I'm Desmond Langkilde, a limber 63 year young fossil, a travel writer, and a dreamer.
I have a dream that's born of passion, nurtured through countless hours, even years, of planning, budgetting, and grant funding application rejections. And still the Dream persists! Undaunted by others who consider the Dream to be fanciful, unrealistic, or just plain crazy. If your dreams are similar, then I'm in good company.
This is a long story. So sit back, grab a coffee (or your favourite tipple), and read on as I share my dream with you.
Then, at the end, make a comment. Be critical. Share your dream. How did you overcome setbacks to turn your dream into reality? After all, I'm posting this to get feedback and inspiration from the Travel Massive community (or anyone you care to share this post with).
👉 So, here's my dream; to walk the entire Africa coastline, including the continents' islands - 40 countries, 40,000km, 52 million steps.
And while walking, to tell Africas' stories. Storie...
Comments
Hi everyone,
As a biologist with a long standing background in tourism (my parents ran two campsites in Greece over 30 years), I have been working on a scientific tourism concept for the past months.
Although I got positive feedback from International organisations, plus an offer to start my project small in Greece, I am having massive self-doubts whether it is a good idea to start anything in tourism. I cannot seem to understand the basic - how would I gain my salary from my activity - which honestly blocks me :-(
Would any of you have recommendations, feedback, experience in the field of scientific tourism? I would love to hear more about the topic here.
I wish to build a network of individualised tours/ projects in the Mediterranean region, starting by Greece that will work together with some Internationaly important initiatives, as well with smaller established NGO´s and initiatives. All activities will be coordinated with the necessary academic/ institutional support and based on a sound scientific ground, adapted and easily communicated to a broader audience.
Thank you :-)
Hello, working in STR & real estate within the Adriatic sea, your project sounds interesting. At your disposal for a call, nice day!
Hi Dominique - "science" is wide - but as a biologist you might be interested to take a look into wildlife conservation type of tourism. Here in Montenegro, I would recommend to get in touch e.g. with czip.me/?lang=en with their tourism arm monticola.me, as well as the dolphin research & protection folks in Kotor, balkan.green/map/blue-operation-wildlife-conservation-tours/. For biodiversity trail blazers: Jovana and Andrijana at the drustvoekologa.me/en/. In Greece again, ecotourism experts such as Frosso K. Dimitrakopolou of ecoclub.com.
gladly!
thank you Kirsi. Yes, science is very wide, but I have already limited it to two fields that I believe are important for the regions and the people interested. The thing is I have an entire list of potential partners and organisations relevant to my project, it is more how to go about making effective cooperations and building the project so that I can also live from it. Though thank you for the recommendations as it includes regions I had not considered yet :)
Check out MEET (Mediterranean Experience of Eco-Tourism) Network — they operate in 9 Mediterranean countries and over 20 Protected Area destinations to develop the region into a leading ecotourism destination.
I already have MEET on my side :) thanks!