The Road Junky Sahara Retreat 2012
Our friends at Road Junky are hosting an incredible retreat in the Sahara for participants who love travel and cultural exchange, to share experiences and be inspired by each other and the beauty of the landscape.
We're excited to share the following interview with Tom Thumb, the original Road Junky.
[caption id="attachment_4880" align="aligncenter" width="640" caption="Photo by Shawn Allen"][/caption]
Just to give us some background, could you please tell us a bit about the Road Junky community?
The site www.roadjunky.com started as a response to a guide book market that tried to turn destinations into products to be sold. Instead for the last 7 years we have run guides and stories for the independent voyager to put the spirit back into travel. Contributors came forward with all kinds of outlandish tales and advice that would simply never get into print in the conventional travel media.
For me personally, having traveled around the world for almost 15 years now non-stop, it was amazing to connect to such a vibrant community of vagabonds, explorers and amateur anthropologists.
We heard great things about your upcoming event in the Sahara - the Road Junky Sahara Retreat. Let's hear the juicy details!
While it's been great to connect to travelers online we decided we really wanted to meet them in the flesh. That began with a travel film festival we held in Berlin in 2010 where people came from all over the world to share their stories - it was all too brief though and so I had the idea of taking time out in a spectacular location like the Sahara Desert to bring travelers together.
Buried deep in the dunes of the Moroccan Sahara, we spend 6 days with 30 travelers making yoga in the mornings, dance expression workshops in the afternoon, meditating at sunset, sharing travel stories round the fire and making music under the full moon!
You held the first retreat last January. What were some of the highlights from 2011?
There was an astonishing sense of community.
With no contact with the outside world people first began to find themselves in the dunes - and then each other. It was moving and unexpected to me how much people bonded as they danced in the moonlight or went walking in the desert. There were friendships made which have endured until this day as people from the last retreat meet up for other adventures.
What are you most looking forward to this year?
For me, there's nothing like the Sahara. The tiny grains of sand form such perfect lines it looks like a team of angels created the dunes that morning. The silence can be so overpowering that you can hear the blood running through your veins.
And to share all that with some of the most interesting travelers to be met anywhere in the world?
It's just the best.
Thanks Tom, for giving us the inside scoop!
The retreat dates: Monday, February 6, 2012 to Saturday, February 11, 2012
To find out more about how to reserve your spot on the 2012 Sahara Retreat, click here.
Photo credit: by Shawn Allen (http://www.flickr.com/photos/shazbot/).