Adventure Travel & Sports Show 2006

Besides spending all day Saturday on the couch reading and nursing the latest incarnation of a nasty British flu bug (again?!), I navigated over to West London's Olympia conference center on Friday and Sunday to soak in the 2006 Adventure Travel & Sports Show.

Geared towards young (or young at heart!) adventure-seeking travelers, the show featured display booths, talks and seminars hoping to inspire all sorts of enthusiasts. Some big displays included student-travel giants STAtravel (where John and I bought our tickets to move here), plenty of specialized overland expedition tour companies (Contiki and Intrepid Tours, for example), guidebook gurus Lonely Planet and Rough Guide, as well as British travel mag Wanderlust. And of course, there was everything in between. Cycling and hiking in Finland? No problem. Botswana Travel Board? Right over on the left. Feel like having an adventure RIGHT NOW? Grab an ax and climb your way up the (fake) ice-climbing wall, sensibly constructed from some sort of durable (ie. not melting) foam.

Discovery Channel's Travel & Living had a booth as well as a camera crew, documenting the entire affair. I can vouch for the camera crew because I was visitng a stand and walked out only to be completely blinded for a moment, literally like a deer in headlights. Once I regained my composure (and sight), I realized that I was a natural extra (read: unannounced) who had unknowingly walked straight into a segment shoot, bright lights and all. With their suave TV host a mere 2 feet away, gabbing on about one thing or another, I shudder to think how cross-eyed I must have looked through their viewfinders!

Although I had no concrete plans of booking a round-the-world-getaway or Everest ascent, I openly admit to being naturally drawn to anything travel-related (the old McKinsey crew can surely attest to this). Here, the added "adventure" element was just a plus. And if that wasn't enough, they had also incorporated a travel photography component into the show, with seminars from professionals advising on how to take winning shots, dealing with life on the road, getting your images published, etc. You could say that between the adventure, the travel and the photography, I felt like I was with "my people".

Highlights and goodies from the show include:

- 2 boxes of Nature Valley granola bars (a sponsor of adventure, apparently!).

- 2 decks of global volunteerism-themed playing cards (each with a photo and developing world "fact").

- 2 tourism CD-roms: one on Jamaica and one on Fiji.

-a 20-minute personal travel consultation from the Sweden Tourism booth, highlighting all of the must-sees for our upcoming Stockholm getaway (February 2-4).

-ridiculous amounts of pamphlets, catalogs, and leaflets (this behavior I directly inherited/learned from my dad, whom all of my life I observed attending photo expos and bringing home bags full of literature just like this).

-entering countless raffles and drawings, hoping to get that African safari or the trip to Australia!

-running into Stephen Stapleton, founder of the Middle-East Offscreen Program at iNOMAD (the organization I have begun working with), while he was handing out pamphlets for an Iranian trekking and mountain-biking venture (their website is soon to come)! Stephen is officially my Person of the Week and I will write more about some unbelievable iNOMAD events in the weeks to come...

All in all, not a bad way to spend time in the name of exploration and daydreaming... about the next ticket "out of here" (wherever that may be)!

Travel happy! xo