Welcome to Tusker Trail’s new blog, written by yours truly, company founder and, with my better half, Amy, co-owner. But this isn’t really a blog.

“Blog” makes me think of something on the digital/tech divide, and what I’m trying to do here is decidedly un-tech. Don’t get me wrong. I’m no Luddite, in fact far from it. You could call me an early Early Adopter. I even owned the first prototype Sony Walkman for cassettes. On the contrary, to the Tech Gods I owe much. I love my iPhone, was self-building my Adventure Travel website before the advent of travel aggregators like Expedia & Travelocity, and remember carting around a Sat phone the size of Shaq’s shoe.

In case you’re saying “Who am I?”, here’s my CV.

• Crossed the Sahara Desert 33 times – first time on a dare
• Climbed Kilimanjaro 45 times
• Installed the world’s first and only webcam on Kilimanjaro
• Led Trans-Africa expeditions numerous times
• Been charged by elephants, buffaloes, hippos and lions
• Tracked poachers in Zambia
• Led trips to five total solar eclipses
• Been shot by Italian Caribinieri
• Dined with cannibal kings
• Serenaded pygmies in Zaire.
• Hitchhiked around the world before my 21st
• Swam the River Nile in Juba (try that now!)
• Had tea with Touraegs north of Agadez
• Came off my Bonneville @ 50 mph (and walked)
• Dined on insects before you saw it on TV.
• Shoveled chicken shit in the Golan Heights (try doing that now).
• Quit on Aconcagua (couldn’t summit)
• Charted ancient archaeo-astronomical rock formations in Kenya
• I lead folks through northwest Mongolia on Horseback
• And trek to Everest Base Camp
• Saw Zep at the Whisky in L.A, prior to the release of their first album
• Saw The Doors when Morrison was so drunk, his first word to the audience
  was a burp in the microphone

So it may walk and talk like one, but this is no blog. What I’m trying to do is pure throwback: recreate in modern terms the vibe of all the Old School Adventurers who came before me, in whose giant footprints I tread. Fearless, restless men (yes, excluding Gertrude Bell & Mary Kingsley, most were men), who faced great dangers and odds as they answered “the Call”.

They didn’t have Nikons or iPhones to capture the pride and perils of their epic journeys. No video to post on “walls”, to impress the less brave souls back home. They took along sketch artists instead, the documentarians of their day, who used pen & ink to capture the exotic images for the world to see. If they didn’t, there’d be no proof of their travels. And they needed proof, because some of the unlucky ones did amazing things, weren’t believed, and died in shame (Google James Bruce, one of the first white men to explore Ethiopia). I recall in my early days sitting in a tiny library in Zanzibar deciphering 5 first edition volumes of James Bruce’s TRAVELS TO DISCOVER THE SOURCE OF THE NILE, printed in 1790. (The letter “S” looked like an “F”). But that’s another story.

Like the daring but tragic Bruce, these Great Explorers also wrote dispatches. Their writings alone would prove their journeys. Volumes, recounting in great detail their adventures on the high seas and the road, though little of where they traveled was ever on a “road”.

Not that I need to prove my journeys – the photography & testimonials do that – but in the spirit of writing for interested people who don’t get to travel as much, here are my dispatches from my true home, the road. Where by hard knocks and dumb luck, I have become a student of adventure.

A “Roads Scholar”.

Looking back I can say that Adventure Travel, or what passes for it, has never been easier. Which is not to say it’s ever easy. You still need incredible desire and commitment to summit any great peak, whether the technical K-2, or the grueling ascent on foot up Kili.

It’s never been easier because the world has shrunk – thanks to all forms of tech like satellite, and the algorithms that make Twitter and Apps and the search engines tick.

Finding the great discount air ticket? Critical destination information? Safe hostels? The correct (or cheapest) vaccines? The right gear, down to what socks or quick-dry undies to wear? Some targeted keystrokes or “touching”, and even an absolute beginner can be good-to-go in no time. First came the speciality magazines, then came what South African rappers Die Antwoord humorously call “the Interwebs”.

Back in the day, not only did you not have quick-dry undies, you had none of these unbelievably helpful travel resources that are available today. All you had, in the truest sense of the word, was Word of Mouth. And with whatever “words” you could muster, you had to be baptized by fire and learn the hard way: by mistakes. And trust me, I made my share. Some life threatening, others just plain embarrassing.

Like the time I got shot (in the knee) by Italian Caribinieri in near Rome because I slept on a “sensitive” road – (the Red Brigades, don’t ask). Today, a simple iPhone search could have prevented that. There’s probably some Theme Park there now, anyway. Or when I got arrested in the bush as a spy by Zambian military during the border wars with South Africa, or in Benin, or Nigeria (both in the same year, 1977). GPS could’ve kept me clear of that strategically vital (not) bridge. And if that dinner with dead-and-buried Emperor Bokassa, butcher and reputed cannibal happened today? Because of his notoriety (a lesser Idi Amin), I’m sure I’d get posted on some global wall of shame and ruin my business and reputation forever. But that was then, and I rationalize by saying the King paid dear for those surplus German Army trucks, which, when down to my last 20 bucks, I rebuilt in In Salah in Algeria, with a paint scraper and a wire brush.  And that’s no lie.

The world seemed so much larger and so much more difficult to navigate back then. Before cell phones and Sat Phones. Before the PC, Mac or otherwise, (let alone the Internet), GPS, or iPad. Perhaps a time before many of you were born. The world was bigger back then because there were real mistakes to be made, mistakes you had to make in order to learn from. Other peoples’ lessons (good or bad) just weren’t there for the taking like so much low-hanging fruit.

But don’t get me wrong. I’m not here to look with nostalgia to “back in the day”, dining out on old stories. I live a life of risk and reward, driven by adventure, a life I could have only dreamed of as a kid. I’ve been there and done that and I’m still doing it. I’m looking back as a way of looking forward to the road ahead. And from where I sit right now, in Tahoe, it looks pretty damn good.

And I’m “dispatching” about it. Past, present and future.

What’s different now, and what a lot of people who did not travel pre-Internet may not know, is that information brings the world closer, makes it safer by illuminating all the pitfalls and potholes that are out there. As you start to realize your dreams of adventure, bear in mind how much all that data makes it easier to get there. And add my voice to the data – to information that may help. What hasn’t changed is that you still need the desire, the dream, to get there.

Here’s what I’ve been dreaming of: next July, Amy and I are going again to one of my favorite new spots: northwest Mongolia. With our company, Tusker, we’ve put together an ancient archaeology and photography workshop to UNESCO’s newest World Heritage Site, in the Altai Sayan EcoRegion in northwest Mongolia.

They call this area “the last great wilderness on Earth”. It’s so remote, so untouched and unspoiled by the last two centuries that it’s just you and the deep green valleys, eternal snow and glaciers, and the odd nomad, right where China, Russia, and Mongolia all meet.

And of course the thousands of ancient stone monuments, dating back 12,000 years (to the early Bronze Age), as well as exquisite, rarely-seen petroglyphs that bring this ancient pre-history to life. Did you see Werner Herzog’s “Cave of Forgotten Dreams”? You should. 40,000 year-old rock art in 3-D. It may get you cranked to come with us.

For this trip, Amy & I have teamed up with Dr. Esther Jacobson-Tepfer, one of the world’s leading experts on ancient archaeology in Mongolia, and her husband, Gary Tepfer, a professional photographer with broad international experience, specializing in landscape and art. Check out their gorgeous new atlas on the topic.

Between now and then, we’ll be trekking Kilimanjaro & Everest Base Camp, scouting a new trek to Bhutan and exercising my new bottlecap opener on our new boat, on Tahoe.

Before I forget: the dumbest Adventure Travel mistake I ever made was driving a truck across Africa with the wrong-sized lug wrench (for my wheels). I discovered this too late with a flat tire near Lisala in the middle of Zaire (now the Congo), and had I not “confessed” before a Roman Catholic missionary priest  – for the right tool, I could still be there today.

Next time I’ll tell you about the 11 places (not ten) I want to do before I take the ultimate journey, from which, as Hamlet so aptly said, “no traveler ever returns.”

Kwaheri.