As you can see, that fantasy came true.  I still can’t believe how relaxed I was in the studio photo.  That’s because Carson had a magical ability to put a guest like me, no professional performer, at ease.  The cameras and lights, the audience, millions watching on TV all went away.  It was just me talking to this friendly fellow with no one around.  An amazing experience.  Some dreams can really happen!   (photo ©Jack Wheeler)

We’re in Indian Tibet here, a region called Ladakh where Tibetan culture flourishes freely.  Wheeler Expeditions first explored Indian Tibet – including running the remote Zanskar River tributary of the Upper Indus, one the world’s most thrilling whitewater experiences – in 1992.  We’ll explore it once more in the summer of 2022. (Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

You have to make different trek up the Ngozumpa glacier (longest in the Himalayas) in the Gokyo valley, where above the fifth Gokyo lake at 16,400 feet you get to call yourself a “scoundrel” for seeing what Everest trekkers don’t.

High on the Northeast Ridge on the left horizon is the last place Mallory and Irvine were seen heading for the summit in 1924, and then disappeared.  Hillary and Tenzing summited in 1953 via the Southeast Ridge over the right horizon.  Everest Base Camp in Nepal is at the foot of the big snowy buttress below the West Ridge.  Called the West Shoulder, it blocks any view of Everest from Base Camp.

On our Himalaya Helicopter Expeditions, we get an abundance of spectacular views of Everest, up close and personal – Scoundrel’s View is only one of many. (photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Spending time with people such as these gives you an invaluably broader perspective of life on our planet. Our concerns, the issues that dominate our headline news, suddenly seem more parochial and far less important. An evening drinking kumiss (Mongol beer, fermented mare’s milk) in their yurts, telling stories, laughing at jokes – you realize how easy it is to relate to them through the core humanity we all have in our souls.

Exploring Mongolia in this way is a priceless adventure. We’ll be there again in the summer of 2022.  photo ©Jack Wheeler)

It was centuries old when Alexander conquered it in 329 BC.  For a thousand years as Central Asia’s great entrepot on the Silk Road between China and the Mediterranean, it was a cosmopolitan center for Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and Nestorian Christianity.   Incorporated into the Islamic world in the 700s, sacked by Genghiz Khan in 1220, rebuilt by the time Marco Polo in 1272 described it as “a large and splendid city,” Tamerlane made it his capital in 1370.

Colonized by Czar Alexander II in the 1860s within the Russian Imperial Empire, and by the Soviets in the 1920s within the Uzbek SSR, Samarkand is flourishing today in independent Uzbekistan.  There is so much to learn and contemplate upon when you are here.  You can be when we explore all Five Stans of Central Asia this coming September. (photo ©Jack Wheeler)

It was on my first visit to Africa that I was able to spend time with them. They live in scattered bands of a few dozen each, always on the move in search of game, sleeping in small makeshift huts of branches and leaves, and far away from villages of Bantus who always try to enslave them.

Their music is hypnotic. To the beat of drums of hollowed-out logs, they sing with a polyphonic complexity that is extraordinary. I’ll never forget the performance they gave for me. Alas, no tape recorder – much less videocam back then!

Warmed by the Gulf Stream, in the summer it’s so strewn with wildflowers the roads are known as “buttercup highways.”  At every turn along them you’re stunned by the incredible scenery. The capital of Torshavn is so laid back the Prime Minister’s Office – the Løgmansskristovan – is a wood cabin with a green grass sod roof.  Great beer from the Faroes’ two breweries is always flowing in the pubs, where the Faroese islanders welcome you like an old friend.

You can easily fly here from Edinburgh, London, Copenhagen, or Reykjavik, Iceland .  A few days here will do wonders for your soul.

You can be awed by such a picture, but to actually physically be here, to witness this magnificence personally so that it is forever a part of your life, is to feel a depth of awe that has to be experienced to be understood. Kanchenjunga is part of the Himalayas, on the border of Nepal and Sikkim, once an independent kingdom now absorbed into India. We fly right up the North Face, and into the Amphitheatre of the Southwest Face as well.