The Amazon’s Javari Basin
In January 2006 I went off the unbeaten path for the first time, into the Javari Basin on the border between Peru and Brasil.
Read more ...
Russia
Guide books to Russia cover about 20% of the country - European Russia, The Trans-Siberian and a few Far Eastern cities. So what's out there in the rest of the world's largest country? Total, utter wilderness; an inhabited area the size of Canada with no roads or railways; people living...
Read more ...
Morocco
Touristy as Morocco is, there are still a few parts of the Atlas Mountains that have been left out of the Lonely Planet where tent-dwelling nomadic herders can be encountered.Ait Bou Goumez Lake Izourar M’Goun
Read more ...
West Papua
Though no longer home to the cannibals and headhunters it was once famous for, the Indonesian half of the island of New Guinea still offers plenty of opportunities to go where few have gone before among some of the most exotic cultures, spectacular scenery and challenging trekking terrain in the...
Read more ...
Indonesia
Many of Indonesia's 18,000 islands remain well off the unbeaten track, with plenty of interesting tribal groups, endemic and even undiscovered species and virgin rainforest waiting to be explored. The Mentawai Islands, Lombok and West Papua are the only ones that I have had the privilege to visit as of...
Read more ...
Vanuatu
The people who live on the 83 islands of Vanuatu, 1,750km to the east of northern Australia in the Pacific Ocean, are said to be the happiest in the world. You really feel it everywhere you go: laughter, big smiles, help and invitations to dinner or to stay in villages...
Read more ...
Yap State, Micronesia
The Federated States of Micronesia is a country with an area greater than the USA but a land area smaller than New York. Why? Because it's made up entirely of tiny islands scattered over a vast swathe of the Pacific Ocean. 1000 miles east of the Philippines is the westernmost...
Read more ...
The Philippines
It says something that six months of travel in the Philippines was not nearly enough for me to do everything I wanted to. But then again a whole lifetime would of course not be enough to fully explore this country of 7,000 islands. Its hundreds of tribal groups with their...
Read more ...
South West China
Although becoming more and more of a backpacker destination, this area also contains some hidden gems. Dozens of ethnic minorities, each with their own bizarrely psychedelic traditional dress, can be visited in villages or spotted at regional markets. Somehow only the least interesting of these tribal markets have made their...
Read more ...
Mongolia
A country the size of Western Europe but with a population of just 2 million, half of whom live in the capital, Ulaanbaatar, leaving the rest of the country an extremely sparsely populated wilderness. Half of the population live in felt tents called gers, or yurts, while a third are...
Read more ...
Kyrgyzstan
7000m+ mountains; stunning alpine lakes; lush foothills covered in pine forests; yurt-dwelling horse breeders, yak herders and shepherds everywhere; constant invitations to drink fermented horse milk; and ulak, the craziest sport on the planet, no exaggeration. All of these contribute to making Kyrgyzstan an amazing places to travel in, which...
Read more ...
Afghanistan
Though a number of backpackers travel independently all over Afghanistan every year, there is only one area of the country that is really safe for tourists: the Wakhan Valley and Afghan Pamir, accessible from Tajikistan, are the only areas that the Taliban never occupied and have not seen any fighting...
Read more ...
Tajikistan
Tajiks are, simply put, among the kindest, most warm-hearted, hospitable people I have ever met.A house in Basid, a village in the Bartang Valley, The Pamirs, Tajikistan The Bartang Valley
Read more ...
Ten years ago, this was the only part of this website - a series of pages with some advice on independent travel in some of the remotest parts of the planet. Around seven years ago, as with my Travel Blog, I stopped being able to dedicate any time at all to this site as my tour operator business expanded faster than I had ever imagined possible. I hope now to rectify that situation by regularly updating this site with new blogs and country guides.
This was of course never intended as a complete guide to everything that can be seen and done in each of the countries and areas listed to the right. It is all very subjective and based on my own far-from-complete explorations of them. Nor does it contain all information of possible use to the traveler. What it does contain is detailed information on interesting parts of those countries that commercial guide books may have missed out, usually due to those areas' remoteness (for example the Yamal Peninsula in Russia). It also contains information on areas included in the guide books but which I feel the guide books and in general most English-language internet resources misrepresent (for example Kamchatka is always portrayed as being prohibitively expensive whereas in reality it can be done independently and very cheaply).
All information is based on my own first hand experience in these places and thorough pre-trip research. Some pages may be somewhat lacking in detailed practical advice on how to reach certain places, serving more as just a source of potential bucket list ideas for like-minded travelers. All photographs are my own, unless otherwise stated.
I have been fairly liberal with the use of the word "country". Not all of the areas covered are countries, but may have been included anyway if I saw them as being sufficiently different from the country they were located in to warrant a separate section.
