I’ve been so fortunate to meet and travel with some of the most incredible travelers over the years. One of those unforgettable individuals is Richard Bangs, whose expertise, generosity, and mentorship have profoundly influenced my journey as a travel writer and content creator. Without the guidance and encouragement of travel icons like Richard, I would not have a traditionally published travel book or a vibrant YouTube travel channel today.
I first connected with Richard through Lisa Napoli, author of Radio Shangri-La: What I Learned in Bhutan, the Happiest Kingdom on Earth. Lisa introduced me to Richard, who was the keynote speaker at my Meet Plan Go event in Los Angeles in 2011. When I reached out to Richard to share that I was launching a travel writing competition on my site, We Said Go Travel, his response was instant: “I will be the judge!”
Having Richard, a legendary travel writer and explorer, as a judge for my first competition brought invaluable credibility to my fledgling initiative. Over the years, I published more than 2,500 writers from 75 countries through 13 competitions, and it all started with Richard’s support. His willingness to step in and offer opportunities, such as bringing me on as co-host for his Orbitz Web series Quest for Adventure in both Puerto Rico and Bermuda, paved the way for so many of the projects I’ve undertaken since.
Richard Bangs’ passion for exploration, storytelling, and mentoring has shaped not just my own journey, but that of countless travelers and writers. His guidance has been a reminder of how mentorship can unlock opportunities and inspire others to forge their own paths in the world of travel.
He is the author of twenty books that capture his incredible journeys and adventures around the globe. His writing beautifully blends storytelling, history, culture, and the thrill of discovery, offering readers both thoughtful philosophical exploration and vivid narratives from his travels. His acclaimed books, including The Art of Living Dangerously, highlight his bold approach to exploration and adventure, emphasizing curiosity, passion, and the courage to live fully while embracing the unknown. His work has inspired countless readers and adventurers alike to step beyond their comfort zones and immerse themselves in the richness of the world.
The Art of Living Dangerously: True Stories from a Life on the Edge
In 1973, Richard Bangs founded Sobek Expeditions, the original and now the largest adventure travel company in the world, with over a million clients guided since its beginning. But this is not just a story of an unusual company, one that 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, adventure cruising, kayaking, back-country skiing, mountaineering, biking, cultural immersions, canyoneering, and more. 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. The author personally led thirty-five first river descents, capsizing on six continents (a unique, albeit dubious, distinction), and organized and led the first trips into North Korea, Libya, Yemen, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, New Guinea, Iran, and even China back in 1978. Sobek clients have included Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mick Jagger, Barry Diller, and Daryl Hannah. It is the shadow company behind National Geographic Adventures, New York Times Active Journeys, and Smithsonian Expeditions. This book traces fifty years of adventure travel and how it has evolved through times of war and peace, terrorism, the rise of the internet, the pandemic, and the first virtual expeditions.
Richard Bangs shared this excerpt from his latest book, The Art of Living Dangerously:
Chapter 63: Sleeping with Elephants
“I have a memory like an elephant. I remember every elephant I’ve ever met.”
-Herb Caen
It was the last night of our exploration of remote Zambia, and we saved the wildest place for last, Mandevu Park, a 50,000-acre private game reserve on the lower Luangwa River that had yet to appear on any map. We had supped on a meal Mexican, probably the only tacos and hot sauce in a 500-mile radius and were sipping G&Ts around a mopane wood fire (a hot-blazing hardwood that “burns as long as your passion”) as the gibbous moon began its bright sweep across the southern sky. Much of the conversation was about how to deal with African wildlife encountered unexpectedly. Unlike Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa and other popular wildlife viewing destinations, Zambia allows “walking safaris” (the concept was invented here by the late elephant control officer, Norman Carr), in which visitors can pad with the animals (the other countries allow viewing only behind a layer of motorized metal). Earlier in the day, we had taken a hike, probably the first Westerners to do so, up to the top of Mount Shongon, which means “the place no one goes” in Nyanja, the local language. Along the way we stepped along the footpaths of an array of herbivores and predators. So, the fireside talk concerned what to do when surprising a beast while wading through high grass or the tangle of thorn trees. Professor Justin Seymour-Smith was the panjandrum on wildlife behavior, and he counseled across the flames: “You never know what a wild animal will do. Meeting you without warning on its turf it might turn and go away, or it might charge. There are no shortages of tales in Africa of folks who have been on the wrong side of animal whim. But there are some general rules. If you encounter a big cat, never run. Stare it down and slowly back up, otherwise it will chase you like a house cat to a mouse; if you chance upon a gorilla, crouch down and bow your head as though praying; if you bump into a hippo or croc or poisonous snake, run like a rat—but you don’t have to run faster than the animal, just faster than your friends.”
Exhausted from our aggressive wanderings that had taken us from the secluded Busanga Plains in the west to this hidden preserve on the Mozambique border, I announced an early retirement, before the professor finished his dissertation, and toddled to my little North Face Lunarship tent pitched on the high mud banks of the Luangwa River. The others were staying in “chalets,” grass huts with beds, showers, and flush toilets, but because I am a world-class snorer, I courteously offered to pitch a tent one hundred yards from the rest. Besides, I liked looking up through the mosquito netting to the Southern Cross.
For some reason, sleep was not forthcoming, and I rolled about in my bag for some time. I felt the cold air from the canyon downstream creep in. I heard the sighing of the river, the whir and chirp of crickets, and later, the voice of an owl, like a dark brushstroke on the night.
Then about 10 p.m., I heard some rustlings upriver. I sat up. The moon showered the desolate glow of a dream onto the scene; the light on the winding river was luminous as a pale shell; and the lineaments of the upstream trees seemed to be swaying. Hippos, I thought. The night previous I had been awakened when a couple of river horses were snorting in the shallows not far from the tent. Hippos graze at night, entering and leaving the river along well-trampled paths, and my little tent was pitched a prudent distance from any such corridor. So, I rolled over and again attempted to force sleep. But the crackling continued, and was getting closer, or so I imagined. But after a few turns of the hourglass, the sound abated. Something, though, seemed not right. I sat up again and peered through the mosquito netting. The ridges of the hills were crowned with a moonstone radiance, melting into a profound blue in the shadowy ravines. Everything—the kith of hills, woods, ancient rocks—hung in chasms of blue air; the whole valley was floating veiled in quivering liquid light. Cloud shadows drifted imperceptibly across the sea of trees, deepening the blue to indigo. It seemed I was looking at the ghost of a world, a lost world.
I squinted and scanned the horizon. At first, I detected just a gray blur against the dark foliage upstream. It might have been a tree. Or a cluster of bushes. But it moved. It disappeared and reappeared again further down the bank. At last, it lumbered out of the surrounding tangle of shrub and creeper and emerged at the edge of the riverbank. It was no longer just a blur but had shape and form . . . an elephant form. Loxodonta africana, a thunderhead of flesh and huge rolling bones with long white tusks flashing in the moonlight. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, it crossed the bank toward my outpost, with pauses now and then to fan out its ears, and perhaps meditate, or dream.
The jumbo tread closer and closer; my heart, already shaking at the cage of my chest, began to throb. Never had I seen a beast so big so close. If life is measured not by the number of breaths taken, but by the moments that take breath away, I was extending my life by a load. About five feet from the entrance to my tent, he halted and stared inside with a look of wildness no civilization could endure. I remained as motionless as I could and looked back into eyes like clear brown water. Then a cramp in my leg developed, so I tried to reposition it without making a sound, but I rubbed against the sleeping pad, which made a squeak. The elephant swung his trunk towards me, and I could see the symmetric ridges emptying, like rained geometry. He sniffed, then stepped back a foot and flapped his ears, the way elephants do when angry or about to charge, or so I thought I recalled from documentaries and picture books. Was he about to charge? I wished I had stayed to hear more of Justin’s animal escape advice. Should I try to unzip the tent and run? Should I clap my hands like a rifle shot and see if he will run? Should I shine my flashlight in his eyes? Should I lie down and play dead? I had my Iridium sat phone in my fanny pack. I wished I could call David Attenborough. Or Justin. Or Simon, a professional hunter sleeping on the other side of camp. But I had no numbers to call and was certain the elephant would hear my voice if I did. So, I just froze in a sitting position and watched as the elephant circled my blue cocoon to the other side and began to make long siphonings on the sausage tree that spread above me. Whew. I relaxed a bit. He was ignoring me. But then I heard what sounded like sawing upstream. I looked and saw a huge acacia swaying in the moonlight, like the treetops in Jurassic Park before a sauropod appeared. Another elephant was rubbing his broad back against the tree on the camp perimeter. Then it stepped from a palisade of thorns onto the campgrounds following the footsteps of its predecessor, along the rim of the river toward my tent. He was bigger than the last, an animal magnitude from another time, and the glint of his tusks brighter. With smooth, rhythmic strides he moved to the very edge of my tent, and he too stopped and glared inside. His great fanned ears moved slowly to and fro. His breath poured through the netting and pressed down on my shoulders. As he altered his position in the moonlight, the shadows showed the structure of his great body, immensely heavy, slung from mighty backbones, supported by columnar legs. I could not help but think he looked like a baobab come to life.
The sublime is conceived as a quality of magnitude or natural force that inspires ineffable feelings of awe, wonder and insecurity in the onlooker. The emotional response is an overwhelming sense of the power, grandeur and lusty stealth of nature in its most terrifying of moods.
This was, with little doubt, a sublime moment.
Now one bull was chomping on the tree next to me and another on the other side starring me down, two oversized rolling bags of horror. And my stomach started to growl. The Mexican meal was starting to process, and I couldn’t hold back a sound. It piped from my tent, and both elephants turned to glower and flap their giant ears. My God, I thought, I am about to be stomped to death by elephants. Genuinely frightened, I felt my heart fly around my insides. My mouth went dry as a winterthorn, and my limbs shuddered. I thought about rolling the tent down the bank into the river, but then remembered I had tethered it to the sausage tree so as not to blow away. And besides, the river was filled with crocs and hippos. The tether rope then made me quiver. The first elephant was a yard away; if he moved forward and tripped on the tether, he would fall on my tent, crushing the ingredients. I considered again making a run for it, but then remembered how much noise the zipper makes, and knew it would cause the elephants even more alarm. Then I heard a sound like Niagara by the tree. My bladder was full as well and was beginning to howl. Too many G&Ts. I was terribly tired. But I dared not close my eyes. The thought of being trampled with eyes open wide was bad enough. But I knew if I fell asleep, I would snore, and I could think of nothing worse than a squashing while snoozing. So, there I sat, stiff as new shoes, as the elephants scoffed and sniffed and chivvied about me. Elephants can eat for 20 hours a day, then rest the rest. A long night this might be. But then after a couple of hours of munching, the two leviathans laid down in a sandy spot below my tent and went quiet. I took advantage of the respite and also laid down but commanded myself to not fall asleep. But my eyelids were heavy, and my mind wandered about in a haze of unbeing. I heard some crunching, sat up, and looked through the mesh. Did I nod off? The moon had crossed the sky and sunk behind the trees. In the now quite dark landscape, I could barely make out a silhouette shambling back upstream. With an unhurried pace it moved back into the shelter of the trees, entwined itself within branches and leaves, and then it was gone.
There was no other sound, save the litany bird, whose call seemed to cry, “Good Lord, deliver us.” There were no more hulking specters. So, I presumed both were gone, at last. But a silent presence still hung in the air. I was about to burst, so I unzipped the tent and leapt outside to relieve myself over the small bluff above the river. Just as I finished, there was a basso profundo bellow that ripped open the night just a few yards below me. I had pissed on the other beast, who was sleeping down the bank by the water’s edge. I dove back into the tent, rezipped it, and hurdled into my bag. There was a subtle spark to his tardigrade pace as he clambered up the bank, to the frame of my tent, and fixed a walleyed stare. Our eyes locked, and for a second I thought I saw a display of avere misericordia, a hint of empathy for a small, vulnerable creature wrapped in nylon.
Then the elephant turned and plodded back into the bush. And into a deep and anodyne sleep I fell, returning with the dawn to a more managed, if less noble, wild place.
Richard Bangs is co-founder of the pioneering adventure travel firm MT Sobek, which has ushered over a million clients into the wildernesses of the world, and pioneered thousands of adventures. Richard is CEO of White Nile Media, a sustainable tourism development and media company that has worked with scores of major companies and organizations, from USAID to Airlines, Tourist Boards, and OTAs such as Orbitz and Expedia. Richard is co-founder of Steller.co, which in a short period has become the world’s largest travel storytelling platform.
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