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Younghusband
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Younghusband

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May 19th, 2005

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RYP: The Anti-traveller

Robert Young Pelton

It is high time to profile one of my favourite modern adventurers: Robert Young Pelton. Born near Edmonton, Alberta young Pelton was educated in a school bent on turning young boys into latter-day voyageurs. After graduating he travelled around South America and Europe, then headed back to Toronto to become a copywriter.

Later RYP started his own design/production company in California, and funded himself to war zones around the world. He gained fame for interviewing “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh and writing The World’s Most Dangerous Places, a sort of anti-travel guidebook to the hellholes of the Earth.

Yet he admits he is not a journalist and just enjoys finding out about far off, under-reported war zones. Here is an adventure quote:

My wife was giving me a hard time for going into Columbia. I had just come back from Liberia, and that’s a pretty gruesome war. They had given me a severed head as a gift, and there was a lot of fighting and death and people being disemboweled and their hearts being eaten, and it didn’t bother me that much. So I thought maybe I was getting tweaked. So I said, “Well, maybe I’ll just do something normal.” Of course, then I got kidnapped and a bunch of people got killed, and they killed all the people we stayed with, and it turned into a blood bath.

The Adventurist is his inspiring autobiography, and The Hunter, the Hammer and Heaven is a collection of three wicked tales of three wicked locales. I recommend ALL these books for anyone interested in countries outside the Anglosphere and Western Europe. Also, he speaks at the Lavin Agency with The Man.

Robert Young Pelton has served as an inspiration and role model to this wannabe modern-day geographer. I even contemplated following a similar route (start design biz, fund self around planet) if I couldn’t get into RMC.

Some RYP links:

Comments to this entry

Fabian
May 20, 2005
1:27 am
Robert is THE MAN.
lirelou
May 20, 2005
2:22 am
Colombia, M. Pelton, "Colombia"
RYP
June 2, 2005
3:13 am
Hey where is Harry Flashman??? Where is Richard Francis Burton???? and Iirelou...I always spell it Colombia... Cool site.
Younghusband
June 2, 2005
3:21 am
Burton is BRILLIANT. When I was younger I was a student of Hoplology. Not sure who Harry Flashman is, but I will definitely check him out on your recommendation.

Cheers for the site kudos!
Younghusband
June 2, 2005
3:30 am
More on "Sir Harry Paget Flashman":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Paget_Flashman and his "official site":http://www.harryflashman.org/.
ComingAnarchy.com » Blog Archive » Hot Zone
September 14, 2005
3:46 pm
[...] Internet behemoth Yahoo! will be launching a new thematic news site at the end of the month entitled Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone. Kevin Sites is a journo whose mission is to cover every current armed conflict around the world in one year. It sorta looks like RYP meets MTV meet the Amazing Race. Keep your eye on it, I know I will. ( via Dr. Barnett) Leave a Reply [...]
ComingAnarchy.com » Blog Archive » Happy Birthday To Us!
September 30, 2005
8:16 pm
[...] Sir Francis Edward YOUNGHUSBAND Battle of the Books: Reviewing America’s Secret War and the Pentagon’s New Map—reviewed in turn by Dr. Barnett. Religious Freedom Guaranteed: A report from the ground on religious minorities in Iran. Anjoman-E Padeshahi Iran: One of the only English sources on the web about London’s Iranian dissident group. RYP: The Anti-Traveler: A profile of a brother-in-arms. Parrish and the Canadian Military: The straight dope on the Canadian military. Cambodia’s Landmine Museum: Seeing some hope in all the anarchy. Confessions of a Thug: Rollin’ wit my 19th century niggaz! Chinese Turkestan 2004: Some photography from China’s Muslim regions. More recognition for JTF2: Canada’s secret commando unit gets some props, but not from the Canadian public. Hijacking the American Language: Stop playing with my mind! Younghusband’s true colours are shown in the debate on cognitive science. [...]
Blondie
October 24, 2005
4:07 am
I suppose you think that for each country he reports in his book as having the dope on, you think that means he has own passport individually stamped in person accordingly to each country he reports on, huh?

I suppose you think that it is pretty cool
a guy can fly and raft into a place like
the Darien Gap and get people killed in the process, huh?

That you think that this one tough hombre may react with un-characteristic chagrin
as opposed to the rest of us if ever witnessing beheadings or human torture is
not neccesarily an admirable trait, it may jsut indicate he is significantly more de-sensitised to violence than the rest of us.

Is that some type of privelege to witness
such groteque happenings?

Watch this, hell never write about how
personally affected by it he might be, he is too busy acting cool about it.

RYP went to places and people were killed there as an off shoot of his traveling there.

Even after this, his travel companion spoke of the whole danger travel experience as worthy of the equivalent to "shits and giggles" ie fun

If you ask me he should get a new hobby and cut the divorce from reality...he has already shown that he can estrange his wife.
ComingAnarchy.com » Blog Archive » The New Dogs of War
November 19, 2005
7:10 pm
[...] I have recently come across an interesting news site that lives up to the cheeky adventurist reporting of my man Robert Young Pelton of The World’s Most Dangerous Places fame. Sobaka is “your online outfitter for worldwide mayhem” and covers some of the wilder places around the world. I was doing some research on the “guns for poppies” drugtrade in Central Asia when I came across this site. Very slick design, some ripping adventures and some pretty good writing so far. I know that Nathan has mentioned them before but this is the first time I have heard of them. I have only had a short chance to click through it so far but I thought I would pass it along. Check it out and let us know what you think. What say you? [...]
ComingAnarchy.com » Blog Archive » Catching up
August 31, 2006
7:23 pm
[...] First is a Slate article entitled Army for Hire which reviews two books on private security companies (formerly known as PMCs) including the latest from our other Bob, RYP. [...]
ComingAnarchy.com » Blog Archive » RYP covers Iraq
December 11, 2006
8:50 pm
[...] Hot ZoneThe New Dogs of WarCatching upI hate Time and NewsweekRYP: The Anti-traveller [...]