The Tour Leaders

I worked with Theo in Thailand near the end of my tour leading days, where my memory starts to blur (probably because of all that time at the corner bar...).He came to tour leading via a classified ad in TNT magazine and a reference from his boss at a party tour company, a woman who'd watched him manage coachloads of drunk Brits across Europe and figured he'd be fine.She was mostly right.This episode covers eight years across Egypt, Jordan, China, Mongolia and Papua.A girl lost overnight in the Malaysian jungle, an army search, and how she's survived on one piece of advice he'd thrown out as she set off.A horse in Mongolia that sat down mid-ride, then stood up and bolted with his foot still in the stirrup. The broken ankle that followed, a five-hour drive to a town called Moron, and crutches handmade by local craftsmen, sheepskin on the top (princely sum of $20)A village in the Baliem Valley where the chief brought out a 500-year-old mummified ancestor, sat him on a stump, and waited for the applause.Theo left tour leading in 2007 after meeting his wife on a tour in Indonesia. They lived in the UK for a year before settling in Australia, where he has been a Victoria Police officer for 15 years.He still thinks you should put your phone away.Enjoy the ride.

I worked with Noah in Vietnam years ago, before it became the destination it is today.In 2003, a man he met in a Korean karaoke bar told him tour leading was a real job. He'd just been fired by the company in question. Noah applied anyway.He led trips through Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, then the Trans-Siberian from St. Petersburg through Mongolia to Beijing. Often he was working it out as he went, while the group assumed he had it handled.We cover a Sapa hike that ended with him carrying a passenger's soiled shorts in his backpack, getting lost near Lake Baikal and finding the fine line between confidence and bullshit, a near-drowning in a Halong Bay cave that a passenger followed up by asking about an insurance claim for his sunglasses, and fermented mare's milk he'd rather forget...Noah now works in disability innovation in London and travels very differently with his family these days.Enjoy the ride.

Louise grew up in a village in Leicestershire and had never met anyone who'd been travelling. Then she answered a classified ad in a magazine and ended up in Indonesia. She spent 14 months tour leading in Laos, completed 18 trips down the Mekong, and later bought an auto rickshaw in Lahore with an engine smaller than a lawn mower. The plan was to drive it 2,000 kilometres across Pakistan. It broke down every day. Eventually they picked up an armed police escort through Balochistan and sold the rickshaw at the Iranian border. There's also a jaguar that tried to climb into their boat in Brazil. Someone wrote a book about the rickshaw trip. Louise still hasn't read it. It's in Norwegian. Enjoy.

Zac and I never met. Same company, same routes, same people, just never in the same place at the same time.This episode covers travelling in armed tourist convoys through Egypt after the Luxor massacre, buses racing each other despite the military escort, swimming off feluccas on the Nile, and the strange responsibility of carrying dozens of passengers’ airline tickets around Cairo before e-tickets existed.There’s also the small matter of accidentally taking some contraband into a government building in Cairo, realising it halfway through a security search, and briefly contemplating life in an Egyptian prison.He didn't go to jail. The tour continued.Then there's getting the tour fund pickpocketed in Xi'an, and taking over a group in India after three days in the country, when the group had already been there longer than he had.Enjoy the ride.P.S. Check out Zac's YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@intrepidsouls2024

Annie traveled overland from India through Pakistan and Iran in 2000 with a dog she'd rescued from a Goan street at three weeks old, tied in a sarong around her waist.In Iran, dogs had only just been made legal again. Everyone got off the bus.This episode covers hitchhiking across Iran with a rescue dog, an Egyptian doctor who required a formal complaint, climbing the pyramids illegally with Purple Kate (Series 1, Episode 3) and lying flat on the stones while the guards swept their flashlights, a horse falling into a neighbour's cesspit in Bulgaria, and the moment Annie told the village mayor exactly where he could go.She drove a 7.5 tonne ark from Bulgaria to Portugal with a pony, a Shetland, three dogs, two cats, and six chickens she wasn't supposed to have...She now runs an animal sanctuary in Portugal with 82 animals, including 28 dogs.If you'd like to support Annie's work, you can find the sanctuary at: Star Mountain Animal SanctuaryEnjoy.sEpmmsCBHhdjug1wvjnd

Arif hails from Eastern Turkey and started tour leading in Cappadocia in 1998. His first tour outside Turkey was Syria — no training, a local guide who had no idea what he was doing, and a group that never found out.This episode covers getting the minibus stuck in the Moroccan desert for six hours after someone at head office decided to swap the 4WDs for budget minibuses to save money — go figure. A broken down boat in a Thai national park after dark, a panicking passenger, and monkeys screaming from the forest. And what it meant to spend a decade leading tours across Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Morocco and Southeast Asia before ending up in Helsinki.Arif still thinks the human touch matters more than the algorithm.Enjoy the ride.

Tracy grew up in Wagga, studied maths and geophysics, and answered a classified ad to become a tour leader in Egypt. She thought it might last a while. It took years.She led tours across Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, India, Turkey and Eastern Europe — learning quickly that sometimes confidence mattered more than experience.We cover getting lost in Moroccan medinas, a spike through her toe in Todra Gorge (and walking on it anyway), a midnight hospital visit in Casablanca, a train that quietly crossed into Belarus without visas, and hearing about 9/11 in fragments at a station in Varanasi.Tracy is now an air traffic controller in Melbourne. Both careers started with ads in the paper.Enjoy the ride.

Richard came to tour leading the wrong way around. Most people travelled first and fell into it. Richard was working a corporate job in London, went to Thailand for his sister Anna's wedding (Series 2), and just never quite went home.His recruitment interview consisted of being in the right place at the right time — specifically, the Baghdad Cafe in Bangkok, where Roachie (Series 1, Episode 2) spotted him, established he had a pulse, and offered him a job.This episode covers a tuk-tuk accident on his very first tour that landed two passengers in a Phnom Penh hospital, managing the paperwork while quietly panicking on the phone to Andy (Series 1, Episode 5). A border guard on the Tibet-Nepal crossing, faced with a man and no photos for his visa, simply handed him a bag of other people's portraits and said pick one that looks like you. A nine-month overland trip from Istanbul to Kathmandu — through Iran, the Karakorams, western China and Tibet — where every week brought another landmark he'd never thought to look for. Richard lived and worked in Siem Reap from 2012 to 2018. Angkor Wat was essentially his back garden.He now lives in the Scottish Highlands. He still gets up early.Enjoy.

Before Anna was a tour leader, she lived alone in a hut in the Himalayas. No electricity. No running water. She banged a pan each morning to warn the snakes she was coming.Anna was built for this.In this episode — a motorbike robbery in KL that took the tour funds, the passports, and everything else. SARS quarantine in Bangkok. Pigs on motorbikes in northern Thailand. And an unexpected invitation to break fast with a family living in Cairo's City of the Dead.She also met her husband on a Cairo rooftop, got married on a Thai beach, and let a gecko decide which city to call home.Enjoy.P.S If this brought back memories — send it to someone you travelled with.

Spencer trained me in Egypt in 1997 — back when applications were handwritten and camping tours ran on vodka and very little sleep.We cover Siwa Oasis, public toilets in Xi’an, ejecting a self-proclaimed Messiah from a tour in India, and the moment a passenger showed Kim Jong-il parody videos in North Korea.We talk about staying steady in a crisis, running back-to-back tours in Rajasthan, China before it changed, and the places that never quite leave you.Here's Spencer.