Wild Frontiers - Our Story

• published: 12 Jun 2015
• views: 83

In this short film, Jonny explains about setting up and running, Wild Frontiers, the multi-award winning adventure travel company... In the Beginning… In 1996, after the relative success of my first travel book, Running with the Moon – a journey that saw me drive a motorbike right the way around the African Continent – I decided to follow in the footsteps of my two heroes form English literature, Peachy Carnehan and Daniel Dravot, from Rudyard Kipling’s short story, the Man Who Would be King. Growing a beard and donning local garb, I travelled, largely on foot, from Marwar Junction in India, through Pakistan, across the Khyber Pass and into war-torn Afghanistan. Here I trekked through the Hindu Kush and the Afghan province of Nuristan before finally emerging here into the valleys of the Kalash. If you look up there, right onto the horizon, you can see the point, 4,650 meters above sea level, and a long way above the valley floor, at which I crossed the border leaving the fear of war behind me and from where I walked down into these peaceful valleys. After 6 weeks wandering through Afghanistan bearded, bedraggled and a good deal thinner, I was looking for a man called Saifullah Jan who I had been told spoke good English. As one of the few truly educated men of the Kalash, I had been told Saifullah was the chief spokesperson for this minority pagan tribe and that he’d be able to help me find a place to stay and learn more about their culture. Jonny: Do you remember that day Saifullah, when I first came into your house? Saifullah: ‘Yes I remember very well – we all thought you were Taliban!’ Jonny: ‘Ha, yes well my beard was impressive! Your children were so young, Gulistan, 7, Yassir 14… now look at them!’ Saifullah: ‘Yes, blah, blah, blah…’ Jonny: ‘Do you also remember suggesting I set up a travel company, to bring travellers to your village and teach them about the culture of the Kalash?’ Saifullah: ‘Yes I do…’ So overwhelmed was I by the friendship and hospitality I received, and the genuinely fascinating and peaceful world into which I’d stumbled, that I put down my bags and stayed for three month. From here I headed back to India where I rented a hut on a Goan beach and wrote my second book, For A Pagan Song, about this journey and my time spent with the Kalash. But Saifullah’s words were never far from my mind and so in 1997 I returned to the Kalash Valleys and with Saifullah’s help set up my first itinerary, our Hindu Kush Adventure. A year later I brought our first group and so Wild Frontiers, named after the Northwest Frontier, was born. All change… Of course the path since then has not always been easy. A couple of years after that first trip the cataclysmic events in New York changed the world forever. I was actually here in the Kalash Valleys with a group when 9/11 happened, and as cut off as we were we didn’t hear about it for another 3 days, surely among the last people on the planet to know. And 9/11 also changed the path of Wild Frontiers. Unable as I was to run trips to Pakistan, I was forced to re-examine my options and in 2002 we inaugurated the company properly and started to branch out into other destinations; starting with Kyrgyzstan, a land through which I had just travelled on horseback while researching a third book and making a Discovery Channel film. Wild Frontiers Today Whilst maintaining the same sympathetic approach to the people we visit and the regions through which we travel, today Wild Frontiers now takes travellers to more than 60 countries on six continents. Using passionate and knowledgeable guides, we are able to provide unique and original itineraries that allow our clients to take a journey beneath the surface of the region and into those special and secret places we all as travellers love to discover. When I set up Wild Frontiers my mission was simple, to provide the platform that would allow others to experience the same amazing world I’d be privileged enough to explore as a travel writer. To give our clients the kind of personal service we know they like, we operate from an office in West London, where we have a dedicated team – all with a wealth of knowledge about our destinations – on hand to answer their questions. All this hard work has been acknowledged with a number of wards, including in 2012 the very prestigious Guardian/Observer Best Ethical Travel Company Award.