Ray Zahab first noticed that something was wrong with his body in the spring of 2022. 鈥淚 just started to feel like shit,鈥� he told me, chuckling. The Canadian ultrarunner was 54, and he felt like his body was breaking down. Even his warm up runs began to feel grueling. He was constantly out of breath, napping several times a day, and struggling with severe brain fog. 鈥淚 felt like I had wool in my head,鈥� he said. He wondered if he was nearing the end of his career.

Was this just what aging felt like, or was something worse going on?

Zahab had spent the last two decades crossing some of the most inhospitable environments on Earth. He鈥檚 best known for running over 4,600 miles across the Sahara Desert in 2007, becoming鈥攚ith partners Kevin Lin and Charlie Engle鈥攖he first runners to do so. But if you name an extremely hot or cold place, chances are, Zahab鈥檚 crossed it. The deserts of Atacama, Namib, Patagonia, Gobi, and Death Valley. The frozen tundras of Kamchatka, Baffin Island, Antarctica, and Siberia.

Early in 2022, Zahab and longtime expedition partner Kevin Vallely were stymied while attempting an unsupported crossing of Ellesmere, a 500-mile-long Canadian island in the Arctic Circle (and one of the northernmost land masses on the planet). 鈥淚t was clear after starting northward that the snow conditions were going to make it nearly impossible to pull our heavy sleds,鈥� Zahab said. The men made poor progress, trudging directly into a brutal wind, and Vallely ended up with a condition known as 鈥渃aribou lung,鈥� which Zahab described as 鈥渇rostbite of the lining of the lungs.鈥� They soon threw in the towel.

Now, after failure on Ellesmere, Zahab鈥檚 body was failing him, too. Doctors ran tests, and knew that something was wrong鈥攈is red blood cell count was severely depleted鈥攂ut for several months, they couldn鈥檛 give Zahab a diagnosis. 鈥淚 thought maybe I had long COVID, or parasites left over from a past expedition,鈥� Zahab told me. 鈥淚 wondered if I was maybe just getting older.鈥�

When the results finally came in, they were worse than he鈥檇 imagined.

Zahab had a rare form of lymphoma, a blood cancer, in his bone marrow. He鈥檇 caught it early, and his prognosis was good, but for an extreme endurance athlete like Zahab, already in his mid-50s, it could mean the end of a career.

鈥淢y doctor was like, 鈥楪ood news. We caught this. We don鈥檛 think you鈥檙e going to die. Bad news is there’s no cure for what you got.鈥欌€�

But Zahab dove into chemotherapy with the same mentality he took into his expeditions. 鈥淚 had the right, if you will, to sit on the couch, binge Netflix, and just try to make it through the next six months of treatment,鈥� he said. 鈥淏ut I wanted to fight it.鈥�

Each month, Zahab went for a few days of chemo and monoclonal therapy. 鈥淚 would come home, and I’d be sick as a dog for two days,鈥� he recalled. But as soon as he was able, he鈥檇 force himself to get up and out, pushing himself little by little. 鈥淚鈥檇 say, 鈥極k, I’m going to walk a mile one day. The next day I鈥檇 jog a mile. Then I鈥檇 get myself as fit as I could over a 10-day period, and I鈥檇 go away for a week or so to do something personally challenging, whatever that might be for me at the time.鈥�

In between chemotherapy sessions, Zahab ran 30 miles in the Mojave Desert with his daughter. After another session, he crossed a valley in Baffin Island with friends. During another chemo break, he went to the Atacama Desert.

These trips were small potatoes compared to his usual expeditions, but they kept his spirits up. 鈥淚 did these things, not to prove that I could,鈥� Zahab said, 鈥渂ut to try and get myself as fit and stoked and full of life as possible before each round of chemo. I鈥檓 reminding myself that I鈥檓 alive, right?鈥�

Zahab Returns to the Arctic

After six months of chemotherapy, Zahab was in remission. But throughout his treatments, Ellesmere Island never left his mind. And this March, almost three years after their failure in 2022, he and Vallely returned to the frozen island.

They first crossed the island on snowmobiles, burying two caches of supplies, then set out from Eureka, a research base, to ski over 300 miles to the town of Grise Fiord.

The men trudged through blizzards, across frozen sea and land, dragging 150-pound sleds behind them. 鈥淭he surface of the snow was jagged, like little daggers,鈥� Zahab recalled. 鈥淚t felt like pulling something across sandpaper.鈥� They encountered temperatures as low as -112 degrees Fahrenheit with windchill, and winds up to 60 miles an hour. 鈥淲e almost never saw a morning that was warmer than -22 Fahrenheit,鈥� Zahab told me. Zahab鈥檚 tracker suggested the men climbed somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 vertical feet, hauling their sleds up and down steep dunes of frozen snow known as sastrugi, and endless rolling climbs overland.

When the men arrived and set up camp each night, all of their gear was so cold that touching anything was risky. 鈥淵ou touch the sleeping mat, it鈥檒l give you frostbite,鈥� Zahab recalled. 鈥淵ou touch the air inflation bladder for the sleeping mat, it鈥檒l give you frostbite. Everything was so frozen that I could barely feel my hands.鈥� Zahab got frostbite on his fingertips just from setting up camp inside the tent.

At night, they staked down their tent with custom-made footlong titanium stakes, double-walling it and burying the fly deep in the snow so it wouldn鈥檛 blow away. Polar bears were a constant threat. They staked out a wire fence around their campsites on the ice, tied to shotgun blanks that would fire if bears tripped the line. They slept with neck gaiters over their face, so that the moisture of their breath wouldn鈥檛 freeze their sleeping bags.

The men packed 7,000 calories a day, 鈥渂ut we were burning through it like it was nothing,鈥� Zahab said. Their kit included six liters of olive oil, frozen solid into ice cubes, which they sucked on as they walked to keep their energy up. (By the end of the expedition, they鈥檇 become so adapted to the cold that when the temperatures crested -20掳C鈥攚hich was rare鈥攖hey felt so warm that they stripped down to their long underwear.)

After 28 days they finally reached Grise Fiord, becoming one of the few to have ever crossed Ellesmere Island overland. 鈥淢oney, time, cancer, planning, training, everything, it all paid off,鈥� Zahab said.

鈥淚 Get to Live鈥�

Zahab, who has a side career as a professional speaker and also founded a youth nonprofit, is a walking embodiment of the power of positivity. But he wasn鈥檛 always this way. Until his early thirties, Zahab was an overweight, pack-a-day smoker. He went from never having run a race in his life, to setting speed and distance records in some of the most extreme environments on the planet, all after turning 40.

鈥淔or the first half of my life, I talked myself out of doing things because I was afraid of what might happen, or failing, or what others would think,鈥� he said. 鈥淚n the second half, I decided I was going to make decisions for myself. You never know how many days you’ve got left.鈥�

Cancer, he says, taught him that 鈥渆very moment you have is something to be celebrated.鈥�

鈥淭here was this moment during chemotherapy where I decided that I was going to continue to try,鈥� he recalled. 鈥淭o do whatever I could do to keep living my life as I had before. The cancer wasn’t going to own me. I was going to own it.鈥�

Today, Zahab is 56, and says he鈥檚 in the best shape of his life, but eventually, his cancer may very well return. He remains in remission, but the lymphoma is in his bone marrow, and there is no cure. This doesn’t faze him.

鈥淚 don’t even think about it,鈥� he told me. 鈥淟et鈥檚 say it comes back in a few years鈥� What am I going to do? I can spend my time worrying about that, or I can spend it celebrating. I get to wake up every single day and make an awesome espresso. I get to go see my kids. I get to run, ski, or paddle somewhere. I get to go trail running with my wife.鈥�

鈥淩ight now, I get to live. Why not focus on that?鈥�

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Back in 2021, I wrote about the case of Daniel Granberg, a 24-year-old from Colorado who died at the summit of a Bolivian mountain called Illimani of what turned out to be high-altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE). What was notable about the incident was that Illimani is only 21,122 feet above sea level, well below the notorious Death Zone, which starts around 26,000 feet and is where most climbing fatalities in the Himalaya occur. And Granberg hadn鈥檛 seemed notably distressed: the HAPE snuck up on him without obvious warning signs.

That鈥檚 a little scary for anyone venturing to these sorts of high-but-not-extreme altitudes. Ideally, you鈥檇 like to have a better sense of the risk factors and warning signs that signal the difference between run-on-the-hill acute mountain sickness and more severe forms of altitude illness like HAPE.

offers some useful clues. Emergency physicians from the University of Vermont and the medical staff at Aconcagua Provincial Park, led by Vermont鈥檚 Andrew Park, crunched the data on all climbers diagnosed with HAPE during the month of January in 2024 and compared their responses to climbers who didn鈥檛 get HAPE. Sure enough, there were some notable differences in how fast they climbed, how long they acclimatized to various stages of elevation, and what symptoms they displayed.

Aconcagua, in Argentina, is the highest mountain in Americas at 22,838 feet. It鈥檚 also the highest mountain outside Asia, and more significantly is perhaps the highest non-technical summit in the world, meaning that it鈥檚 possible to ascend without specialized climbing skills and equipment. That makes it accessible, but it also means that climbers can hurry up the mountain at a dangerous pace. found that roughly three climbers die each year out of more than 3,000 who attempt it. HAPE was the second-leading cause after trauma, accounting for a fifth of the deaths.

Park medical staff screen climbers at camps at roughly 11,000 feet and 14,000 feet. Crucially, there are no standard sleeping camps between those two elevations, which means you have to make that 3,000-foot jump in one night. Standard guidelines on altitude illness from the Wilderness Medical Society (which I wrote about in detail here) suggest increasing your sleeping elevation by no more than 1,500 feet per night once you鈥檙e above 10,000 feet. If logistics force you to make a bigger jump, you need to add rest days to keep the average rate of climbing below that threshold.

A total of 17 climbers were diagnosed with HAPE in January 2024. The key feature of HAPE is a potentially dangerous build-up of fluid in the lungs that interferes with the delivery of oxygen into the bloodstream. It鈥檚 mainly diagnosed on the basis of shortness of breath, lower than expected blood oxygen levels for a given altitude, and a crackling sound in the lungs. None of the HAPE victims died; all were quickly evacuated by helicopter to lower elevations, which is the main recommendation for treating HAPE.

Overall, the climbers diagnosed with HAPE were very similar to a group of 42 climbers surveyed during the same period who weren鈥檛 diagnosed with HAPE. But a few suggestive differences emerged. The most significant was the number of nights they spent at the 14,000-foot camp, after that 3,000-foot jump in sleeping elevation. The HAPE climbers spent an average of 3.6 nights at that camp, compared to 5.0 nights for the non-HAPE climbers, a statistically significant difference.

Interestingly, both groups had planned a total of 10.4 nights, on average, to reach the summit. The HAPE group actually spent slightly longer getting to 14,000 feet, but they spent less time adjusting to that elevation. Typically the risk of altitude illness starts ramping up beyond about 10,000 feet, so once you get to 14,000 feet you鈥檙e well into the zone where many people will be experiencing altitude-related symptoms.

On a related note, 71 percent of the HAPE patients reported that they had symptoms of acute mountain sickness (AMS) at 14,000 feet. AMS is the most common and mild form of altitude illness, typically manifesting as a headache plus other symptoms like nausea and lethargy. The typical advice for AMS is that you should stop ascending, and if symptoms don鈥檛 resolve within a few days, descend to a lower elevation. Notably, every single one of the climbers who had AMS at 14,000 feet then went on to develop HAPE (at a median elevation of 18,000 feet) reported that their AMS symptoms hadn鈥檛 resolved before they continued their ascent.

There are a few other observations that raise more questions than answers. Just under half the HAPE climbers reported taking acetazolamide, a diuretic known to climbers under the brand name Diamox that helps ward off AMS. In contrast, only a fifth of the non-HAPE climbers used it. It seems unlikely that Diamox is causing HAPE. Presumably climbers who were struggling to handle altitude were more likely to try Diamox and also more likely to eventually develop HAPE. Still, the researchers suggest that it鈥檚 an observation that鈥檚 worth following up on.

Similarly, 44 percent of the HAPE group reported having a recent upper respiratory tract infection, compared to just 29 percent of the non-HAPE group. This difference wasn鈥檛 statistically significant, but it鈥檚 plausible it might have been significant with a larger sample size. Lingering inflammation in the respiratory tract might contribute to the leaky capillaries associated with HAPE. For now, it鈥檚 another idea to check out in future research.

The strongest conclusions we can draw from the data are also the most familiar ones: ascend slowly, and if AMS strikes, pause your ascent until symptoms resolve. That鈥檚 easy advice to give, but hard to follow, especially because AMS symptoms like headache and fatigue are so vague and commonplace at high elevations. But the data here offers a stark warning: ignoring this advice heightens your risk of progressing to more serious forms of altitude illness that sometimes, with little warning, turn out to be fatal.

For more Sweat Science, join me on and , sign up for the , and check out my forthcoming book .

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I. Two Sides of a Single-Edged Blade

Franklin Park, Illinois, December 25, 2021

The sword was suspended in the basement rafters with a message from 1945 still secured to its fittings. My grandfather and I were sitting one floor above it at his kitchen table when an email arrived. It was 9:17 A.M. on Christmas Day in 2021, the Chicago weather too mild, the ground too much of a defeated brown, and the gathering too small to suggest that anything festive was about to happen. A notification lit up my phone with the subject line 鈥淢erry Christmas and a letter from Umeki-san.鈥�

The timing was convenient. I was visiting for the holidays, staying at my mother鈥檚 childhood home in Franklin Park, ten miles west of Chicago. My parents were there, too. My grandfather, Joseph Kasser, who goes by Ben or Benny, built the home in 1957 for a family of four that eventually dwindled to one. My mom, Kathy, was the first to go, leaving for college in 1971; my grandma Alice died in 2008; my uncle Bob died in 2010. They left Benny alone on Louis Street with a lifetime of modest possessions. Among them was a Japanese sword he鈥檇 found on an Okinawa beach in the final days of World War II.

It was six months after I first asked Benny if he鈥檇 be interested in finding the sword鈥檚 owner. I don鈥檛 remember what I said to start the conversation. I do remember that I was nervous asking a man who doesn鈥檛 own much to part ways with a keepsake he鈥檇 found during perhaps the most consequential time of his life as an antiaircraft gunner in the U.S. Army. He didn鈥檛 hesitate. He said, 鈥淪ure.鈥�

It was one of those inspired 鈥渟ure鈥漵 that really mean 鈥渁bsolutely,鈥� a posture-correcting 鈥渟ure,鈥� an energy-intoned 鈥渟ure,鈥� not 鈥淚 suppose鈥� or 鈥渋f you want.鈥� A momentous syllable that set something off. It was apparently something he had considered.

Now, on Christmas Day, I didn鈥檛 know if the email that had arrived contained good news about our quest. I read it silently while sitting at the kitchen table, where I had heard one side of the story for more than three decades.

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On October 30, British twins Hugo and Ross Turner ascended to 8,500 feet in an electric-powered paraglider-like aircraft, called a paramotor. The brothers soared over the ski resort Val d’Isere in the French Alps.

The 34-year-olds told 国产吃瓜黑料 their flight set a world record for highest altitude by a tandem team in one of the battery-powered devices, and that they have submitted their flight data to the Federation Aeronautique Internationale (FAI), the governing body for air sports.

A paramotor is a steerable parachute, similar to a paraglider, outfitted with a giant rear propeller. Unlike a traditional paraglider, where pilots must launch from a cliff or hillside and catch columns of rising warm air to ascend, the motor and propeller allow pilots to take off from open, flat ground鈥�no hills or cliffs required. 鈥淭his is why paramotoring is so popular in places like the United Kingdom,鈥� Hugo said.

Though mostly reliant on gas-powered engines, some paramotor companies are aiming to become greener. But electric batteries are notoriously heavy, and, when flying a parachute, every ounce counts. 鈥淭he big challenge the industry is facing is this conscious decision that we need to move away from petrol engines,鈥� Hugo said, 鈥渂ut it鈥檚 difficult to get enough battery power to make the weight justifiable.鈥�

Although the world鈥檚 first electric paramotor was built in 2006, the technology has seen little refinement in the nearly two decades since. Most of the devices are powered by two-stroke combustion engines which burn around a gallon of gasoline per hour, and can typically fly for two-to-three hours without refueling. 鈥淭o get the same flight time out of an electric paramotor, you鈥檙e talking a battery weight that a human could not physically carry,鈥� Hugo said. 鈥淭he energy density of the battery is so much that getting an extended flight time is very difficult.鈥�

The weight is a difficult problem to solve, but even beyond concerns about emissions, there are other advantages to electric paramotors. They鈥檙e quieter, and鈥攍ike electric cars and motorcycles鈥攕moother to drive. Electric motors offer instant, consistent torque, which makes flying an electric paramotor more predictable and controlled than a gas-powered paramotor. Electric power also comes with unique advantages at high elevation. As altitude increases, air pressure decreases, causing gas-powered motors to lose thrust due to a lower oxygen-fuel ratio. Electric motors, on the other hand, maintain consistent power output regardless of elevation.

There has never been a tandem electric paramotor altitude record before, so even the relatively low elevation of 8,500 feet was enough to get the brothers in the record books. But theirs isn’t the first altitude record set in any electric paramotor. American Nathan Finneman reached 14,790 feet with an electric-powered wing聽in September.

Finneman was flying solo, however, and started from a much higher elevation, at over 10,000 feet in Leadville, Colorado. His paramotor battery put out 4.8 kiloWatt-hours (kWh) of power, and let him climb for 28 minutes despite brutally cold temperatures, which dropped to -13 degrees Fahrenheit聽with windchill. 鈥淭here are a handful of electric paramotors like this out there,鈥� Ross said, 鈥渂ut they鈥檙e only designed for solo flight. We wanted to look past that, and see what we could do in tandem.鈥�

鈥淲e鈥檙e all about pushing the limits of new technology through purposeful adventure,鈥� Ross added. 鈥淲e鈥檝e started off with a blank canvas and said, 鈥榃hat is the best emission-free technology that we could use to make a benchmark?鈥欌€�

Their paramotor, dubbed the E-Maverick Max, was custom designed by United Kingdom manufacturer Parajet International. The entire rig weighed about 88 pounds, 50 pounds of which was the battery. Their motor powered a carbon fiber propeller, sporting three 4.5-foot blades. This rig gave the twins 175 pounds of thrust, pumped out by a 5.8 kWh lithium ion pouch cell battery, which ran for 35 minutes in the air.

Thirty-five minutes is a far cry from the two or three hours that a gas-powered motor could last, but it鈥檚 a start, and was even more than the 28 minutes Finneman was able to fly with his solo paramotor. Though it may not sound like much time, it’s a significant achievement considering the twins weighed a staggering 530 pounds on takeoff.

The twins launched from 6,200 feet, and though they hoped to be able to get above 10,000 feet, their flight went awry. 鈥淲e weighed so much that we really struggled to gain altitude,鈥� Ross said, noting that the World Air Sports Federation (FAI) observer watching them was surprised they even managed to take off.

鈥淲e launched from the field, and we immediately started heading down-valley, and we just dropped,鈥� he said. 鈥淭his massive pocket of cold air made us sink quite fast. Fortunately we found this ridgeline, a fork between two valleys, and we got some lift there. That鈥檚 where we stayed, working patterns between the ridgelines to keep rising.鈥� The twins crested 8,520 feet before the battery cut out. They are currently waiting for their record to be formally verified by the FAI.

Hugo and Ross explained that, while they likely could have climbed higher if they鈥檇 started at a higher elevation, FAI altitude record stipulations required that they launch from a flat location with a 330-foot radius in all directions, a rare sight in the Alps, where the twins live. 鈥淥therwise, we could have certainly taken off on the top of a mountain,鈥� Hugo said. 鈥淚n any case, we hope this will start a trend towards making recreational flying greener, and better for the environment.鈥�

鈥淓lectric is unquestionably the future,鈥� said Parajet founder Gilo Gardozo. 鈥淣ow it鈥檚 a question of people adopting that reality, and the technology delivering.鈥�

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It was the trip of a lifetime. Several months paddling the Amazon, trying to eat without being eaten. It almost all went to plan.聽But when Bruce Frey and Ed Welch found themselves being trailed through the jungle by a jaguar at sunset, their only choice was to take refuge in a tree and hope they could survive the night.

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Paige McClanahan, a journalist and travel writer, is much too diplomatic to phrase it this way, so allow me to be the grump: you鈥檙e the reason locals so often dislike tourists.

鈥淭ravel has become a consumerist exercise where the goal is to get our money鈥檚 worth out of a place,鈥� McClanahan says in a phone interview from her home in France. 鈥淲e need to wake up. Paris owes you nothing.鈥�

The tourist-local tension has been around since before Marco Polo, but in her debut book, , McClanahan shows us just how bad things have gotten. Globally, travelers will log some 1.5 billion trips abroad by the end of 2024鈥攖he largest movement of people the planet has ever seen. In a handful of years, that number could reach 1.8 billion. Closer to home, Americans are on track to take almost two billion domestic leisure trips annually by 2025. Despite the buzz around mindful experiences and sustainable travel, locals from Athens to Zermatt have had enough of us. Some Hawaiians have requested that we stay home. Romans fine tourists up to $280 for clogging the Spanish Steps. In July, an annoyed mob roamed Barcelona鈥檚 boulevards dousing visitors with squirt guns.

McClanahan, who writes for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian, has plugged her journalistic pen into this bursting dike with empathy, not by shaming or lecturing anyone. Nor does she ask people to stay put, which would be detrimental to conservation work, prosperity, and cultural bridge building. Instead, McClanahan uses the voices of locals adversely affected by tourism to inspire us to travel with more curiosity, humility, and appreciation for how our holiday can be hell on the climate and local residents. Above all, she wants us to know that we have the power to make travel a force for good.

This elevated mindset is the hallmark of the new tourist. Becoming one isn鈥檛 hard. It means visiting Iceland in the off-season or trading the line at the Louvre for a Paris Noir walking tour to soak up the city鈥檚 Black history. You can control your partying in Amsterdam and stay behind the fence at the Grand Canyon. You can insist on supporting local guides and locally owned hotels, restaurants, and food carts. (The Barcelona mob targeted people eating at a Taco Bell, among other spots.)

鈥淓ven if you鈥檙e a low-budget traveler, you can still be a high-value visitor,鈥� McClanahan says.

McClanahan, who left the United States at age 26 and has spent the past 17 years writing from Africa and Europe, admits that she has made plenty of old-tourist mistakes鈥攍ike posting a self-serving Instagram reel from Angkor Wat that barely showed Angkor Wat. 鈥淚 live in a glass house,鈥� she says.

McClanahan casts no aspersions on the types of trips you like but does bristle at people who consider themselves 鈥渢ravelers鈥� and not tourists. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 deny that people travel for a huge range of reasons, some higher-minded than others,鈥� she writes in The New Tourist. 鈥淪o, sure, call yourself a traveler but never forget you鈥檙e a tourist, too.鈥� What matters is that we make informed decisions on how to travel in ways that put places and the people who live there first.

鈥淥ne of the most constructive things we can do in our flickering moment of life is to embrace the chance to leave our comfort zones鈥攖hose dangerous lairs where we learn to languish,鈥� she writes. She adds to me: 鈥淣one of us can wave a magic wand and change the behavior of millions of other people, but each of us can be that change.鈥�

The post People Are Traveling More Than Ever, Driving Residents Crazy. It鈥檚 Time to Listen to the Locals. appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

It鈥檚 a pleasantly warm afternoon in Azerbaijan, a former soviet republic sandwiched between Russia and Iran, and the tank crewmen of the Qubadli regional Border Detachment are hosting a party. For hours they鈥檝e been working to raise a wedding-style tent and set a dozen tables with cartons of fruit nectar, bowls of nuts, and plates of pale pink meats. The Azerbaijanis have been fighting off and on for more than 30 years with Armenia, another ex-Soviet state a grenade toss to the west, but tonight the war can wait.

Around 5 P.M., 14 shiny Nissan Pathfinders, Toyota Land Cruisers, and Mitsubishi Pajeros come racing into the encampment behind a military-police escort vehicle鈥攁 boxy Russian-built Lada鈥攚ith lights flashing and engine whining. The SUVs file into a gravel parking area that was scratched out of the scrubland. Dozens of the detachment鈥檚 T-72 tanks and infantry fighting vehicles sit silently nearby like insects ready to sting.

The dust settles and about 30 civilians from more than 20 countries step from the cars, stretch their legs, and look around in wonder. Some are doctors. Some are vagabonds. All of them are here to see one of the world鈥檚 most contentious enclaves.

The detachment base sits on the fringes of Nagorno-Karabakh, a 2,700-square-mile patch of the Lesser Caucasus Mountains nestled inside Azerbaijan but historically home to a lot of ethnic Armenians, too. The two have been at each other鈥檚 throats for generations over this region, with thousands of lives lost. In the past four years, Azerbaijan has reclaimed the besieged area, and more than 100,000 Armenians fled back to Armenia. While the conflict appears to be over for now, there are remnants of the war everywhere: step off the road and a land mine might do you in.

A muscular, jovial colonel with thin, graying hair and slate-colored eyes comes forward in his battle dress. The tank crews stand at attention in navy blue boiler suits. His name is Murad, but that鈥檚 all he can say. A patch on his chest reads O (I) RH+, which is his blood type.

鈥淲elcome! Welcome!鈥� the colonel says to the guests. 鈥淲e鈥檙e so honored you are here.鈥�

The leader of the visiting guests, Charles Veley, a 58-year-old from Marin County, California, steps forward from a white Mitsubishi that I鈥檝e been riding in, too. 鈥淭hank you for having us,鈥� Veley replies. 鈥淚 hear you have a surprise.鈥�

鈥淵es, yes,鈥� the colonel says. 鈥淚 hope you enjoy.鈥�

What鈥檚 no surprise is that Veley, who has a boyish grin and a neutral, even way of speaking, is here. That鈥檚 because he is, according to a system he created, America鈥檚 most traveled person, a wanderer who has visited more of the planet than almost any known human in history. Fewer than ten people have seen more of the globe than he has.

To quantify that, there are lists. The most straightforward one comes from the United Nations, which affirms that there are 195 countries in existence, including places like Palestine and the Holy See. Federal Express says that it delivers to more than 220 countries and territories. The list that Veley compiled, and that thousands of other extreme travelers recognize, tops out at more than 1,500 distinct places that are currently possible for one to visit. It includes countries, regions, enclaves, atolls, both poles, and at least one small, sheer-cliffed islet in the middle of the ocean. Russia isn鈥檛 just 鈥淩ussia,鈥� but 86 discrete stops. The United Kingdom has 30 stops, including islands like Herm and Sark. To see the United States, you must travel to 79 places that stretch from the Florida Keys to the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea.

鈥淐harles isn鈥檛 an adventure seeker but a knowledge seeker,鈥� his friend Kolja Sp枚ri, the German founder of the Extreme Traveler International Congress, a yearly gathering of the world鈥檚 most obsessive travelers that鈥檚 been held in such places as Baghdad, Equatorial Guinea, and Siberia, told me. 鈥淗e鈥檚 the spiritual father of all country collectors,鈥� he added in a blog post.

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The world’s most interesting video game designer just hid a treasure in the woods. What’s he up to? Jason Rohrer has been pushing the limits of game design for 20 years, but his latest creation takes players into the forests of New England in search of a sculpture made of solid gold. The catch? He says there isn’t one. But people familiar with his past work aren’t so sure.

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In my early twenties, I worked briefly as a snorkel assistant on a tourist boat in Maui. I helped guests defog their mask and get their fins on and off, but mostly my job entailed making sure everyone had a good time.

On my first day, the captain gave me some sage advice: 鈥淪ometimes the best response to a guest is to simply smile and nod.鈥� I did a lot of smiling and nodding that summer, to questions like 鈥淗as the ocean been sprayed for sharks?鈥� and 鈥淒oes the water go all the way around the island?鈥� Maybe the sun was getting to people, I thought. Maybe it was vacation brain, which we all lapse into on occasion. I laughed these off amiably.

Fielding such nonsensical queries gave me a whole new appreciation for wilderness guides. We pepper them with endless curiosities, and they respond with infinite patience and kindness. They educate millions of people largely disconnected from nature and some who think caribou magically turn into elk at a certain elevation. (Apparently, this a very popular misconception.)

I asked my guide friends in the travel industry to tell me the funniest questions they鈥檝e gotten from clients over the years. Here are some of the most hilarious.

Lessons in World Geography

鈥淐an鈥檛 I just hop a bus from Quito to the 骋补濒谩辫补驳辞蝉? How long would that take?鈥� 鈥�an American client on a 骋补濒谩辫补驳辞蝉 Islands trip with Rebecca 国产吃瓜黑料 Travel. Staffer Katie Beckwith explained that the islands lie about 600 miles off the Ecuadorean coast, and that a plane was the best way to travel there from the nation鈥檚 landlocked capital city.

鈥淲hat is the primary language taught in schools here?鈥� 鈥攁 guest on a Natural Habitat 国产吃瓜黑料s trip in Alaska. 鈥淚n a way, this is a testament to how exotic and remote Alaska can feel at times鈥攍ike another country,鈥� the guide I spoke with told me. 鈥淗owever, they still teach English in schools here, just like they do in Minnesota.鈥�

Coming to Terms with the Concept of Sea Level

鈥淲hat elevation are we at?鈥� 鈥攁 client kayaking in Antarctica with G 国产吃瓜黑料s, in addition to a client standing on Pfeiffer Beach in Big Sur, California, during a Backroads trip. More than a few wilderness newbies are still sorting out what sea level means.

Swell Times and Teachings

鈥淒o I need to know how to swim in order to snorkel?鈥� 鈥攁 traveler on an excursion specifically catered to snorkelers. Andy McComb, founder of Redline Rafting in Maui, said his team fields this question almost daily. Their response: 鈥淲ell, it鈥檚 a great day for a boat ride.鈥� I would have added gently that a snorkel is not considered a floatation device.

鈥淲here are the waves? I paid for the waves!鈥� 鈥攁 Stoked Surf School client during a lesson on a sunny, wind-free, small-swell day off the South African coast. As surf-school owner Michelle Smith points out, any wave is good when you鈥檙e a beginner riding a nine-foot soft top. 鈥淚 replied very diplomatically that I have no control over the weather, but I could assist in making the most of the conditions,鈥� she said.

The Wilderness Really Is Wild

鈥淒on鈥檛 be ridiculous! They wouldn’t put wild animals inside a national park.鈥� 鈥攁 client visiting Alaska鈥檚 Denali National Park and Preserve. Naturalist guide Brooke Edwards of Alaska Wildland 国产吃瓜黑料s was surprised to hear this comment while explaining to her group that food should not be left out in the open in Denali National Park because animals like bear and marmots would make a grab for it.

Natural Habitat 国产吃瓜黑料s specializes in eco-conscious wildlife trips. Over the years, company guides have learned how to wittingly respond to naive animal questions such as: 鈥淧olar bears look so cuddly. Don鈥檛 you think it鈥檚 OK to just pet them once, really quickly?鈥� To which guides have replied: 鈥淵es, you can pet them. Once. And you鈥檒l never get to pet anything ever again.鈥�

鈥淚s there any way to call the butterflies closer to us?鈥� To which guides have said. 鈥淚 left my butterfly whistle at home鈥攕orry!鈥�

And some questions are best left unanswered, like these two:

鈥淗ow many birds does a giraffe eat in a day?鈥�

鈥淎t what age does a rhino turn into a hippo?鈥�

There鈥檚 No Remote Control in Nature

鈥淲hat time do they turn off the waterfalls?鈥� 鈥攁 frequent question fielded by the staff of Basecamp Ouray in Colorado when guiding summer hikes. Logan Tyler, founder of the outfit, said that after about 30 seconds of awkward silence, he usually just moves on, leaving the question lingering.

You Can鈥檛 Have Fries with That

鈥淒o you think McDonald鈥檚 would pay to rebuild the Darwin Arch as fiberglass golden arches?鈥� 鈥攁 client in 骋补濒谩辫补驳辞蝉 National Park on a trip with Latin Travel Collection. Company founder David Torres explained that the famous lava arch of Darwin, which collapsed due to erosion in 2021, is a 14-hour boat ride from the closest inhabited island, so McDonald鈥檚 would likely have no interest in such advertising in the middle of the Pacific.

鈥淐an you helicopter in Thai food, burgers, and pizza?鈥� 鈥攁 Seven Summits client at Everest Base Camp. These guides have had similar requests before, and in this instance they actually coordinated delivery from Kathmandu.

The Wilderness Is Not a Movie Set Staged for Your Pleasure

鈥淲ho paints the aspens?鈥� 鈥攁 client on a snowmobile tour to Colorado鈥檚 Maroon Bells. Guide Sam Terlingo explained that the aspens鈥� 鈥減aint鈥� is natural.

鈥淵ou鈥檝e gone to so much trouble lighting the trees for Christmas.鈥� 鈥攁 camper with Tribal 国产吃瓜黑料s, a tour operator specializing in remote adventures in the Philippines, pointing to the acacias along the shore. At this particular off-grid camp, those 鈥渓ights鈥� were courtesy of fireflies. Staffer Greg Hutchinson said his team just smiled and nodded.

鈥淚s that island always there?鈥� 鈥攁 client on an Alaska Sea Kayakers trip to Prince William Sound. This was another question the guide just let go.

鈥淏ringing all this sand and creating this lovely campsite is such a great idea. How did you do it? Must鈥檝e taken a lot of effort.鈥� 鈥攁 guest at Aquaterra 国产吃瓜黑料s鈥� Camp Silver Sands site on the India鈥檚 Ganga River. Founder Vaibhav Kala jokingly replied to the client, it was even more difficult to build the roads to truck all of the sand there.

鈥淒o you mind calling park management and asking if they can release more of the blue coloring in the water? My photos are just not blue enough!鈥� 鈥攁 guest in Croatia鈥檚 Plitvice Lakes National Park, known for its 16 mesmerizingly blue waterfalls . 鈥淎fter a few moments, when I realized that that his question was not a joke, I explained that the colors of the lakes are all natural and changed hue through the day, depending on the sun,鈥� shared Tihomir Jambrovic, cofounder of the operator Terra Magica 国产吃瓜黑料s. 鈥淚鈥檓 still not convinced that he believed me completely.鈥�

Finally, Keep Your Hands Off the Guides

鈥淚s it true the guides aren鈥檛 allowed to sleep with guests?鈥� 鈥攁 woman on a Zion National Park trip with Black Sheep 国产吃瓜黑料s, Inc. The tour operator鈥檚 founder, Fred Ackerman, affirmed that this was indeed his company鈥檚 policy. To which the client replied: 鈥淭hat’s too bad. Your tips would be higher.鈥�

Jen Murphy is 国产吃瓜黑料 Online鈥檚 travel advice columnist. She has the utmost admiration for wilderness guides and has to regularly bite her tongue when she hears clients ask ridiculous questions.

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By the time we鈥檇 reached the bottom of the Cayman Trench, some 2,000 feet below the ocean鈥檚 surface, I鈥檇 lost feeling in my legs. My neck was aching, and my ears felt as though they were going to explode under the mounting pressure. 鈥淗eavy,鈥� said the passenger sitting next to me. He stared out the window with shell-shocked eyes, and I looked, too. A Milky Way of multicolored stars twinkled in blue, violet, and white as far as we could see, like fireworks in a night sky. But these were no fireworks, and the view was no starscape.

What we were seeing were the bioluminescent emissions from tens of thousands of plankton, cephalopods, and who knows what else. This is what the world looks like at the ocean鈥檚 sunless depths.

I鈥檇 come here because I wanted to see where the planet鈥檚 largest collection of organisms called home. I wanted to explore one of the last frontiers on earth.

This was more than ten years ago. Back then, regular folk weren鈥檛 talking about vacations to the deep ocean, let alone booking trips to it. There were no sanctioned tours or government-licensed operators to take you. The only way for a private citizen like me to get down there was to either save up several million dollars and purchase a custom-built submersible, or fly to Honduras and meet with the renegade undersea explorer Karl Stanley. I chose the second option.

Stanley had hand-built his own submarine, the Idabel, without any formal training and without any government oversight. Because taking tourists down 70 stories in a homemade, unlicensed submarine, without insurance, was a liability nightmare, Stanley moved his operation to Roatan, Honduras, where regulations for underwater craft were lax or nonexistent, and deep water is close to shore. He ran his submarine business off a tiny dock along Roatan鈥檚 touristy West End, between a few sand-floored tiki bars serving pink slushy drinks and packs of stray dogs picking through trash heaps.

Stanley had completed more than 2,000 dives in his little homemade sub. Along the way, he had some close calls. Like the one time in an earlier sub when he got stuck in a cave and snagged on a rope. Or another when a window cracked at 1,960 feet as he carried a local from Roatan and the man鈥檚 pregnant wife. Dangers aside, thus far Stanley had chalked up more time exploring the deep waters between 1,000 and 2,000 feet than anyone in history.

To join him on a deep-sea adventure, I鈥檇 need to autograph no waiver, wear no helmet, strap on no seat belt. I just needed to show up at a dock at the end of a dusty dirt road with several hundred dollars and an empty bladder. I signed up. Soon after, I was 200 stories beneath the ocean, witnessing lifeforms that put Avatar to shame.

Today there are more than 200 private submersibles operating around the world and a dozen companies selling tours to the sunless depths. The deep ocean has finally become accessible to anyone who wants to go there. What could go wrong? Even back then, I knew the answer: just about everything.

A Year After the Titan Disaster

It鈥檚 been a year since the world saw exactly how lethal these deep-sea voyages can be. On June 18, 2023, the private submersible Titan launched five men on an expedition to view the wreckage of the Titanic, which is roughly 400 off the coast of Newfoundland. The dive was supposed to take a few hours and reach a depth of more than 12,000 feet. But 105 minutes after the Titan ducked below the waves, it went dark.

The U.S. and Canadian Coast Guards and the U.S. Navy were called in on a frantic search to rescue the passengers, only to discover days later that the Titan had imploded. There were no survivors.

The Titan disaster made international headlines for more than a week. Soon millions of people around the world were talking about submersibles and debating the merits of manned exploration to the ocean鈥檚 depths.

On various social media platforms, many people wrote condolences to the families of the deceased passengers. Many more mocked the whole enterprise. I saw people label the passengers 鈥渄aredevils,鈥� 鈥渇ools,鈥� 鈥渁rrogant,鈥� 鈥渋diotic,鈥� and worse. Several journalists (rightfully) lambasted media outlets for focusing on the lives of five wealthy men lost at sea while 700 migrants drowned in the Aegean Sea a few days after the Titan was lost. The comments and derisions continue to this day. I should know. I鈥檝e been on the receiving end of some of them.

I鈥檝e since spent a decade praising undersea explorers and arguing the importance of visiting the ocean鈥檚 depths. Several people scolded me, explaining how manned deep-sea pursuits were not only dangerous and expensive, but also pointless.

They argued that in the age of robotic drones, cameras, cables, and computers, no human needs to go down there again. We can explore the planet鈥檚 secret wonders in HD from the comfort and safety of a climate-controlled office. Why bother boarding a sub? Why go deep?

And so I find myself here, defending the human compulsion to explore. You know, that messy, tactile, anything-can-happen kind of exploration we used to be proud of. The kind that shot us to the moon. That brought us across oceans to new worlds. That led us out of caves.

Without that kind of exploration, a scientist can鈥檛 prove theories and a journalist can鈥檛 tell rich stories. I鈥檝e learned over the past 20 years, through much trial and error, that the only way to really write about a subject is to know it; the only way to know it is to experience it; and the only way to experience it is to show up.

The road to discovery, I鈥檝e learned, is long and hard and filled with frustration, wandering, and dead ends. It鈥檚 expensive and too often feels fruitless. Which is the whole point. I believe that casting a wide net and blindly trying to follow leads is an essential part of the discovery process.

The Merits of Showing Up

Anyone with a computer can view HD virtual tours of the Louvre, the pyramids of Giza, and Pisa鈥檚 leaning tower. Yet that kind of tourism hasn鈥檛 overtaken our collective desire to experience things in person. Families this summer and last have, in record numbers, chosen to spend weeks on the road and thousands of dollars adventuring to these landmarks in person. Business travel also stormed back as soon as airports reopened, and bars, clubs, and restaurants in many cities have become packed to the gills.

After a few years of lockdown, of experiencing life on Zoom, human beings are flocking to IRL experiences. The metaverse is a failed, desolate wasteland, and virtual cocktail parties have gone the way of Iggy Azalea.

As wasteful, time-consuming, and seemingly pointless as it may seem, even bean counters and glad-handers realized that the best experiences in business, science, journalism鈥攁nd life in general鈥攃an only be had in person. This is what the submarine skeptics seem to be forgetting.

The U.S. Navy submersible Alvin has made more than 5,000 dives in the past five decades at depths below 20,000 feet. While researchers were putzing around the 骋补濒谩辫补驳辞蝉 Rift in Alvin, they witnessed giant 鈥渃hemosynthetic鈥� tube worms, the first life-forms ever observed to exist entirely without the need for sunlight鈥攐ne of the most significant biological discoveries. It was in Alvin that researchers recovered a 1.45 megaton hydrogen bomb that had been lost over the Mediterranean Sea in 1966.

It was in another submersible that scientists caught the first footage of a giant squid鈥攁 massive, mythic creature that no human had ever witnessed in the wild before. The list goes on and on, and includes hundreds of supposedly impossible discoveries made during deep and dangerous dives into the ocean. Discoveries that were made by showing up. One sub captain told me that on every dive they discovered something new.

Certainly, the passengers aboard the Titan weren鈥檛 on a serious scientific or journalistic mission of discovery. They were on a joyride to see the remains of history鈥檚 most famous shipwreck. But they were moved by the compulsion to explore. We can have the debate about how deep a submersible can safely go, which safety precautions should be required, who ought to be trusted to build and captain them. Those are worthy discussions, and there are people above my pay grade who should have them.

I鈥檓 not against rules and regulations, either鈥攔ather, it鈥檚 the idea that we should avoid certain kinds of exploration that irks me. I believe that the only real way to experience life and truly connect with the ineffable, otherworldly wonders of the world is to experience them in person. I learned this valuable lesson in those sunless depths, 2,000 feet below the waves.

The View At the Bottom

A carnival of the bizarre danced outside my porthole ten years ago during that submarine dive in Honduras. We鈥檇 just touched down on a sandy dune below 2,000 feet. On the other side of the window, a fish with stumpy legs waddled past another fish covered in brown blotches, yawning with pouty Mick Jagger lips.

Minutes later, a beach-ball-size orb appeared a few inches from the glass鈥攁 jellyfish, I think鈥攅mitting flashes of bright pink and purple light like some kind of underwater disco ball. First only blue lights flashed, then red, then purple, then yellow, until every color in the spectrum had appeared. After that, all the colors appeared at the same time, and the spectacle was repeated. The hundreds of rows of lights were evenly spaced around the glob. It looked like a cityscape after nightfall. When the lights were red, they looked like the taillights of cars on a freeway; when they were white, they looked like an urban grid as viewed from an airplane thousands of feet above.

Between the lights there was nothing鈥攏o visible flesh, nerves, bones, or body. And there it was, this thing, two feet from our faces, at a depth equivalent to twice the height of the Chrysler Building, watching us with its non-eyes, communicating with its non-brain, and dazzling us with its Las Vegas lights.

I realized that not only had no human ever seen these animals, but that these creatures had never seen themselves. The ocean down there was completely black; the only way we could see anything, and they could see us, was through the glare of the submarine鈥檚 headlights. These animals had been evolving at these depths for millions of years; we鈥檇 been evolving on land for just as long. And here we were sharing space for the first time.

Beyond witnessing these life-forms, I wondered how else our presence might be interacting with theirs, what other information we might be broadcasting to one another.

As I sat there cramped in a tiny metal sub pondering all this, I felt an emptiness in my chest that breath couldn鈥檛 fill. The undersea is the largest living space on the planet, the 71 percent silent majority. And this is how it looks鈥攇elatinous, cross-eyed, clumsy, glowing, flickering, cloaked in perpetual darkness, and compressed by more than 1,000 pounds per square inch.
I鈥檇 love to share with you some pictures or videos from my sub experience, but I didn鈥檛 take any. I was too busy being gobsmacked by wonders of the natural world and our place within it.

I guess you had to be there.

James Nestor is the author of . This essay was adapted from the book. 聽

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