes + kilts + wind is a good equation for getting on YouTube for all the wrong reasons.

Has anyone done anything similar to this before?

There have been a few fatbike and packraft expeditions on sections of the coast connecting Alaska and British Columbia. It’s most common to travel the Arctic on foot, dogsled, snow machine, or skis when everything is frozen. Andrew Skurka did an Alaska-Yukon loop in 2010. Our routes are significantly different because he didn’t take a bike, I’m not taking skis, and our weather windows and start-finish locations are not the same. The Canadian portion is the wild card of this trip in many ways. Most of my resources for that section come from early 1900s polar explorers Roald Amundsen and Vilhjalmur Stefansson.

What do you hope to accomplish by doing this?

I have a few personal motivations. I’d like to sail the Northwest Passage through the Arctic Ocean at some point. Since I’m currently between sailboats, this will allow me to get a feel for the region from a different, but valuable, perspective. Also, I grew up in Alaska. Its in my bones and it’s been way too long since I’ve been there. And more simply; I love packrafting, mountain biking, and visceral connections with wildness.

We’re also making a documentary about the trip. I want to give people a way to think about adventure that doesn’t require dropping a bunch of cash on airfare, Land Rovers, and guides. My bigger goal is to get people into the wild. Our culture tends to look at nature through TV survival shows and car windows. I don’t want to discount the very serious risks and dangers in it, but I don’t think fear of nature is a healthy mindset to start from.

Going even further, recent studies have shown that people widely underestimate the benefit of having a relationship with nature. This lack of understanding of how much nature improves our overall psychology can create a disconnect. I’d say that reflects my experience as well. Ultimately, this disconnect becomes a problem for us as individuals, and it becomes a problem for nature because we become less inclined to protect the wildness that remains.

How did you get the money to do this?

My cost of living on this trip will be much cheaper than that of living in an apartment in a city, a lot cheaper actually… even if done perpetually. If you don’t count the documentary and the gear (which I’ve mostly collected over time), the total cost is probably only about $500 per month. It’s important to shift that perspective up front.

To answer your question, I run some websites that generate more than the $500 minimum monthly requirement.  Some of the gear was also provided by the manufacturers.

Making the documentary in such an extreme and remote environment adds significant expense. If I’d decided to head south and not film it, I could have left with three days of planning, gear I had on hand, and zero dollars beyond what my sites generate. Since I decided to add so much complexity, I turned to Kickstarter to bridge the gap.

What are the greatest potential threats to your completion of the expedition?

Weather, logistics, and injury. The expedition includes a lot of difficult to research and difficult to traverse areas bracketed by huge variables regarding bodies of water that may or may not be frozen when I get there, and a temperamental ocean on the last leg. If I get stalled at the beginning, and the ocean turns nasty near the end, I may run out of time. Those variables also add logistical problems as far as making sure I can get food when I need it, and dealing with unpredictable equipment failures. Lastly, it’s hard to predict wear and tear on the body, and just as hard to predict accidents. I had to scrap an earlier version of this expedition last year when I lost concentration for a split second and broke my collarbone mountain biking.

Wild animals could be included under injury or logistics as well. Everybody seems to want to talk about bears in terms of getting attacked. Since I’ll be spending so much time north of the tree line where I won’t be able to hang stuff out of the reach of critters, I’m more worried about getting my food pilfered by animals in the middle of nowhere while I’m asleep.

How long have you been working on the 77Zero project?

The training started when I bought my sailboat in 2008. Since then it’s gone a few directions that I didn’t predict.

What did  you do before you became a full-time adventurer?

Internet marketing allowed me to move to Panama full-time in 2006. After I got back to the US, I got a gig running the internet marketing efforts for a small company and leveraged that into starting a small ad agency/consultancy.

What would you like to do for your next expedition?

I think this where I’m supposed to act like a pro athlete and say, “I’m just looking at next Sunday’s game.” But… the plans for the next expedition are to work sailing back into the equation. The exact plans will be largely determined by the capabilities of whatever boat I can scrounge up.

How long did it take you to grow that beard?

It’s at about 5 months in most of the pictures and Kickstarter video (below).

The post Andrew Badenoch and the 77Zero Project appeared first on XpatMatt.

Dunn, a former financial planner, distinguishes herself from other travel bloggers (in both practice and writing) with her thriftiness.  In addition to writing about ways to stretch a dollar, she stretches them herself—remarkably well—by traveling slowly and saving money through novel methods such as house sitting and caretaking.  I e-mailed Dunn in Australia, where she had just arrived after finishing a the pilot for a travel TV show in Nepal, to ask her about solo travel, saving money, and inspiring books.

Matt Gibson: You’ve been working on a pilot for a TV series recently. Can you tell me about that?

Nora Dunn: Well, it’s pretty top secret stuff (no really, it is!), but I can tell you that in September I filmed a travel TV series pilot in Paris and Nepal, and we stopped traffic (literally). It’s for a North American broadcast audience, and I’ll be sure to share more on that as soon as there’s news to share!

MG: You started traveling with your boyfriend, but later continued alone. What was your first solo trip?

ND: My first solo trip was a six month streak through New Zealand and Europe. I got my solo travel groove on, and I’m having a blast now.

MG: Most women are warned not to travel alone. Were you frightened?

ND: One of the things I’ve discovered through travel is that 99% of the people out there are fundamentally good. There are heaps of awesome female solo travelers! I’ve never been frightened about it, beyond getting butterflies in my tummy (which I actually quite enjoy – it means I’m doing something good).

MG: You use several unique strategies for saving money on the road, such as house sitting and volunteering.  What have you found to be the most effective ways to save money on the road?

ND: My money management techniques are less about saving money, and more about making full-time traveling financially sustainable. With a freelance writing income I don’t earn a huge amount, but I write what I want for whom I want which is well worth it. In order to get by on this income, I volunteer in trade for my accommodation in many of the places I go (house-sitting, caretaking, etc). This keeps my expenses low and allows me to travel slowly, often experiencing a slice of local life wherever I go.

MG: Your writing appears in many places. May I ask what proportions of your income come from books, articles, your blog, and other sources?

ND: Most of my income comes from columns I write for Wise Bread, AmEx, Care One, Transitions Abroad, and other one-off articles I write online and for magazines. I also make some money from affiliate sales, my blog, and even the occasional donor.

MG: What non-monetary benefits, professional or personal, do you get from blogging?

ND: Being part of a community as tight-knit as travel bloggers and writers has many perks, which include the occasional chance to meet up on the road – a very rewarding experience. There’s also lots of moral and professional support when I need it, which can be comforting in the sometimes isolated world of travel.

MG: What’s the most popular post on The Professional Hobo?

ND: I’ve had a couple of popular posts, including “Is Full-Time Travel an Act of Withdrawal”, and “What to Pack for Full-Time Travel”.

MG: Has traveling alone as a woman ever limited your travel experience?

ND: I’ve actually found solo travel to be more liberating than limiting. It’s easier to meet new people, easier to get invitations for homestays (whereas putting up a couple isn’t always possible), and it becomes more necessary to interact with others (ideally locals), which often creates a more authentic travel experience. The sense of accomplishment I get from pushing my boundaries as a solo traveler is brilliant. The only limiting factor is a constant consideration for safety, and not getting into a situation I can’t get out of.

MG: You are now a role model for solo female travelers around the world. Who inspired you?

ND: Rita Golden Gelman wrote a book called Tales of a Female Nomad, which was a great inspiration for my own solo travels.

MG: What equipment do you carry for working on the road?

ND: I have a laptop, iTouch, unlocked cell phone, camera, and external hard drive for back-ups. I also carry a slew of cords and chargers for everything, as well as a few extra parts just in case.

MG: Is there a particularly good book, article, or author that you read recently you’d like to recommend?

ND: I’m currently reading The Patagonian Express by Paul Theroux, where he hops on a train in Boston and rides it to the bottom of Patagonia. It’s about the journey rather than the destination, the writing is superb, and it further stokes my love of international train travel.

The post An Interview with the Most Professional Hobo: Nora Dunn appeared first on XpatMatt.

Because of their tradition-challenging relationship, they spend their days studying the traditions of the world’s oldest cultures. Because borders sought to keep them apart, they live borderless lives. Because their lives could not remain stationary in the physical world, they found work in the one place where they could keep a fixed address—the Internet. Now, while visiting remote and ancient cultures, they have become icons in one of the fastest-growing and newest technological cultures—the blogosphere.

This email interview found the postmodern couple in the southern Philippines where I asked them about their travels, some of their favorite reads, and their work in the most postmodern of literary forms.

MG: Can you recall a time that you were surprised by a large unexpected increase in traffic to your blog? What happened?

CN: We’ve had occasional surges in traffic related to specific events. The earthquake in Sichuan, the Chinese crackdown in Tibet, and, of course, the terrorist attack on Mumbai, which we experienced first-hand at much too close a distance. (We were right across the street from the Taj Mahal Hotel and Tony actually saw the attackers running by.) The people came to us during these events for two different reasons. Firstly, friends, family and followers wanted to see if we were OK. Secondly, our descriptions of the local culture occasionally showed up first in Google searches by people seeking to learn more about these regions. We’ve also had quirky things send us traffic. We photographed a strange ice formation created by a high-altitude plant in Zanskar, India which sent a stream of scientists to our website. And our video on the border closing ceremony near Amritsar, India somehow became a reference for a Wikipedia article on Indian nationalism. It’s amazing what actually brings in our visitors, it’s almost impossible to predict.

MG: What is your most popular blog post? Why do you think that is?

CN: We have several posts which seem to stick out. The Omelette Man of Jodhpur seems to be one of our most visited posts. And, of course, there is the piece on the ice formation in Zanskar, which I mentioned before. Interest in Danba Family, The Baisha Miao, and The Paduang seems to suggest pieces on the struggles of tribes and ethnic minorities are popular. Our most viewed piece is actually a YouTube video we did called The Lions of Sasan Gir. It’s actually only a short clip, but people like the view of the rare Indian lions. We also have a notorious YouTube video called The Rajdhani Express which is a tongue-in-cheek review of the famous Indian train. Indians HATE the video and have thereby made the piece one of our most successful videos. Check it out for their rabid comments – we love reading them and have referred our visitors back to the comment section several times. Actually, the video isn’t that bad, they just seem to have worked each other up in the comment section.

MG: What’s your favorite blog post on ContemporaryNomad.com? Why?

CN: We have several blog posts which bring back amazing memories. Tony’s Rajasthan Camel Safari is a crack-up because of all the things that happened on the trip. And Thomas’ Trans-Island Odyssey was a wild ride across the Andaman Island chain which included a run-in with wild elephants and an encounter with the Jarawa tribal people. Great memories. I also love our two videos on our 20-day trek across Zanskar.

MG: Is there competition between bloggers out there, given that new blogs keep springing up with often similar themes (and occasional downright rip-offs)? Or do you think that many are driven more by the need to express their own passions.

CN: More and more blogs are springing up because everyone wants to have a voice. We get that. Some people are driven by the lure of dreamt-up riches, which is unrealistic. But others simply thirst for adventure with a dash of writing. Actually, it often surprises us how few really good travel blogs are out there. There is definitely space for more. Unfortunately, it does seem that some travel bloggers have an overly competitive edge. We noticed last year that one of our fellow bloggers seemed to have hired people in India to vote for his site over and over again in the Blogger’s Choice Awards resulting in a last minute jump in rankings. That’s not cool. While some view travel blogging as a competitive race, we are far more interested in the sense of community. It’s through this community that we discover the best destinations for future adventures.

MG: Do you find yourself using search engines in order to research your topics more when you blog, or are you more concerned with capturing the moment? Or does one complement the other?

CN: We don’t base our postings on what we perceive to be popular keywords or commonly googled topics because we realize that all of our most popular posting are off-the-wall things that we put up just because we thought they were funny or fascinating.

We love Walking the Amazon, which others might not label a “travel blog,” but we definitely would. We also love Life on the Tibetan Plateau with its encyclopedic knowledge of the Tibetan world. And we just discovered a new blog on Africa called Border Jumpers, which we are following now. And of course, Beverly at Nomadic Narrative is a good friend of ours, so we regularly follow her site. She recently spent 6 weeks traveling with us through Cambodia and Laos and we co-blogged our experiences together, which was a lot of fun.

MG: Who, in your opinion, is the most successful travel blogger (from a business perspective)? Why do you think that is?

CN: That’s a great question. Who knows? Sites have such different purposes and ways of monetizing their content. I would venture a guess that it is one of the smaller sites which is doing something really crazy, such as the one I mentioned before “Walking the Amazon.” While the site is not necessarily making much money now, if he succeeds, he’ll probably end up with book deals and well-paid magazine articles or TV interviews. Even if he doesn’t get rich, such an incredible journey would definitely meet our definition of success.

MG: What equipment do you carry for working on the road?

CN: We carry WAY too much: two laptops (Toshiba Satellite, Sony Vaio), two cameras (Canon 400D, Canon G7), five lenses for the 400D, an underwater casing for the G7, a ridiculously large but very useful power strip with exchangeable fuses, a tent, a camping cooker, a pump operated water purifier, two mosquito nets, a huge medical bag, diving masks and snorkels… We hate the bulk, but we use it all. We change equipment as we travel. We had high-altitude clothing and warm sleeping bags for the Himalayas, but when we left the mountains we gave all the mountain gear to a Ladakhi man who wanted to become a trekking guide.

MG: We all have certain expectations when we visit places. It’s easy for a place not to live up to what we imagine it to be. What was your most disappointing trip?

CN: We have both been traveling for over twenty years, so our expectations have grown much more realistic with experience. However, there are occasional disappointments. Our recent trip to Laos was a little disappointing because of the horrible field burn-off which takes place in March and April. We knew in advance that burn-off would occur, but we had no idea how bad it would actually be. I highly advise staying out of northern Southeast Asia in March and April. Beyond that, I would say the biggest disappointment we experience is the general feeling that adventurous, exploratory travel as a whole is slowly ending. The world is changing very quickly. Exotic tribes are vanishing, extraordinary wildlife is disappearing, pristine environments are being destroyed or bought up and turned into high-priced resorts. If you want to travel, get out there and do it now before everything is gone or too expensive.

MG: What trip was the nicest surprise

CN: Nepal was probably the nicest surprise. Travelers have been going to Nepal for decades and we both expected the country to be so over-developed and over-visited that it would certainly fail to impress. Quite to the contrary, the country blew us away and we have become devoted Nepal fans. (We just wish we had been going every year for the last twenty years.)

MG: What’s the strangest thing that has happened to you on the road?

CN: We could fill a 32-volume set of books with strange stories and adventures. One story we tell a lot is about turning on an air cooler in India and having a snake blow out of the machine at us. That seems to strike a chord with critter-phobic travelers. We have both been arrested, we’ve been bitten by poisonous things, and we’ve been charged by wild animals. Once, an elephant stepped over our tent in Zimbabwe during the full moon. We held our breath as we could see the back-lit shadow of the enormous beast stepping over us. We’ve been in car accidents, we’ve been attacked, and we’ve been caught up in violent conflicts. A million stories.

MG: The growth of backpacking has resulted in an increase in rave-type parties in travel hubs and destinations worldwide. Along with this has come an increase in drug use among travelers. How do you feel about drugs and backpacker culture?

CN: We both hate this scene and avoid it like the plague. Unfortunately, it really is like a plague that seems to be sweeping across the world wiping out the earth’s more beautiful spots. We now refer to it as Vang Vieng syndrome.

MG: Travel can make or break relationships. How do you deal with the pressures put on you and your partner by life on the road?

CN: Actually, we are a couple. We don’t talk about it much on our blog because our blog is about adventure, not our relationship. But interestingly, it is our relationship that really got us into long-term travel. When we first met 17 years ago, there was no way for a German and American gay couple to stay together legally as no country acknowledged the relationship for the purpose of immigration. We had to bounce around the world to stay together. In fact, Lisa Nunn, a professor of sociology at the University of San Diego, has been documenting us for over eight years. Later this year, she will release a 45-minute film on our lives called Excluded (the last segment was recently filmed in Cambodia) and will be speaking at this year’s national sociology conference on how our struggles as a binational couple caused us to “go nomadic.”

MG: Is there a particularly good book, article, or author that you read recently youíd like to recommend?

CN: “Papillon”. It’s required reading for the adventurous at heart. Also read the follow-up “Banco.” “Keep the River on your Right” is amazing as is “Shantaram.”

The post Tony and Thomas of Contemporary Nomad on Traveling and Blogging appeared first on XpatMatt.

This is the second part of a two-part interview with Debbie Dubrow, author of Delicious Baby. Part 1 can be read here.

MG: Were you nervous the first time you traveled with your children? What did you expect it to be like?

DD: I was nervous the first time I took my son to the grocery store! Everything changes when you have kids, but somehow we keep doing most of it. There is a lot of negativity about traveling with young kids, but if travel is important to you, you keep doing it anyway.

I was worried that we wouldn’t be able to enjoy the trip, see what we wanted and eat good food. I also worried about what would happen if the baby got sick or injured when we were far away from our trusted pediatrician. I still worry about those things (to a more limited extent) with every trip we take, but I find that advance planning helps a lot.

What I didn’t expect is the way that having a child brings you into local life more. We eat in more casual restaurants, and I try to find the kinds of places that local families would eat. We spend a lot of time at playgrounds, and we end up talking with the other kids and parents. We shop in the markets because we need snack foods and picnic lunches. Plus, in most countries, when people see you traveling with a child, they want to talk to you and spoil your kids a little. All of those things have made our travels richer.

MG: You maintain a professional blog, which is a lot of work. You also travel, which is enormously time consuming. You’re a parent, which (I’ve been told) also eats up a bit of time. On top of all that, you teach at Rick Steves’s Travel Center, you’re a member of the Travel Insights 100 travel expert panel, and you’re a co-founder of Passports with Purpose. How do you manage to handle so many responsibilities?

DD: I’m very careful about prioritizing what I do so that I focus on what is important to me. I don’t watch TV, I have my groceries delivered, I don’t sleep as much as I should, and my house is a mess.

MG: What equipment do you carry for working on the road?

DD: We carry too much equipment. My husband and I are both techies, so we have two laptops, iphones, my Kindle, plus one SLR camera and a point and shoot. Recently we added an iPad to the mix so that we can perfect TripDoc for the iPad as well as the iPhone.

MG: You have achieved near-celebrity status with your blog. To what do you attribute this success?

DD: I’ve tried to develop good relationships with other bloggers, and when I can, I help people out and share information. I think karma really works in your favor in the online world. Travel blogging is very new, and there is still so much room for all of us to grow – it makes a lot more sense to be collaborative than competitive.

MG:: What qualities do you look for in a parenting or travel blog?

DD: I look for someone who has interesting stories and who feels like a “real” person. I love to peek inside a life that is very different from my own and see what it feels like to be that person.

MG:: What are your favorite blogs?

DD: NerdsEyeView, Capitol Hill Seattle – a Seattle Neighborhood Blog, David Lebovitz and Oh Happy Day.

MG: Is there a particularly good book, article, or author that you read recently you’d like to recommend?

DD: I just finished reading Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi. It was so sad that reading it made my body hurt. I wish I could write like that.

I also liked this essay by Pico Iyer.

MG: If you had to choose one moment traveling with your children as the most rewarding, what would come to mind?

DD: It’s just experiencing things through their eyes. It’s cliche, but everything is new to them, and that is such a refreshing way to travel. Now that my kids are getting older, I realize that they are coming to enjoy exploring new places as much as I do (albeit at their own pace, and with their interests as a guide), and that is very rewarding.

This is the second part of a two-part interview with Debbie Dubrow, author of Delicious Baby. Part 1 can be read here.

The post Traveling with Children: An Interview with Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby Part 2 appeared first on XpatMatt.

Sure, Tim Cahill will go drunken diving for poisonous sea snakes, and Rolf Potts will try to sneak onto the set of The Beach in a Thai fishing boat, but that’s nothing.  If you want brave, talk to Debbie Dubrow.  She travels with her husband and their three children aged 5, 3, and 1.  That’s three children to take care of on airplanes and in hotel rooms, restaurants, and taxicabs all over the globe.

That’s balls.

A former Project Manager at Microsoft, Dubrow also writes Delicious Baby, ranked the best travel blog in 2009 by Technocrati, and probably the most popular parenting travel blog in the world.

In the first part of this two-part interview, Debbie talks about her experiences traveling with her children.

Matt Gibson: I’m sure that you traveled before you had children.  When did you know you wanted to make travel a lifestyle?

Debbie Dubrow:  Travel has always been an important part of our lives, the desire to go experience the world didn’t change when we had kids.

MG: Have you ever made any mistakes traveling with your children that you now look back on and wonder, ‘why on earth did I do that’?

DD: Constantly.  I probably have a short term memory disease, because I keep going places with them anyway.

MG: What was the disaster you had traveling with children?

DD:  The trickiest situation was landing in Heathrow airport, which was supposed to be a 4 hour layover for us, and finding out upon landing the airport was closed because of an ash cloud.  It was incredibly crowded, there were long waits for everything, and very little information.  Luckily the kids were so happy to be off of the plane that they spread out their toys on the baggage claim floor and played pretty happily while we figured out how to get our baggage, get into town, and a place to stay.

Other bad things:

●      I’ve been thrown up on in flight.  No, I did not have a spare shirt in my carryon

●      We’ve had delayed baggage on almost every transatlantic flight we’ve flown with kids.

●      I flew from Paris to Seattle a few days after the liquid bomb scare in Heathrow.  I was 8 months pregnant, and it was my first solo flight with my son. I wasn’t allowed to bring any toys along, they limited the number of diapers I could bring, even my pen was confiscated because it had liquid in it!

I think that when you get into a tricky situation, it can actually be empowering.  I get so focused on not letting the situation impact the kids, that things usually go ok.  Afterwords I feel more confident about handling the small problems that crop up.

MG: How old was your first child when you started traveling as a parent?

DD: The first trip was when our son was 2 months old.  Like most new babies, each child’s first flight was a trip to visit family.

Before my oldest son was born, we had planned to spend my husband’s paternity leave (one month) in Paris, and we did that when he was 6 months old.  I was surprised at how concerned everyone was about our plan (after all Paris is hardly an unknown or developing country).  I am so glad that we took that opportunity to travel.  It’s rare for a career-focused parent to be able to take a whole month off at once, and if we had been home in Seattle we would have been sucked into our everyday lives and chores.  In Paris we were much more focused on enjoying our time together, and bonding as a new family.  It also set the ball rolling for continuing to travel as he got older and as we added more kids to our family.

MG: What countries have you found to be the most child friendly?  Why?

DD: Spain, Italy and Turkey were all very child friendly, mostly because local children are part of everyday life.  People expect to see them in restaurants, hotels and tourist attractions.  In restaurants, the kids get really spoiled with the waiters bringing them special foods – and in Italy we sometimes had a server offer to hold our baby for us to keep him happy while we ate!

Italy is known for not having very many playgrounds, especially in Rome, but in any country where the cities are built around a central plaza it helps to bring along an inflatable ball.  Once you start kicking it around, it doesn’t take long for more kids to show up and join in the fun.

MG: Have you traveled in many developing countries with your children?  How does it differ from traveling in developed ones?

DD: We really haven’t yet.  There are so many places to travel, and I am willing to wait until the kids are little older to visit developing countries.  Diseases that don’t have much impact here can kill a child in the developing world if the proper medical care isn’t available, so extra caution is warranted.  Still many parents do visit developing countries, and are willing to do the extra work to make sure that their kids water and food are safe when they travel.

The post Traveling with Children: An Interview with Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby Part 1 appeared first on XpatMatt.