Further Reading
Top 10 trips for that frontier feeling
Set yourself a challenge, meet a remote tribe, do something different – there are still opens for would-be pioneers
- Plymouth-Dakar Rally – buy an old banger and attempt to drive it through Europe to Africa, negotiating the Spanish hinterland, Moroccan drivers and Saharan sands en route to Senegal.
- Omo Valley, Ethiopia – meet the remote tribes of this little-visited region of Africa, where women wear clay lip plates and men jump over cattle. Eye-opening and unique.
- Amazon Basin – wild trip opportunities abound: make an easy cruise from one of the big hubs in Brazil and Peru, or mount an exploration of the vast region’s remoter tributaries.
- Everest Base Camp, Nepal – hike in the footsteps of Edmund Hillary on the route to the foot of the planet's highest mountain. You won't be alone (this is now a popular trail), but the sense of scale and significance is still strong.
- East Timor – explore the forests and beaches of one of Asia’s newest countries, where tourists are few and far between.
- Antarctica – board an icebreaker and set sail for the untouched bays and bergs of the White Continent to feel like an ancient mariner. More travellers are visiting these days – but they're still massively outnumbered by penguins.
- Rickshaw Rally, India – brace yourself for a hair-raising ride: negotiate the roads of India in a flimsy three-wheeler on an alternative rally race (arranged throughout the year), where you self-drive a rickshaw across the subcontinent.
- Go overland in Africa – explore the continent in a sturdy truck (many tour operators offer tantalising, six-month-long itineraries) to link remote centres such as Timbuktu (Mali) and Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) with Nairobi (Kenya) and Cape Town (South Africa).
- Mount Roraima, Venezuela – climb this tepui (flat-topped peak), a Lost World that was the inspiration behind Conan Doyle’s atmospheric novel, and is home to unique wildlife
- Komodo Island, Indonesia – meet living dragons (which grow up to 3m long) on the sun-soaked islands of Indonesia; while you're there dive with manta rays and look out for megapodes birds.
