Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder, and a very special day today because I am with one of the, I guess, nobility of the travel industry, certainly the adventure travel industry, Darrell Wade, who is the chair,

former CEO and also co-founder of intrepid travel, which is, I believe, the world's largest

provider of adventure travel experiences. Have I got that vaguely right?

You probably have, Simon. I'm not sure about the nobility piece. I can make, take questions.

I question that a little bit, but yeah, look, that's roughly my background. Yep.

So talk about co-founding then. The world has never, for the last 50 years,

it certainly hasn't been short of companies providing adventure travel

experiences. So what did Intrepid set out to do different?

I think I'd done a lot of backpacking before we started Intrepid. I had a year traveling

across Asia and then went back and got a so-called real job for a while and then had another

year traveling through Africa.

And I was during that period that I kind of just realized two things.

One, I didn't want to go back to a conventional job.

So I've managed to avoid that for the last 35 years.

And secondly, and this perhaps might sound more unusual, is that I didn't think anyone was really catering for people the way I like to travel.

And so what I meant by that is it's fine to get your lonely planet book and head off for a long period of time.

And, you know, I absolutely adored doing that.

But no one was catering for people who only had two weeks or maybe three weeks annual leave, but wanted

to travel in a similar type of ethos, let's call it, to Loli Planet.

And so that was the idea.

So traveling as a backpacker almost, perhaps a little bit above that level, but being

organized in what you do and what you see and who you meet and just getting under the skin of the destination. So that was kind of the thesis, if you like. So at the same time that people were saying, oh, you sign up for our overland truck and it will take you 10 weeks to get across Africa. You were saying, we understand you don't have 10 weeks, so let's provide you with some intense travel experiences that's it but also we didn't want to

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