Here’s a look at the new crop of young explorers and the things they’re doing to advance the species. Among them is one of my favorites: Kira Salak. NYT called her “a real-life Lara Croft”, which is kind of lame. Anyway, Salak has traveled to almost every continent, visiting some of the world’s most remote places, including Madagascar, Mozambique, Bangladesh, Papua New Guinea, and Borneo. She was the first documented person to kayak solo 600 miles (966 kilometers) down West Africa’s Niger River.
The Explorer’s Daughter
And you thought traveling with kids was an added hassle. Not so, says Kari Herbert, daughter of British explorer
Wally Herbert, who completed the first crossing of the Arctic Ocean by foot and dog sled, by way of the North Pole, in
1969. Daughter Kari says her presence on some of dad’s expeditions helped break the, um, ice with various indigenous
groups.
In this short, nice
little
interview in the LA Times Herbert talks about travels with dad and mum to an Inuit hunting village on a remote
island in Greenland. She ruminates on chiildhood with an explorer dad, eating blubber and her recent book.
Gear Guy Wilderness Raft
Took me a while to think about this one. Outside Online’s
Gear Guy has got some suggestions about
how to pack in a raft should you, say, be stuck in some mountainous area with lots of lakes, no trails, and you need to
get around. That is, apparently, a need, and where there is a need there is someone serving that need. Hence,
the makers of wilderness rafts.
Hackaday Stove
Our good friends at Hackaday have a link to a
cool howto on making a backpacking stove out of Pepsi and
Guinness cans. I like it. Very Mcguyver.
Hoofing It Across the Gobi
Why take four wheels when you can take four legs? Or so seems to be the
question in this interesting Guardian
piece about riding horses across the Gobi. Mongolia is making the news a lot these days. There was a piece in
the Times today about how English
is taking hold there as part of a modernization effort led by the government to get people to speak the language,
the “Singapore Model” was it they put it. Seems Russian wasn’t working out too well for them. Then there was the
“Golfing Across Mongolia“ the epic story of Andre Tolme to shoot
the par 11,880 country.