Interview on The Jens Heitland Show: Storytelling through travelling

I recently had the unique opportunity to be a featured guest on a podcast with Jens Heitland, an internationally renowned human innovation expert from Germany, to talk about travel writing and the process of telling stories. Jens found what I had done with my life to be quite innovative in the sense that I had turned it inside out and headed off in a completely different direction to fulfil my life’s passion of being a travel writer.

COPE WITH HOPE Interview with Nandinii Sen

Many of you would have heard of Nandinii Sen the former 80's supermodel who has built a career acting on TV, Bollywood and more recently the hit Amazon Prime web series Made In Heaven.  Nandinii is a very old family friend and contacted me a few weeks ago to interview me for her channel Cope With Hope.  She started this during the lockdown in April 2020 to find out how people were dealing with a very challenging time in their lives and it has continued as a virtual platform for caring, hope and compassion.  Frankly I was quite puzzled as to how I fit into the picture but Nandinii said that she wanted to include me in this series because she found what I did to be quite inspirational and motivating!

 

Speaking at PechaKucha Goa Vol.18 Wanderlust

PechaKucha’s 20x20 presentation format shows your 20 chosen images, each for 20 seconds. In other words, you've got 400 seconds to tell your story, with visuals guiding the way. PechaKucha means "chit chat" in Japanese. This creative outlet began as nighttime get-togethers in Tokyo in 2003 by two renowned architects. Since then, three million people have attended PechaKucha events worldwide. During my stay in Goa I was delighted to be part of the Travel PechaKucha Night with 11 other intrepid travellers where I shared my adventures in Ladakh by land and by water.
https://www.pechakucha.com/

 

WEBINAR | Adventurers are Ageless - South Africa Edition

In the second edition of the “Adventurers Are Ageless” series, we talked about a thrilling ride through South Africa. The webinar revolved around a story that I wrote for National Geographic Traveller in May 2018 and featured some enthralling slides and video taken by my photographer friend Sundeep. South Africa offers an incredible range of outdoor adventure on land and water and even through the air and this webinar will open your eyes to all these enticing possibilities!
Click to read the original article

 

WEBINAR | Adventurers are Ageless - Rafting with Aquaterra

This webinar featured an illustrated discussion of three great whitewater trips that Vaibhav Kala and I, two close friends, united by a shared passion for adventure, had completed together. The first two are the Brahmaputra and the Zanskar, both spectacular river experiences and considered the crowning achievement in any paddler’s list of Indian river descents. The final one is the last descent of the Yangtze in which we became the only two Indians to raft China’s greatest river before the building of mega hydro projects put an end to this fascinating river journey forever.
Click to Read about the Brahmaputra
Click to Read about the Zanskar
Click to Read about the Yangtze

 

The Green Lakes of Kanchenjunga Part - 2

The mythical Green Lakes nestle at the very base of the northeast face of the mighty Kanchenjunga. This story recounts a trip that I made to visit them in November 2014 with Sujoy Das of South Col expeditions www.southcol.com/ The trip was a bittersweet one because sadly the lakes have disappeared wiped out forever by global warming.
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The Green Lakes of Kanchenjunga Part - 1

The musical name, Kanchenjunga translates as “The Five Treasures of the High Snows” in Sikkimese and mountaineers have kept the actual summit itself inviolate in respect of the feelings of the local people for whom the mountain is sacred. While the world knows it as the third highest mountain in the world (8,536m), it inspires tremendous awe and respect among Himalayan climbers as being more difficult and dangerous to climb than Everest.
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Skydiving in South Africa at 60: Living on the Edge !

This is the GoPro video shot by my instructor Mike as we dived from 10,000 feet above Plettenberg Bay. Just the most unforgettably thrilling experience.......... the feeling of riding the sky was like the Sandman promised, like an “eagle in the eye of a hurricane that’s abandoned…”😄😄
Click to read the original article 

 

Rafting the Yangtze

Way back in high school, I had first heard of the Yangtze Kiang in China and the romance of the “Son of the Ocean" had stayed in my mind ever since. This trip was particularly poignant as it was the last time that this section of the Yangtze would be rafted because of the mega-hydro projects coming up downstream. And so in March 2008 when I turned 50 I became one of only two Indians to raft China's greatest river.
Click to read the original article