Video: TravelSmith Travel Tips #12 - Getting Through Foreign Customs and Immigration

World traveler Richard Bangs returns again this week with more good travel tips for those heading abroad. In this video he shares advice on how to successfully navigate through customs and immigration without getting yourself into trouble. He even shares an experience of his own from when he was traveling in Ethiopia and learned a valuable lesson.

Harrowing Tales Of The First Descent Of The Baro River In Ethiopia

Before he became the face of adventure travel on the television show Adventures with Purpose, Richard Bangs was a world-class paddler and river guide who made first descents on numerous rivers across the planet including the Indus, Zambezi, Yangtze, Euphrates and many more. One of his early expeditions took him to the Baro River in Ethiopia, which hadn't been fully navigated at the time either.

In a recent post to his website, Richard shares some harrowing tales of his adventures along the Baro, which runs for approximately 306 km (190 miles) before it feeds into the Sobat River and eventually the White Nile. His stories include encounters with man-eating crocodiles, incredible white water and unexpected tumbles over waterfalls. The title of the article is "What's Worse? Death by Drowning or Crocodile" which pretty much tells you everything you need to know about this expedition. The article is a reminder of just how wild and untamed parts of our planet remain and how dangerous these expeditions can be. Definitely an excellent read for a variety of reason, as it touches on why we pursue dangerous adventures in the first place.

The video below serves as a bit of teaser for the story, but be warned, the footage is not for the faint of heart. There are some graphic images shown that some could find disturbing. If you'd rather avoid those images as best you can, I'd suggesting simply reading the article instead, although it also has a photo or two that aren't for the squeamish.

Trekking The World: 50+ Countries On Six Continents In 424 Days

Travel can be an amazing educational tool at times, helping to engage young people in subjects that are often seen as "boring" or "unimportant." History, culture and geography all come to life much more vibrantly when students have the opportunity to make a more direct connection with a place that comes alive in some very fascinating ways.

That was exactly the premise behind the Trekking the Planet expedition, a 14-month journey undertaken by the husband and wife team of Darren and Sandy Van Soye. The duo set out on January 28th of last year and have been circling the globe ever since. During that time, they have managed to visit 40 different countries on six continents, most of which have been in the developing world. The expedition has another three and half months to go before it is done, and the Van Soye's hope to add another 13 countries to their passports before heading home.

Making this kind of journey is a dream for many of us who have longed to hit the open road for an extended period of time. And while Darren and Sandy have had numerous adventures on their world-spanning adventure, they didn't set out just for their own enjoyment and enrichment. They conceived Trekking the Planet is a tool for helping to reach out to students in classrooms and help engage their curiosity about geography more fully. With that in mind, they've established a series of geography education modules that highlight the various places that they have visited. Those lessons are designed to  work in classrooms with students ranging in age from 6 to 17 and can be modified to fit nearly any type of curriculum. Their lesson plans have been so successful in fact that they are now followed by 55,000 students in 850 classrooms spread out over 20 countries.

While on the road, the Van Soye's prefer to travel on foot as much as possible. As a result, they have often found themselves in a number of places that are far from the beaten path. Their journey has taken them to a number of remote regions, including the Mustang region in Nepal, into the Simien Mountains of Ethiopia and along ancient Bedouin trails in Jordan. This approach to travel allows them to get closer to the people living in the countries they visit and have experiences that are out of the norm. They've even had the opportunity to speak at 18 different schools along the way, allowing them to share their adventures even more directly with students in different countries.

You can follow Darren and Sandy's adventures, as well as subscribe to their newsletter, on their Trekking the Planet website.

Journalist Plans 7-Year Round-The-Word Trip On Foot

Journalist Paul Salopek is preparing to set off on an amazing journey that he expects to take roughly seven years to complete. Along the way he'll be covering more than 22,000 miles (35,400 km) almost entirely on foot, as he attempts to trace the route that our earliest ancestors took as they migrated away from Africa and went out to settle the rest of the world. He calls this expedition the Out of Eden Walk.

The two-time Pulitzer Prize winning writer is planning to start his ambitious project in January when he'll set out on a grand trek from the Great Rift Valley in Ethiopia. The valley is the place where most scientists believe man had his origins, spending some time there before spreading out across the globe. After departing Africa, Salopek will then walk across the Middle East and Asia before hopping across the Pacific Ocean to Alaska. At that point, he'll already have covered thousands of miles and spent months on the road, but he'll hardly be finished yet. The next stage of the expedition will take him south  all the way to Patagonia at the extreme end of South America.

Salopek says that this is a very personal project for him and he intends to tell numerous stories from the road, chronically the people that he meets and the places that he sees along the way. The list of topics he intends to cover while on this journey includes climate change, the impact of foreign aid from the west on various locations, cultural change in the 21st century and much more.

The Nieman Journalsim Lab at Harvard posted a story about the journey earlier today garnering some insights into what Paul hopes to accomplish and what gear he expects to take with him when he gets underway. Amongst the items he'll be taking with him are a MacBook Air, cameras from GoPro and Sony, a handheld GPS unit and a satellite phone. Fairly standard gear for an expedition of just about any length.

This looks like it will be a fascinating journey to follow and it certainly will be long enough. I look forward to reading Salopek's reports from the road. I'm sure they'll be fantastic.

Video: Mountain Biking In Ethiopia

I love mountain biking and I love travel. When you combine the two I think it makes a magical mix. That's why I love these videos from destinations that you wouldn't typically consider as a place to go for a ride, even though they probably have some epic trails. That seems to be the case with the video below, which was shot in Ethiopia. The backdrops are spectacular and riding through the Simien Mountains looks amazing. It definitely makes me want to go see them myself.

ethiopia enduro trip, teaser from juanmcsean on Vimeo.