Award-winning travel photographer, blogger and filmmaker Ric Gazarian and public speaker and points expert Stefan Krasowski announce the 2022 premiere of an international travel festival that is designed to inspire, convene and support the world’s most accomplished and avid adventure travelers. The inaugural Extraordinary Travel Festival will take place in Yerevan, Armenia from October 14-16, 2022, and bring together the world’s most daring and ambitious explorers in a series of seminars and conversations that will help foster new connections and enable deeper travel planning in a post-pandemic world.
"Imagine many Marco Polos types, all gathering in a single location,” said Co-Founder, Gazarian, whose blog and website @GlobalGaz, feature stories and images from his colorful travels to over 150 countries. “The idea is to share knowledge, connect doers with dreamers, and help these extraordinary travelers research and plan their next eye-opening adventure.”
“As the world seems to get smaller with social media, accomplished travelers strive to discover the road less traveled. We endeavor to discover and explore and simply be surprised with some experience we were not anticipating. We think getting off the tourist path and into the real world in a more deep, extraordinary way is just what’s needed,” says Krasowski, who has traveled to every country in the world.
The Extraordinary Travel Festival will be hosting travelers who dream about planning their next trip to destinations that are challenging-to-visit, such as: Libya, Madagascar, or Iraq. It will also convene explorers who are passionate about seeing remote, pristine and extreme destinations, like Antarctica, Socotra, or Pitcairn Island.
Throughout the three-day festival, speakers from all corners of the globe, from Colombia to Kuwait to South Africa, will be taking the stage or leading breakout sessions about deeper, more out-of-the-ordinary travel experiences that are outside the norm. The speakers will inspire attendees with motivational talks of how they accomplished the impossible, for example, traveling to every country in the world without taking an airplane, or traveling by boat to Timbuktu. Other speakers will provide actionable information about how to obtain difficult visas or keep yourself safe when traveling to destinations in conflict.
The Festival will also be organizing pre-conference trips, dinners and evening parties in the Armenian capital, Yerevan. Armenia was just named the World's Leading Heritage Destination category in the World Travel Awards 2021.
"This event is about building community within this group of accomplished and avid travelers while learning about practical and actionable advice on how to create that next amazing travel experience,” added Krasowski.