Latest / Adventure Sports Podcast / Ep. 1163 Amazing Adventure Travel with Seth Quigg

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Ep. 1163 Amazing Adventure Travel with Seth Quigg · Adventure Sports Podcast

0:06
[SPEAKER_00]: You're listening to the Adventure Sports podcast.
0:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for adventuring with us, as we discover what incredible athletes and outdoor enthusiasts are doing all over the world.
0:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Now here's your host, Kurt Linville.
0:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey friends, we have just a couple of announcements.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Super short this time.
0:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Before we dive into the episode, number one discord server.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, we meet on discord.
0:31
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0:38
[SPEAKER_01]: They change the link for it periodically, not sure why it's probably a good thing.
0:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So you have to go to the show notes from this episode.
0:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Click on it, join the discord server, and we'll see you there.
0:50
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0:52
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0:53
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1:02
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1:06
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1:08
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1:09
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1:14
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1:16
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1:21
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1:32
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1:34
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1:41
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1:45
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1:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Now on with today's episode
1:51
[SPEAKER_01]: But today I have Seth Quig with us, who is a returning guest.
1:55
[SPEAKER_01]: He has been on the show twice and we did a replay of one of his episodes once, so this will actually be the fourth episode on the Adventure Sports podcast, but that spread out over quite a few years.
2:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, you may not remember, but Seth Quig has had a lifetime career in the outdoor industry.
2:13
[SPEAKER_01]: He worked for Nulls for a long time, and
2:16
[SPEAKER_01]: then he started working with a partner from Nulls to make their own company.
2:21
[SPEAKER_01]: They do adventure travel guiding all over the world.
2:25
[SPEAKER_01]: They do a lot of fundraising for charity as well.
2:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's kind of fun.
2:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Seth and I live in the same valley, even though we've not met.
2:33
[SPEAKER_01]: We're just talking about we're going to have to grab coffee soon.
2:36
[SPEAKER_01]: But anyway, Seth, welcome to the Adventure Sports podcast.
2:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you, Kurt.
2:40
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a pleasure to be here.
2:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's really fun.
2:43
[SPEAKER_01]: I've enjoyed the conversations that we've had over the years.
2:47
[SPEAKER_01]: You're one of these people that you're enthusiasm just really shines.
2:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And I also like some of that southern hospitality that seems built into your DNA.
2:58
[SPEAKER_01]: So you were from down there North Carolina, Asheville area.
3:02
[SPEAKER_01]: What's the story there?
3:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Hey, yeah, I was born and raised in North Carolina.
3:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Live there until I was 22.
3:09
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, grew up in a rally area and then went to undergrad at Appalachian State.
3:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And yet, where I really got, you know, fell in love with the outdoor recreation and education process and that was kind of the hook, one of the pivotal points.
3:27
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, and then I gave some of your resume right there, but was it straight to nulls after that or what happened?
3:34
[SPEAKER_02]: No, so we moved to Boon, North Carolina, and then kind of really fell in love with the rivers of Western North Carolina and started guiding river trips, kayaking, and rafting trips, and in the summer, I'd go out to the Kern River in California and guide me in a couple of buddies and for like four years, we did that while we were in college.
3:54
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, it was started river.
3:57
[SPEAKER_02]: It was all about the rivers.
3:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And then, you know, graduated university went out to California for another river season and then ended up moving to Montana.
4:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And then just kind of following the path for for 20 years of where where the world was going to take me.
4:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And so yeah, it was in Montana.
4:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And then working at a university there running the AmeriCorps program.
4:21
[SPEAKER_02]: and then would go to Alaska in the summers and guide mountain guide and sea kayak guiding.
4:27
[SPEAKER_02]: And then in 2007, I started teaching with Nose.
4:35
[SPEAKER_02]: So that was probably, yeah, three or four years in between those two.
4:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
4:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And then from Nose, you ended up where you currently are.
4:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, yes.
4:46
[SPEAKER_02]: So with those, you know, I was one of the lucky instructors.
4:49
[SPEAKER_02]: I got work right off the bat and worked was able to work all over the world where you know, a lot of nose folks could stuck it in the Rockies are in Utah or somewhere, but I was lucky.
5:00
[SPEAKER_02]: And I got to work at all the nose bases and at the same time I started working with another company called World Challenge Expositions out of Australia.
5:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And so as we do, you know, as a contract employee, put in your schedule together, so I would go down to Australia and I helped run the training department down there for this company.
5:19
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we would train all of the instructors on taking these high school groups to different countries around the world.
5:27
[SPEAKER_02]: And so between world challenge and nose, I put my schedule together for roughly 10 years.
5:34
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I didn't live anywhere in it, pay rent.
5:36
[SPEAKER_02]: I was in my 20s.
5:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, it was leading trips around the planet like I had a truck and Idaho and like some stuff But and then in 2014 I was like, okay, I think you know, I'm going to try this this different lifestyle And so I moved back to North Carolina and was teaching at a university there teaching outdoor education and And it upstarted my own company and so we took off.
6:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there
6:04
[SPEAKER_02]: That's provided a lot of balance over the last 10 years, you know, being able to live somewhere, and then be able to go and work in the field as well.
6:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's really great.
6:15
[SPEAKER_01]: So this episode is not really about guiding.
6:19
[SPEAKER_01]: It's more about adventure travel, but it's always fun when you meet somebody who somehow is like, I made it happen.
6:26
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I got the outdoor.
6:29
[SPEAKER_01]: career and I made it work and I'm still going and so many people Seth, they envy that.
6:37
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, they're like, oh, man.
6:39
[SPEAKER_01]: I've got I've got my cube farm job or I've got this job or that job and I I would do anything to be able to have more of an adventure focused, but you know, we all make her decisions and it's not that there's a right way in a wrong way
6:52
[SPEAKER_01]: but I will say it's fun to talk to someone like you.
6:55
[SPEAKER_01]: You've been all over the world forever now and led so many trips and had so many experiences with so many amazing people I'm sure that's your super cool man.
7:05
[SPEAKER_02]: yeah it's been a wild ride and it's been very profound you know and lots of growth lots of transformation for my guess but also for myself you know and human development and thinking about life in general you know it's a it's an adventure travel was such a catalyst to to growth and learning and into becoming a better human right
7:28
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure.
7:28
[SPEAKER_02]: I often, you know, we talk to, you know, we live in the Gunnison Valley here and there's it's full of guides and doing things and I'm like, well, why do you do it, you know, and what's your motivation behind it?
7:40
[SPEAKER_02]: And so my own personal thought is that, you know, we have these experiences they should be.
7:46
[SPEAKER_02]: They should lead us to becoming a better human, right?
7:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, you know, some of my neighbors and other folks will be like, well, we're going to go ski in Iceland and like, all right, well, why?
7:59
[SPEAKER_02]: What do you do?
8:00
[SPEAKER_02]: What's it for?
8:00
[SPEAKER_02]: For recreation, for recreation of yourself and your clients, but surely there's a greater mission involved.
8:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
8:09
[SPEAKER_02]: You know?
8:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And so what we do now with our company is, it's a mix of education and adventure travel, right?
8:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Showing people different lives, different lifestyles around the world and helping shift their perspective on what it means to be alive on this planet.
8:27
[SPEAKER_02]: through adventure travel, right?
8:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Because it takes people out of the comfort zone and test folks and yeah, all other reasons behind it.
8:34
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's an amazing, amazing platform for change.
8:41
[SPEAKER_01]: If people open for it, you know, it's personal change for the people that go on the trips, but it's also cultural impact in the places to which you go, right?
8:52
[SPEAKER_02]: very much so yeah I mean we make a lot of change on the ground with local people and yeah within you're within the guests and ourselves and yeah it's just a it's an experience right and it has a lot of potential to be a transformational experience if facilitated the right way
9:13
[SPEAKER_01]: well for sure and I've talked to so many guests who've done extensive travel and they all come back to the same thing which is people are just really good people almost without exception no matter where you go
9:25
[SPEAKER_01]: You know you find out you have so much in common and all of the the fear mongering and talk about how dangerous it might be and these people are going to mug you and you're going to get you know all that kind of stuff They're like yeah, there are a few bad characters out there like there are here right Yeah, and but people are generally just wonderful wonderful humans that that just want to interact and give and enjoy a good conversation and have fun and
9:54
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
9:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And you are someone who's done enough travel to no better.
9:59
[SPEAKER_01]: So what could you tell us more about that?
10:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, it's, I think it's all about perspective, right?
10:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And you're perceived risk versus actual risk.
10:08
[SPEAKER_02]: And so for example, like I have a friend who is like, wow, aren't you nervous going to all of these places with, you know, potentially dangerous humans?
10:19
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, my question to them
10:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, you know, we live in a country that allows guns.
10:25
[SPEAKER_02]: That allows people to be able to carry guns.
10:27
[SPEAKER_02]: No other place in the planet allows that.
10:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Surely there might be an exception.
10:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Places that we go, nobody is carrying weapons for offense or defense, right?
10:40
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it's all about perspective.
10:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, it goes back to, I'm like a bit of a spiritual philosophy of like, how you perceive,
10:48
[SPEAKER_02]: the world.
10:49
[SPEAKER_02]: And how do you perceive yourself in the world?
10:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you envision the world as a friendly place or a dangerous place?
10:55
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you get stuck on this idea of like, wow, it's the world's out to get me, then it's a little bit of a hindrance in your potential development, right?
11:07
[SPEAKER_02]: And so if people can snap into a different perspective and mind frame, they start seeing the world differently.
11:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, hmm.
11:19
[SPEAKER_01]: That's good.
11:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, hey, you just mentioned that you're a little jet lagged because you just got back on it from another big trip Nepal, right?
11:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yep.
11:29
[SPEAKER_01]: What were you doing in Nepal?
11:31
[SPEAKER_02]: So this was a trip with our company, the crew, and a project, and so it was the 21-day trip, and so the crew and the projects, all about leveraging travel to drive positive social change.
11:42
[SPEAKER_02]: So the first three days of the trip are for accommodation purposes, we go out, we support this village out north of Kathmandu.
11:51
[SPEAKER_02]: And so in this village, tourism is a brand new
12:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Outers of the village and the community to like talk about different solutions for sustainable tourism development and I've been working on in this community for 15 years my first time in the pause 2010 And so we know a lot of the the people really well We have strong relationships and so they want to bring more tourism So we bring our guests there.
12:23
[SPEAKER_02]: We talk about this sustainable tourism development and then we talk about their lifestyle as well, right?
12:29
[SPEAKER_02]: And so
12:31
[SPEAKER_02]: this village is very much the old world, right?
12:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Like they don't have technology.
12:35
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, they're starting to have some things, but it's a lot of people.
12:39
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, that are farmers, that live simply.
12:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we bring our guests from the states and from the developing the developed world there and talk about what it means to be alive and to be human.
12:51
[SPEAKER_02]: So we facilitate wisdom circles as we call it.
12:56
[SPEAKER_02]: And so for people to answer or ask and answer questions, freely about what your lives are like, right?
13:02
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, yeah, that's good.
13:03
[SPEAKER_02]: The villagers asking, will however you empower
13:09
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, we're just trading information and trading stories.
13:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And so part of that theory is, you know, looking at a capitalistic United States in 2025 and seeing our potential pitfalls, right, and how we're becoming disconnected from humanity.
13:29
[SPEAKER_02]: And then looking at the Napoli culture and seeing how they're very much tied into it.
13:34
[SPEAKER_02]: More so than we are.
13:35
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'll use this example of like, you know, a lot of our kids here have the nicest new skis and new bikes and, you know, a lot of amenities that are fingertips, but yet a lot of them and us are struggling with mental health, right?
13:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And so our village and Nepal, like people don't have any monetary assets, but they have
13:56
[SPEAKER_02]: simplicity.
13:57
[SPEAKER_02]: They have real human tasks at hand, you know, not to say ours aren't, but there, you know, what is the value of going to get water for two hours a day with your best friend?
14:07
[SPEAKER_02]: What does that have on your overall experience in life, right?
14:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And so the idea is that we have a lot to learn from each other about.
14:15
[SPEAKER_02]: how we can coexist.
14:17
[SPEAKER_02]: And so the first couple days of the trip are all about that.
14:19
[SPEAKER_02]: And then on this specific trip, we went to the Everest region in the Kumbu.
14:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And we tracked the three paths route.
14:29
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we got pretty lucky, Kurt.
14:32
[SPEAKER_02]: We flew, we took the last flight from Kathmandu to Lukla.
14:37
[SPEAKER_02]: I was going to say you're pushing the season there, so the weather's changing the Himalaya very fast.
14:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Really.
14:44
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a good buddy in Manali who told me that the snow line is rising a thousand meters annually.
14:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And so the what's happening, the Indian Ocean, all the weather's changing in the ocean, right?
14:55
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it's bringing typhoons faster and
14:59
[SPEAKER_02]: in different seasons than normally.
15:02
[SPEAKER_02]: So typically in October, November, December, it's dry and sunny.
15:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we had a typhoon typhoon come in, but we luckily got the last flight in the Lugla.
15:12
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm so we landed in Lugla and then tracked in the rain for four days in the airport closed for those four days after.
15:19
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we didn't have any traffic behind this, which was great.
15:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And then like
15:27
[SPEAKER_02]: It was blue bird for the remainder of the trip, but that rain had brought two feet of snow up at higher in the mountains.
15:36
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it was, the route was very challenging for folks.
15:41
[SPEAKER_02]: We climbed this one, peak chicken gray, and that usually it would take like six or seven hours from the village up to the summit and back, and it took us like nine to 10 hours.
15:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And people were just walked, you know.
15:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's tough when this nose deep.
15:56
[SPEAKER_01]: It's probably heavy too.
15:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it was heavy.
15:59
[SPEAKER_02]: It was heavy.
16:00
[SPEAKER_01]: That makes it hard, too.
16:01
[SPEAKER_02]: The sun's out, so it's melting the snow.
16:03
[SPEAKER_02]: So you have mud snow and every step that you could take your slide back a little bit and just expanding more energy and getting some burned as well.
16:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And so yeah, it was a wonderful trip.
16:15
[SPEAKER_02]: We were supposed to go over a pass called the Komala.
16:19
[SPEAKER_02]: That was closed by the National Park because of some people went missing up there.
16:24
[SPEAKER_02]: So we went down and around.
16:27
[SPEAKER_02]: got to base camp and ended up sending four people back via chopper and then yeah crossed two two passes that were above 18,000 feet and climbed a couple more big mountains and the group was phenomenal.
16:41
[SPEAKER_02]: We worked hard but didn't get worked and that's how how transformation occurs you know from extreme adversities is something that can really help with with human development and so
16:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think all of our groups feeling accomplished.
16:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I said, nine of the group is from the Gunnison Valley, local people in Crestabute in Gunnison.
17:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we're going to have a potluck and a couple weeks and kind of debrief the trip and revisit and maybe put a slideshow together.
17:12
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, it was really good.
17:13
[SPEAKER_02]: It was a good one.
17:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I sound so cool.
17:17
[SPEAKER_01]: So many things come to mind.
17:18
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we started with the cultural impact.
17:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And you said something about the value of a couple of people going two hours to get water for the day.
17:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And I took me back to Kenya.
17:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Because that's what went on there, too, of course, when we were in Kenya years ago.
17:33
[SPEAKER_01]: But the one thing that I noticed in Kenya, there is no technology.
17:38
[SPEAKER_01]: So what did people do?
17:39
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, they'd like the lanterns and they'd sing songs, they'd talk to each other, they'd tell stories, they'd laugh, your circle of wisdom was every night.
17:49
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
17:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I do.
17:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Every night.
17:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember one evening, especially some of the neighborhood kids, I have their not, they're not on their phones, they're not playing video games, they don't have movies to watch, they don't have electricity, they don't have anything like that at all.
18:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And so what they did is they built a charcoal fire in this little
18:08
[SPEAKER_01]: can and they put field corn around it to roast the corn and then as as darkness fell the gathered around that that fire and one of these little kids I don't know how you know what the age of this gal was but she started playing a drum better than anyone I know can play a drum and
18:27
[SPEAKER_01]: She was young, you know, but that's what they did.
18:29
[SPEAKER_01]: She started banging the drum.
18:30
[SPEAKER_01]: They started singing together.
18:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And they stood around that fire while the corn rose to it and beat that drum and sang the most amazing songs.
18:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're talking about kids that were probably like four years old up through maybe 12 years old.
18:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just thought, okay, why, how do you put a price on that?
18:49
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you, how do you measure the value of that type of interaction that they have all the time?
18:54
[SPEAKER_02]: That's right, I don't want to mean it's real world, it's real human connection, you know, which I feel like we are getting away from in the US and then, you know, more of the developed global north, if you will, real connection, real ceremony, real thoughts about right to passages and how, where are we going as a species, right?
19:17
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think, you know, with this whole technology
19:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Like we're a jeopardy of losing a lot of ideas and practical application of being a human being and how we connect to each other, how we connect to ourselves, how we connect to place and being very wrapped up in our phone world or computer world.
19:40
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's a, it's a really interesting time, you know, I used to, you know, I've been working in Nepal for 15 years.
19:47
[SPEAKER_02]: And the development that's happening there is tremendous.
19:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Like when I first went 2010, you would go in the tea house in the kitchen and everybody be drinking, rock, sea, smoking cigarettes, dancing, singing, and
20:00
[SPEAKER_02]: My former business partner was like, wow, are they really blown away that, you know, Americans are all on their phones now and I was like, well, everybody in Nepal is on your phone now, you know, so it's changed dramatically the culture there as well.
20:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, ours also, but now everybody is seeing all the whole world, you know, everybody has access to information that's going on on the planet.
20:25
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's interesting, so I was just before an pause, leading an expedition on the Silk Road in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.
20:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Gosh, that could be the most thought-provoking history on the planet, where the East means, right?
20:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it just reaffirms that was the beginning of globalization.
20:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, and like how, you know, people from Hendustan were trading with the Afghans and the Uzbeks and the Turkmen and then that, you know, Jenghis Khan's empire came over and it was just, it was the trading route between East and West.
20:57
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it's just, again, like a reaffirmation that, that.
21:03
[SPEAKER_02]: We will continue to be globalized as long and that there's ups and downs and empires and histories and that, yeah, it's just history repeats itself, you know.
21:16
[SPEAKER_01]: That's funny.
21:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Seth, I used to think, maybe I was born a hundred, maybe a hundred and twenty years to late.
21:22
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I would have really fit in a hundred and twenty years ago.
21:25
[SPEAKER_01]: But then I started looking at what was going on, you know, the wars with the Native Americans, even the Civil War, you know, and the technology, the disease, the illnesses that now we just kind of laugh about because we have cures, simple cures, preventative cures, you know, and I started looking at all of that, and I thought, huh, we forget sometimes that
21:51
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of benefit that we've reaped from the industrialization and the technology and all that kind of stuff.
22:00
[SPEAKER_01]: It's easy to look at all the problems that come with it.
22:03
[SPEAKER_01]: right and we have problems that come with it big ones that we're going to have to overcome but that said so many benefits i mean think about what you do for a living you couldn't have done that a hundred years ago not being able to travel the world with groups and have these these cultural exchanges an amazing amazing travel i it wouldn't have been possible it's true i mean you look at my grandmother
22:29
[SPEAKER_02]: My great-grandmother, my grandmother, my mother, I'll grew up on a farm and rural North Carolina, right?
22:35
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's lives were very similar, right?
22:38
[SPEAKER_02]: And then now you have this generation where the world is your oyster.
22:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Of course, of course, we have, I have innate privileges that help me do that.
22:46
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, I mean, the world is globalized more than more than my grandmother would have ever expected.
22:53
[SPEAKER_02]: And so if we keep that trajectory going,
22:59
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like, oh, wow, we never thought that you could be on Mars or whatever.
23:08
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, that trajectory is sharp, it's hot, right?
23:13
[SPEAKER_01]: It is, you know, SpaceX is developing starship and for people that don't pay attention to it.
23:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't blame you, but if you're interested in it, you might be interested in this.
23:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, one of the ideas they have for it is not just interplanetary travel, but a way to get anywhere on Earth in 20 minutes.
23:29
[SPEAKER_02]: I've heard that.
23:30
[SPEAKER_02]: I was talking to my neighbor Kim over yesterday and we sat and kind of had a deep dive about about that.
23:36
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's yeah, anything is possible, right?
23:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's crazy.
23:42
[SPEAKER_02]: It's crazy.
23:44
[SPEAKER_01]: But think about that you could take a half-hour and go to Europe and have lunch and take a half-hour and get back to anywhere in the U.S.
23:52
[SPEAKER_01]: It would be like crazy.
23:53
[SPEAKER_01]: You could have a lunch break from work in Europe from the U.S. That's actually a thing that could happen.
24:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I believe it.
24:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
24:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Why not?
24:05
[SPEAKER_02]: It's all possible, but I go back to your point about...
24:09
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, the positives of our community.
24:12
[SPEAKER_02]: So me and my neighbor were talking yesterday.
24:14
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, on this trip in Nepal, every one of the guests got sick, right?
24:20
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
24:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's, and so the question beg the question was like, well, why aren't you getting sick, Seth?
24:27
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, and we talked about it and talked about the microbiome, you know, from adventure traveling for the last six months, you pick up different germs all over the planet, right?
24:38
[SPEAKER_02]: and it can build your immune system in your microbiome.
24:42
[SPEAKER_02]: But we were talking about, well, why, what do you think all the guests are getting sick and it's because we come from such a place that's
24:50
[SPEAKER_02]: clean, you know, and it's sterile and terrible and it's easy, it's easy living, you know, generally speaking compared to a lot of, you know, countries that are still using human labor to build city walls and cities and like they were years, thousands of years ago, but it's interesting to think about about that when you take people to the global south and to developing more on this get worked.
25:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, in the more you travel, but probably the boronoculated you are, and the less you have to deal with it, although I'm sure it's still something you have to watch out for.
25:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey friends, I want to take a minute to tell you about campfire ranch.
25:33
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25:45
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25:59
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26:08
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26:18
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26:29
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26:35
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26:42
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26:44
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26:47
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26:53
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26:58
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27:02
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27:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
27:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you tell us a story?
27:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's hear one from your Silk Road experience for something that would connect us to what the experience was really like.
27:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so we spent 15 days in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.
27:28
[SPEAKER_02]: In the rear, like Uzbekistan, I think will be one of the top five travel destinations for Europeans in the next, in the next couple years, like the infrastructure is amazing, travel is easy, the food is organic and clean and the history is just absolutely incredible.
27:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we ended up crossing after our weekend Uzbekistan, we crossed the border into Turkmenistan.
27:53
[SPEAKER_02]: And so this was a different story than who's back to stingy.
27:57
[SPEAKER_02]: So Turkmenistan is primarily geographically, it's all a desert and they're wealthy and natural gas.
28:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And that shows in the two cities that we went to, one Mari and the other one's Ashkabat, which I'll get to that.
28:12
[SPEAKER_02]: But the infrastructure of the country
28:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Pretty poor.
28:18
[SPEAKER_02]: So we ended up taking a van from the border down south to the city of Maddie.
28:25
[SPEAKER_02]: I think we went like 150 kilometers, but it took eight hours in the road.
28:31
[SPEAKER_02]: It might be the worst roads I've ever experienced.
28:36
[SPEAKER_02]: So like huge ridge lines coming up in the middle of the roads.
28:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
28:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Half asphalt, half gravel, just.
28:45
[SPEAKER_02]: atrocious.
28:47
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we finally, one of the guests was like, so we should be there, right?
28:52
[SPEAKER_02]: And we're like, we've got three more hours and just like, that's all crushing.
28:58
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll send you some pictures of really interesting place.
29:00
[SPEAKER_02]: So we finally get to this city of
29:05
[SPEAKER_02]: is a massive city made out of primarily marble, white marble, huge buildings, like bigger than vakes, and there's like a small population of people.
29:17
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was very, it was very, very interesting to say the least there.
29:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And so the subsequent day after that, we went and visited this ancient civilization called Goan or Tepe, which is 5,000 years old.
29:31
[SPEAKER_02]: So the very time line is the ancient Egyptian,
29:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Kingdom.
29:36
[SPEAKER_02]: And yeah, but there are no humans there.
29:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And like no UNESCO, no archeologists.
29:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's just like artifacts everywhere, pot, like he looks sitting out on the walls, like bronze statues.
29:51
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a horse.
29:52
[SPEAKER_02]: skeleton on the ground, like an incredible glimpse into human history.
29:59
[SPEAKER_02]: They are even pots that are local guides that had some like transformational kind of medicines and them, almost like not Ayahuasca, but
30:10
[SPEAKER_02]: some other different ingredients that the shamans were using.
30:13
[SPEAKER_02]: So they found the remnants of these.
30:15
[SPEAKER_02]: So anyways, we went to this place.
30:17
[SPEAKER_02]: We went to the ancient kingdom of Merve, which was once the largest city in the world until Jing is consacted.
30:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's 3,000 years ago.
30:26
[SPEAKER_03]: Wow.
30:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Wild, incredible history man.
30:30
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you love adventure travel, it's history is a kind of a part of that and understanding where you're going and you're kind of perceiving
30:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And so then we drive to Ashkabat, which is the capital city, and this is the real, the most interesting place.
30:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's, you know, it was like a city built for, like it could support millions and millions of people.
30:52
[SPEAKER_02]: And there were almost no humans there.
30:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Like so, what?
30:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Huge city, you know, with these buildings, and they have like the largest, some of the largest sites in the planet, like the largest Ferris wheel in the world is in Ashkabat.
31:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And, yeah, it was kind of like an midnight shaman on film with like an intro, like a weird plot of like, no one's growing old here or something like, wow.
31:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And another kind of interesting thing is that you're not allowed to have a car in Ash, goodbye, unless it's white.
31:27
[SPEAKER_02]: So everything in the city is white.
31:39
[SPEAKER_02]: In between Iran and Afghanistan, and you just have this city that's like kind of haunted from that's crazy.
31:47
[SPEAKER_02]: You have to wear white sunglasses, too.
31:49
[SPEAKER_02]: We asked the question, we might have to do we need to be wearing white clothes and they're like now you're good.
31:55
[SPEAKER_02]: That's crazy.
31:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, such an interesting country.
31:59
[SPEAKER_02]: It's highly, like the big high level of security and like their skeptical of Westerners, there's almost no tourism at all.
32:08
[SPEAKER_02]: I think like 4,000 tourists a year and they're mainly from the central Asian region.
32:14
[SPEAKER_02]: So incredible place.
32:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I probably never got back to that to third-minute standing in, but wow, what an experience.
32:22
[SPEAKER_02]: All right.
32:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, very interesting.
32:26
[SPEAKER_02]: So then we went back to use back to stand and then I ended up flying to Nepal after that.
32:30
[SPEAKER_02]: And that felt like I was like, it's going to be good to be back in Kevin do.
32:36
[SPEAKER_01]: So your hub's gotch on a lower the world.
32:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you?
32:39
[SPEAKER_01]: How are you?
32:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to ask if you have culture shock.
32:42
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you've gotten used to a lot of the cultural shifts that you see as you travel.
32:45
[SPEAKER_01]: But how do you manage it?
32:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Great question.
32:47
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't, I mean, I don't
32:49
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't have much culture shock these days at all earlier than before.
32:54
[SPEAKER_02]: You've seen it before.
32:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I've been there before, I've been, you know, into my, but with that being said, I'm always reflecting on myself like I've been abroad six months.
33:05
[SPEAKER_02]: relatively consecutively this this year in the last six months and constantly reflecting on myself interpersonally and yeah like almost forgetting my community back home and then like all right how are we how are we show up and live here like what what's going on back at home you know so that it's not like it's not a reverse culture shock but it just take a little bit to like
33:28
[SPEAKER_02]: ground, regroup and kind of reenter into different places, you know, but having the expectation that it's going to happen and knowing, knowing about the process, that brings the first amount of awareness, you know, like, okay, there, you know, you might have some issues going here there, but at this point in the game that, I don't, I'm not experiencing much culture shock because of
33:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think it's harder to come home for me personally because when you go somewhere you expect there will be a difference and maybe you've studied a little bit about the culture and it's like, oh, there it is.
34:03
[SPEAKER_01]: I see it.
34:04
[SPEAKER_01]: This is it, you know, this is what I'm getting for and then you come back home.
34:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I wasn't ready.
34:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know, and a lot of times when you're traveling, you're not going deep with folks, really, like it takes a lot of intimate relationships, but you're having it's more surface level connection, it can be than the deep dives of intimacy with your partner back home or your family, you know, things are in a different
34:31
[SPEAKER_02]: kind of a different setting, right?
34:33
[SPEAKER_02]: We have this expectation of this curated different environment that you're traveling in and then you're going to come home back to your quote on quote real life and like, yeah, you show up differently, you know.
34:47
[SPEAKER_01]: So which ones more real to you with all the travel you do?
34:51
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean they're both very much real, but they require me to show up in different ways.
34:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, so when I'm on my way to support my family, you know, dive into intimate relationships more and show up from my community where, I mean, in on trips as well, you got to support your clients and support your team.
35:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And, but it's, it's just a little bit of a different, a different role.
35:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Also, then now you have to switch hats and know what you're doing.
35:21
[SPEAKER_02]: That's right, and sometimes like especially with like enough, you know, younger people that are traveling around the world, it helps to have some going to talk to you about that like traveling is, you know, you're going from different world to different world, you know, so earlier this year I was in Subtarian Africa leading a trip and that led it back to Europe and then over to Ladakh and Pakistan and then, yeah, back to Crestabute and then to Silk Road and then to Nepal and now we're back.
35:50
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's a very, very much a changing of realities.
35:55
[SPEAKER_02]: But self-care is key and everything, you know, drinking enough water, eating enough food, resting, exercise, stress management, all of those, you know, or you have to, you gotta manage yourself.
36:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Well,
36:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, share a story with us if you would about crossing one of the high passes on this trip into Paul.
36:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so, yeah, the first pass on this trip got shut down because it too much snow and then so, yeah, headed up to Gordek's ship and then crossed the Cholapas.
36:28
[SPEAKER_02]: So typically, when there's not a lot of snow,
36:32
[SPEAKER_02]: There are dirt trails, right?
36:34
[SPEAKER_02]: And you can move up those trails efficiently and effectively, but with this new snow, you have new trails.
36:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And so typically, the people from one side of the pass will go break the trail up to the pass, and vice versa.
36:47
[SPEAKER_02]: The people on the other side of the pass will go break the trail up on that side.
36:52
[SPEAKER_02]: And these people are usually young fit and a poly people.
36:56
[SPEAKER_02]: And so they're going straight up.
36:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Right?
36:58
[SPEAKER_02]: They're not one of these fixed packs, right?
37:00
[SPEAKER_02]: So when we were crossing, I think those runs a lot past.
37:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Usually the paths is kind of a long switchback that takes you, you know, up to the past gently, but this was not the case on this trip.
37:12
[SPEAKER_02]: These paths, these trails were like pretty straight up.
37:15
[SPEAKER_02]: You would go climb for like a hundred meters and then stop and then it would go this way and then
37:26
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, and in Nepal and in the Himalayas the way to get there is going slow.
37:30
[SPEAKER_02]: So we say, bestaddy, bestaddy job goes slowly to go fast and, you know, I always just try to reinforce self care, right?
37:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Like eat enough food, drink enough water, and move slowly.
37:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Those are what's going to make us successful, right?
37:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And yes, some people naturally grab a hole to that and then take
37:56
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, fit enough to walk fast and then they get humbled.
37:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
38:01
[SPEAKER_02]: That happened like we have, you know, I had a bunch of like mountain people on this last trip and, you know, some of the one of the guys was, you know, like, I don't wear sunscreen and then sure enough the first day got like second degree burns on his nose.
38:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah.
38:21
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I mean,
38:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, the Himalayas will humble you, you know, and then but not just humble you, but also show you
38:31
[SPEAKER_02]: The cultural side, which is so, there's so much love in Nepal and the people are wonderful, but it's a different world for folks, it's challenging for people, you know, but that's part of it.
38:42
[SPEAKER_02]: It's all about what reinforces the learning and the transformation.
38:46
[SPEAKER_02]: So we got over both passes, you know, relatively effectively and efficiently and then, but yeah, we had a couple really long days in the mountains, which I love, which is the best, you know?
39:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's where people dig deep and learn something about themselves.
39:03
[SPEAKER_01]: That's why they come back changed, right?
39:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly right.
39:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
39:06
[SPEAKER_02]: They do something that they never thought they could do.
39:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And they change the perspective.
39:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Ah, so cool.
39:14
[SPEAKER_02]: So good.
39:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, tell us a little bit about the Karina project.
39:20
[SPEAKER_01]: This is your company that you started with Nicole, right?
39:23
[SPEAKER_02]: When the call, yep, so Nicole was, you know, she we've been friends since 2007.
39:27
[SPEAKER_02]: She was my first big boss at knows when
39:31
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, we were in our 20s and yeah, we started dating a, you know, three years ago.
39:36
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I have a long list of past guests and we had some guests come to us and say, hey, what's your appetite for going back to the Himalayas?
39:45
[SPEAKER_02]: And we thought about it were like, well, what's the most important thing?
39:48
[SPEAKER_02]: And she's been a mountain guide for 20 plus years and an outdoor educator.
39:52
[SPEAKER_02]: She's runs an outdoor-ed company in California called Positive Adventures.
39:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Also,
39:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And so they work with the schools to teach leadership and life skills and things like that.
40:05
[SPEAKER_02]: But we were like, yeah, let's go back.
40:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, what's the most important thing?
40:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, why do we love these trips?
40:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we landed on connection.
40:14
[SPEAKER_02]: So facilitating connection to our self, connection to place, connection to the local people.
40:19
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like the local people in Nepal are just the most lovely humans on the planet.
40:24
[SPEAKER_02]: And we love that so much.
40:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Like we just love being with them and learning about their lives and songs and speaking Nepali
40:34
[SPEAKER_02]: all of it and so that was kind of the impetus for coronavirus project and then my last company was very much mass tourism and right like we it was very much clients and clients out only cared about revenue blah blah blah and there's so much magic that lies in international adventure travel
40:52
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it's like, let's not be like, you know, this mass tourism, my last company, and let's, let's do something that unlocks that magic.
41:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's tap into the connection, connective piece of it.
41:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we started the corona project and within, you know, the first couple months, we got 15 people signed up to go to Everest region.
41:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And then last year, we ran a Nepal spiritual adventure.
41:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we did yoga,
41:18
[SPEAKER_02]: and we talked a lot about Buddhism at this camp that overlooks the whole Himalaya from Montesluit to Everest and then we hiked in Langtang for seven days.
41:28
[SPEAKER_02]: And then this year we ran a river expedition on the Xan scar river in Ladakh and that's a good story out to have to tell you that.
41:37
[SPEAKER_02]: And then this last and applause are for Trip.
41:40
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, wow, I still consult with some of the other companies I've worked with in the past.
41:47
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, Corona projects, it's an amazing, it's great, and it's a way for people to have a more meaningful experience that's facilitated in our style, which is very much an educational style and of
42:04
[SPEAKER_02]: personal development and growth, not just like a regular tour company where it's just, you know, the guy doesn't focus on that.
42:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And there were my focus on it differently.
42:16
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, it's good.
42:17
[SPEAKER_02]: So we're looking at doing that.
42:18
[SPEAKER_02]: We've got a whole bunch of trips on the books for next year, some, um, Kilimanjaro trips.
42:24
[SPEAKER_02]: I've been a river guide for 20 plus years.
42:26
[SPEAKER_02]: And so looking at running the Carnelly River
42:31
[SPEAKER_02]: going to North East India and running some rivers there in the Brama putra and then back to Nepal at the end of the year as well.
42:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And you have a real philanthropic focus as well, not just experiential with the people, but you actually are trying to make a difference for inner city kids.
42:52
[SPEAKER_01]: That's right about.
42:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, yes, so we partner with non-profits, NGOs, and every place that we work, and we support those NGOs.
43:00
[SPEAKER_02]: And so Nicole, she worked with big city mountaineers for many years and actually helped found the Minnesota branch of that.
43:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And so our guests, we give our guests an option to raise money for big city mountaineers.
43:14
[SPEAKER_02]: but then also to contribute to our local nonprofits in the ground.
43:17
[SPEAKER_02]: So in Nepal, we work with two nonprofits.
43:20
[SPEAKER_02]: One has got the mom and that is run by a lady in the village where we work.
43:25
[SPEAKER_02]: And so she teaches the local women about recycling and upcycling.
43:29
[SPEAKER_02]: So she pays them to collect plastic and then they weave that plastic into products.
43:35
[SPEAKER_02]: like toiletry bags and laptop cases and we buy them from her and then we sell we're selling them in the Gunnison Valley.
43:42
[SPEAKER_02]: So we're creating a circular economy there.
43:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And then in Tanzania, we're working with an NGO called Make a Difference Now that's all about educational programming for rural youth.
43:57
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we take our guests, we talk about the nonprofit, we do some projects, and then we go on an adventure.
44:05
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's combining an adventure with some real world humanitarian connective pieces.
44:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I like that.
44:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's it.
44:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I've said it many times, I continue to say it, adventure matters, and when I say get out there and have some fun, I believe it's transformative, even if you just do small things in your own neighborhood, in your backyard, you know, with your family, with your community, I mean, all those things are transformational, your health gets transformed, it gives you something to look forward to and to plan about and to invest energy into it.
44:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Just isolated as it's its own standalone thing, but I really believe in doing adventure in a way that makes an impact in the world in the positive way and it's not hard to do.
44:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I talked to so many people who as soon as they start traveling they see needs.
45:01
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, wonderful.
45:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Or as they do some big event, they realize I'm getting actually quite a bit of attention for this.
45:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm getting press and I could promote something for somebody, you know, that that's making a difference in the world.
45:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Or it's like, oh, well, I love to hike these trails.
45:19
[SPEAKER_01]: What if I hike them with some of the middle school kids in my community that could use some time moving and getting away from their black screen and interacting as a group?
45:30
[SPEAKER_01]: I just love it how many different ways that adventure leads people to making a positive impact.
45:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And if all they ever did was just meet people who love the same sport, that'd be fantastic.
45:45
[SPEAKER_01]: but we can go and do so much more.
45:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think it's really cool that you're doing that.
45:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, man.
45:54
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I think at some point when you you adventure enough, you start realizing that it's your your a piece of the team, right?
46:03
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you sure you can go on adventures by yourself, but do that.
46:07
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd like to go with people and like get to know people and talk to people and have objectives together, right?
46:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And so at some point you start realizing that it's not about you per se, that it's how you can support everybody else.
46:19
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it's a metaphor of
46:21
[SPEAKER_02]: looking at the world, like how are we going to serve the people where we are recreating, where we are adventuring?
46:27
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not about us, what about the other people?
46:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Don't be selfish, you know?
46:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Take care of others.
46:34
[SPEAKER_02]: And then just be in a service and on practicing gratitude and adventurous like, yeah, there's so much, there's such a metaphor for becoming a good person,
46:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I think just climbing one of those high passes if nothing else can help you learn patience.
46:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's going to help you later in life.
46:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And you're going to get to times when you know you feel like blowing your top.
47:00
[SPEAKER_01]: You just like, no, I've learned patience now.
47:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I can actually help this situation instead of escalating it.
47:06
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
47:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
47:09
[SPEAKER_01]: It's it's super cool.
47:11
[SPEAKER_01]: So if somebody has never traveled
47:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, let's say that their medium fitness, they're like, well, I don't even know what I'm capable of, but I can do some things, you know.
47:22
[SPEAKER_01]: What would be a great place for them to start if they came to you and said, Seth, where should I go?
47:27
[SPEAKER_01]: What should I do?
47:28
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to experience something.
47:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, I would say.
47:33
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it really depends on what they're up for, you know, and so it involves a conversation of, you know, some people that never left the United States that don't have any desire to leave the United States.
47:46
[SPEAKER_02]: So I would say you need some kind of desire to grow somewhere else and then why would you want to go?
47:53
[SPEAKER_02]: What's the point, you know?
47:55
[SPEAKER_02]: But go and slow, you can go anywhere if you go slow and you take good care yourself.
48:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Right?
48:01
[SPEAKER_02]: You can climb, that's how you climb big mountains.
48:04
[SPEAKER_02]: You go slow, right?
48:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And be in patient with yourself.
48:07
[SPEAKER_02]: But that's like what I'm trained in is like facilitating these trips for folks and helping set people up for success, you know?
48:14
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we have multiple trips at the end of next year.
48:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Some trips in Nepal that are like we have a seven-day hike.
48:23
[SPEAKER_02]: which is a perfect first hike for folks in the Himalayas.
48:28
[SPEAKER_02]: There are some big days, but it's manageable.
48:32
[SPEAKER_02]: We took a group of seven last year and they had some people would never, you know, they weren't hikers.
48:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we trained them up on here's how to be successful in the Himalayas.
48:45
[SPEAKER_01]: right and they did it and their minds blown changing lives now they know how to do it and now they know how to do it right which is pretty cool you know you were talking about the uh sandscar river you said you said I'm gonna tell you about that but we never got back to it so before we run out of time I'm gonna hear that story yeah this is a good one so
49:06
[SPEAKER_02]: So I was in Europe, in London, I picked up a private group in the London and the very diverse group from Oliver, and we went to Swatini, formerly known as Swaziland.
49:17
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we did a five-day trek there, and then we also did this community immersion project where we worked at a neighborhood care point, as they're called, and helped
49:30
[SPEAKER_02]: they're like built for orphans and places where orphans can go to receive food and things like that because of HIV is such a high yeah because HIV is very prominent.
49:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Parents have been wiped out.
49:44
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what we're talking about.
49:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Fares have been wired out, y'all, try to be politically correct, it's just what it is.
49:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so anyways, we ran this trip, I go back to Paris, I ended up missing a flight.
49:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Now originally was going to fly to Don Salah to try to meet his holiness, the Dalalama, and then I was going to do a four-day motorbike trip from Don Salah up to Le, in northern India.
50:10
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I was knackered, I missed my flight in Paris, so I was like, I rebuked a flight directly to Le.
50:17
[SPEAKER_02]: fly to lay and like wake up the next day I'm like oh man my back is so sore what's going on the soft bed and I was there a week before the clients arrived and so at the same time
50:30
[SPEAKER_02]: I had, I had just heard that his holiness was in Zanskard, and I'm like, oh my god, he's here, like, good thing I came here.
50:38
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I was emailing with his team, and they were like, if you're in Le, you should come be blessed by the Del Ramah on Friday.
50:48
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, wow, that's incredible.
50:49
[SPEAKER_02]: OK.
50:50
[SPEAKER_02]: So,
50:51
[SPEAKER_02]: I had like four days to go, and I'm, you know, standing in this tea house, wake up again.
50:57
[SPEAKER_02]: My back is wicked sore.
50:59
[SPEAKER_02]: I go, I'm like, what is this?
51:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And I go out to breakfast and then just started raining sweat.
51:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm like, oh, wow.
51:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
51:07
[SPEAKER_02]: That's interesting.
51:08
[SPEAKER_02]: And at the same time, I started, I developed these two open source, one on my hip, and the other one on the inside of
51:18
[SPEAKER_02]: This is not good, Kurt.
51:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I was going to a lot of time in Sub-Jair and Africa.
51:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And I know what actual risks lie there.
51:27
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm like, OK, I think I have like a T.C.
51:29
[SPEAKER_02]: fly or a buy-off.
51:31
[SPEAKER_02]: So, but the fever was very intermittent.
51:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Like one day I'd be wicked sick with a high temperature and then I say, but I'm like, OK, I'm feeling great.
51:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And so,
51:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, ended up chatting with my co-instructor in Swatini's, like, made that looks like a tick bite.
51:45
[SPEAKER_02]: I think you have Africa tick bite fever, and so I went to meet the Dalai Lama.
51:51
[SPEAKER_02]: while this is all happening in like God blessed by him and we have that and then the day after that my clients arrive and they're from all over the world and we have this Zanscar River trip and so you know at the orientation meeting I'm like you know full transparency team like I've got this
52:11
[SPEAKER_02]: weird fever, I think I need to evak myself to Delhi, you know, and got to go to the tropical infectious disease ward.
52:18
[SPEAKER_02]: And so went back to the teahouse, looked for flights to Delhi, no flights.
52:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And the next day I was like a slept all day, 105 temperature.
52:27
[SPEAKER_02]: And on the river trip, we had three,
52:31
[SPEAKER_02]: uh we had a three-day drive to the put-in so i was like well i'm just gonna double up on these antibiotics luckily doxy cycling was the cure for aftb so i was like i'm gonna double up on these antibiotics and if we get to the put-in then and i'm dying i'll just ride back you know and so
52:51
[SPEAKER_02]: we drive to the put in three days and luckily, I was feeling strong, I was like, okay, this medicine's working.
52:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we put in on this tributary of this landscape on the Stalt River, and it's flat, breaded river.
53:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And all of our guests were from Indian Europe and they had some of them had never been on a river trip before.
53:10
[SPEAKER_02]: But it was the first two days where flat and we got to train them up.
53:14
[SPEAKER_02]: I was rowing, we had six paddlers.
53:17
[SPEAKER_02]: And then so we then we dropped into the Zanscar Gorge and it was like the highest, it was at Flash Flood Stage.
53:25
[SPEAKER_02]: And so no, we guys that I boat with there, some of my guys, they're like, you know, the most experienced boaters in the country of India.
53:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And they're like, we've never seen this river this big.
53:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And so are you having rafts or drift boats or what?
53:38
[SPEAKER_02]: We're in rafts, big rafts.
53:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, in rafts.
53:45
[SPEAKER_02]: But they're also building a road from leg to patom in the Caprio's Ansgar.
53:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we're added out and watching bulldozers like dropping in house size bulldozers into this river.
53:56
[SPEAKER_02]: And because of that, there were 10 new class five rapids on this series.
54:03
[SPEAKER_02]: It was game on and but we styled it and we kept everybody in the boats, all the boats up right and it was a highly adventurous.
54:11
[SPEAKER_02]: um expedition and then what yeah was it was absolutely incredible and then yeah it was taken the doxy cycle until the end and we dropped into the indistrover boated on the indistrover for a couple of days and then went back to LA and um yeah it was a really really incredible highly adventurous expedition where again the guest left being like damn that was mind blowing
54:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, life-changing, I get to imagine.
54:42
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, classified gets my attention.
54:45
[SPEAKER_01]: It really does.
54:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And of course, I was a kayaker, and it's different on a kayak than in a wrap, but you had kayakers with, yeah.
54:51
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that's, that's intense, dude.
54:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, big water, big Himalayan cold white water.
54:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Which is different than, you know, our class five here in the US, which is technical and more shallow, usually.
55:07
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, it was good to phenomenal phenomenal river corridor still wild, you know feels you know I feel like in this day and age it's harder and harder to find like wild places on on earth where You're just far away Yeah, right and this way I was a good one Hmm sounds like fun.
55:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you know what we're we're about out of time, but
55:34
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll bet you have a story for a something that maybe changed your life or changed the life of a client.
55:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Something that was like that stands out still in my memory.
55:44
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the, you know, an example of what can happen.
55:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I mean, I think you know, I've taken so many different people.
55:53
[SPEAKER_02]: from one place around the world, to another place around the world, and foraging the connections between different humans around the planet and having those be sustainable makes me happy.
56:08
[SPEAKER_02]: That's, it's a reason why I do what I do.
56:10
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I'll have friends that, like for example, when I was in Kathmandu this last time, I had like 10 different friend groups from different parts of life.
56:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I had a dear friend from Chilean Patagonia who I worked with at Nose, that was in Kathmandu, another guy from Aspen at a different time of life, another friend,
56:33
[SPEAKER_02]: From Boulder, Colorado, who had his other project, other Nepali friends from the US, it was just like this incredible web.
56:44
[SPEAKER_02]: of connections between humans from different parts of life, different parts of the planet.
56:49
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's really special, I think.
56:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it just makes me happy to have such an amazing community of humans in my life and around the world.
57:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's unique, Seth.
57:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Not many people can claim that.
57:03
[SPEAKER_01]: It's true.
57:03
[SPEAKER_01]: That's unique.
57:04
[SPEAKER_02]: It is unique.
57:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's what I think one of my superpowers, my ability to connect with people cross culturally
57:14
[SPEAKER_02]: From Rickshaw drivers to billionaires, you know, we're all human beings and we all have things in common and bringing people together to show them, to show us similarities and differences and explore and hope just be open, open up our hearts to being vulnerable and trusting each other and trying to provide a positive experience for people on the planet.
57:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it keeps moving, it's good, it's magical.
57:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, let's wrap it up there, I think that you have given us enough of a taste for what your lifestyle is like, but also for the experiences that people have with you and what the world is like, you know, all around the globe.
57:58
[SPEAKER_01]: I think maybe it'll just wet our appetites and maybe Seth maybe people will start connecting more like you're talking about and we'll realize we're not really so different.
58:09
[SPEAKER_01]: We can drop the ideologies, we can start getting along embracing our fellow humans, you know?
58:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's just all about the love, it's what I say, it's all about the love, that's why we're here.
58:20
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what it's exactly right, let's use adventure sports to make humanity better.
58:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone, like you're gonna say to make love another well.
58:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, no And make love also that's making the world Makein' love he's getting outside keep being good human beings You know, I love it.
58:41
[SPEAKER_01]: That's all right, but everybody out there make sure you find your thing and whatever it is get out there and have some fun Thanks, Kurt, you're the man.
58:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, thanks, Seth