Adventure Tour

Speaking of Adventure Travel

Is your club or company looking for an entertaining expert speaker on adventure travel? Or are you looking for a presentation on a specific location or activity, like climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, trekking in Nepal, or cultural touring in Bhutan?

Embark Adventures’ founder and owner, Donovan Pacholl, is available to speak. Pacholl has not only organized hundreds of adventure trips around the world, he has also traveled extensively and led expeditions throughout Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan, and Tanzania, and a number of other countries.

He has also spoken and given presentations at events around the country, including trade shows, conferences, and hiking and outdoors clubs.

Just get in touch today, and let’s see how we can help.

 

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Myanmar widens doors to influx of visitors

Myanmar

Children watch a helicopter carrying a Thai Princess visiting the Mrauk-U temple ruins in Myanmar. It was the first time any of them had seen anything in the sky except birds and bats.

Visiting Myanmar, which feels like taking a step back in time to a forgotten place filled with red-robed monks and bicycle rickshaws, has just gotten a little more competitive.

Now that the country, formally known as Burma, is gradually opening its doors to visitors, the outside world is rushing in at breakneck speed, and Myanmar is having a tough time maintaining sufficient infrastructure for the influx. The more than 800,000 people who visited in 2011 represent a 30 percent jump in just one year, though this number is still significantly smaller than the 19 million that chose Thailand, the Associated Press reports.

Fortunately for those who’d like to visit before it’s taken over by McDonald’s and Starbucks but don’t want to worry about finding a hotel room, we at Embark are planning trips there starting in 2013.

The AP reports:

New laws are being drafted to make it easier and tax-friendly for foreign hotel chains and others to do business in Myanmar. Auctions are under way for dozens of colonial buildings that some developers want to restore as boutique hotels and others want to tear down. Tourism authorities say the country needs more restaurants that cater to international tastes, more car rental agencies, more airplanes to shuttle tourists to the sacred temples in Bagan, more English-speaking tour guides, more everything.

Tourism has risen starkly since Suu Kyi, who is now running for a seat in parliament, was released in late 2010. To avoid becoming an urban jungle overflowing with backpackers and sex tourism, the country is considering a limited, higher-end tourism market like Bhutan.

“We want to handle Myanmar with care,” said Su Su Tin, who runs a travel agency and is an executive member of a consortium of more than 100 hotels, airlines and tour operators. “It’s a fragile thing.”

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Mountain Travel Sobek Going to North Korea

Folks toss around phrases like “glimpse a hidden world” all the time, but the reality is, most places aren’t hidden. Hard to get to, sure. Rarely visited, okay. But hidden?

North Korea is truly hidden, off-limits as a matter of decades-long political policy. You just don’t go there, and the people there don’t leave.

But now one of the great and pioneering adventure travel companies, Mountain Travel Sobek, is taking a group of 24 people to North Korea in September. The trip is being led by one of our idols, their co-founder Richard Bangs, who started Sobek Travel after floating an uncharted, crocodile-filled African river in 1973.

Our hats are tipped, our hearts are full of envy, and if we had $9,000 on hand, we’d be off to North Korea this fall.

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Climbing Ol Doinyo Lengai

Climbers Amy Mendenhall and Bridget Martin share their photos and stories from climbing the active volcano Ol Doinyo Lengai in Tanzania this past February. Major props to both of them for giving us a view into a truly insane and unique climb. We hope it’s obvious why we recommend it.

Embark considers treks to Ladakh in northern India

Embark is exploring trip options to Ladakh, a trekking region in northern India that borders Tibet and Pakistan. Ladakh plays peaceful host to Indians, Pakistanis, and such a great number of Tibetans that the region, so strongly influenced by Tibetan culture and religion, is called “Little Tibet.”

Embark adventurer Ken is currently reporting from the city of Leh in the Ladakh region, which is surrounded by the giant Himalayas. His colorful blog includes great photos and personal observations, including: You land at 11,580 feet and the affects of the altitude are immediate (headaches, chills); every other bag at baggage claim on arrival is a 50-pound bag of rice brought in by locals returning after a bitter winter; and the hotel provides a hand bucket for the toilet and a red bucket for bathing.

Clearly Ladakh is no tourist trap–in fact it is one of the most sparsely populated regions in Kashmir–which makes traveling there both hard (not as many restaurants, easy-to-read maps, etc.) and luxurious (no tourists). Embark is excited to continue to explore this rugged terrain in the hopes of offering up an affordable but breathtaking step off the beaten path.

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Kilimanjaro Summit Picture

Friends Bridget Martin, Amy Mendenhall, and Andy Schiestl faced heavy snow and freezing wind, and watched other groups turn back, but they managed to conquer the summit of Kilimanjaro, and it turned out to be beautiful. Bridget weighs in with the following account, which proves that the right climbing partner can make all the difference:

“Summit night was a challenge mainly due to two things:  the incredible cold temperature/wind and the fact the air is so thin. Each step was incredibly taxing on my breathing, especially when we had to do a couple quick moves in succession on the rock scrambles. And the fact that I was shivering for about 7 hours that night didn’t make matters any easier. When we got to the crater I was so excited I thought we were on the summit (I was ignoring the fact that there was another bit of ascending trail  to my left, the mind can play tricks when there is little oxygen). Amy said, ‘Come on, lets go,’ and I said, ‘Where?’ I was pretty happy just being on the crater. But she reminded me I didn’t come all that way not to summit so up we went the last stretch to the summit. . . pole, pole. Reaching the summit was a dream of mine for about 10 years and I am so excited I made it. What a spectacular sight to behold and sense of accomplishment to be standing on the highest peak in Africa!”

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Embark climbers tough the weather on Kili

Stephen and Cindy Koester just sent us this photo from their Kilimanjaro climb at the Furtwängler Glacier near Crater Camp just 1,000 feet from their summit of Kilimanjaro. They came up the Lemosho Route and through the Western Breach. A couple people had to descend due to altitude sickness, and although they had bad weather much of the trip, it looks as though near the summit, the weather started to improve for these determined partners.

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