Join The Explorers Club on Monday, January 8th to look back on fifty years of adventure with veteran explorer Richard Bangs.
In 1973 Richard Bangs co-founded Sobek Expeditions, now MT Sobek, the original and largest adventure travel company in the world. But this is not just a story of an unusual company; it’s the story of a passionate team of adventurers who profoundly transformed the way we travel and experience the world. It presents true stories—both perilous and awe-inspiring—from the full array of adventure travel: trekking, climbing, sailing, diving, rafting, kayaking, backcountry skiing, mountaineering, biking, cultural immersions, canyoneering, and more.
MT Sobek pioneered scores of adventures, from trekking in the Himalayas to cruising the Galapagos and Antarctica to first descents of some eighty rivers around the world. Bangs personally led thirty-five first river descents, capsizing on six continents (a unique, albeit dubious, distinction), and organized and led first adventures into North Korea, Libya, Yemen, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, New Guinea, Iran, and even China back in 1978. This new book traces fifty years of adventure travel and how it has evolved through times of war and peace, terrorism, the rise of the internet, and the pandemic and the first virtual expeditions.
Streaming live here on explorers.org, our YouTube Channel, and our Facebook Live — Monday, January 8th at 7:00 pm ET.
RESERVATIONS
This will be an in-person lecture at Explorers Club Headquarters.
In-person tickets are $15 for Members, and $30 for the General Public.
Check-in will begin at 6:00 pm, with a beer and wine reception from 6:00 – 7:00 pm
Richard Bangs
Richard Bangs has been called the father of modern adventure travel and named one of the great explorers of the last 100 years by Explorersweb. He is co-founder of the pioneering adventure travel firm MT Sobek; was part of the founding executive team of Expedia.com, and served as president of Outward Bound. He executive produced and hosted the Emmy-winning PBS series, Richard Bangs’ Adventures with Purpose, and won the Mark Dubois Lifetime Achievement Conservation Award. He founded travel media products for MSNBC.com, MSN, Slate, and Yahoo. He organized and led first descents of upper sections of a number of great rivers around the world, including the Zambezi, Omo, Indus, Euphrates, Coruh, Bio-Bio, Tatshenshini, Alas (Sumatra), Watut and Waghi (New Guinea), and a score more. Richard is also co-founder of Steller.co, the world’s largest travel storytelling platform. His new book, The Art of Living Dangerously, is his 20th title.
