Off the Beaten Path with American Journalist Scott Gurian

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
3 jet setting through the neon lights from Tokyo to Rios.
Go riding high. The beat drops low.

(00:27):
Number one. Everywhere he goes and.
Show late night with stories bold gold plated entails untold
microphone his mighty Sword podcast.
World you can't ignore. Welcome to the Up in the Clouds

(00:48):
podcast featuring your host Adrian Hustling.
What's up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode
of the Up in the Clouds podcast.I'm your host, Adrian.
Today we got a great interview lined up for you with Scott
Gurion, American journalist and big time travel guy.

(01:09):
But before we get to that, let'sgive you a little life update.
I am currently here in Guayaquil, Ecuador.
That's right, I'm back in Ecuador.
I would say my favorite country in South America that I've fully
traveled and the reason I came back here is because I was in
Peru. I was in Lima, but the flights

(01:31):
to go back to Canada were not exactly ideal.
They were quite expensive and with an airline and I do not
like that's Avianca, do not fly with them.
But anyways, so yeah, I actuallydecided that in the worth my
time to come back to Ecuador, spend one last week here, do
some works warning and then fly back to Canada from guy kill.

(01:53):
Now everyone listening, probablythinking what the heck are you
going back to Canada? You're supposed to be traveling
for like a bunch of years. Well, I still am.
But when I was in Peru and looking at flights to Australia,
which is gonna be my last destination, the cheapest
flights actually went through Hawaii.
And I said, well, we're going tobe going up that direction
anyways. I might as well stop at home,

(02:15):
see some family and friends kindof retool, have a bit of a
breeder and get ready for the next chapter.
So it is a little better. Sweet that the Latin America
portion, road trip coming to theend.
It is being a hell of a ride, a hell of an experience.
So many good memories. I've met so many good people,
seeing so many cool places. But I think it is time for for a

(02:39):
new chapter to begin. I'm kind of getting a little
fatigued and that does happen after after time.
It's being almost seven months now that I'm traveling, staying
at hostels on the go, speaking adifferent language or at least
trying to. And I think I'm looking forward
to going home for a little bit, see some friends and then going
to Australia, Going to Australiato work because your boy is

(03:03):
broke as hell. You know, I did everything I
could while I was out here. And definitely no regrets when
it's time to go, make some more money and then keep traveling.
So that's the plan for now. I'm really hoping that I'll have
a job lined up in Australia by the time I get there.
I'm looking for either a firefighting position or a job

(03:25):
in the mines. So anyone listening, if you have
a contact, please, please, please, please let me know.
Otherwise, if I don't have something lined up, I think I'm
going to be flying to Sydney. I have a few connections there.
And as well, if you're listening, you're from Sydney,
reach out, let me know. I'd love to see you.
But the cheapest flights from other Canada or Hawaii go to
Sydney. So that's where I'm going to be

(03:47):
starting. And yeah, we'll see what
happens. If the flights going through
Hawaii are cheaper, I might go Hawaii and just chill out for a
week. And then now I'm down to
Australia because that would be super cool.
But that is a whole lot of things I gotta figure out in the
next couple weeks. I'm kind of waiting till you
Canada and I'll knock out some numbers and get that all sorted.
But for now I have a couple morenights here in Ecuador.

(04:10):
So I'm just doing the typical tourist thing, doing some
sightseeing, seeing the attractions and just really
enjoying the last moments. I haven't had much of a chance
to really reflect and think about these last 6-7 months.
And so hopefully, you know, in the coming weeks will have a
chance to do that because a lot has happened, but I've been so

(04:31):
busy and so caught up in the moment, I haven't had the chance
yet to decompress. But anyways, it's, uh, it's been
a hell of a journey. Allows everyone that's listening
that I met along the way, all You Beautiful people.
And thanks again for tuning in. So like I mentioned, we've got a
good interview for you today, Scott Green, American
journalist. He has done a water traveling,

(04:51):
both personal and with work. And he's got some really cool,
unique stories from along the way, including a road trip he
did from UK to Mongolia, where Iwent through a bunch of
different countries that you've probably never even heard of, as
some really cool stories along the way.
So without further ado, we're not thrilled over Scott Durham.
And as always, let me know what you think about these

(05:14):
interviews, if there's somethingI can approve, if there's other
details or questions I should beasking about.
And if you'd like to be a guest on the pod in the future, feel
free to reach out at Up In the Clouds under Score on Instagram
or at upintheclouds@gmail.com. All right, without further ado,
let's head on over the interview.

(05:36):
But we'll get her started here. I got a I got a fun little intro
for you, so bear with me here, but we'll get her going right
away here. So welcoming on our next guest
to the podcast. He's a Peabody award-winning
American journalist covering stories such as Superstorm
Sandy, the riots in Quebec, a sunrise pilgrimage to Cambodia's

(05:58):
Buddhist temples and following I'm going to say it is wrong.
Zapatista Indians across Mexico.His work has enabled him to
travel across the globe and inspired him to start his own
podcast Far from home. The Always in the Trenches, off
the beaten path, Yes Man and opposite to the popular song
Scotty Doesn't Know, Scott Gurgaon.

(06:24):
Thanks so much for having me, really appreciate being on your
show. Yeah, no worries.
Did I say your name right? Yeah, yeah, you got it.
OK. Yeah, I always worry about that.
Now, Scott, before we get into things here and I am excited
about this interview, I always start with a segment called
Speed Round Questions and it's just meant to kind of loosen

(06:46):
things up a little bit. Now, are you familiar with the
segment? I've certainly other people have
yet done this with me before. Usually it's kind of at the end
of the show, but I I get what you're doing to kind of loosen
people up at the beginning, so I'll do my best.
Alright, sounds good. Well, I'm going to give you 2
options. You pick the option you like the
best. Are you ready?

(07:07):
Right, as ready as I guess I'll be.
Alright, happy to be home or wish you were traveling.
Oh, I'm supposed to. It's supposed to be speed,
right? Yeah.
I mean, right now, I guess I'm happy to be home.
But yeah, in general, I wish I was travelling.
Yeah. OK, window or aisle?
Seat No definitely window. Yeah, hostel or hotel?

(07:32):
Neither. Yeah.
I've, I've never, I, I like having my own.
I, I could do hostels if it's like my own room or sometimes
they have ones with like the privacy curtains where they're
like built into the wall as opposed to like a bunk bed or
something. I don't mind so much, but you
always get at least one or two snores in the room.
So I, I don't know, I kind of don't like that.

(07:53):
I don't usually go all the way to a hotel room either.
I usually do an Airbnb or I've been doing a lot of house
sitting. So if I had to choose those two,
I'd say hotel, but probably not hotel.
Yeah. OK, fair enough with the privacy
aspect. Gringo trail or off the beaten
path? Oh, without a doubt, off the
beaten path. Alpaca or koi?

(08:17):
To eat. Yeah.
I'm I'm, I don't, I'm vegetarianor pescatarian.
So I if I did still eat meat, itwill probably would not be coy
not into Guinea pigs for for youto you know, thank you.
OK, for. I'd pick El paca too.
Alpaca was delicious, but there you go.

(08:37):
I didn't know you were. Yeah.
Yeah. Fluent in Spanish or fluent in
Spanglish? Spanglish at this point I hope
they become more fluent. We can get by.
Ask the hard hitting questions or keep it conservative.
No, I, I mean, I, I'm a, I'm a journalist at heart.
So I'll ask the hard hitting questions.

(08:59):
OK, slow travel or see and do everything.
Oh definitely slow travel. I'd rather see fewer places but
really get to know them well instead of doing the whirlwind
tour. Definitely report from the front
lines or from a safe distance. From the front lines, which with
the caveat that I'm, I'm not like seeking out like war zones

(09:21):
or things like that necessarily,but I've been to a lot of places
that most Westerners would not consider going or they'd be
afraid to go. So I I'm probably more
adventurous than the average traveler or tourist.
OK. And last one, mushrooms or
ayahuasca? I don't, I don't really do drugs

(09:42):
in general, but I guess we'll get into, I did attend an
ayahuasca ceremony and I tried just a little bit and we'll get
to discuss that more later on. But that's the one of the two
that I've done and actually actually didn't have much effect
on me. But we'll, we'll talk more about
that later on, I assume. OK, sounds good.
Alright, well, you passed with flying colours.

(10:04):
Great. Why is my first question, um, I
actually wanted to ask you aboutis what made you get into
journalism? OHP man Um, I always had an
interest in doing something kindof in media or like even way
back in high school, I was like resident of the TV studio and
somehow I just naturally found myself found my way more into

(10:27):
audio and radio than than TV andvideo.
I just happen to know someone who worked at a radio station,
started kind of doing that just like my freshman year in
college, just interning with thelocal community radio station.
Studied that in school, but, butmostly just learned it kind of
on my own just by doing it. Um, and you know, the thing
about freelance work, you could just do it.

(10:48):
You don't necessarily need to behired or trained or anything,
especially in community, you know, or public radio.
And I think the one big experience that really set me
down this path, as as you mentioned briefly in your intro
was my, I think it was my, I don't know if it was my junior,
my senior year of college, I hadsome friends who were film

(11:11):
makers and they were making thisdocumentary about the Zapatista
Indians in Mexico. If people remember, if they're
old enough, the old like Rage Against the Machine music
videos, Zapatistas with this indigenous rebel tribe, they
would cover their faces like with balaclavas and everything.
And so this was in, I believe, 1999 where they were having this

(11:33):
March for indigenous dignity allacross Mexico.
So it's obviously a very large, you know, Aztec and Mayan, you
know, population all around Mexico and various tribes,
different languages. A lot of them don't even speak
Spanish. And like in many places, you
know, indigenous people in Mexico have a history of not
being treated very well by the government and we're very poor

(11:53):
and had a lot of problems. And so they had this, I think it
was like a two week caravan thatwas going all across Mexico,
picking up more people all alongthe way, eventually converging
on the Zocalo, the big square inthe centre of Mexico City, to
make demands on the government for indigenous rights.
And this just so happened to line up with my spring break
from from college. And so my filmmaker friends were

(12:15):
going down there making this documentary, you know, following
this whole caravan. And so I flew down there to meet
up with them. And it's funny, most, you know,
college kids, you know, they talk about going away for spring
break and maybe they'll go to Mexico, but they'll go to Cancun
or something. And here I was following this
indigenous rebel tribe for, for like a week.
And it was just, it was incredible.

(12:37):
Like I, I, I think it, up to that point, I don't think I'd
ever traveled out of the countryon my own before because I was,
I don't know, 2122 years old. The young kid didn't really know
what I was doing, you know, totally in over my head.
And I was doing as a journalist,so I was for my local community
radio station and for this this national radio program.
I had this little mini disc recorder and I and A microphone

(12:58):
headphones flew down, had no clue I was doing rented a cell
phone from the airport. This is before we have
smartphones and Wi-Fi everywhereand ended up getting a $2000
cell phone bill. At the end of the week.
I, I, you know, followed. I, I, I met this, um, I, I had
to track down where this group even was.
And, you know, speaking in my broken Spanish had way too much

(13:21):
luggage and, you know, so I justlike took a bus to, I had a
rough itinerary of where they'd be, which days.
So I took a bus to like the capital of the Mexican state
where I heard they were going tobe.
And I was asking people like, have you seen the Zapatistas,
you know, where they are? And then took another bus to a
smaller town. And, and I, I finally a taxi cab
and I finally somehow managed tofind them in this little shanty

(13:45):
town in the absolute middle of nowhere.
And my filmmaker friends were like totally surprised.
Like, how in the hell did you find us here?
And I just spent that week, likefollowing him around and filing
these daily reports, you know, that aired like across the
country in the US on community radio stations.
And it was just the most amazing, coolest thing.

(14:05):
And I remember the final morningwhen they finally arrived, you
know, in the Zocalo when I was staying in a hostel, but just
off the, you know, the square there in the centre of Mexico
City. And, you know, being in going
out to the square, I don't know,6:00 in the morning or
something. So the sun had risen, but, you
know, it was still very quiet and just, you know, lady pushing
around a Cardiff Tamale breakfast, tamales for people

(14:27):
and, you know, no one in the square.
And I remember, you know, there was some like Japanese tourists
or someone, you know, when they were talking to me and I, I
said, well, just watch in a few hours, like this square is going
to be packed with hundreds of thousands of people.
And sure enough, it was just a few hours later and there was
this giant rally and there's a big Mexican flag above.
And, and we were kind of making history in Mexico where they

(14:47):
were making hands outside the Mexican, you know, parliament or
whatever. And, and I was like filing
reports that aired across the country.
It was like the coolest thing I've ever had ever done up to
that point. And, and I realized that, like
the coolest experiences I've ever had as a journalist has
reporter have been when I've been abroad in another country
and another culture. And I just want to do more of
that kind of thing. I want to do like a foreign

(15:09):
correspondent thing. I just want to keep traveling.
And I've just continued doing that ever since.
That is an insane story. Yeah.
Most kids are going to Fort Lauderdale or Fort Fort
Lauderdale, as they call it, right?
And you had a completely. That is crazy, especially at
that age, too. So I can see why that inspired
your career. And I was reading your bio there

(15:30):
and it said, you know, close to two decades doing the journalism
now. Are you still doing journalism
or have you focused more now on doing the podcast and traveling
abroad? Well, I, I do journalism through
my podcast. I mean, I'm not, it's not like a
chatty kind of show. It's more of like a documentary
kind of show and it involves journalism aspects.
I mean, I still consider myself a journalist.

(15:51):
You know, I started out working in public radio in the US doing
stuff for NPR and BBC and placeslike that.
But overtime I've kind of drifted more.
I haven't done anything for actual broadcast radio in a few
years now. It's mostly podcasts now as, as
you know, a lot of people, even myself, having worked in radio
for so long, I hardly listen to the radio anymore.
Most, you know, most people, I think Netflix started everyone

(16:14):
to listen to what they want to listen, when they want to
listen. It's all on demand now Um and so
yeah, I've gotten into podcasts and also it jelso just because
it gives you more freedom to instead of having, you know, on
the radio. I would have like a 3 1/2 minute
slot to do a little story versusa podcast, like how much more
space to do like a 3045 minute documentary or something.

(16:36):
So it's a lot more freedom stillfrom the journalist background.
I still try to, you know, spend hours, you know, crafting every
little edit and making, you know, I still try to make things
well edited and not, you know, have more content in there that
needs to be in there. You know, I still have those
that journalist mindset. But yeah, it's just podcast.

(16:56):
Just allow for a lot more creative opportunities.
So, yeah, I, I still kind of consider myself a journalist.
Not everything I do is hard journalism, like the latest
breaking news. In fact, I try not to do that,
though it's a little hard with everything going on right now in
the world. So, you know, I've done some
stories recently about how the cuts, you know, the American

(17:16):
cuts to foreign aid around the world are affecting people and
all these countries. And, you know, I've done stuff
like that. And during COVID, I, you know,
reached out to just friends and colleagues around the world and
just had them send me voice memos from their phones
describing what the situation was like in in their country.
So yeah, I still do a lot of journalism, but, you know, fun
stuff as well. Oh absolutely, I mean there is a

(17:38):
lot going on in the world these days so it's kind of hard to
avoid it. But how often do you get to
travel now and then? Just a fun little bonus
question. I saw some pictures on your
website. What is up with the massive
windscreen? Yeah, I have, again, because I
come from the radio background and I have all the gear and
everything and I'm a stickler for good sound and I'm, I'm

(17:59):
fortunate that I have that experience and background of,
you know, working professionally.
Um, and so, you know, there's a lot of podcasts out there where
people don't really, you know, people don't have any training
or experience like formally. And so they don't it's Well,
yeah, well, that's fine. And you're, you know, you're
doing the best you can. I get that.
And it's one thing if you're just recording an interview like

(18:21):
this, but when you're out in thefield, wind is your biggest
enemy and you just get a rumbling sound and there's no
way to get rid of it. So if, you know, I check the
weather whenever I go out and ifthere's even if the wind is more
than like 5 mph, whatever it wasa 10 kilometers or whatever,
I'll bring. I have like a windscreen that I
put on my microphone is this big, ridiculous, enormous thing.
But but it does the job that could be out almost in hurricane

(18:43):
force winds and it you'll barelyhear it.
So it's great. So yeah, I have some kind of
fancy gear that I've got acquired over the years.
It looks like a house duster to me.
Like, I laughed because I saw that then I'm using these little
Rd. microphones, right, with like the tiny little
windbreaker. And I was like, yeah, OK.
Yeah, I mean, that'll work in many cases.
But again, it just depends whereyou are and how windy it is.

(19:04):
And the part of the challenge isa lot of times, depending on
where I'm traveling, like I can't always bring all the gear
I want. Like, you know, as, as we'll get
into, you know, I've been to some like authoritarian
countries that drove across Iranand a lot of Central Asia where
I technically wasn't allowed to be a journalist.
And so in that case, I had to just bring a tiny little
recorder. And sometimes I couldn't even
use that, sometimes even just recording on my cell phone

(19:26):
because I don't want to stand out, you know, So you gotta kind
of judge the situation in the circumstance.
But yeah, the other part of yourquestion, how much about
traveling nowadays? Um, I mean, right now, this is
kind of a rare moment you've caught me out where I'm actually
home for quite a while now and Idon't have any upcoming travel
plan just yet. Well, next week, I'm tomorrow

(19:48):
actually, I'm leaving for a weekto go to West Virginia randomly.
But it's, aside from that, I actually don't have any other
big travel plan just yet. And I probably won't till the
fall or winter. Um, just because when you're
away so much of the time, like Iwas looking back on my calendar
recently and before I returned in November, I like the previous
two years I've been away from home 70% of the time.

(20:10):
And so, yeah. And so I, you when you're away.
So, I mean, there are people whoare total digital nomads who
like don't even have a home basethat I feel like that would be
hard to, for me to be totally nomadic.
So I do have my home base here in in New Jersey, in the suburbs
of New York City. Um, and when I'm away for months
and months at a time, like thereis stuff back home, like there's

(20:32):
a leak in the kitchen ceiling I have to fix and like other
repairs and things, you know, that it's hard to do from abroad
necessarily. So that's why I'm home for a
little bit now to take care of alot of life stuff.
But in general, over the last few years I've really gotten
into house sitting and pet sitting as a way to basically
travel for free. I, I look for, as we said, I'm a
big fan of slow travel. So I try to spend at least a

(20:53):
month or more in a place to really get to know it well, to,
you know, have access to a kitchen.
You could do all your own grocery shopping.
So that cuts down on costs. But also you get to like go to
the local market. And especially if you're in a
tropical country, I love to likebuy all the weird fruits I've
never seen and take them home and cut them open and explore.
You know, I love to cook. I food is a big part of my
travel for me and just the cultural experiences and, and

(21:17):
then I've gotten, you know, I'velearned all the tricks as, as
Americans that a lot of people aren't fortunate like this.
But as Americans, we have accessto, you know, they have all
these credit card bonuses you could sign up for.
I don't know what it's like in Canada if you have the same
thing we you have this, OK, a lot of speak to European
friends, whatever, they don't have anything like this
unfortunately. But so yeah, I just, I signed up

(21:37):
for credit cards to get the bonus points.
And so I've racked up, I think Ihave about 700,000 airline
points, right? Now spread.
Spread between a bunch of different airlines so yeah so I
could basically travel for free and I can stay places for free
and so I'm just covering my groceries or whatever wherever I

(21:58):
go and so yeah that's what I've been doing the last few years
doing a lot of international house sitting um, because
that's. Super common.
The International House sitting like, is that pretty?
Easy to find or yeah, I mean, there's websites, there's
Trusted House sitters and Mind My House is another smaller one.
And then there's a lot of Facebook groups as well,
although I don't know quite how they met people on there.

(22:19):
But yeah, there's websites for that kind of thing.
There's people who just do that and it's, you know, it's all
peer reviewed thing, almost likeAirbnb.
So, you know, so you kind of know who you're hiring if you're
at the homeowner and people, youknow, create a whole profile.
And I, I got this ebook online which taught me how to do it.
I was just getting into it because I have a neighbor who

(22:40):
actually, she's originally Canadian, but she, she was my
neighbor for a while living in the US And then a number of
years ago she sold her house andjust started house sitting
around the world. She didn't have a home
basically, and was just going from country to country of
Jamaica to Thailand to Copenhagen and all over the
place. And that got me really
fascinated in the idea. And so yes, I started looking
into it and yeah, I mean, over the last year.

(23:03):
So I was just housing domestically for a friend out
near San Francisco for a few months.
And then I was in Melbourne, Australia for about a month.
Then I was in Auckland, New Zealand for about a month and
did like a road trip around New Zealand.
But in general, I tend to have more luck finding the kind of
stories I'm most interested in when I go to the developing
world. But but, but I feel like

(23:25):
wherever you are, if you spend enough time there, you can find
interesting things. And that's, you know, it's also
what I'm looking for when I'm traveling.
I'm looking for places where I could find stories for my
podcast. I.
Try to come back from every tripwith at least a story or two.
So even even in a place like Copenhagen, where which on the
face of it might not seem like an interesting place, but I, you
know, spent, you know, over a month there and just meeting

(23:47):
people, you know, exploring, I found several really interesting
stories. Well, I feel like that's a big
part of it. It's just the people you meet,
right? Like sometimes you might not
think the destinations, that's interesting, but then you meet
people who have stories, and that's where it kind of takes
off from there. And the reason I brought you on
is because you have quite a few stories yourself, and I wanted
to dive into the first one here.You mentioned that you were in

(24:09):
Chernobyl, wandering around abandoned buildings.
How the heck did you end up in Chernobyl and how did you get
access? It's actually not as complicated
as you'd think. Well, I mean, maybe now it might
be, but at least as of a few years ago, before the war and
everything, there were tours people could go on.
So I was in, I was in Kiev with,with.

(24:30):
So we'll get into, I took this big road trip.
I drove from the UK to Mongolia and, and back a number of years
ago. And we could discuss that a
little later on. But on the way back, I, we drove
across Ukraine. This was in 2016 and that fall.
And so, yeah, while we were in in Kiev, we they have like day

(24:52):
trips. You could take up the Chernobyl
and it's just a bus, you know, with a bunch of other people.
You drive, it goes up for the day.
They actually have longer tours you could take as well where you
actually stay overnight there and it's more expensive and you
get to see other places that youwouldn't see on just on the day
tour. But you're pitching a tent or
what? No, no, no, no, they have, they

(25:14):
have like they have like dorms or whatever.
I don't think it's anything fancy, but like bunk beds or
something. It's my sense, but there's so
there's several what they call the exclusion zone.
You know, there's like obviouslythe most radioactive area right
by the reactor, which no one's allowed in.
I mean, there are crews that work there and like help keep
everything contained. And then there's outer rings of,

(25:37):
you know, depending on where theradiation spread.
And there's certain areas which are clearly totally off limits
for everyone. There's this area, I think it's
called the Red Forest, which is like one of the most highly
contaminated places in the world, which actually went in
The Russians invaded Ukraine a few years ago.
They actually went with the Ukrainians are warning them.
They said don't go there. It's super radioactive and the

(25:57):
Russians ignored them and they pitched tents in the middle of
this like highly radioactive area and they all got super sick
and had to be evacuated to Belarus, apparently.
But yeah, so there's like reallyradioactive areas and there's
other areas, you know, you go with a guy, they they would take
tour groups all the time. So like they have Geiger
counters, but they don't even need to look like they know
where the areas are. And they would tell you like,

(26:18):
well, you're OK here on the pavement because it like seals
in. They like trucked out the
contaminated dirt and paved over, but don't like step over
there on the grass because that's has higher levels of
radiation. And then when you're like
exiting, you go through several layers of like radiation
detectors and even the bus drives through.
So they want to make sure you'renot tracking radiation back to
the city, you know, but you're taking you in like abandoned

(26:42):
buildings of like the, the, you know, little, little villages
around Chernobyl where people lived.
And they were told in, you know,1986 that, you know, well, you
got to leave, but don't worry, you'll be able to come back
within a few weeks. And, you know, it's been decades
and decades later and you still see calendars on the wall from
1986, like, it's like a time capsule.

(27:02):
It's crazy. Just, you know, it's really the
eeriest place I've ever been. Just this snapshot in time
preserved there. We walked through like an
abandoned nursery. We were seeing the little beds
where the kids, you know, and their cubbies with like, you
know, drawings from the kids andeverything scattered on the
floor. And then we went to this
community centre with his giant,like, Olympic size pool that,

(27:24):
you know, obviously over the decades, everything's crumbling
now and falling apart. And there was an amusement park
there when, you know, the bumpercars overgrown with weeds and
the Ferris wheel. And, um, yeah, it's fascinating.
And like I said, if you go on the more extended tour,
apparently they would take you to, like, a grocery store and
to, like, you'd actually get to meet.
There's like some old people whostill live there who refused to

(27:45):
leave or I think they initially have to leave, but then they
actually let them come back. They wouldn't let their children
or grandchildren live there, butthey let, they agreed to let
them, like, live out their yearsthere.
And they're growing vegetables and everything.
Somehow they haven't come out with all kinds of cancers and
everything, which you would imagine they would, but but
yeah, I know they say like, I guess the people kind of like

(28:06):
the animals there have adapted over the years.
They're genetics and everything there's you know there's animals
apparently there's lots of wild horses we we saw like wild dogs
and animals that they've just adapted to the higher levels of
radiation somehow. So yeah, incredibly fascinating
place and I'd love maybe somedayto go back and if to go on an

(28:28):
extended tour, it's yeah, I highly recommend that if.
People aren't. If they open up, I'm assuming
the tours aren't going on right now, but hopefully at some point
in the future. I would love to go, and this is
super random. I have some pretty crazy dreams.
I remember that dream once whereI was paintballing in Chernobyl.
So now that's always being something I wanted to do because

(28:49):
it's this big abandoned town. I feel like the perfect place
for it. But it is fascinating the fact
that, yeah, you have people thatare going back living there.
They're not having any of the effects.
I always see posts about there'scertain kinds of like, fungi and
mushrooms that are now eating upthe bacteria.
I think it's, yeah, it's crazy. But were you wearing any kind of
like, PPE, personal protective equipment while you're there?

(29:10):
You're just in your own clothes.And what was like the overall
feeling while you're there? Like, I know you said it's like
going back in time, like a time capsule, but was it kind of
solemn? Like what was the overall
feeling? Yeah, I mean, Eerie has the
biggest area where I could use to describe it, just it's kind
of creepy go. I mean, there's people who are
into that they call dark tourismwhere they like the wander

(29:32):
through abandoned buildings and everything.
I don't, I don't necessarily specialize in that, but it,
it's, yeah, it's, it's crazy to see just, you know, still the
calendars on the wall and that, you know, it's like you hopped
in a time machine and went back.Obviously with all the
destruction, things crumble overthe years.
So in that sense, it's not like a time machine, but it's, yeah,

(29:53):
just incredibly kind of spooky. And just putting myself in,
there's a line in my podcast where I realized, so I was born
in 1979 and this happened in 1986.
And I was thinking as I'm walking through the preschool,
like, you know, that I would have been around the age, well,
maybe you know, a little older, but, um, you know, if I'd born,

(30:16):
been born just, you know, a yearor two later in, you know,
Ukraine, that I could have very well been in that preschool.
That could have been me who did one of those drawings or
whatever and slept on one of those little beds.
And actually my family MyHeritage is from Ukraine, so
so yeah, it wasn't that far fetched.
So yeah, yeah. Just crazy to to think what life

(30:38):
was like for all these people there.
Yeah, and now how? How much was the tour?
I'm just curious like was it expensive or remember?
16 I mean, I don't, I don't, I don't think it wasn't like
ridiculously expensive. I I maybe 100 bucks.
It was made probably less than that.
I yeah, I I really was 2016, so it's over a decade ago.

(31:00):
Yeah, no worries. It's hard to renegade.
Ago So yeah, yeah, but it wasn't, it wasn't like
unreasonable. Yeah.
OK, Perfect. No, that's super interesting.
I do need to get there someday, for sure.
Well, we're gonna move on from that.
And another story that you had, and this one I want to talk
about because I just was in Perufor six weeks, was the fact that
you went to an Ayawaska ceremony.

(31:21):
So tell me about that. Basically, how do you get
introduced to it? What happened and what effects
did you have, if any? So I was in Lima because she had
a radio colleague who was livingthere with her husband who was
like teaching English. And so they were living in the

(31:41):
Barranco neighborhood of Lima, which is kind of trendy
neighborhood there. And they had like a spare
bedroom. And so they decided, well, we'll
just invite other like audio producer people to come down.
They called it like this radio residency.
And so so I applied as she accepted me.
And so I got to stay with them for a few weeks and then that I
stayed with them, I think for two weeks and then I extended my

(32:02):
trip. You know, like I said, I'm a big
fan of slow to travel. So I stayed a few extra weeks in
Lima and, and I figured, you know, I, like I said, I'm not a
fan of whirlwind tours. I really, you know, I didn't
even get to see Cusco or whatever.
I just figured I just want to know this one city.
There's one place really. Well, I figured, you know,
Cusco, Machu Picchu will be a separate trip.
I'll come back at some point. I still hope to make it back at

(32:24):
some point. So I just pretty much stayed in
Lima the whole time. And as part of that time, when I
wasn't staying with my radio producer colleague, I stated in
Airbnb there with this guy namedJeffrey, who was a Belgian
originally, but he had moved andwas living in Lima and super
cool guy. And I, you know, I try to do
some research before I go to a place to kind of look into kind

(32:46):
of potential story ideas. And sometimes you just got to be
on the grounds, you know, it's, it's hard to do everything ahead
of time. But one of the things in my
initial research I saw on Atlas Obscura from familiar with that,
they, they sit in Lima. There was this, uh, they called
it the Mercado de Brujas, like the witches or Wizards market.

(33:08):
Like it was this market where they would sell.
There's a lot of people, you know, especially indigenous
people who are into a lot of traditional herbs, healing stuff
and some weird stuff, almost like voodoo kind of shrunken
head kind of stuff, you know, weird cures and you know, stuff
with questionable scientific validity.
But you know, people believe in it.
So, you know, good for them, youknow, so I, I thought, well,

(33:32):
that's kind of interesting. Um, and I, I mentioned that to
this guy Jeffrey, I was staying with and I said, I heard about
this. Do you know anything about that?
Maybe some kind of story there? And he said, oh, you should meet
my friend Lucho, who's, he didn't, he didn't like the word
shaman because he thinks that's kind of figurative, but they
used the word could undergo likea cure or a natural healer.
And so Lucho was a could undergoand he and he was into all this

(33:57):
kind of stuff and and he lived in Pucallpa, which is like the
city at the edge of the Amazon, you know, on the other side of
the Andes and the other other part of Peru.
And so we call Lucho up on the phone and he he he's interested
to meet me. So he actually takes an
overnight bus trip over the Andes.
So we. Want to to.
Meet me if I just, I just wired him the fare for the bus money.

(34:21):
And so he meets me there and we go.
I, I join him on this West. We we taken another overnight
bus trip all the way up the coast of Peru to this little
city of Chiclayo in the north, which is not a place any tourist
would normally go. It's actually, ironically, the
city where Our New Hope was serving for a number of years,

(34:42):
apparently. I've heard of it but it didn't
go. Yeah, there's you have no
absolutely no reason to go. There's there's not as I don't
think as much of anything there.So.
So I joined Lucho in this other overnight bus trip up the coast
to Chiclayo on this quest to search for this star shaped

(35:03):
stone that he had seen in a hallucinogenic vision that
supposedly had magical healing powers.
OK, so this is it was a great. This is like the ideal story for
me. One of my favorite stories that
I've ever done because you're honest.
Like quest for this mystical thing.
It's like. You know it's.

(35:24):
Like Harry? Potter or whatever, you know,
Yeah, Indiana Jones or something.
So it was crazy. We so we went to this market
there and we actually. So you went to the guy he's, you
know, dealt with in the past, he's bought some stuff from, and
we actually found a similar stone, but the guy told him that

(35:46):
apparently the stone that he hadimagined or seemed in his vision
had just been sold the previous day.
No come. On but we we found a similar one
and he didn't have the money. He wanted me to, you know, give
him the money to buy it. And I said, I kind of I feel
really bad, but like, is it journalists?
There's kind of journalist rules, like kind of can't just

(36:08):
give you money. If I feel still feel bad about
that. But but he like looked at it,
felt that he said somehow he would like absorb the power from
it that, you know, just by seeing it and touching it, that
he could, you know, instill in his future spells or whatever he
would cast. So anyway, that was a
fascinating story. So we returned to Lima and then
we keep in touch and then like aweek later he contacts me again

(36:31):
and some so, so people may have heard of ayahuasca.
So it's this hallucinogenic potion that's brewed from roots
and herbs and things in the jungle.
And it's supposed to have curative properties that you
know, any like if you have any kind of issues or psychological

(36:51):
imbalances or you know, it's like, I guess like psychedelics
or whatever, it'll supposedly build new pathways in your
brain. That's not a recreational drug
by any means. Because in fact, you know, as
part of the experience, a lot of, you know, there's a lot of
purging involved, you know? Yeah.
And have you, have you done it at some point?
I haven't done it, but I've heard about it.

(37:12):
And to be honest, I was debatingdoing it.
And then my guide, I was doing a, a city tour in Cusco and I
asked him about out of curiosity, like, hey, do you
know a good place to go? Like I was thinking about it.
And he goes on this whole long speech about, you know,
everything that it does to you and the fact that you like, you
actually like leave your body and it's open to like other
identities, like entering your body.

(37:32):
And they could be bad, they could be good.
And that there is like a couple that took it recently and the
boyfriend ended up killing the girlfriend and I'm like, wow,
holy shit, I'm OK. Pause.
Maybe not. Oht wow, wow.
Yeah, that was just his perspective.
I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I think it works
differently for everyone from what I've heard, but so, so
Lucio would do these ceremonies regularly.

(37:54):
Um, and so people, I guess through word of mouth, people
would hire him to conduct these ceremonies.
So I tagged along with him to this.
The ceremony he was doing in, you know, Iasca now has become
like a trendy thing in some places.
They have like retreats. People go down to Cancun and
they do it in the Cenote and theunderground, you know, or even I

(38:14):
think in Brooklyn, I hear there's like people now doing
underground Iowa. Ceremonies.
No, I know it's become a hipsterthing now, but this was like the
real deal, like with Lucha, likewe went to this like really
poor, like shantytown, way way way on the outskirts of Limit
where like no tourists would go.A giant piles of trash on the
side of the road. I don't think they have trash

(38:34):
pickup straight dogs running across like really poor like
it's not a place I would and would have ever gone or felt
safe going by myself. But so I tagged along with him.
We go to these, these peoples, you know, house with this tin
roof and stray dogs barking all around the neighborhood.
And we sit in this living room and they they invited there's a
few other people who, you know, were coming over to participate

(38:57):
in this. And we sit in a circle on these
really hard back chairs in the in this living room with a
single light bulb hanging from the ceiling.
And he proceeds to conduct this ceremony where you know, he's,
he has like is all different elements.
It's fascinating to watch. You know, he has like a, a

(39:17):
potpourri, he called it, or what, just like this liquid.
He's like almost like you're in church, like sprinkling it
around the room. And he has some like tobacco
from the jungle or something. He's like smoking these cigars
to like cleanse the air or something.
And then he and then he gives each person like a little bit of
iasca to consume like a few oz Um, and I wasn't initially

(39:42):
going, I was there like reporting.
I, you know, I was recording thewhole thing audio, you know,
documenting the experience. I wasn't planning on doing it
myself, but he kind of encouraged me and I said OK in,
in the interest of journalism tounderstand what these people
experiencing local have just notthe full amount, but just like a
little bit. And it was, it was bitter.
It wasn't quite as bad as I was prepared for, but yeah, it was

(40:05):
definitely bitter and not a verypleasant taste.
He only gave me, I don't know, maybe an ounce, 2 oz or
something that like probably half or 1/3 as much as the other
people drank. And so everyone consumes it.
And then we go back and sit in the chairs and he starts like
chanting. Turns out the lights, he starts
chanting and he has a harmonica and he's, you know, we're all

(40:28):
kind of waiting for it to kind of kick in and.
Me, sorry, sorry to interrupt you there briefly before we get
to it kicking in because I want to see what happened to you.
We are using Zoom free. So this meeting is actually
going to end in 60 seconds. So we will continue momentarily
here. And I also want to know how many
times you've said for the interest of journalism, but we

(40:51):
will get to what happened afterwards.
We're just gonna take a brief break here and Zoom, if you want
to sponsor the podcast so I don't have to use these free
meetings anymore, feel free to reach out.
But yeah, we'll see in a few minutes there, Scott.
Yeah, we'll jump right back in there.
So basically you're in the room,you got the one little late in
the middle. You're all sitting around in a
circle. You take the ayahuasca.

(41:11):
What happened next? So we all, we're all sitting
around in the dark kind of waiting for the IASCA to kick
in. And I myself start, you know, at
some point, like, my stomach feels a little upset.
Um, but then it kind of goes away after a bit.
And then like, I don't know, I'mnot really feeling much of

(41:32):
anything. And then meanwhile, the people
around me start having experiences.
And Lucho keeps like leaning over to me is like, you know,
asking me in Spanish, like he's the only thing, yet you're the
only thing that's. And I'm almost embarrassed.
I'm like, no. And But, yeah, Meanwhile, yeah,
the people around me are like describing these hallucinations

(41:52):
of all kinds of things. And, uh, and I have, you know,
this goes on and on. Um, and it has almost got a
little boring after a while. Like I, you know, like people
having these crazy experiences. And I'm just like sitting there,
like, OK. And I basically have, I don't
know, four or five hours of audio of people vomiting in

(42:15):
buckets and, and, but it no, butit was really cool.
And at what I mean, not that part was cool, but the cool part
was like I, I at one point, likeit culminated with this one
woman who is like his assistant who he was training or whatever.
She had like the full on experience and it was almost
like witnessing an exorcism. Like he was like he was casting

(42:38):
demons out of her or something. And it was crazy.
Like I've never witnessed or experienced anything like that.
Um, and uh, yeah, eventually it kind of started to wear off and
we all kind of went to bed. And yeah, I wanted to the next
morning I wanted to ask her like, well, what what happened?
Like what was unfortunately my Spanish wasn't great, but also

(43:00):
it seemed like a very personal intimate experience.
Don't wanna pry either, but yeah, that was a really
fascinating experience. One of the craziest things I've
ever witnessed. Well, I want to ask, but again,
like it is a personal thing, so I don't know if you can share,
but what were some of the hallucinations that were taking
place, like you said people werementioning as it was happening,
they're explaining it like can you share any of that or?

(43:25):
I don't, it's been a few years now, so I don't remember if we
were going to go back and listento my podcast episode, but, um,
it was, I think Lucia said at one point he was like riding on
a motorcycle and this woman was with him and I, yeah, I, I
really don't remember all the details.
Yeah. But it like, yeah, for the, this

(43:48):
one woman, it seemed to be really like, she was like
breaking down crying and it was like a crazy experience.
But then this other guy who camethere, he seemed to be having a
really positive experience and he was like, well, this, you
know, put the icing on the cake and he, you know, it was, yeah.
So it again, it seems very personal to the individual and

(44:09):
obviously what else they have going on in their life.
And certainly I've heard the from speaking around the people,
I've heard that in most cases it's not, it's fairly harmless
in the end. But if you obviously, if you
have any history of depression or mental illness or something,
it could be really dangerous in cases like that where it could

(44:31):
cause some new connections that,you know, could like taking any
kind of recreational drugs or something if you're in that
condition, you know, apparently.So depends on your mental makeup
for sure. Now did I mention that?
Like what the reason was behind?Why?
Maybe you didn't have an experience?
Why you didn't feel it? He said that I wasn't fully into

(44:52):
the experience that I, because Iwas there as a journalist, that
I wasn't like fully committing myself to.
I mean, I think it's a variety of different explanations.
And I've since done a follow up episode with what actually a
Canadian who studied, you know, with she studied Iasca and Peru
for a number of years. And so she knows a lot about

(45:13):
this, but she also has kind of the Western perspective and was
able to kind of explain things to me in ways that Lucio was.
And, and my understanding now isI think it was a combination of
things. First of all, it was just
because I didn't have the full dose.
I just had a small amount. But also I, I think for me, it
was hard to fully, I mean, yes, I was there as a journalist

(45:33):
reporting, but also it was a very uncomfortable like you're
sitting in these really hard back chairs And it wasn't like,
you know, when you go to these retreats, you know, where they
do ayahuasca apparently and you're like lounging around in
bean bag chairs. It like you could fully relax
and like give yourself over to it or whatever.
And it was very hard for me to relax or feel comfortable in

(45:55):
this really uncomfortable chair for hours on end.
Yeah. So that that's certainly didn't
help. It just wasn't a comfortable
space. Um, so uh, yeah, I think, I
mean, I was wondering initially like, was I somehow immune to
it? Um, like I said, I don't really
have a history of drug use or anything, so I, I had no idea

(46:16):
how I would react, but I, after speaking to this, this woman who
has some more experience and shekind of explained things to me,
I think I be willing to maybe give it another chance at some
point. And you know, I, I, I don't, I
don't necessarily think I'm immune to it.

(46:37):
Like there was all these other mitigating factors why it might
not have had the full effect on me, you know?
Yeah, well, it kind of sounds like back in college we had a
triple X hypnotist come come to the campus and he had people
come up on stage to volunteer toget hypnotized.
So I remember I was one of the volunteers.
But it's one of those things as well where you have to be like
fully open to the experience andlike, relax and let yourself go.

(46:59):
And I, I thought it was such a joke at the time.
I was like, what is even happening?
So I didn't get hypnotized and some other people were acting
like they were. I don't know if they're just
good actors or not. I end up playing the whole
thing. I was like, I'll just go with
it. But it sounds like a similar
situation. I'm curious just your
perspective, like do you believein the Ayahuasca and the
ceremony and like the spiritual healing like?

(47:20):
Yeah, I mean, these people were clearly having real experiences,
like they weren't making this up.
I mean, who am I to tell them what they felt was false or
whatever? And I and I have by the way, I
have done hypnosis and it has worked on me so.
OK, OK. But but, yeah, I mean, I'm
willing to believe anything. I, you know, even if there's a,

(47:43):
there's a lot of things that science can't necessarily
explain, you know, and if that'ssomeone's real experience, they
really felt something like, I have to trust what they told me,
you know, And there are times where maybe it is a placebo
effect or maybe there, you know,there could be other reasons.
It might not be necessarily scientific.
But did it happen? Did they really feel these

(48:04):
feelings? Well, without a doubt, you know,
so. Yeah.
No, that's a really cool experience.
I am still very curious but I don't think it'll happen this
trip maybe, maybe this future when I come back for.
Sure. No pressure at all.
Yeah, you gotta. If you don't feel comfortable
with something, you shouldn't doit.
Yeah. Yeah, well, my one experience on
this trip was doing mushrooms inColombia and Tarona Park, and it

(48:25):
was an amazing experience. But people, people have already
heard about that. So don't you talk, but we'll
move on. So the next story I'm really
curious about is this road trip that you took from the UK to
Mongolia. You mentioned it a couple Times
Now, so it says here that yeah, you're raising money for
charity. So one, what was the charity 2,
What was the vehicle of choice? Because I heard it was a tiny

(48:46):
car, car and three, water. Some of the more favorite
stories from the trip, I know one of them that you mentioned
on your website is actually about dealing with the cops,
which I've kind of a similar story.
So I'm curious about that one aswell.
So we start at the very beginning.
Um, my brother and I got in thishabit at some point of taking a
big trip every year over Christmas and New Years.

(49:08):
Because we are mother died, we didn't have a lot of close
family left in the area. So we figured rather than just
sit home and make Christmas dinner or whatever, we might as
well go away somewhere interesting.
So we went one year to, let's see, we went to Alaska and went
dog sledding. We went to Ecuador and the
Galapagos Islands one year. We went to where did we go?

(49:31):
We went to Thailand and Cambodiaone year and then one year we
went to Cuba. And we, we don't usually do
tours. We figured in Cuba just
logistics of getting around, it would be easier to join like a
tour group. And we had some issues on our
tour group where our guide kind of got drunk at abandoned the
Group 1 evening. And so all of us to the tour

(49:51):
group kind of bonded in the absence of a tour guide.
He eventually came back, but, but so all of us in the tour
group kind of kept in touch. We set up a Facebook group.
We're still in touch with several of them to this day.
And so there were a couple of people, this woman, Rosie and
her husband Alan, who were on the tour.
And they're both kind of middle age.

(50:11):
I think Rosie just turned 60. This was a number of years ago.
She was still, you know, quite afew decades older than my
brother myself, but very adventurous, has done a lot of
traveling. She's British originally, but
now she lives with her husband Alan in WA.
And so, yeah, we just hit it off.
We connected really well. And so a few months after we got

(50:36):
back from that trip, Rosie reached out to my brother in May
and she said, hey, I'm planning to do this crazy road trip for
charity with my best friend Jane.
We're going to be it's it's an event called the Mongol Rally.
It happens every year where people, you know, drive in these
little tiny cars from the UK allthe way to Mongolia.

(50:57):
And she said, we're planning on doing this trip with you and
your brother want to join us. And I had known that she had
told me when we first met her that she was planning on going
on this trip. But for some reason, until she
like mentioned, like, hey, do you want to come with us?
The thought didn't occur to me. I don't know how, but when she
said it, like immediately, I waslike, wow, this is amazing.
And also like, I have a background in journalism.

(51:19):
Like I want to do a podcast about this, just documenting the
whole experience. It seemed perfect for it.
Not just the trip itself, but even all the months of planning
that went into a trip like that.We have to figure out, you know,
the route we're going to take, all the visas we need, all the,
you know, vaccinations. Learn a little bit about car
repair, buying a car. What Car do you buy?
How do you know? We took a basic first aid class.
We, you know, what kind of equipment do you bring?

(51:40):
Like like so many logistics thatgo into a trip like that.
And so like I said, the event iscalled the mongol rally.
It uh, it happens every year. I think the last few years they
took a break obviously during COVID and then they've changed
the route now with everything going on in Russia and Ukraine
and you know, everything. So I, I just saw that they

(52:02):
started it again, that they justlaunched, I think this year
they've modified the route now. But when we went, so it would
start at this race track in the UK and it would end in actually
the Siberian city of ulan Ude, which is just north of Mongolia.
But there's no, there's no set route.
You, you know, there's a start line and the finish line is very

(52:25):
loosely organized and you just figure out, you know, whatever
route you want to take to get from point A to point B.
And the organizers say if you breakdown or get lost along the
way, like you got to figure it out on your own.
There's no number you could call, no placing an e-mail, you
know, So, yeah. And you.
So there's like a few hundred teams that would do it each

(52:47):
year. Most of them were young kids on
their gap year or whatever, mostly guys, you know, So we
were kind of unusual. We were a little older and Rosie
and Jane were definitely older. So that was a little unusual.
And yeah, we raised, you have toraise, I think, 1000 British
pounds for charity there. There's like the official
charity for the organization, which was this group called Cool

(53:09):
Earth, which raised money to help protect the rainforest,
considering all the carbon. We were, you know, looking at
the environment, driving 1/4 of the way around the earth.
Yeah. And then and then we also chose
a secondary charity, this group called Soil, which I had
encountered years earlier when Iwas doing some reporting in
Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake there.

(53:29):
It's a group that would build these compostable toilets with,
you know, it's because there's obviously a public health
sanitation crisis there. They had the whole cholera
outbreak a number of years ago. And then they also have really
poor soil quality. And so it creates this nutrient
rich compost that would go back to the land to help grow crops
and everything. So those are the two charities
we raise money for. And uh yeah, we planned out the

(53:51):
whole route. It ended up taking us about 7
weeks 52 days. Time frame that you have like
because I know you said everyonepicks their own route.
So like is there any kind of like time frame or time?
It's not a yeah, it's not a race.
There's no winners or losers. You're just trying to get to the
end without, you know, breaking down too badly.

(54:12):
I mean, everyone broke down inevitably.
But, you know, it's a question of, I mean, a lot of people of,
I forget the exact statistics I mentioned.
So I did my whole first season of my podcast, I think 23
episodes or whatever, just documenting that journey.
I was like recording all along the way.
People should go back and listenFar from home the show, but the
the there's no Yeah, it's not a race, but you yeah, you're just

(54:38):
trying to get to the end. And so I mentioned on yeah, I
forget what the exact statistic I mentioned on the last episode
in that season, but of the hundreds of teams that started,
like, how many dropped out alongthe way or didn't make it for?
Whatever reason. And we had many moments where we
were considering throwing in thetowel because we had so much car
trouble along the way. What Car were you using?

(54:59):
So, OK, so the organizers make you get, they actually limit the
size of the engine. So they, because they don't want
you to, you know, just go on a Land Rover or something.
They they want you to take like a little tiny car that's totally
unsuitable for a trip like this.Because the thinking is that
you'll inevitably, you know, break down along the way and

(55:20):
then you'll be forced to interact with the locals instead
of just zooming through. And thus you'll have more of an
adventure, which I totally respect.
That all makes sense, except we just had so many breakdowns.
Yeah. We ended up broken down or, you
know, at a mechanic in every country beginning in, I think
Bulgaria, with the exception of Kyrgyzstan.

(55:41):
Um, so we spent so many hours and days, you know, stranded at
a mechanic waiting, you know, toget parts fixed or replaced.
The car just became a money pit.We spent.
I don't know how I just lost track of how much money we spend
repairing that damn car. So, yeah, it's all the whole
theory about breaking down, interacting with locals make

(56:02):
sense on some level, but we justhad so much trouble.
Like after a while it's like I Ijust, I want, I'd rather be
spending his time meeting locals, interacting with them,
not just meeting the mechanic, you know?
Which really sucks. Ironically, our friends had the
exact same cars as it was a Nissan Micra which is like a
little tiny hatchback. Oh my gosh.
Yeah, not, not made for driving 1/4 of the way around the earth.

(56:25):
Wow. Yeah.
And they, their car, I think wasmaybe a year or two younger than
ours, but they, they had no, hardly any problems at all with
their car. We just had so many issues like
radiator problems, overheating in the middle of the desert and
all kinds of issues. Um, and so, so our route was we

(56:47):
drove SE across Europe and obviously it, you know, became
interesting once we entered Eastern Europe.
That was when it first started where we crossed over into like
Romania and Bulgaria and suddenly the highway just kind
of ended and we're set on these back roads and we see, you know,
old ladies Babushka's carrying bundles of carrots on the side
of the road that they just dug up from the garden.

(57:07):
You know, we feel like we've stepped back into the old world.
Um, and then we ended up at the border to cross.
This is in 2016. So it's just bad timing through
no fault of ours, you know, ended up at the border to enter
Turkey six days after there had been an attempted coup.
So there was a lot of scrambling.

(57:27):
He had to figure out, is it still safe?
But what do we have other options?
What can we do? And we looked into, you know,
what is it possible, you know, bypass Turkey and put the car on
a ferry across the Baltics, the Black Sea?
But there were like very few ferries, apparently.
And then, well, could we drive north around the black suit like
N through Russia? But then our visa for Russia was

(57:50):
allows a certain number of entries and exits and we needed
to like, enter the country a couple times later on as part of
the journey. And would that exhaust too many,
you know, entries or exits or And also if we went that way,
then we'd have to go back S we'dhave to go through Chechnya.
And is that a good idea you? Know.
So a lot of last minute scrambling in the end, I always

(58:10):
tell people that the world, if you just read, you know, listen
to the news here, the headlines,the world could sound like a
big, bad, scary place, but you really need to like go beyond
the headlines. And it's so hard to tell from
afar what things are actually like on the ground.
So we just reached out through social media, just we found
friends of friends there on the ground in Turkey and ask them,
hey, like, is it safe? Like, what are you seeing around

(58:33):
you? What do you think?
Like, would you would be able totravel there now?
And they said, yeah, we think it's OK.
Like it's yes, there was this attempted coup, but the
government might crack down veryforcefully, very quickly.
And we we ended up going across Turkey just to be extra safe.
We kind of zoomed across much ofthe country purposely skip this

(58:53):
stumble and anchor us. I still haven't been to
Istanbul. It's still on my bucket list.
I need to make it back. But we did go to Cappadocia,
which is really cool that peoplelive in these like cave homes
where they lived for millennia. It's really, really fascinating
place. I'd love to spend some more time
there at some point. But you never would have even
known there was there had felt like normal.
It wasn't even a big police presence or anything.
It was crazy. I mean, maybe they were hiding

(59:14):
out somewhere, but it wasn't like visible around us that we,
that we noticed anyway as peopledriving through.
So Turkey was fine. And then, and then we drove
across Iran as American tourists, which was fascinating.
If you're American, Brit or Canadian, you have to hire a
tour guide to take you, you know, across in order to get a
visa. So we got a tour guide, nice,
really nice guy. And he really was just a tour

(59:35):
guide. He wasn't like a government
minder or anything like that. And so we, we spent a little,
you know, your time in Iran, we figured, why don't we ever going
to get back there? Um, and so we, we got to drive
around, but you know, he would like to be in the car with us.
And we drove all around the country, saw the main sites,
went to Tehran and Mashad and some of these cities, Isfahan

(59:56):
and yeah, fascinating place versions are the nicest people
I've ever met in all my travels,despite whatever.
Yeah. And that's one of the biggest
lessons I've learned from all mytravels is that despite whatever
religious, political or, you know, social, social differences
people might have, you know, government governments might

(01:00:17):
have with each other, like, people are just people, good
people. Generally, wherever you are, if
you're lost, if you're broken down on the side of the road,
the average person is willing tohelp you out usually.
Well, that's why I don't watch the news.
They portray everything so negatively.
And like we used to and you know, if you just follow from
outside sources, you wouldn't goto half these countries.
Like from my South American trip, I look at Government

(01:00:38):
Canada website and it says do not travel, do not travel, do
not travel, high risk, high risk.
And I never experienced any of those.
The people have been so nice, sowelcoming, so kind.
So yeah, you really have to get that boots on the ground
perspective. I mean, I know it's not that I
don't trust the government warnings.
Or whatever, I take all that into account.
But I just feel like you need, you need a full, you need a full
perspective. And yes, there are.

(01:00:58):
I mean, there are genuine reasons.
I mean, I was taking risks like reporting undercover in Iran as
a journalist, Like I couldn't put that on my, you know, the,
the forms I filled out to get a visa to go there.
You know, I, I could have, I mean, there was 1 little bit of
a close call in retrospect whereI was just taking too many risks
like with my ball. Come on, I'm here for it.

(01:01:19):
No, I don't. I don't wanna I.
Could tell you. But but no there no there.
Are legitimate reasons to be concerned at times, you know,
and there are places that you know, I wouldn't go and I, I
feel like if the locals tell me not to go there, then I trust
them. Like, you know, I have a
listener, my podcast to reach out to me a few years ago and he

(01:01:42):
was saying what you should, you should come to Venezuela like
he, he, his, he grew up there his, his kids still live there.
And he was saying, well, you know, it's, it's actually not so
bad. And this is a few years ago, and
I was seriously, I was considering going, but now he
tells me, like, now is not a good time.
Things have gotten really bad and right, you know, And if he's
a local person telling me don't go, I'm going to trust what he

(01:02:02):
says. Like, you know, he knows way
better than, you know, than anything I could gather from
reading the news reports or whatever.
But anyway, yeah, Persians just incredibly nice.
And we would meet these people for 5 minutes.
They were so excited to meet Americans.
They didn't know that we could go there.
And they were, they wanted to practice their English and they
would strike up conversations with us.
And after 5 minutes, they were inviting them us to their homes

(01:02:24):
to come for tea, come for dinner, stay with their families
that, you know, it was just incredible.
So, yeah, Iran is a really fascinating place.
And then, yeah. And then after that, we just
went all through Central Asia, which I feel very privileged to
have gone to because it's one ofthe it's not a place that most
Westerners get to visit. All the all the stands to

(01:02:46):
Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, who's Vestan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan.
Yeah. You know, it's this lesser known
part of the world. And it was just like a black
hole in my geographic knowledge before I went there.
Um, and all these former Soviet republics, Um, and yeah, that
was really fascinating. And along the way, as I said, we
had all kinds of car trouble, overheated in the middle of the

(01:03:08):
desert in Iran, got like all kinds of problems.
It culminated with us blowing our head gasket in Turkmenistan,
which is like one of the worst things that can go wrong with
the car. We couldn't get our visa
extended because Turkmenistan has really reclusive country,
like second only to North Korea.So you only get a five day
tourist visa to drive across thecountry.

(01:03:30):
And so we basically had to stickthe car on a flatbed tow truck,
get it towed 6 hours to the border of Uzbekistan, basically
push it across the border and then went to the city of Bukhara
and had to wait a week for a newhead gasket to get shipped from
Dubai. So that was that was an
experience. Well, while we while we sat

(01:03:53):
waiting. For it we.
All, you know, having food illness and, you know, running
back and forth to the toilet andthat that was my experience of
who's Becca Stan. I hope to go back someday and
have a much better experience with Pakistan.
But so, yeah. And then, yeah, I don't know.
And then and then eventually making it to.

(01:04:16):
Well, OK, some of the stories along the way, I'll tell you.
So in Tajikistan, getting stopped by shady traffic cops,
you know, there's, I mean, obviously there's a lot of
corruption, a lot of these countries, and they want to get
bribes wherever they can. And they see these Westerners
coming through in their rally cars or the stickers and decals
on the side and everything. So of course, we're, you know,
bright shining targets. They pull us over and they they

(01:04:39):
point a. Speed camera at another.
Car that's going by and then they try to tell us that that
was us and that was our speed and like they were totally
making this up and, and I I covertly recorded this whole
interaction on my cell phone. The whole, the audio of the
whole thing. So this is in one of my episodes
where people could hear how the whole thing went down where

(01:05:01):
they, they had you know, they obviously didn't speak English.
We didn't speak Tajik or Russian, but they got some guy
back at police headquarters on the phone who was translating
for them and and they were trying to get us to pay $100 to
get out of there, like pay it onthe spot there.
Is it clearly a bribe? And I mean, we, we resisted as

(01:05:21):
long as we were like, we don't want to feed into bribery.
Eventually we're like, we're definitely not paying you this,
but OK, well, here's a bottle ofvodka we bought and we we gave
that to them and we finally managed to get out of that.
In other instances, I threatened, you know, contact
the American embassy. I don't know if that how much
that's going to work going forward.

(01:05:42):
Now that, you know, Trump administration, it seems like
they're cutting embassy staff and everything worldwide.
So in the past, I felt very privileged as an American
because that Americans would always have the most the largest
embassies in all these countries.
But I don't know if that's goingto be the case going forward,
but we certainly have to rely onthe American embassy in while
few times in in Turkmenistan where we got to the border and

(01:06:03):
seemed like they weren't going to let us out of the country and
our it was about to expire at midnight.
Wow. And so we have to have the woman
from the embassy on the phone translating to the in Russian to
the soldiers got, you know, blocking the, the exit gate of
the country. And then there was another time
in Mongolia where after, so after we went through Central
Asia, we went up through a little bit of, we have the kind

(01:06:24):
of around China, through a little tiny bit of Russia and
then into Mongolia. And we got stranded in the
absolute middle of nowhere in Mongolia.
You have the things, few things you have to know about Mongolia.
It's first of all, it's an enormous country.
People don't realize. And it's very undeveloped.
Or at least at the time we were there, it was very undeveloped.

(01:06:47):
I think they've since paved moreroads.
But at the time we were there, you look at a map of Mongolia
and you see these lines going east and West across the whole
country. And you figure, well, these are
the main roads connecting the country.
And OK, maybe they're not highways, but at least you would
think they're paved. But in reality, they were in
many places, just like tracks through the sand and the grass.

(01:07:07):
These are like the main east West routes across the country
and you're just trying to followthe path of whatever vehicle
went ahead of you. And so and it's very easy to get
lost. You know, GPS doesn't work very
well, not, not just because there's not good cell signals,
but I mean, we had, we had Google Maps, which, you know, if
you started in a place while youhave the signal, it'll kind of

(01:07:28):
keep guiding you even without a signal.
But inevitably that wouldn't always work.
We also had a satellite, satellite thing with GPS there
and we had like 3 paper maps. We were constantly comparing.
And even with all of this, it was hard to keep track of where
we were going because the road wouldn't inevitably like it
would be a single line on a map,but in reality it was split like
3 or 4 different ways or it would be the opposite.

(01:07:51):
It would split different ways onthe map.
But we only see one line ahead of us.
And so you're like, you was almost like flipping a coin.
Like, which way do I go? Oh my gosh.
And so stressful. No and no signs.
Not even signs in Russian or Mongolian.
Just no signs in the whole country once you're outside of
the cities. So yeah, that was challenging.
And it has the lowest populationdensity of any country in the

(01:08:13):
world. So if you get lost, you may have
to wait quite a long time beforesomeone comes along to help you
out. And and you'd be driving along
and there'd be these river crossings like little brooks or
whatever you'd have to drive across sometimes because the
bridge was out, other times because there was never a bridge
built there in the 1st place. And so, yeah, this one day we
got, we kind of got stuck tryingto exit this one river crossing

(01:08:37):
and we have to wait for a truck to come and attach a tow rope to
kind of pull us out. And so we saw another river
crossing coming up on the map. And we're like, OK, we don't
want to risk that again. So, you know, we see there's
this other little line that there's this the little path
that goes off to the right and it looks like it goes parallel
to the main road. And we could take that one
instead and it'll rejoin the main road a little later on.

(01:08:58):
And it looks like if we go that way, it would somehow avoid the
river crossing, which is all well and good if you're on flat
terrain. But the problem is Mongolia is
very hilly and our little tiny cars don't have a lot of
horsepower. And so we started, we started
going that way and we just barely made it up some of these
hills. I didn't mention by the way,

(01:09:21):
these were driving stick, which neither my brother and I had
driven manual before. So that was a whole learning
curve. In addition to we bought.
The car in the UK, so the. Steering wheels on the right so
that when people were, you know,curious about that once we left.
Europe and then if I. Was driving on the highway or
somewhere and my steering wheelson the right.
So if I wanted to pass a truck, I'd have to have my brother look
out the passenger side window and it tell me is it safe to

(01:09:43):
pass? That was crazy.
But anyway, so yeah, we, yeah, these cars didn't have a lot of
horsepower at this. We were going up this hill.
We just barely made it up and over the other side.
At a certain point, we're like, we just have to keep going
because there's no way we'll be able to make it back up the way
we came. And to make a Long story short,
again, this is all my podcast. You could hear the whole saga as

(01:10:04):
it played out over several episodes.
But we ended up getting both of our cars ended up getting
stranded at the bottom of this like rocky ravine, like a Canyon
kind of area, absolute middle ofnowhere, no one around.
We clearly couldn't make it backthe way we came.
We couldn't make it forward either.
There's these giant like rocks that are we just could not get
the traction to get up the otherside.

(01:10:24):
We tried taking the floor mats out and putting them under the
tires, like we just could not get up.
So totally stranded. Um, we end, thankfully we had
this satellite device where we could send texts that we sent
texts to the American or we, we text actually friend back in the
UK who in turn, you know, got our GPS coordinates reached out

(01:10:45):
to the American and British embassies in ulaan Bataar, which
is the capital Mongolia, all theway on the other side of the
country from where we were. And they sent out a couple of
teams from the Mongolian National Emergency Management
Agency to come from skew us basically all and yeah, get us
out of there. And so that was this.
Whole crazy. Story Friends yeah, we

(01:11:10):
eventually, yeah, we got we got out of there, we thanked them,
they were super nice guys and then we continued on our way.
We you know, we had a few more little bit more car trouble over
the following days of Mongolia really wrecked our cars.
We all these bumps and everything.
We broke our like rear, I think it would be called the wishbone
or whatever, like the axle that the wheel just bowed out and it

(01:11:32):
just rusted and we got it weldedand then like the next day it
broke again just beyond the wells get well, but a second
just so many problems. Somehow against all odds, we
finally made it to the finish line in ulan Udey, Siberia and
we returned home. It was 52 days total, seven

(01:11:53):
weeks. And then, and then after like
like a maybe a month or so afterwe got home, we were in touch
with the guys from we, we actually, when we, after this
whole saga in Mongolia, we actually stopped at the American
Embassy when we got to Mongolia's capital and met with
the, the guy from the embassy there because he was just
curious, gets crazy. Sorry, you wanted to meet us.
And here's the full story because he just got snippets of

(01:12:14):
the story when we were communicating by text.
So he met us. He was interested, you know, so
we kept in touch After we got home, maybe a month or so later,
he actually emailed us a photo of the American ambassador to
Mongolia presenting a certificate of appreciation to
the head of the Mongolian National Emergency Management
Agency for rescuing us. We were apparently the first

(01:12:35):
American drivers they'd ever rescued.
So I like to think we we made history, then we caused an
international incident. So whole my gosh.
So if you. Didn't have that satellite
device though, no. Could it be no Siri?
Who knows? We would have.
Been struck. There.
Forever. I mean, no one around at all.

(01:12:55):
And it was also, I don't know, probably a couple of miles high.
So we would get out of breath even walking, you know, very
far. And it was and were storm clouds
rolling in. It looked like, I mean, if there
was anywhere there's going to bea flash flood, it looked like
where we were, you know. So yeah, it was.
That all around. But you probably did that much
for supplies either, right? Like talking water.

(01:13:16):
Food like were you? Well, we we always, we always
carried a little bit of supplieswith.
Us just in case that we had somecamping supplies and some little
thing to heat up a fire and stuff.
So we had, we had might have some supplies.
We definitely over prepared in certain aspects.
Like we've brought all kinds of backup car parts that you know,
you can't, there's no way you could repair for everything that
could possibly go wrong. Like we brought it because my

(01:13:38):
brother and I had never driven manual before.
So he actually brought an extra clutch because we thought we
might, you know, we, we, we ended up being fine.
With the parts that we needed. Like a head gasket.
We didn't have it because who knew, you know, he can't bring
everything possible. So, but so there are a lot of
things that we never ended up using, but the, a satellite
device was something that it's really good that we had um,

(01:14:01):
because yeah, we needed some wayto communicate with the outside
world in case of an emergency. And if we hadn't had that, I
don't know what we would have done.
No, Exactly. Well.
Oh my gosh, yeah. I can only imagine the stories
you have. And it makes sense that you did
a whole season, your podcast just around the one trip.
I'm going to have to definitely give it a lesson in the future.
And it sounds like a trip I might have to actually attempt

(01:14:22):
at some point, to be honest, because it sounds super
fascinating. Just the places you'd see in the
experience you would have with, like you said, all the
breakdowns and seeing the behindthe scenes of some of these
countries. Yeah, unfortunately now because
of the current. Current political situation,
they don't go all the way to Mongolia anymore because that
would require driving through out of Russia, which is not
advisable at the current moment.So now it ends at Kazakhstan

(01:14:46):
instead. But you still get quite a cool
experience going all across Central Asia.
So I think it would still totally be worth it.
And I think, yeah, I think they're not going.
They're advising you not to go across Iran right now either, so
I think you go across Turkey. I need to look at a map to get
my geography correct, but I think you put your car on a

(01:15:09):
ferry or no? I think you'd go through the,
UM, the, which we call the caucuses, which we unfortunately
didn't get a chance to go through.
So you like Armenia and Georgia and Azerbaijan, but one country
I think does you're not allowed to drive from one country to the
other. So you have to like, it's crazy

(01:15:30):
all the political infighting. So you have to like put your car
on a get it shipped or something, even though it's like
right across the border. It's kind of dumb.
And then I think you put your car on a ferry across the Baltic
Sea to Turkmenistan, is my understanding.
Yeah. But they.
But otherwise, I mean, so that'skind of the things that
organizers have have put in place.

(01:15:51):
But otherwise, they let people drive however they want to get.
Like there's teams in the past that in the course of going from
the UK to Mongolia, they would drive all the way up through
Scandinavia, go north of the Arctic Circle just for the hell
of it, you know? Or one team, I think, put their
car in a. Ferry and crossed over to
Africa. And drove across North Africa to
it's like whatever you want to do, you know, it's crazy, but I

(01:16:16):
feel really privileged to have seen giant chunks of the world
that most Westerners never get to see.
It was a really good opportunity.
And that's the benefit of driving rate.
So I've mentioned actually like.Going through South Central and
South America now because those backpacking and taking public
transit or flying like you're staying on a certain course.
But if I actually had a vehicle or a bike and I've met people
that do, you can see those otherdestinations.

(01:16:38):
That's actually the cool part oftravel that I'd like to
experience. So I say, if I ever come back to
South America, I want to actually get a rig, you know,
whether it's like a 4 by 4 or some kind of vehicle, or it can
actually travel to these lesser known destinations.
Because I met a German guy who'son a bike and he told me he
showed up in this random town. He was talking to the locals and
they were so happy to see him cause they don't get a lot of
tourists. And they said, Hey, would you be

(01:16:59):
interested in rafting? And he's like, yeah, I'd love to
go rafting. Like theoretically speaking.
Well, all of a sudden 20 minuteslater this local shows up and
he's like, yeah, you ready to gorafting?
He's like, right now he's like, yeah, why not?
He's like, well, how much is it gonna be?
He's like, no, no, no, this is free.
Like we never get tourists. We want to show you our, our
town and our river and everything.
And they, they just took off. So it's it's stories like that
that fascinated me. And that's the kind of travel

(01:17:20):
that eventually I want to get into.
Like this current trip I'm on, it's my first time backpacking
solo, so that's a whole new experience.
But hopefully as you get more comfortable, yeah, I can do
more, more trips like that. Yeah, definitely.
Yeah. No, I.
Having your own mode of transportation, like, you know,
driving like it gives you the opportunity to just stop off
wherever you want, take side trips or I heard about this cool

(01:17:42):
thing down the road. I wanna go check that out.
Unfortunately, on our trip, we ended up so much time broken
down that we didn't have time toexplore.
As I started to say before there's it wasn't a race.
So you didn't, you know, there was a competition in that sense,
but there was an eventual date where we had to get to the end,
to the finish line because the organizers of the event like we

(01:18:04):
couldn't just abandon our car Russia like you needed.
Otherwise you'd pay import fees and everything.
So they, it was like a rail headthere where we had to like bring
it, drive it to the railhead. They would stick the car on a
train and ship it back to the EUin order to and then they
dispose of the car there at that.
At that point, the UK was part of the EU.
So because we bought the car in the UK, we just have to get it

(01:18:26):
back to the EU. And then I think it got sent to
a junkyard in Lav, I want to say, and it was disposed of
there. But yeah, we had to, we have to
eventually get to the finish line by a certain date.
So yeah, unfortunately I, I would love to, I don't think I
would retake. I would go on that entire trip
again. But there are certain places

(01:18:46):
along the way which we just kindof zoomed through.
And I really wish you had more chance to explore.
So like I said, Turkey, you know, is stumble and get to go
to Cappadocia. I'd love to spend some more
time. And, you know, parts of Central
Asia, like Dushanbe in Tajikistan seemed like it might
be pretty honest. Some people told me it's not
actually not that interesting, but it seemed like a really

(01:19:06):
pretty city or even Mongolia, Like we saw the little towns
that we hardly got to spend anytime in ulaanbaatar, the
capital. So I'd like to go back there
exactly do similar things. Yeah, yeah, I think that's the
biggest thing for this trip. Rather than seeing places, it
gave me just a little taste of all these places that I'd like
to go back to at some point, kind of like a cruise.
Exactly. OK, well, we're going to take
another quick. Break here and then we'll come

(01:19:28):
back just to wrap things up. Yeah.
So we're just finishing up the story there of your road trip.
So question actually, how much money were you able to raise for
charity at the end of it? It's been a few.
Years now, so I don't remember the exact amount, but we, I
mean, we, we met the minimum we had to meet just like 1000

(01:19:50):
British pounds we have to raise at least.
So I think we raised maybe a little bit more than that.
And then a lot of people also, we also gave them the option if
they wanted to donate just to help offset some of our
expenses. So I think we got about an equal
amount for that, as well as whatwe raised for charity.
Perfect, perfect. Well, I'm gonna leave the.

(01:20:11):
Floor open to you now I don't know if there's any other
stories that you wanted to sharetoday I like I said I've already
taken up all your time so I really do appreciate it and if
not I'm also going to give the platform over to you if you want
to let people know kind of whereto find you your website, your
podcast, all that fun stuff too yeah I guess one other story I
forgot to. Mention was when we were in
Kazakhstan and we got to crash Kazak wedding, which is

(01:20:35):
interesting. Yeah, we're back when we had
been in driving across Iran. We met this woman there who was
originally from Kazakhstan and she was just in Iran to have
some plastic surgery or something like who knew?
Iran is apparently a place a lotof people go for plastic
surgery. And so she said when you come
across Kazakhstan, like I, I normally, I live in Dubai, but

(01:20:58):
I'm going to be back there at that time.
My family lives there and you should come and stay with my
family. So, yeah, we, we took her up on
that. And while we were there staying
at her race, she said, well, a good friend of mine is getting
married and so I'm going to the wedding and if all of you wanna
come along. So myself and my brother and our
two friends, Rosie and Jane, we all got dressed up and we went

(01:21:21):
to this classic wedding. We understand a thing.
But it was interesting to see that, you know, the I mean, it
was it wasn't super traditional.It was very Western like in a
banquet hall. But you know, all the food they
were serving that there was horse meat, which they eat in
Kazakhstan. OK, so are you didn't have it I.

(01:21:43):
Don't. I don't need me.
I think I might have had a little by accident, yeah, but.
Yeah, even in like the. Eggplant.
Salad, or they put it in everything and something I
thought was totally innocuous. So it was a salad.
Well, I there was something chewy in there.
I think it was forced meat mixedin with a salad as well.
So, yeah. And then the entertainment they
had during the wedding, they hadlike this guy come out and drag

(01:22:05):
and dancer. It was very odd.
It was like, OK, this is not what I would expect at a
wedding. And yeah, it was we felt a
little out of place. It was, it was it was an
experience. So that, yeah.
I mean, I love that's like the best kind of travel where you
could really just get the experience of local traditions
and, you know, like an average tourist going, if the tourist

(01:22:28):
even goes to Kazakhstan, they'renot getting invited to a local
wedding, you know, so I feel really privileged that we got to
have that experience. Um, what's your, what's your go
to? Yep.
What's? Your go to dance move.
What were you busting out? Of the wedding.
Oh, I was in. I was just in awe of the.
People doing some of the traditional Kazakh dances, which

(01:22:50):
was fascinating to watch. The like their traditional mean.
They're obviously had Western music as well.
But then there was a certain time in the ceremony where was
obviously mostly older people who, you know, did some of the
dances. And this wasn't like a kind of a
slow like it was a really energetic kind of, it was really
fun to watch. I took a video, but I think I

(01:23:12):
posted on my Instagram at the time.
Um, so yeah, that was really fascinating.
But um, yeah, we clearly, yeah, felt a little out of place
because we, we didn't really have proper like clothing
address up for a wedding or anything.
We just had like our ridiculous like vintage suits that like
we'd wore for the rally send offat like the launch party.
So it was like these ridiculous things we got at a thrift store

(01:23:35):
that, you know, so we clearly looked out of place and we are
already out of place being Americans there, you know, so I
think people got a kick out of us.
So that was quite an experience,No, All those are the best
stories, right? Those unique experiences.
Where, you know, you meet a local and then you get invited
out to something like that. So that's really cool.
I will actually watch a YouTube channel.
Yes, Theory. And they've done a lot of those

(01:23:56):
experiences where, you know, they go and talk to locals.
The next thing you know, they'regetting invited out for dinner
or to weddings or these different experiences wherever I
go. But it's it's hard to like.
Break in. You just got to.
Spend a lot of time in a place you got to travel slow and just
meet as many people as you can. You know exactly.
You don't just have those experiences or.
Maybe if you go to somewhere. Where notorious ever go and then

(01:24:19):
the people are really excited tomeet you and then then you have
it's easier to have those experiences.
You know, definitely, definitelygo like you like to do go off
the. Beaten path.
Don't talk to the other tourists, talk to the locals.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. Exactly.
Well, Scott? I want to say thank you so much
for. Coming on, I've loved hearing
these stories and I definitely, like I said, I gotta listen to
the podcast now because I'm super curious about the other

(01:24:42):
ones and obviously this road trip as well.
But I'm going to open up the platform to you now if you just
want to shout out your podcast or website where people can
follow along for future travels.Yeah.
So my show is called Far From Home.
And people could go to my website, farfromhomepodcast.org,
and I'm on Instagram at Far FromHome podcasts or Facebook.

(01:25:02):
Also Blue Sky, though I don't use that so much.
But yeah. And all the podcast platforms on
Apple, Spotify or any other overcast Pocket Casts,
whichever. And I'm now in my fourth season.
So I've spent 100 episodes at this point.
And it's not just an interview show.
As I said, I don't usually do interviews.
It's mostly like out in the field documentary style

(01:25:25):
reporting. So when you're hearing me talk
about all these crazy adventure stories I did, it's not just,
you know, if you listen to the podcast, you won't hear me just
telling the story again. You'll actually hear the audio
out in the field. When I brought my recorder,
you'll hear it as it's happening.
So people describe it as like movies for their ears, like the
best compliment I've ever received.
When someone listens, they said,oh, I felt like I was there with
you and that that's kind of my goal.

(01:25:46):
So, yeah, the whole, as I said, the whole first season, if
that's what I recommend people start back at the very
beginning, the whole first season was documenting that as
he wrote a trip from the UK to Mongolia.
And then I for some crazy reason, decided to drive all the
way back, which wasn't officially part of the rally.
And that's when I got to go to Chernobyl.
I went to Tuva and southern Russia and, and learned all

(01:26:07):
about Tuvan throat singing, which was fascinating.
So I did an episode on that and I, I in Moscow, I spoke to some
Russian girls, just the culturaldifferences between Russians and
Americans, which was super fascinating.
So yeah. And ever since then, I've
continued traveling around the world.
Like I said, the Peru I've gone to Japan have gone to cope
Copenhagen interested big documentary about an crazy

(01:26:29):
anarchist community there. So yeah, lots of fascinating
stories. So show again is called Far from
Home and people should check it out.
Definitely, definitely. And I know it's not for a while,
but. Where are you going next?
Yeah, as I said before. I don't, I'm, I'm randomly going
leaving tomorrow from West Virginia for a week just as

(01:26:49):
chaperoning some kids from my high school on a volunteer
service trip. Aside from that, I as I said,
I'm just spending a bunch of months at home right now just
catching up with personal life stuff.
I've been like super busy juggling ahead of kind of a
bunch of drama this summer so I don't have anything planned just
yet. It'll probably be the fall or

(01:27:12):
more likely the winter before I'm able to travel again,
ideally somewhere warmer than I don't.
Not a big fan of cold weather. I don't mind the heat so much,
but I don't like cold weather somuch.
So ideally either tropical or Southern hemisphere.
I really, I think my one of my top priorities now is really

(01:27:33):
improving my Spanish so I could become totally fluent, which
will then, you know, as a journalist open up most of the
whole hemisphere, Western Hemisphere to me.
I can get by with my Spanish. I can, I can kind of, basically
I could do an interview with someone, but I could ask the
questions, but I can't fully understand their answers.
So I really want to work on my Spanish and like go to language

(01:27:54):
school or something. So I've spent some time in
Wahaca. I might go back there.
I know there's a really good language school there.
Or I've been wanting to go to Buenos Aires forever, forever
though I hear Argentina might not be the best place to learn
Spanish because they speak really quickly and have a
certain accent or whatever. But yeah, probably somewhere in
Latin America most likely would be the next place I go.
So we'll see. Well, they told me Colombia is

(01:28:17):
actually the best. Place to to learn Spanish, but
I'm I'm still I'm still working on mine.
But there you have it. So for everyone listening, yeah,
make sure to go check out the far from Home podcast.
Scott Gurion, thank you so much for coming on.
Thank you so much for having me.Really appreciate it.
That's it for today's episode. Thanks for listening.

(01:28:37):
If you enjoyed it, make sure to leave a review and follow us on
your preferred listening platform as well.
You can follow at U in the Clouds under score on Instagram
and at Up in the Clouds on TikTok for my latest travel
updates. We'll see you next week for an
all new episode. Take care.

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