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Finding the Right Adventure Holiday
Many of us will have dreamed of going on that once-in-a-lifetime adventure holiday. Whether it’s climbing Kilimanjaro, getting back to nature on an African jungle trek, visiting the ends of the earth to see the Polar Regions or helping to build a school in South America – there are now adventure holidays to suit all ages and abilities.
But how do you know which adventure trip is right for you? Maybe you’re worried that you’re too old to properly enjoy some of the more active adventures, or want to find a holiday that the whole family will enjoy. Or perhaps you’re worried about the skills or experience you may need, or how it would work if you went with a partner or travelled alone.
Our live and interactive Web TV show featuring Kate Humble and Colin Stump from TUI adventure brands offers you expert advice on picking the right adventure holiday – with information on the best destinations and holiday types to suit all ages and abilities.
Kate Humble and Colin Strump join us live on Wednesday 6th January at 2:30pm to discuss adventure holidays.
For more information visit www.apassporttoadventure.com (Live from 6th Jan 2010).
H: Vicky Letch, Webchat Host
A: Kate Humble, TV Presenter
B: Colin Stump, TUI Adventure
H: Hello I’m Vicky Letch and welcome to the Travel Show. Now many of us have dreamt of going on that once in a lifetime adventure holiday. Whether it’s climbing Kilimanjaro, getting back to nature on an African jungle trek or visiting the end of the earth to see the Polar Regions. Whatever your cup of tea there’s something out there for you. Now according to a leading industry report, a passport to adventure, the adventure holiday market has never been so popular, with Brits flocking to find a holiday with a difference. Well joining me to discuss where to go and what to do is TV presenter and self confessed travel junkie Kate Humble and Colin Stump from TUI adventure. Guys welcome. Thank you very much for joining us today. Now do remember of course we are live so if you have any questions for Kate or Colin or indeed any comments for any other viewers watching do pop them in the box below and click submit. So, before we get stuck in here, in the studio let’s take a look at some of the types of activities involved in these adventure holidays.
It looks absolutely fantastic. I have to say, not so keen of jumping in the icy pool but a day with the penguins, that I could do, definitely yeah. So let’s just kick off then, people are definitely moving away from the trend of beach holidays aren’t they.
A: There are probably various reasons for that. There has been quite a lot of press as we know recently about the dangers of skin cancer and maybe you know, people don’t feel like they want to go and peg themselves out on a beach for two weeks and get skin cancer, so that might be a contributing factor. I think another thing is that bizarrely the credit crunch might have something to do with it because you know when perhaps when there was a bit more cash swimming around people might do more than one holiday a year, you know they might go skiing at this time of year and then they might do a summer holiday and maybe even another or sort of a short weekend break, that sort of thing. Now we’re sort of thinking ‘eeek’ we can’t really afford to do all that, so so maybe we can only have one holiday and therefore we want it to be really special you know we want to do something a bit different, something that we’re really going to remember and something that we can really look forward to.
H: Absolutely.
A: And I think the other thing, well I mean Colin you might think differently but I wonder if people like me actually are partly to blame.
B: Oh, You’re all to blame.
A: Sorry
B: Media has had a huge impact on our market place of the early days of Michael Palin wandering around Pole to Pole, to the more recent Attenborough series, Kate doing the Frankincense trail the other week, I mean a fantastic programme we all said
A: You had to say that didn’t you
B: It said she didn’t wear enough sun tan lotion but that’s us caring for our people.
A: You don’t have time.
B: But no clearly it’s opened up a whole world of inspiration for many people they want to go and do, get just that little bit more out of the holiday because a lot of the holidays, let’s not de-cry the traditional beach holiday or even the downhill ski holiday, people want to chill out, they want to take time out, they want to put their feet up, but increasingly people want to come back with memories that will endure for life and I would argue that adventure holidays are the type that we can offer through companies like the adventure company, exodus, imaginative traveler, headwater, offer a great range of trips worldwide as Kate said from the Antarctic in the south to the Arctic in the north I think I got that the right way round. Crossing the deserts of Africa, climbing mountains in the Andes maybe cycling the leafy lanes of Umbria all of these are things we can do these days.
A: That’s the thing, I mean that’s the thing that’s really changed I think, because you know when I started travelling in earnest, which was in the late eighties, you know I was independent I was earning actually a pathetic amount of money but you know it was amazing how far you could stretch your pound if you were willing to sleep in a ditch, which I did quite a few times. But you know then, there simply wasn’t this sort of holiday on offer you know adventure travel I suppose if you were to be purest really was adventure. I mean there was no internet, do you remember those days?
H: Actually I do.
A: Barely
H: No I do
A: But no there was, there was no internet, there was no mobile phones, for places I went and travelled across Africa on my own when I was 19, there wasn’t even a guide book to do that, you know you kinda made it up as you went along. Now it meant that my parents basically spent a year in fear
H: Exactly
A: They got kind of two postcards in that year
H: Oh my Gosh
A: Now the wonderful thing is that these are things that anyone can do and they can do it safely, they can do it securely, it doesn’t have to cost a fortune because you know most of the holidays that Colin’s companies offer are small groups so you’re with like-minded people but also you’re sharing the cost
H: Yeah
A: So suddenly adventure travel has become something that anybody can do and you know the world is a wonderful place and I spend my entire life telling people how fabulous the world is, it’s hard to get people to care about things I really care about, coral reefs, rainforests
H: Yep
A: you know those great wildlife habitats, unless they can actually go and see them themselves
H: Absolutely
A: and now that’s more than achievable
H: Yeah it is more accessible and also I’m just picking up on something you said about when you did it, sleeping in a ditch you could stretch your pound. There will be people watching now for example who have never even thought of doing a holiday like that. What about people who don’t want to compromise too much on comfort? It isn’t all about slinging your backpack on necessarily is it?
B: I think these days most of our customers want an active day they want to be out there they want to be mountaineering they want to be crossing deserts, they want to be seeing gorillas in the jungle but at the end of the day they actually want to get into a reasonably comfortable piece of accommodation they want to know the foods not going to poison them so we take great care to balance the excitement during the day with as comfortable accommodation as possible. Now if you’re out in the wilds of Ethiopia tramping around in the fantastic Simien Mountains then all you’re going to have is a tent. But these days if you’re trekking in the Himalaya, when I went up to do Everest base camp seven years ago, really a tent or basic tea houses is the only option you have, this is when temperatures outside are kinda minus seventeen degrees centigrade and the choice today is that we have much much more comfortable accommodation people in Nepal and Bhutan in India have invested in much more comfortable lodges for people to stay in. We can expand the market that way as a lot of people didn’t want to do the camping, they didn’t want to do the basic lodges.
H: Of course, yes
A: The other thing I will say, I’m going to butt in here because I’m a big advocate of camping, I love camping, I hate hotels. I think camping is one of the great joys of life particularly camping in the wilds you know not in a campsite when you are literally sort of cheek by jowl with caravans and things, that’s not camping to me that’s just trying to stay somewhere not terribly expensively. But you know if you go to Nepal for example, now Nepal has been hosting foreign tourists for many years now and the Nepali people are very very good at it, they’re expert at it so if you go to some of the wilder places in Nepal and you do end up on a holiday that involves camping rather than staying in a lodge, you’ll be looked after so beautifully. I mean I’ve never done this because it’s a bit swanky for me but you know I’ve heard of literally someone will come to your tent in the morning with a hot cup of tea and a bowl of hot water to wash in
H: Wow
A: Now that’s pretty super deluxe camping
H: Yes it is
A: So you get the comfort but you also get that joy, I mean you know you’ve done it, there is something really wonderful about spending a night in a tent particularly in quite an extreme, you know when it is really snowy or it’s high or something and you’re in your like little world, I love it.
H: No I like camping
B: Another great example, you’re a great proponer of desert travel where you take people out to the Wadi Rum in Jordan
A: It’s beautiful there
B: There’s nothing better than sleeping in a Bedouin tent open under the stars and you see the sky is crystal clear
A: Actually there is one thing better
B: Go on then
A: Don’t sleep in the tent at all sleep outside
B: Absolutely, yes outside
A: Oh it’s amazing, absolutely amazing
H: Oh lovely
B: And the same sleep in a swag in the Australian outback. You think you’re going to get bitten but you’re not, nobody ever gets
H: Oh we’ve all done it. I haven’t done it, I haven’t done it.
B: So if you think a holidays ultimately the kind of trips that we offer our little company headwater that does independent walking and cycling holidays mainly Europe off the beaten track departures. Now they’ll take you, you’ll cycle from point to point during the course of an eight or eleven day holiday. The accommodation will be three maybe four star beautifully situated, wonderful food and you’ll walk and cycle point to point, the luggage will go, will be transported for you between the hotel stops. So we can offer that sort of level, the alternative, the other end of the extreme we can put you on a small ship, expedition cruise ship and take you down to the Antarctic and there you can see some of the most desolate but beautiful scenery on earth, the penguins, the whales that will come up and swim back to have a look at you because they’re so curious about what is this metal object in front of me. But at night you’ll have fantastic food, you’ll have a comfortable cabin and you’ll have great lectures from experts on the environment.
H: Wow
A: Why is it that polar bears don’t eat penguins?
B: I think that might be something to do with the fact that they live at opposite end of the earth.
A: No they can’t get the wrappers off. Anyway
H: Boom Boom
H: Let’s get to some of these questions then, remember of course we are live, so if you do have any questions
A: Or really bad jokes
H: or really bad jokes, I thought that was an excellent joke.
A: I quite liked it
H: Did it come out of a Christmas cracker?
A: Might have done
H: Right this one’s from Maria. Maria thank you very much and she says I love the idea of an adventure, but can this be done on a budget and without taking too much time out of work
A: Well I’m going to start with this, because I know then you’re going to talk for half an hour and I won’t get a word in edgeways, so I’m going to start and say Maria, you absolutely can and that’s the beauty of these sort of group holidays. Obviously they are tailored, you want to sell holidays to lots of people, let’s be brutal here
B: Yes
A: And not everyone can take months of at a time to go and have an adventure so you know that’s the clever thing about these companies is that they’ve honed in on the fact that people like Maria want to have an adventure holiday but they have two weeks off or they have ten days off and so they’ve tailored it exactly to that. And one of the great things and I know this from bitter experience, when you do an adventure holiday on your own and you’re trying to organize everything yourself you can spend quite a lot of your holiday actually sorting out logistics. Do it with these guys, you don’t have to.
H: It’s all done
A: It’s all done, so literally all you have to do is to remember to pack your toothbrush and your knickers and off you go, you know and that’s the beauty of it and because you’re going in a little group, all the costs of things like guides and transport and everything is spread out amongst that group, so it’s actually very affordable indeed. Over to you, now you can tell Maria where she should go.
B: Absolutely, it’s very simple. There’s one company in our little group of companies called geckos and geckos really focus on the sort of eighteen’s to thirty five market. We don’t offer every inclusion that you get on some of our other holidays so that when you get into a destination you then have the freedom to go and find your own food. You can elect not to do certain sights and save some money, so you can kind of self-package within the holiday. We’ll provide the infrastructure, the local transport, the expert guides to where to go and what to see in the various towns or destinations you get to but obviously travelling as a group, as Kate has said, you do share the costs of the accommodation and the transportation and the guide and therefore the cost for the kind of distances you’re travelling is very competitive.
H: OK. Maria if you’re looking for a little one, email me. Right let’s get on with these questions then. This is from Thomas Charles Whitman. Thank you Thomas and he says I’m a huge fan of Eastern Europe but have only ever visited on short breaks on stage weekends etc .
A: I’m amazed he can remember, are you sure you were in Eastern Europe.
H: Do you remember those?
A: Are you sure you were in Eastern Europe?
H: Exactly. Now I’m a little older, I’d like to go back to the places and have a more active walking holiday, where would you guys suggest?
A: Well I would say, I would, I probably would head straight to what was the former Yugoslavia, which obviously now is broken up into the individual countries. I went there when it was Yugoslavia and I have some friends who became Slovenian, suddenly overnight and I went and stayed with them in what is now Slovenia and it is absolutely stunning, really stunning country, beautiful mountains you’re right on the, if you go up into the mountains you’re right up on the border with Italy and Austria as well so you’re at this real kind of alpine meeting point it’s glorious. And then of course you’ve got all the coastal regions, Croatia, Montenegro is gorgeous, I mean again, I went to Montenegro very very early on just as the sort of breakup was happening, absolutely stunning country and it’s great walking isn’t it.
B: Absolutely, and if you wanted to do something just a little bit more aggressive, something a little harder then maybe head for Poland and go into the Tatra Mountains. Some great stuff to be done there, both in the winter, snow-shoeing and of course during the summer months a bit of trekking and maybe a bit of mountaineering too.
H: I have to say my ‘roomy’ always opts for a little bit of me time and for you know a couple of weeks a year and he always chooses walking holidays. He loves it, he feels really rested and a bit of time to yourself to have a little ponder
A: I think there is something very very therapeutic about walking it’s my you know when I’m kinda sitting in front of the computer going oh I don’t know what to do next
H: No, exactly
A: I go for a walk, take the dog out you know and come back and suddenly I’m a genius again.
B: Another one of our companies Exodus run a trip into Ethiopia. Now most peoples visions of Ethiopia I’m afraid all go back to the sort of Michael Burke imagery
H: Yes you’re right, yeah
B: Desolate waste lands and hugely poor people suffering a massive famine. But if you go up into the Simien Mountains of northern Ethiopia it really is a remedial trip for everybody
A: Unbelievably beautiful
B: you can’t, it distracts you wonderfully from all the other day to day pressures that you have and of course you’re walking through hilltop villages you’re up very high in many places but you’re acclimatized quite nicely so it doesn’t affect you and it’s, it’s not just the physical process of walking and looking at the marvelous scenery which is unique in that part of the world, but it’s the fact that you have time to walk through villages, you know have a chuckle with the kids, buy a little bottle of coke from one of the children or in fact we spent an hour and a half having a coffee ceremony in one village which is a marvelous thing. Really puts you in touch. Came out of this hut covered in smoke but it doesn’t matter in fact frankincense as well but the most wonderful experience, you’re not going to get that from looking out of a coach.
A: Plus, plus when I walked in the Simien Mountains a few years ago I had one of my top wildlife encounters of all time. There is a wild dog, it’s a wolf, it’s called the Simien wolf. There are apparently about 40 left in the world and I was at 4000 meters in the Simeon mountains and I was ahead of, I was with my husband on a couple of Ethiopian guides and I was at the front because I’m you know competitive.
B: Well now I’m very jealous because I’ve not seen one
A: And I got up and there, there it was, it was absolutely, it was one of those things I’m never going to forget, it was incredible.
H: And did it just stand and look at you
A: And we looked at each other and then it just sort of walked off and I was just like “They’re behind us I’ve just seen a wolf and no-one’s going to believe me because they weren’t there” which is really annoying when that happens
H: And no time to grab the camera
A: Oh I never took one and I take rubbish photos anyway and it would have been out of shot and out of focus and everyone would have thought it was just somebody’s cat you know
H: It’s just a smear. OK, this one’s from Paul Temple. My lady isn’t keen on flying but I’m trying to get her to see a therapist to get hypnotized so that we can go on an adventure
A: Oh let me talk to, talk to is it Paul?
H: Yes this is Paul Temple
A: Paul’s lady
H: Paul’s lady are you listening?
A: Now Paul’s lady, listen to me because I was and if I sort of admit it really still am terrified of flying. I absolutely hated it, hated it to the point that I couldn’t even go to an airport and be normal. And it is
B: Is anybody ever normal at an airport
A: Well I think that’s part of it actually. And in fact what I did I got prescribed by my GP. I got prescribed Beta Blockers which are heart pills but they just make you, they don’t make you kinda weird or sleepy or, well you probably think I’m a bit weird anyway but what they do do is just calm you down, they just take the edge off and that really helped so I would certainly say go to your GP. I have also done hypnotherapy. I’m going to sound like a freak now aren’t I, but I was hypnotized to give up smoking but I was also hypnotized for sea-sickness because I was doing this big trip, a work trip, and I thought if I’m sea-sick the whole time that’s going to be living on a boat for a month I’m going to be completely useless, they were going to heave me overboard, you know and somebody said have you tried hypnosis, I thought that’s not going to work, it works, so it really may well work for her but the other thing is that there are courses that you can go on because I think, certainly for me anyway, the basis of my fear of flying is that you know there are all those weird noises and you don’t know what’s going on
H: Exactly, yeah
A: You don’t understand it and you suddenly think why is the engine slowing down, well that’s absolutely natural you know they vroom up the engines to get the plane up in the air and then of course they pull them back again because they don’t want to waste the fuel and that’s what’s happening but until somebody explains that to you think the planes about to fall out of the sky.
H: You are absolutely right, it’s the not knowing, I agree with that, yeah
A: So really I can’t urge her enough because it’s such a horrible thing to, I know you know, I’ve had it, is to really deal with it but the other thing is you know, they could go and have an adventure that doesn’t involve flying. You know, I mean you do trips in Europe
B: We do
A: And you know it’s easy, get to France go on the train you know or go on the ferry and then go and do a walking holiday or a cycling holiday in France, something like that and
H: Yeah
A: You know the trains in Europe, when it’s not snowing and they’re stuck in tunnels are brilliant, it’s a great way of getting around and you could hook up with one of your walking holidays
B: I’d recommend getting all the way though to the Swiss Rail System. Eurostar and then down through southern France into Switzerland.
H: Beautiful yeah
B: Opens up some of the most magnificent walking country.
A: So don’t think, just because you don’t want to get on a plane that you can’t have an adventure because that’s absolutely not true.
H: But try and face the fears because it’s such a shame that something like that stops you from experiencing things. Now amazingly, because you two go on… no I’m only joking, we’re almost out of time. But, we do have time to squeeze in a quick question from Emma. Thank you so much Emma. This says how do I find out what vaccinations I need before I travel? All these places sound brilliant, but I’m worried about health risks. And I think a lot of people would have these concerns.
A: Well the simple answer is you know if you’re thinking about going anywhere, I mean literally anywhere go to your GP or travel clinic and there are travel clinics in almost every high street now and tell them where you’re going and what you’re planning to do and don’t do it the day before you travel because sometimes you need like a month or two lots of injections and presumably when you book holidays with you, you give all that health information anyway.
B: Most of our trips through all of our companies have very very detailed itineries which are sent to you way before your departure date that will give very clear guidance on everything from visas to vaccinations to all the kit that you will need as well.
H: Ok brilliant. So, in conclusion then, people are wanting different things from their holidays, they’re wanting life experiences. So if anyone’s out there slightly bored of their day to day grind and they want something that they can talk about for years to come, this is the way forward. Where can they go for more information?
B: Let’s say it together
A&B: www.apassporttoadventure.com
H: Stay there you two, click. Beautiful. Right so you got it, for more information on some of the great adventure holidays available do visit apassporttoadventure.com. Thank you both so much. Do you know I was thinking I’m not going to go on holiday this year , I was going to save the pennies, I’ve changed my mind.
A: What are you saving for apart to go on holiday?
H: Exactly, what am I saving you’re right. Just before we go let’s all wet your whistle with some other looks at some of the wonderful adventures you can go on and some of the destinations you can visit. I’ll see you soon.
