Our most recent T+L Twitter Chat covered the best new destinations, gadgets, tour guides, and more for adventure travel.
We started out by asking our expert panelists where the up-and-coming adventure travel destinations were. Answers ranged from andBeyond visiting “Uganda for gorilla trekking or Sri Lanka for snorkeling with blue whales,” to Absolute Travel sharing how their “travelers want new takes on tried-and-true destinations, like a vintage sidecar ride through Shanghai.”
Dunton Hot Springs keeps it local by having unique adventures in the deserts or mountains, while Butterfield Robinson is excited about new overseas trips ranging from Chile to Newfoundland. ROW Adventures suggested Manila or Bangkok “for urban adventures. [There’s] nothing like risking your life on a moto-taxi weaving through 10 million people.”
For the scariest moments our adventure panelists have ever experienced, Visit Napa Valley shared a thrilling moment of a “hot air balloon landing on a teeny patch of grass in the middle of acres of #NapaValley vines.” Judah Schiller recounted how he once took a “12 hour ferry ride across [the] stormy Red Sea from Hurghada to Sharm el-Sheikh.” T+L’s Deputy Editor Laura Begley Bloom “had a 2 foot wide spider drop on [her] head while mountain biking in [the] Seychelles” (i.e.: my nightmare).
For a dream travel partner (real or fictional), answers ranged from a unicorn from Adventure Travel Trade Association's (ATTA) Shannon Stowell to Richard Branson or Anthony Bourdain from CMH Heli-Skiing. The Explora travel group put it well by saying “Salvadoor Dali. His irreverent theories and sheer brilliance would be the perfect match for the surreal South American landscapes.”
To conclude the chat, we asked our panelists to describe adventure travel in three words. T+L’s Executive Digital Editor Rich Beattie said: “Camping. Not glamping” which we couldn’t agree more with. T+L Digital Intern Maria Pedone suggested, “open your parachute” as her three words of choice—sounds like an born adventure traveler to us.
Gabrielle Blitz is the Associate Social Media Editor at Travel + Leisure.
