Letter · 2026-09-09 · 3 min

“Adventure Travel”: What comes next?

The problem isn’t finding somewhere to go. It’s finding somewhere that still feels like genuine discovery.

A wide wall of orange sandstorm dust rolling across a straight desert road under a heavy grey sky, scattered trees either side.

There comes a moment in every travel addict’s life. A dangerous moment: you start browsing holidays and nothing quite hits the spot anymore.

Patagonia?

Northern Lights?

Safari?

Everest Base Camp?

Now what?

You aren’t bored with travel; it’s that travel has just got saturated, and dare I say it, a bit boring…

The problem isn’t finding somewhere to go; the world is bloody massive! The problem is finding somewhere that still feels like genuine discovery, with no cruise ships, phone signal, or TikTok dances.

A rider standing over a small off-road motorbike with one fist raised, looking down over a grid of walled housing plots filling a wide valley, hills beyond and a small drone hovering in the middle distance.

What I found is that the great irony of adventure travel is that the more I travelled, the bigger the world became.

I didn’t used to agree with that. At first, it felt like the exact opposite — I was fixated on the “30 countries before I’m 30”, then it became “40 countries before I’m 40”. I continued to collect destinations and fill passport pages.

Then one day I realised that despite scratching all the countries off the map, I’d barely scratched the surface. Beyond the famous names lay hundreds of places most people don’t consider.

The gable end of a raised wooden building with a steep dark roof, seen through trees on a hillside with layers of misty forested mountains behind it.

Not because they’re difficult.

Not because they’re unsafe.

Simply because they haven’t yet appeared on a thousand Instagram feeds.

I stopped asking: “Where should I go?”

And started asking: “What’s the weirdest, craziest, most interesting thing I can do?”

And that’s where things got exciting.

A crowded train carriage with several passengers close to the camera and sleeper bunks visible above them.

Comfort became less important.

Discovery became more important.

I stopped looking for luxury and started looking for stories.

I went camel trekking in Jaisalmer with desert nomads instead of the Golden Triangle, Eastern Siberian forest camping instead of the Mongolian Silk Road, winter snow hiking in Morocco instead of shopping in Marrakech, wandering the Munnar tea fields instead of Goan beaches.

A man in a chequered scarf and sunglasses sitting on dark rock, patches of snow around him and layered mountains in the distance.

A man smiles close to the camera beside the face of a bridled camel, with other camels and a handler resting on sand in the background.

Three men sit posed on a wooden bench inside a fabric-lined yurt, storage boxes, towels and a kettle around them.

Travel got different but it took a leap of faith to avoid the commonplace “bucket lists”. Trust me, it pays off, and that’s why I founded Atlas51.

First and foremost, to give you guys the opportunity to tell stories and make memories like these. With some effort, some curiosity, a willingness to be slightly uncomfortable, the reward is an experience you’ll still be talking about years later.