Frontier and expedition travel guide
Plan an expedition-type trip for a frontier-feel adventure. Visit the Amazon, the Arctic, the Mongolian steppe or book a remote homestay
Fancy yourself a budding Bruce Parry or Ranulph Fiennes? Want to blaze a new trail into the Amazon, pull a sled across the Arctic or make a solo traverse of the Mongolian steppe?
In truth, there are few places left totally undiscovered.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t have a frontier-feel adventure.
You could
visit somewhere really remote – the icy vastness of Antarctica, the far north of Canada (perhaps arrange a stay with the local Inuit) or the little-known ‘Stans’ (sprawling Kazakhstan, mountainous Kyrgyzstan, hard-to-explore Turkmenistan…).
Or you could
set yourself an explorer-worthy challenge: the Plymouth-Dakar Rally sees entrants drive an old banger from the UK to Senegal, while the purpose of the Rickshaw Rally is to negotiate a golf-cart-style vehicle across India. Various other such challenges can be found worldwide.
Meeting
little-visited tribes is a fascinating experience, and the rise in popularity of homestays means you can spend time living amid an alien culture. Bed down with the indigenous Indians of the Ecuadorian Amazon, live alongside the tribes of the Omo Valley, Ethiopia, or stay in the stilted houses of Vietnamese elephant catchers.
Of course, there’s
nothing to stop you planning a bona fide expedition. All you need is a worthwhile aim, a lot of curiosity and a clear plan. Institutions such as the Royal Geographical Society offer
grants and funding to projects that have an inspiring goal – be that mapping a national park in Tanzania, conserving the rainforests of Borneo or researching climate change in the Arctic.
There are still unknown lands to explore, frontiers to find – and there’s no reason why (with some decent planning)
you can’t be the first to find them.