Armchair Explorer: Travel and Adventure Inspiration

It's hard to imagine Christmas without reindeer. But long before the beloved antlered animals were pulling Santa's sleigh, they were providing a way of life for indigenous peoples around the world, including the Nenets of Siberia’s Yamal Peninsula.

The Nenets of Siberia’s Yamal Peninsula are among the world’s oldest existing true nomads, making a living by herding reindeer in a place that literally translates to ‘the end of the world.’ And when Christine Amour-Levar learned that she had a third-degree connection to the tribe, she set about arranging an unprecedented trek to accompany them during their southward migration. Five months later, she was leading the largest - and only all-female - group that the Nenets had ever hosted, as they prepared to live, migrate, and journey alongside the tribe for a week.

Cozy up and get ready for an episode that celebrates this traditional symbol of the holidays in a decidedly non-traditional way...even including the occasional consumption of fresh reindeer blood.

FIND CHRISTINE

Follow Christine Amour-Levar on Instagram (@christineamourlevar) or visit her website at christineamourlevar.com for more incredible stories, photos of her expeditions, and more. You can also find her book, Wild Wisdom: Life Lessons From Leading Teams to Some of the Most Inhospitable Places in the World, online or at your local bookstore. Finally, we encourage you to learn more about her two nonprofit organizations, Women on a Mission and HER Planet Earth, where you can volunteer, donate - or even sign up for an upcoming expedition yourself!

SOCIAL

Share the show with your friends! Subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening, follow @armchairexplorerpodcast on Instagram and Facebook, check out Armchair Explorer's website, armchair-explorer.com, and learn more about APT Podcast Studios on their website at APTpodcaststudios.com.

CREDITS

This episode was produced by Armchair Productions. Find our other shows at armchair-productions.com. Jenny Allison wrote and produced this episode, along with host and producer Aaron Millar. Charles Tyrie did the audio editing and sound design. Theme music written by the artist Sweet Chap.

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Follow legendary mountaineer Rick Ridgeway on the most profound adventure of his life, a journey through the Himalayas in search of a lost friend.

In 1980, while climbing a remote peak in eastern Tibet, Rick and his three climbing partners were hit by a devastating avalanche. Rick survived but as he pulled himself out from under the snow, he saw his best friend Jonathan Wright lying on the ground not moving. He gave him mouth-to-mouth, he stroked his hair, he held him in his lap, but it wasn't enough. Jonathan died a few minutes later in his arms.

As he died, Rick made a promise. Thousands of miles away Jonathan's baby daughter, Asia, was taking her first steps. He promised he would be there for her and watch over her as she grew. 18 years later, Asia turned up on his doorstep with a favor to ask. She wanted to go find her father's grave to pay her respects, and she wanted to Rick to take her. This is the story of the adventure.

"A life worth living is lived at the edges where it is wild"

- Rick Ridgeway

But it is also the story of one of the greatest mountaineers of all time. Rick's latest book is called 'Life Lived Wild: Adventures at the Edge of the Map'. It is a beautiful memoir of a life lived to the full, immersed in the beauty and adventure of the natural world. Through this episode we will also hear some of Rick's other favorite tales of adventure and learn the wisdom those wild places have given him. More info at www.patagonia.com

Highlights include

• Getting lost while sailing across the Pacific Ocean in search of Tahiti
• Taking the famous newscaster Tom Brokaw to the summit of Mount Rainier with legendary climbers Yvonne Chouinard and Doug Tompkins.
• Nearly dying of hypothermia while kayaking across a frozen lake in Chilean Patagonia.
• Discovering what it feels like to be trapped in an avalanche facing certain death
• Following the journey of Rick and Asia through one of the most spectacular landscapes in the world
• Learning the wisdom of a life spent in the wild and how nature can be our greatest teacher

Join the Community

If you're enjoying the show please consider showing your support by buying me a pint! The show is free but it takes many hours to produce and almost all of it is done singlehandedly by me. The sponsors cover costs, but not my time. If you like what you hear and think that two episodes a month is worth the price of a single frosty beverage then please go to www.patreon.com/armchairexplorerpodcast.

From just $5 per month you will get you ad free episodes and access to our explorers community with exclusive travel discount vouchers delivered right to your inbox each month. Buy me a pint! ... the next round will be on me.

Thank you Sponsors!

Today’s episode is sponsored by Wayfarer Vans - the backpacker’s version of camper vans. Kick-ass van conversions at literally 1⁄4 price of other people, that are designed to de-clutter your adventure so you can be in the moment, taking in the wild spaces your van has delivered you to. www.wayfarervans.com

Let's Hang out

Follow @armchairexplorerpodcast on Instagram and Facebook or head over to www.armchair-explorer.com to find more background information on this episode

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“There is something in us,” legendary nature writer Jay Griffiths writes, “that detests the tepid world of net curtains ... the chloroform world where human nature is well schooled, tamed from childhood on, where the radiators are permanently on mild and the windows are permanently closed.”

Lost with her life and desperate to escape the confines of the modern world, jay set out on a journey to explore the world’s wildest places. She would explore ice, earth, water, fire and air. It would take seven years and all her savings. She would sing with cannibals in the highlands of West Papua, drink ayahuasca with shamans in the amazon. She explored the frozen arctic with Innuits and the fire desert with the aboriginals of the Australia.

Through her travels jay learned the wisdom of the indigenous people that call these elements home. She discovered how they shaped their culture and beliefs, and in time how they shaped her too. She was seeking wildness. She was following her ‘feral angel’, listening to its call to take flight and reconnect with the wildness inside her.

This is an incredible adventure, but it’s also a fountain of near forgotten wisdom and a call to all us to listen to that ‘urgent demand in the blood’ that urges us to take flight too. It is up to us, she says, to find what it is in the in the world that matches that wildness in yourself and to become that.

This is a story for anyone that’s ever crawled up the walls, stared out the window and dreamed of escape. This is a call to the wild.

Highlights include:

· Take ayahuasca with shamans in the Amazon

· Walk naked and alone into the frozen wilderness of the Arctic

· Trek the highlands with the freedom fighters of West Papua, one of the most remote and least-visited places on earth

· Have dinner with cannibals

· Find out how to apply the wisdom of the wild in our own life

Jay’s book of this adventure is called ‘Wild: an Elemental Journey’. It is one of the most beautiful pieces of nature writing I have ever read and couldn’t recommend it highly enough. Her latest book ‘Why Rebel?’ is awesome too. Search them up wherever you get your books – you won’t be disappointed!

Join the Community

If you're enjoying the show please consider showing your support by buying me a pint! The show is free but each episode takes about 40hrs to produce. The sponsors cover my costs, but not my time. If you like what you hear and think that two episodes a month is worth the price of a frosty beverage then please go to www.patreon.com/armchairexplorerpodcast.

From just $5 per month you will get you ad free episodes and access to our explorers community with exclusive travel discount vouchers delivered right to your inbox each month. Buy me a pint! ... the next round will be on me.

Thank you Sponsors!

Today’s episode is sponsored by Wondrium. Wondrium is like Netflix for your brain, an enormous encyclopedia of mind-blowing audio and video content designed for curious people just like us. Go to www.wondrium.com/armchair to get a 22-day free trail with access to thousands of hours of audio and video content, all for free, no strings attached. Check it out!

Let's Hang out

Follow @armchairexplorerpodcast on Instagram and Facebook or head over to www.armchair-explorer.com to find more background information on this episode

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What constitutes a life well lived?

When Darcy Gaechter turned 35, her life was everything she had hoped it would be. She had a loving partner, a rewarding job as a kayak expedition guide, and hard-won fame within the competitive world of whitewater kayaking. By her own measures, she was living the dream. And yet, many of her friends and family looked at her life and saw only what she did not have - a husband, children, a traditional high-paying office job.

Listening to them, doubts began to take root in Darcy's mind. Maybe, she decided, it was finally time to surrender her wild lifestyle and join the more stable - if not more boring - upper crusts of well-behaved society. But before she could do that...she had one final adventure to take.

It was an adventure so ambitious, so wild and deadly and unprecedented, that she believed it could cure her of her seemingly bottomless desire to tackle these quests, to chase the next horizon. And thus, mere months after her birthday, she found herself dipping her paddle into the frigid source waters of the Amazon, ready to kayak through its innumerable dangers - natural and manmade - in the following months.

Whether you're interested in kayaking, Amazonian culture and indigenous history, the interpersonal dynamics of expeditions, or all of the above, this episode is sure to engross you - from beginning to end.

FIND DARCY

Follow Darcy on Instagram @darcygaechter, and hear about her latest projects, events, and more on her website. The book she wrote about her Amazonian adventure is called Amazon Woman: Facing Fears, Chasing Dreams, and a Quest to Kayak the Longest River From Source to Sea. Get your copy today online or at your favorite bookstore (we especially love local bookstores)! Want to kayak with Darcy? Book a trip with her adventure company, Small World Adventures, and enjoy some of the best paddling Ecuador has to offer.

SOCIAL

Share the show with your friends! Subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening, follow @armchairexplorerpodcast on Instagram and Facebook, check out Armchair Explorer's website, and learn more about APT Podcast Studios on their website.

CREDITS

This episode was produced by Armchair Productions. Find our other shows at armchair-productions.com. Jenny Allison wrote and produced this episode, along with host and producer Aaron Millar. Charles Tyrie did the audio editing and sound design. Theme music written by the artist Sweet Chap.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Follow deep sea explorer Rory Golden to the world’s most famous shipwreck: Titanic. Located 12,600-feet below sea level, in the middle of the North Atlantic, only a handful of people have ever seen her with their own eyes. Descending in a tiny Mir submersible, in a cockpit the size of a small port-a-loo, with enough pressure outside the port windows to crush him in an instant should anything go wrong, this is a once-in-a-lifetime journey into history and the dark depths of the sea.

The Titanic is the world’s most famous shipwreck. It was the largest and safest vessel ever built, or so they thought. Four days into its maiden voyage, on a calm night, it struck an iceberg ripping a 300-foot whole in its hull. Panic ensued. There weren’t enough lifeboats. There was no one to save them. Of the 2,200 people on board, 1500 perished.

It took only three hours for the greatest ship ever built to sink and for more than 50 years it lay undiscovered there, at the bottom of the ocean. Rory’s mission was to recover historical artefacts from the wreck – they found leather bags with clothes still neatly folded within, a bottle of perfume still unopened, the ship’s wheel last touched by the Captain before he walked calmly to his death in the dark sea. Through Rory’s journey we learn not just the history of the Titanic, but the individual personal stories of heroism and tragedy that he rescued from the bottom of the sea.

It’s an incredible adventure. But it’s also a ground-breaking piece of exploration. We know more about the surface of Mars than we do the bottom of the sea. 70% of our planet is ocean, yet only 5% of the ocean depths have been explored. There are creatures down there that no one knows even exist – strange bioluminescent beings living in a world of darkness and extreme pressure, creatures that are as alien to us as any little green man that may or may not one day appear from the sky. The oceans are our planet’s last frontier of exploration. Join him now as we descend into the deep to dive the world’s most famous, and dangerous, wreck. Join him to dive the Titanic.

Highlights include:

· Find out what it’s like to descend to 12,600-ft beneath the ocean in a tiny Mir Submersible

· See the Titanic through Rory’s eyes as he travels across the wreckage in search of historical artefacts to preserve

· Hear the story of the Titanic, the greatest shipwreck of all time

· Be inspired by the mysteries of the deep ocean, the final frontier of exploration on the planet

Who’s the Guest?

Rory Golden's dived all over the world, from the coasts of his home in Ireland to deep-sea off-shore rigs and some of the most iconic wrecks on the planet, including The Titanic. He is one of the most respected underwater explorers in the world and the on-board Titanic expert for Ocean Gate Expeditions, a deep sea underwater adventure company which takes ordinary people to extraordinary depths, including the chance this year to dive the Titanic alongside Rory himself. For more information: https://oceangateexpeditions.com. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook @oceangateexped.

Thank you to The Great Courses Plus for sponsoring this episode. Head over to www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/armchair to get a free month trail with unlimited streaming of 1000s of videos and audio ... it’s a great way to support the show!

The Armchair Explorer podcast is produced and hosted by award-winning travel writer Aaron Millar. Follow the show on Instagram & Facebook @armchairexplorerpodcast. www.armchair-explorer.com

"Best travel podcasts 2020: Every episode is an immersive experience" - The Guardian

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