From Backpacker to Mountain Guide: Turning Adventure Travel into a Career

What happens when a six-month backpacking trip changes the entire trajectory of your life?

In Episode 9 of Roam Alone, I sit down with Donovan Pacholl, co-founder of Embark Exploration Co., the outfitter behind my very first summit: Mount Kilimanjaro.

Donovan shares how a backpacking journey through Europe and Africa evolved into a global trekking company that now leads adventurers up some of the world’s most iconic mountains. We revisit my experience climbing Kili with Embark, talk about what makes a trek beginner-friendly for first-time solo travelers, and unpack one of the biggest fears holding people back: safety.

If you’ve ever wondered:

• Is the world actually safe for solo travelers?
• Are people inherently good?
• What’s the best first “big” adventure if you’re going alone?

Donovan answers with the grounded confidence of someone who’s spent decades exploring remote corners of the globe.

Time Stamps:
00:00 – The backpacking trip that became a lifelong calling
16:30 – The best Embark trip for your first solo adventure
22:41 – Safety tips and why the world isn’t as scary as it seems

This episode is for anyone craving adventure — but waiting for reassurance.

Check out all of the treks YOU can join with Embark Exploration!!

Roam Alone is hosted by Theresa Stephens.

Instagram: @theresaannstephens

Facebook: /theresastephens

Facebook: /RoamAlone

Transcript

Theresa Stephens Hello, everyone. I'm your host, Theresa Stevens, and this is Roam Alone. Solo travel, shared stories. My guest today is Donovan Pascholl with Embark Exploration. Welcome to the show, Donovan.

Donovan Pacholl Thanks for having me.

Theresa Stephens Thank you so much for coming on. So the first time I knew of embarks existence was way back in twenty seventeen. I had done a few different events with this group called Team in Training, and they are kind of like an athletic fundraising arm of Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. And it's a really cool thing. You join like an event, like a marathon or a triathlon, and you raise money for leukemia and lymphoma, and in exchange, they train you to complete one of those events and then they pay for everything. And so all you have to do is focus on the event and they take care of everything else. And so it was twenty seventeen, and I was thinking of doing another event and I wasn't sure what. So I thought maybe a century ride. And right around that same time it was like kismet because I got an email from Leukemia and Lymphoma Society saying, hey, we get this new event we're going to do. It's called Mount Kilimanjaro. It's the mountain for people who don't climb mountains. And I was like, that sounds intriguing, but like, I've never hiked before. And we got on a conference call. And I do believe you were on that call. And by the end of the call, like forty five minutes later, I was all in.

Donovan Pacholl Yes, it was probably me. We were fortunate enough to be able to start working with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society back in twenty seventeen. So I think you were in those first inaugural year when they started doing climbing Mount Kilimanjaro as one of their additions to their marathons.

Theresa Stephens It was it was amazing. And yeah, it was completely unexpected because they they had never done anything like this before. And so it was very intriguing. And I'll get to more of those details later on. But by twenty eighteen, I think it was June of twenty eighteen. We went, um, flew across to Africa, to Tanzania. And it was it was a defining moment of my life. Like, I, I still

Donovan Pasholl I'd love

Theresa Stephens remember

Donovan Pacholl to hear that.

Theresa Stephens that. Yeah. It's you know, it. You carry that feeling with you of summiting, doing that hard thing. You carry it with you for months afterwards. Heck, it's been, you know what, six years now. And I still remember that feeling.

Donovan Pacholl Yeah.

Donovan Pacholl you know, uh, Mount Kilimanjaro obviously is, like, iconic. And so when people

Donovan Pacholl get that experience of climbing one of the highest mountains in Africa, and that's what kind of excited us. I get to work in the world of once in a lifetime experiences. So, uh, when you say that it means a lot to me, you know, it's not like I'm just doing some kind of corporate job. I'm changing people's lives, changing people's lives.

Theresa Stephens Absolutely. So tell me about how Embarc got started, how you got started in this world.

Donovan Pacholl It's long and it's complicated. But I'll give you the short version. Um, I actually lived on Mount Kilimanjaro in two thousand and two and two

Theresa Stephens What?

Donovan Pacholl thousand and three. Yes.

Theresa Stephens Oh, wow.

Donovan Pacholl Um, with my wife, Kari, who also works for Embarq. At the time, she was my girlfriend. But, um, I started doing solo travel a few years prior, and I got I started traveling further and farther into more interesting places, and I decided actually in two thousand to solo travel to East Africa.

Theresa Stephens Oh, wow.

Donovan Pacholl Um, and it was just with a couple friends, and we went to Tanzania and we were there for a month, and I met a gentleman who, um, had a church up on the side of Mount Kilimanjaro, and he invited me up to see it, and I went up to see it, and I was like, wow, this is amazing. It's up in the mountains and banana trees and coffee and really, really relaxed and nice. And he said, there's also a gentleman over here who has a house that he would rent out to foreigners. And I asked him, I was like, well, how much would he rent that house out for? And he said, you know, maybe like one hundred dollars per month. And I was like,

Theresa Stephens Oh my

Donovan Pacholl I

Theresa Stephens gosh.

Donovan Pacholl just kind of put it in the back of my mind. I was like, okay, that's great. Interesting. And at the end of that trip, I had spent a month in Tanzania. I'd been traveling for six months, and I came back to the United States, and I decided to bring the gentleman with the church. I decided to bring his son back to the United States.

Theresa Stephens Oh, wow.

Donovan Pascholl And so I got a bunch of people to I started fundraising and they contributed money to me. And I sent this kid from East Africa, from Tanzania, some money to fly out here. And it just so happened that a woman donated to the cause, who had a niece who was interested, who donated to the cause, who ended up being my wife or girlfriend at the time.

Donovan Pascholl we started a project for porters on Kilimanjaro that's still going to this day. So it's a long, longer story. But conceptually, yeah, I ended up living on Mount Kilimanjaro and starting to organize treks up the mountain. Um, and then I got involved with other parts of the world. And anyway, that's kind of conceptually what came about. How we started basically in bark is we like to be involved with like adventure travel and certain types of countries. But it all started actually from when I first started doing solo travel. So it

Theresa Stephens So.

Donovan Pascholl stemmed from that.

Theresa Stephens Yeah. So what, um, what was the impetus for traveling solo as opposed to finding some friends to go with, maybe going with some family members? What

Theresa Stephens it about it that said, I'm just going to go alone and I'm going to go see and do these amazing things.

Donovan Pascholl Well, I'll take you like a few years back to get to where I was at that point. So basically I had a friend who said, hey, you want to go solo, travel through Europe for a couple of weeks? And I was like, yeah, everybody always does that. And she's like, you have to do it. It's so amazing, right? And so I went to her. I went went with her, who's a good friend who grew up across the street from me, and she and I went and solo, traveled for three weeks, and I thought it was really, really cool that I was going somewhere for three weeks to just backpack around, you know, through Holland and Belgium and stuff like that. And I met these guys from South Africa who said that they had been solo traveling for like six months, and they started in Southeast Asia. And I was like, you can do that. And they were like, yeah, this is all we've been doing.

Donovan Pascholl was totally blown away by it. And I was sitting in this hostel in Amsterdam called Dirty Nellie's. I remember it was all these different people, no Americans. It was, you know, South Africans and Kiwis and Germans, and everyone had a different set of stories of what they were doing, where they were going. And I thought I was cool because I only was going somewhere for three weeks. You know, I was actually prior to that, I was sitting in a cube, um, you know, in a corporate office back in the United States, you know, in my early twenties. And I was kind of getting bored with the cube life. Right. So

Theresa Stephens Oh, yeah.

Donovan Pascholl I was searching for something a little bit more. So I came back from those three weeks and I went to two of my friends and I said, listen, you wouldn't believe what's happening over there in like, Europe. And you can go farther and further than you can imagine.

Theresa Stephens Right.

Donovan Pascholl Let's quit our jobs in one year and let's go travel for like six months at least. Let's just drop everything and do it. And we did it. So,

Theresa Stephens That's

Donovan Pascholl um.

Theresa Stephens amazing.

Donovan Pascholl We. Yeah. So we saved our money. We, um, you know, got out of our apartments, and,

Theresa Stephens Mhm.

Donovan Pascholl um, we created this trip where we left and we traveled and we went, you know, flew into Europe and went all the way down to North Africa by ourselves and then traveled all the way across Europe into, um, all the way over to, like, Croatia and, uh, our, um, Croatia and Greece and, um, just a host of different countries over those six months. And in Turkey, we spent a month in Turkey.

Donovan Pascholl And we're just going to take different modes of transportation. And that trip, that six month trip really, really kind of defined what I wanted to be. And I knew I wanted to be an adventure. I knew I wanted to be a backpacker. Um, and it made me more adaptable, and it made me go into all sorts of different circumstances. Um, and learn how to travel and meet people. Uh, we rented a car for a month in Spain and traveled all the way down the coastline. Um, had different adventures. And in Morocco, which was a lot of fun and

Theresa Stephens Yeah.

Donovan Pascholl came and crossed and went all the way, um, you know, across, like the Czech Republic and Buddha. And we went over to Budapest anyway and had a month

Theresa Stephens Wow.

Donovan Pascholl we became rafting guides in Turkey for a month, which was totally wild.

Theresa Stephens That's

Donovan Pascholl Um,

Theresa Stephens so incredible.

Donovan Pascholl yeah. We hitchhiked. We, you know, slept in, we camped, we slept in car, in cars. Occasionally we slept on people's porches. We stayed in hostels, hotels. And so it was it was everything that changed my life. And then right at the end of that, that trip at about five months, I said, let's go fly down from Turkey to East Africa, because I'd heard a lot of great things about Tanzania, had no knew nothing, just like, let's

Theresa Stephens Right.

Donovan Pascholl fly to East Africa. And we did. And we flew there. And I spent we spent a month in Tanzania. And I realized that Africa is where it's at. It's not the the misconception of what a lot of people would be. And I knew that I'd have

Theresa Stephens Yeah.

Donovan Pascholl some place in it at some time in the future. But later I went back and met my wife, who was already in love with Africa. So we moved there. So it's kind of a roundabout way that I got to living, uh, on Kilimanjaro. But then that decision right there changed, where essentially embark was, was born.

Theresa Stephens That's that's just incredible. You know, going from the corporate world, living, you know, out of a cube, working out of a cube to literally living wherever, you know, direction you went in, in whatever form, whether you slept in cars or on porches. And that's, you know, to to make that leap is such a dream of most people. That stays a dream. You know, nobody

Donovan Pascholl Yeah.

Theresa Stephens can to make that leap and actually make it real. So few people do that. And now and that was what, two thousand and two?

Donovan Pascholl Yeah, yeah, it was about two thousand. Uh, well, the first, the first, the six month trip was before September eleventh. So it was like in two thousand is

Theresa Stephens Wow.

Donovan Pascholl when I did the trip and brought the gentleman back from America or back to the United States. Um, but, yeah, it was hard to leave. I had a great job. I was making good money. I was working for like a vendor of Microsoft. I, you know, had an apartment in the city and things like that. But, um, yeah, it was a it was a decision that I'm so glad I made because it changed so much of my directory, my direction in life and what I wanted to be involved in.

Theresa Stephens Absolutely. And so after so you've had embark it's been since since around that two thousand and two is when it started or when did you like officially open the doors of embark?

Donovan Pascholl We officially opened in two thousand and eight. The four years prior, I worked for a, uh, online, uh, solo travel company who taught people how to, uh, go to hostels and how to get around Europe and how to get around, you know, buying, um, you know, your rail passes and and those kind of things. So it was one of the first content publishers where people were sharing content about how to adventure in country X, you know, it could be people were putting content. It was the very first time. So someone was going to Patagonia and they would come back and they would write a blog or a story about it, and we would publish that story. So I was

Donovan Pascholl Um, and they worked with lots of different people, but it was, it was fun because I had been a backpacker. I was passionate about backpacking, but I wanted to bring adventure into it. Right. So, um, adventure to me a lot of times I grew up kind of doing rafting and guiding trips and getting big groups of people to, you know, raft through Hells Canyon and between Idaho, Idaho and Oregon and different things. I started putting all these ideas together, and I realized I wanted to be in planning more, like expedition style trips.

Theresa Stephens Right. And I know just from way back in twenty seventeen when I looked on your website, uh, and I looked at all the different, you know, tracks that you had then. And then when I went back in like twenty, twenty four, twenty five when I was signing up for Everest Base Camp, like, your options had more than doubled from, you know, of all the places that you could, you know, send a group to go on a trek. So you you've grown the options for, um, these guided tours just I mean, twofold, tenfold. It's been amazing to see your growth just on this side of things.

Donovan Pascholl Yeah. I mean, what we're basically doing is we're planning once in a lifetime adventures where a lot of people Don't want to go into the exactly the solo travel piece and figure out all the nuance and the detail. Maybe they have two or three weeks off work, but they want to go do, let's say, a one hundred mile hike in Pakistan to K2 Base Camp, right? Um, it's those kind of things that, uh, my wife Carrie, and are intimately involved with. In fact, she's leaving for Bhutan here next month, and then she's back in Pakistan, um, in July. And so constantly kind of shifting around, finding, like, epic adventures. And as you remember, probably on a Kilimanjaro trip, it was still a very epic adventure, even though it wasn't it wasn't, uh, like it felt maybe didn't feel like a tour. It just felt like an adventure hike.

Theresa Stephens Oh, it absolutely was. And maybe I said it wrong because it's definitely not a tour. I mean, you know, we now that I've gone on three different, um, treks with embark, I know that literally, I am putting my life in your hands, in the hands of the guides. And, you know, for Everest, the Sherpas or the porters on Kili, I mean, it's it is not for, you know, somebody to do a loan. This is something that you need experienced guides to, to get you there. And if you listen to them and you do what they say and you train in advance, and I believe me, I follow your training plan to the letter that you can make it. You can do these hard things.

Donovan Pascholl Yeah. No, you can, you you really can. And, um, you know, the world is big and there's lots of great hiking that exists kind of everywhere. And if you if you want to go see other parts of the world, hiking is a great way to do things. It's just like it's almost like bike touring too. It's fun to just walk and be moving. Um, and looking. I'm sure you remember on your trek to Everest Base camp when you first showed up at Namche Bazaar, um,

Theresa Stephens Oh yeah.

Donovan Pascholl about eleven thousand feet, and you're like, oh my gosh, there's like a thousand people that, like, live up here, you

Theresa Stephens Exactly.

Donovan Pascholl know, and

Theresa Stephens Had no idea.

Donovan Pascholl it's wild, but there's a lot of the world. I mean, we're planning some trips right now to this remote part of India called Ladakh. And it's the same thing. It's just, um, you know, different villages and people living up in the mountain, and it's fun to walk. I think it's.

Theresa Stephens Absolutely.

Donovan Pascholl Yeah.

Theresa Stephens And the one thing that I really like about your company is that I know that you aren't just, you know, doing a little research on the internet and contacting some people in the area. You are yourself, just like you said, with Kerry going to Bhutan, that you guys are doing these treks yourself so that, you know, firsthand, um, you know, to get to know the guides and to get to know the areas in which hotels to stay in before and after, which is the best trail you know, to take. So you know intimately how to lead others on these treks, which I think is a wonderful approach.

Donovan Pascholl Yeah. No, it's, um, you know, it's a lot of traveling, but it's a lot of fun too. And I do sit in an office a lot of the day, and I do spend a lot of time trying to convince people to do these adventures. But when I'm out on these adventures and I get, you know, I pinch myself and I'm like, wow, um,

Theresa Stephens Yeah.

Donovan Pascholl I'm out here trekking in Tibet or in Bolivia or some other part of the world. I feel lucky, I feel lucky that I've been able to define my my hobbies or not my hobbies, my interests. Um, and to build an adventure travel company.

Theresa Stephens Oh, absolutely. So if somebody is listening right now, and since this podcast is about solo travel, going out on your own, not waiting for anybody to necessarily go with you, but to maybe join a group that, like I did with Killy, that I don't know anybody. There were eleven of us in our group up Killy, but I didn't know any of them before flying all the way over to Africa and meeting them at the start of the trek. And then, of course, we became very fast friends. But up until that point, you know, it was all on my own training was on my own. Flying over there was on my own. If somebody's listening right now of all the tricks that you do, which one or maybe two or three would you recommend for someone doing this alone? I know you probably would say all of them, but if you could just pull out a couple of examples, which ones do you think would you recommend for, let's say a first timer?

Donovan Pascholl Yeah. I mean, you know, a lot of these tracks you can do as a first timer. It's just a matter of your comfort level. And if you're just starting up a really, really good one, that's rather close to the United States and isn't a huge time commitment is Guatemala. So Carrie and I did spend two years in Guatemala living at the base of a bunch of volcanoes,

Theresa Stephens Wow.

Donovan Pascholl and we have this thing called the Three Volcano Challenge, which is basically climbing three mountains in six days and,

Theresa Stephens Okay.

Donovan Pascholl um, collectively the elevation. The elevation gain with all of them is ten thousand feet. Kind of put together now,

Theresa Stephens Oh wow.

Donovan Pascholl but these are non-technical hiking mountains.

Theresa Stephens Mhm.

Donovan Pascholl Okay. And so anyone can hike these mountains. They're done in a day. Um, you're still sleeping back down at the base. You're not sleeping up on the mountain. Always.

Theresa Stephens Okay.

Donovan Pascholl Um. And it's. And it's close. Guatemala's only three hours south of Texas on a flight.

Theresa Stephens Yeah.

Donovan Pascholl Um, it's a safe country. Most people don't realize it's actually pretty magical country. When the Spanish set up there, when the Spanish kind of moved over here and set up their empire, they actually based it in Guatemala, in the town of Antigua.

Theresa Stephens Oh

Donovan Pascholl Um,

Theresa Stephens really.

Donovan Pascholl Antigua, if you go there and I highly, highly recommend it, it feels like it's southern Spain. It's

Theresa Stephens Are.

Donovan Pascholl totally magical cobblestone streets. It's it's great. And it's a wonderful place that exists. So Guatemala is a great one for starting. It can be done in a short period of time.

Theresa Stephens Mhm.

Donovan Pascholl Dramatic scenery. Um, and there's, you know, we have a lot of groups that are kind of going there with lots of onesy twosies where people don't know each other, but

Theresa Stephens Yeah.

Donovan Pascholl I think, yeah. And I think the other thing, I mean, you can do this as a solo traveler too. You can fly there and you can go to Antigua and you can reach out to some different guides that can easily be found, and you can go climb these mountains on your own, too. Um, or you can reach out to someone like embark, um, you know, maybe six to nine months in advance and

Theresa Stephens Mhm.

Donovan Pascholl start reaching out and just kind of talking to us. We're not huge, you know, we're maybe four or five hundred people per year. So we have to always kind of say like, oh, there's a good group in November or a good group in February. But what

Theresa Stephens Yeah.

Donovan Pascholl I can tell you is most people who do these trips are fun people. You know, most

Theresa Stephens Oh

Donovan Pascholl of the

Theresa Stephens absolutely.

Donovan Pascholl time you're going to meet, you're going to get a good mix. The only one really bad trip I had one time was when I mixed the Bernie Sanders people with the Trump people.

Theresa Stephens Oh, no.

Donovan Pascholl That was that was a bad group that I put together, that I didn't realize that their political leanings. But most of the time, all of these, uh, groups are, are fun people to be around, you know? The thing about these, though, that makes it interesting, and what makes it also so powerful is there's a little bit of a level of suffering. Right?

Theresa Stephens Yes.

Donovan Pascholl So I'm sure you suffered on your trek to Everest base camp.

Theresa Stephens I did.

Donovan Pascholl Right, right.

Theresa Stephens Oh,

Donovan Pascholl Uh,

Theresa Stephens yeah.

Donovan Pascholl everybody suffers, right? You're going to suffer if you climb Kilimanjaro on your summit night, right? But you collectively get through it together. And that's

Theresa Stephens Yeah.

Donovan Pascholl where the that's where the power is and the experience itself. Right? It's not like you're just sitting on a bus looking out, going, here's, you know, the Eiffel Tower or whatever. You are physically exerting yourself to the almost the maximum point possible. And that brings out magic.

Theresa Stephens Oh, it absolutely does. I mean, both, especially Summit Night on Kilimanjaro, that group, there is something very special about that group. There were eleven of us. There was a big contingent from Savannah, maybe seven, I think came from Savannah. Otherwise we had San Francisco and Saint Louis and I think New York, new Jersey, and then of course, me from Kentucky. And we just I mean, we just meshed so well and and you're right, there was a lot of suffering the whole way up. I remember Mark for days in his nose started bleeding and it bled for like three days. And he kept going and we would just, you know, follow the blood drops behind him. And then Tracy got to fifteen thousand feet and started throwing up for two days. And it was like we were, but we were all feeling so rough and we could, you know, really empathize with each other. But then when we all reached the summit, like every all eleven of us reached it, and we looked around at each other and the smiles on our faces, knowing that we did it and we did it together. You know that shared joy. It was. It was so special. So special.

Donovan Pascholl Well, that's what makes it great also to with some of the foundations that we work with, like, you know, Blood Cancer United formerly team and team in training, Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Um,

Theresa Stephens Mhm.

Donovan Pascholl um, yeah. The shared experiences, shared experiences in life prior to this thing and then going through those, those journeys together. But yeah, it's always magic and it's and it's a lot of fun and, um, yeah, adventure can, uh, you know, adventure can change your lives. I have a lot of people that I swear they say, Donovan. I think of, like, the top three things that I've done in my life. One, you know, when I gave birth to my kids to getting married. Three, like summiting Kilimanjaro.

Theresa Stephens Oh,

Donovan Pascholl You know

Theresa Stephens absolutely.

Donovan Pascholl what I mean?

Theresa Stephens It's in mine.

Donovan Pascholl Um, yeah. It's it's fun.

Theresa Stephens One hundred

Donovan Pascholl It's.

Theresa Stephens percent.

Donovan Pascholl Yeah. It's a it's also a magical destination. You know, I

Theresa Stephens Yeah.

Donovan Pascholl truly think there's something magical

Theresa Stephens Mhm.

Donovan Pascholl about the area. The people. Tanzanians are really, really nice, and

Theresa Stephens Yeah.

Donovan Pascholl they're and they're fun. And so you throw Kilimanjaro on that, which we've all seen from The Lion King and you're like, I'm here and I'm doing this, you know, it's it's, uh, it's it's amazing.

Theresa Stephens It is. And you know you made a point for somebody who maybe likes hiking maybe wants to try something like this. But I think you know if they're thinking that it's way beyond their skill level. You mentioned specifically non-technical which you said Guatemala is and Kilimanjaro is the same. It's hiking. It's just hiking, you know, to pretty high elevation. But it's not, you know, there are no ropes. We never use crampons or anything like that. Um. Oh. Hold on. Sorry. See, my, uh. My son is now home. I'm going to. All right. So, um, once again, if somebody is just now thinking, trying to get up the courage to go traveling solo, roaming alone, do you have with all your extensive travel experience, do you have some safety strategies or habits that you personally incorporate in your travels to stay safe? Or or some tips for somebody who's just kind of starting out on their own?

Carrie O'Callaghan Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I mean, you know, we have a tendency in the United States to we see the news and we think the world is dangerous and it's actually opposite. The world is mostly safe. And I think people are mostly inherently good. So I've talked about a lot of this over over the years because people start to question certain countries you can go to. Everyone's like, oh, you can't go to, you know, El Salvador and Central America, or you can't go to Honduras and other places and you actually can. And I've taken my families there. I've taken my older parents to a lot of these countries. Um, the world is safe. You can do it. Uh, people are are mostly good, and you're not going to have any problems. So I actually had a friend who rode his bike all the way around the world for four years, and

Theresa Stephens Oh,

Carrie O'Callaghan he

Theresa Stephens wow.

Carrie O'Callaghan never paid to spend the night anywhere in four years.

Theresa Stephens No

Carrie O'Callaghan And I'm talking.

Theresa Stephens way.

Carrie O'Callaghan Yes, I'm talking. He rode his bike from Cairo to Cape Town, and it took him one year and

Theresa Stephens Oh my

Carrie O'Callaghan he

Theresa Stephens God!

Carrie O'Callaghan was going through Sudan. He was going through Ethiopia, he was going through all these countries. And and he never had any problem. He never paid anywhere. He would just sleep on people's property, show up into villages where he couldn't speak the language, and he never had any problems. So I think the world is mostly safe and people are good. I think the strategies is maybe start in easier locations somewhere, like, you know, Western Europe, which is a very easier place to travel, and then you can evolve into kind of the next level. Usually after people start in Western Europe, they either go back to Europe a second time or they go to Southeast Asia and they start doing the, you know, the Thailand, the Vietnam, the Cambodia thing. So there's a lot of circuits that are out there, um,

Theresa Stephens Yeah.

Carrie O'Callaghan that people are going on. Um, and I would say like another really popular one is Kenya to South Africa overland. You can go from Kenya all the way to South Africa, a variety of different ways, traveling through about seven different countries. Tons of Canadians are doing it, tons of Europeans, not many Americans, because they don't think it's it's safe. So,

Theresa Stephens Right.

Carrie O'Callaghan um, there is a lot of fun countries that you can travel to. I would say the only thing to be aware of, um, is usually what I say is, is border towns or transition town, you know, transition between one country to another. It always seems like if you're ever to meet someone who's trying to maybe slightly take advantage of you, it's always that border crossing. It's the the taxis or the money changers that are right on those areas. And I've, I've kind of dealt with this a lot over the years and learned that, you know, once you step, you know, three or four minutes away or run the gauntlet is what I call it, running the gauntlet. You come out of the, you know, the airport and, you know, Egypt or something like that. Once you get past all the the people that are looking to maybe, maybe make it a little bit extra off you off of a taxicab ride, you generally are going to find the right people. Um, another strategy that I learned that is super fun is I. I now join Facebook groups for expats that live in that city. So,

Theresa Stephens Oh

Carrie O'Callaghan for example,

Theresa Stephens yeah.

Carrie O'Callaghan I'm going to be in Mexico City for a couple weeks next month. And I always join like expats of Mexico City. Right?

Theresa Stephens Mhm.

Carrie O'Callaghan And I get into there and I start just kind of doing, searching, building contacts, um, and finding groups of people to know, you know, what I could or shouldn't do in all of those locations. So,

Theresa Stephens Oh that's

Carrie O'Callaghan um,

Theresa Stephens a great idea.

Carrie O'Callaghan yeah, it's super fun. You can reach out to them in advance, but you can also there's anywhere you really, really want to go. Um, you can learn about it in advance. So, um, I've spent a lot of time in Mendoza, Argentina, which, by the way, is one of the coolest small type of cities I love. And I could live in in Argentina. And I joined Expats of Mendoza, and I learned all about Mendoza, and I'm thinking of maybe even moving back there for, for a year at some point with my wife and my son.

Theresa Stephens Oh that's awesome I love that. Yeah, that's a fantastic strategy. Both of those, um, without a doubt. So, um, I don't think we've mentioned it before. What is the website where people can find more information about the different tracks you do with embark?

Carrie O'Callaghan Yeah, just embark exploration Co if you're into hiking or adventure or want to challenge yourself and go to usually a distance mountain somewhere, reach out to us and let us know if you have any, any, any questions and you want to do it. We can take you through the process of doing a big high altitude trek and somewhere like, you know, Peru, East Africa, the Himalayas or elsewhere.

Theresa Stephens Sounds incredible, and I can personally attest I've been to Kili, Machu Picchu, and Everest Base Camp. And you all, all three of them were incredible. And the people that you hooked me in the group that I was with up the guides, um, the porters, the Sherpas, the the restaurants, the, you know, the lodging, everything, even the tents. I mean, literally, we're on the side of Kilimanjaro, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen thousand feet in the air. And we have like a five course dinner in a tent. How they did it, I don't know, but it was the most amazing food on the side of a mountain you can ever imagine. So.

Carrie O'Callaghan Yeah.

Theresa Stephens Yeah, absolutely. Donovan,

Carrie O'Callaghan Great.

Theresa Stephens thank you so much for joining me today. I really, really appreciate it.

Carrie O'Callaghan Yeah. No. Thank you.