There are a lot of folks who are taking to adventure travel and this is quite an encouraging as well as welcome phenomenon. After all, adventure travel is also an important sport that needs to be promoted and encouraged around the globe. Adventure travel is growing not only as something that is a sport or passion but also as a business that is expanding by leaps and bounds around the globe. As global prosperity rises, people get time off from the humdrum of work and take time and make the effort to indulge in adventure travel is various kinds. At the same time, the sport avenues and infrastructure is also rapidly expanding which means that people have so much more to choose from. It is no wonder then that people are quite excited by its prospects and many folks have also benefited immensely from this in an economic sense.

Some of the common forms of adventure travel are trekking and hiking, mountain climbing, rafting and bungee jumping or maybe canoeing to name a few.  There are others who prefer less extreme activities like camping or biking which suits them and their families better. In any case adventure travel is on the rise and this is certainly good news.

News from the Everest Base Camp is always interesting and awaited eagerly by people who love adventure news. One of these highlights is that teams have made their way up to the Everest Base Camp and since the teams now have permits as well as visas they can go from Kathmandu and cross the border up to Tingri as well as some other Tibetan villages. These teams will get up to the Everest Base Camp where you have the Altitude Junkies as well as SummitClimb making their way to the Everest Base Camp in the recent past.

Now when the teams get up to the Everest Base Camp they experience what is known as a Puma or a religious ceremony. It is here that a Lama or a priest performs the ceremony where he asks the ’mountain gods’ to protect the climber and also asks the god for permission for the climbers to make their way up to the mountain peak. Forgiveness is also sought for any damage that the mountaineers may inflict on the mountain that is being climbed.  The effects of these Pumas are quite different on different climbers which mean that some people are quite indifferent about these ceremonies, whereas some others do consider these as being important.

Getting up to the Arctic is not a joke. There are so many dangers as well as arduous circumstances that face anyone who wants to get there and come back in one piece. This is one of the main reasons why Christina Franco had to abandon her trip up to the North Pole as part of her North Pole 2010. The fact of the matter is that the region has huge ice fields and also negative drift that can easily take their toll on the adventure travelers who want to get to the North Pole. Christina had to abandon her trip after she spent around three days in the ice, unable to find her way around a water filled area. She was also painfully aware of the fact that time was less and as the drift was negative and quite against her, she had no fair chance of achieving her goals of the North Pole 2010 trip. So she called it a day and has to take a ride on a resupply plane, thus abandoning the trip altogether.

The pilots of the plane that rescued Christina Franco agreed that she was stuck up so bad in that place that there was no way she could have gone any further.

Getting up to Kilimanjaro on the last day of the climb is not so tough. It is the earlier days that pose a lot of problems along the way. The route is easy as you just have to come out of the camp at Mweka and the it goes down quite rapidly and then off the mountain side. This is a very busy route at some times of the year given the fact that it is used very commonly by so many folks as they want to make their way down the mountain. It takes around there to four hours as one makes their way to Mweka Gate. There are some places that are quite steep and the guide does caution you against these as the trails are quite narrow as well as steep at some points.

In the Cloud Forest, the trail can be quite wet and cloudy which means that you need to be careful of slippery rocks as well as trails. As you go down, the trail is seen to get more and wider and it almost becomes like a road. This is quite a simple road and navigable also and you will have no problems descending down this slope.

It has been 40 years after the first Earth Day was kicked off. But things do not seem to have turned much for the better over these 40 years or so. The climate change has become the biggest challenge of our times as global temperatures rise by the year. As the global ice caps melt it is true that the waters of oceans will also rise and make sure that so many low lying areas get inundated. The Earth Day is one of the ways in which we reiterate our commitment to saving the environment and making a different to how we live such that we are more responsible in our actions. The Earth Day 2010 is supposed to be a kind of turning point to bring about change for the better.

There is so much to be done in terms of energy efficiency, sustainable and renewable energy as well as green jobs. So much remains to be done and Earth Day is one way to take the challenge head on and make an appreciable difference. But all of this needs a commitment as well as a need for concerted action. Unless people get serious about this, it would be tough to make a difference on the ground.

Getting to the North Pole in a hot air balloon seems like a wonderful notion. French explorer Jean Louis Etienne, who is also a doctor, has started on his arctic adventure, where he wants to go solo over the North Pole. He started his journey from Spitsbergen in Norway amid good weather and low winds as well as pretty warm temperature. It seems as if the exploration had the blessings of the elements that went along with it. This is something that Jean has been dreaming of, and also preparing for years. He has been to the North Pole earlier, but getting up on a hot air balloon and making a solo trip all the way there is a different ball game altogether. In 1986 he has spend 63 days on ice and he has gone to the North Pole on foot which his sled, alone and in 2002 he had drifted alone in the Arctic Ocean for 4 months taking scientific readings.

There are some people like Jean who specialize in taking the road less taken and who make their mark on the adventure travel circuit. These are the real heroes who are celebrated and all so inimitable in any age.

Mongolia is quite a fascinating place for an expedition and this is what the Mongolia 2010 expedition is all about. This is an expedition that Ripley Davenport is going to embark on and a lot of adventure travel enthusiasts are waiting on the wings to cheer him on and also have him take up this expedition which promises to be quite something to cheer and also write home about. Ripley is currently in the process of getting his preparations ready and in place for the inimitable Mongolia 2010. These details are quite consuming as well as painstaking as they have to get everything ready such that all aspects of the expedition come up just perfect.

The Mongolia 2010 is a huge trip that covers more than 1700 miles and it starts up from the Eastern Mongolian Steppe, and then he gets into and crosses the quite desolate Gobi Desert. After this, the trip means that he would have to go through the Altai Mountain Range which is no small feat. All of this means that he has to get ready with all the preparations. The trip is monumental and quite grueling which needs load of planning and execution.

It is time we paid attention to celebrations like that of Earth Day. This is important because if we are not mindful about our planet, we could be left without a self sustaining one for our future generations. This is why the BBC is commemorating the Earth Day with bringing the Planet Earth to iTunes series for viewers and it could be offering the version free also. If you are a fan of the series you can look it up between the 12^th of April and 26^th April to get a free download of the version.  This has been named ‘Pole to Pole’ and offers quite a bit of action of the conservation variety.

If you want to commemorate Earth Day you can buy the whole series for $2.99 each and make a wonderful collection of wonderful set of videos that have 2,000 hours of man hours embedded in them leading to lots of wonderful footage and a lot of great effects on screen. You can get it on BluRay and also for your iPad which means that there are a lot of media on which it is available and all so easily too. So you do not have to go to any stores to really pick it up.

There are some races that are eagerly awaited by adventure race enthusiasts around the globe. One of these is the Raid the North Extreme Adventure Race. This is one of the top races in the North American continent and it has made a very strong comeback in 2010. The Raid the North Extreme Adventure Race this year will take place in British Columbia. It is a combination race and there will be teams of four that will compete against each other. The competition will consist of paddling, trekking and also mountain biking in the area which is known as the Kootenay Rockies. This is a place that has many splendid biking routes that bikers love to savor when the weather is great.

The Raid the North Extreme Adventure Race spans more than 500 km and it is spread over 6 days. These are form the 4^th to the 12 of September, 2010 and this is according to the schedule that has been fixed already. The route also has wonderful wildlife. There are elk, moose and bighorns as well as bears of various kinds. This makes the route all the more interesting and quite a pleasure to enjoy as well as to watch.

There are 2 teams that are on the Catlin Arctic Survey and the 2 teams are certainly facing a lot of problems as they try to navigate through the bad weather conditions that prevail in the terrain there. The explorers are going northward and this despite the fact that the ice conditions are indeed some of the worst that they have ever encountered there. The explorers want to make their way to the North Pole and while they are it, to take samples of the arctic ice. The ice conditions and consistency is changing all the time, which is something that can indeed endanger their lives and put them at a serious risk. The wind also does not make the situation any better as they battle the onslaught of the elements, day and night on this adventure.

There was one day early in the morning when they say the ice crackle all around them and there was a huge bang after which the ice just broke. They had to quickly decide which side of the ice crack that they wanted to be on, given the fact that they could not possibly stay where they had moored their tents. This was quite scary, to say the least.