OUR EXPERTS
YOUR INSPIRING TRAVEL COMPANIONS National Geographic researchers, explorers, writers, and photographers have brought the world to our members for more than a hundred years. Now, they bring you to the planet’s most intriguing places to share their passion and their insider perspectives. We’d like to introduce you to a few of them. A longtime resident of Santa Fe, New Mexico NEVADA WIER is an award-winning photographer specializing in the remote corners of the globe and the cultures that inhabit them. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including National Geographic magazine, National Geographic Adventure, Outdoor Photographer, Outside, and Smithsonian. She is a Fellow of the Explorer’s Club and a member of the Women’s Geographic Society. Nevada will lead photography expeditions in India and Tanzania, as well as the May 2015 Santa Fe Photography Workshop. Author, photographer, filmmaker, and National Geographic Emerging Explorer SANDESH KADUR seeks to inspire people to appreciate and protect the world’s biodiversity. With subjects ranging from king cobras to clouded leopards, his documentary films have appeared on the National Geographic Channel, the BBC, the Discovery Channel, and elsewhere. His photographs have been featured in numerous books and magazines. Sandesh’s many awards include CIWEM Environmental Photographer of the Year, the International Conservation Photographer award, and the 2013 North American Nature Photographers Vision Award. Sandesh will join the November 3, 2015 and February 15, 2016 departures of our India Wildlife Safari.
Writer and adventurer ROFF SMITH migrated to Australia about 30 years ago and has written extensively about his adopted land, authoring National Geographic Traveler: Australia and Australia: Journey Through a Timeless Land. In 1996, Roff set out on a 10,000-mile solo bicycle trek around Australia that he chronicled in a National Geographic magazine article series and a book called Cold Beer and Crocodiles. He has written of crossing Australia on the Indian Pacific Railway for a National Geographic book, and his story on Australia’s Fraser Island appeared in the September 2010 issue of National Geographic magazine. Roff will join the December 2015 and the January and February 2016 departures of our new trip, Inside Australia: Tasmania to the Great Barrier Reef. Archaeologist and National Geographic grantee JOYCE WHITE is a consulting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and executive director of the Institute for Southeast Asian Archaeology. For more than 30 years, she has directed a research project on Ban Chiang, a UNESCO World Heritage site in Thailand. Through the Middle Mekong Archaeological Project, which she also directs, she has excavated a number of sites in Luangphabang province in Laos. Her focus is the evolution of agriculture and metallurgy in prehistoric Southeast Asia. Joyce will join both October 2015 departures of our new Southeast Asia by River and Rail expedition. Conservationist and National Geographic Emerging Explorer STEVE BOYES has dedicated his life to preserving Africa’s wilderness areas and the species that depend upon them. A native of South Africa, Steve spent more than five years in the Okavango Delta while doing fieldwork for his doctorate in zoology. He currently runs the Cape Parrot Project with support from the Society’s Conservation Trust and is the Scientific Director of the Wild Bird Trust. His work takes him all over Africa, studying wildlife rehabilitation and biodiversity, fighting the wild-caught bird trade, and planting thousands of trees in forest restoration projects. Steve will accompany our December 2015 departure of Southern Africa by Private Air.
WHEN ARCHAEOLOGIST AND NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC EMERGING EXPLORER JEFFREY ROSE TRAVELS TO OMAN THESE DAYS, EVEN THE PASSPORT CONTROL STAFF MAKE HIM FEEL LIKE HE’S HOME: “You’re the guy who walks his dog on the beach!” they’ve been known
to say when he arrives. Jeff spent three years in an Omani fishing village and many, many months excavating prehistoric sites all over Oman. He will be leading our new expedition there next year. Here’s what he has to say about falling in love with the country. WHAT ORIGINALLY BROUGHT YOU TO OMAN?
I read Wilfred Thesiger’s book Arabian Sands when I was 17. He was one of the first British explorers to cross the Rub’ al Khali, the vast desert that covers much of the southern Arabian Peninsula. It sounded like the last great archaeological frontier. Through a grant from the American Institute for Yemeni Studies, I traveled to the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, to learn Arabic, and suddenly I was running a project by myself in extremely remote parts of eastern Yemen. After 9/11, Yemen wasn’t a very welcoming place. I visited an Omani friend from graduate school in 2002, and he took me down to the south, to Dhofar, where I work now. I’ve never seen anything like it, not to this day. This is a landscape covered with prehistoric archaeology from all time periods. The density of sites is just mind-boggling. It was love at first trip. WHAT STANDS OUT ON A FIRST VISIT TO OMAN?
The people: They’re friendly, warm, genuine, smiling, gentle— just lovely, lovely people. Without even knowing you, they’d give you the shirt off their backs. Another first impression:
Oman’s incredible landscape. You might envision a desert that’s dry and sandy, but much of Oman is green and mountainous. I love showing people this country. It’s a gem. The sultan hasn’t turned it into a glitzy commercial center, but has worked instead to preserve and celebrate its traditions. Everything here still smells like frankincense. People wear traditional attire. All the romantic things that originally drew me to Arabia you can still find in Oman. YOU’VE MADE FASCINATING ARCHAEOLOGICAL FINDS IN OMAN. WHAT DO THEY REVEAL?
We know that humans first migrated out of Africa between 120,000 and 60,000 years ago. We didn’t know exactly who they were, where they came from, or when they left. Nubian material we’ve excavated at Dhofar in southwestern Oman tells us they came from the Nile Valley between 120,000 and 100,000 years ago, and that they took a southern route. There was never a land bridge across the Red Sea here, so they had to have some sort of seafaring technology in order to cross it. Perhaps they saw what was across the Red Sea when they looked east and they wanted to know what was there.
READ MORE OF OUR INTERVIEW WITH JEFF ON OUR WEBSITE. SEE PAGE 84 FOR OUR NEW EXPEDITION THAT JEFF WILL LEAD: TRAVELING THE SANDS OF TIME: OMAN TO DUBAI.
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