To understand the amazing story of World Expeditions, you need to go back in time. It’s 1975 and the world is in the midst of a profound recession caused by the oil crisis. Australia is struggling with sky-high inflation, a massive trade deficit and spiralling unemployment. In Nepal, home of the planet’s tallest peaks and of the fabled Mount Everest, or Sagarmatha as it is known locally, climbed for the first time in 1953, it is something like the Wild East.
Would-be adventurers are drawn here, hoping to follow in the tracks of Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay and scale the highest Himalayan mountains, or trek to remote valleys. Others are simply in search of enlightenment on the hippie trail. Nepal’s capital Kathmandu even has a neighbourhood named in their honour, Freak Street, close to Durbar Square.
Cowboy days
“It was cowboy days,” recalls travel writer John Borthwick, who would soon find himself leading treks throughout the region.
“That part of the world was awash with far out people, wandering the Overland Trail to the East from Europe and America, and they were mostly skint. It was cheap and exotic, and travellers then seemed a lot more resilient when things went wrong, as they often did.
To say that these are not ideal conditions for the birth of a brand-new industry is an understatement. However, that is exactly what was brewing.
“You could spend many time-consuming days in Kathmandu, organising your own trek,” comments Borthwick, “for travellers with limited time that was impractical, so there arose a need for somebody enterprising to do that for you.”
Australian Himalayan Adventures is born
Enter two astute young Canberrans, Goronwy Price and Christine Gee, who see this need and answer it. In 1975, they form Australian Himalayan Expeditions, not just a new company but at the forefront of a new tourism sector: adventure travel.
It is now 50 years since the launch of AHE, which, after weathering another global recession during the 1980s, was renamed World Expeditions to reflect its expanded operations across Asia, South America, Africa and Australia. Half a century on, World Expeditions runs tours across all seven continents and remains a trailblazer in adventure travel.
One trekking guide who has been with them almost from day one is Garry Weare, who led the company’s first “Around Annapurna” tour, in 1979 and, at 77, still regularly escorts World Expeditions’ groups through the Himalayas.
“It has been a progression of introducing so many people to the trails across the Himalaya,” says Weare, author of several Lonely Planet guides and an acclaimed travel narrative on trekking in the region, “and the most gratifying thing has been witnessing people’s minds being opened to places they’d never considered visiting. AHE popularised trekking in the Himalaya.”
“From the earliest days there have been lots of people who have shaped who we are,” says World Expeditions CEO, Sue Badyari, who joined the tour operator as a receptionist, in 1986, “but the pioneering recipe, mixed with sustainability, social responsibility and customer satisfaction remain central to what we do.”
Storybook childhood
Badyari’s own storybook childhood, travelling into remote corners of Australia, in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains, and to Nepal, via Kashmir and Ladakh, at just 13, with her parents, helped “inspire a passion to continue that into work life”.
“It was a time before computers and internet” recalls Badyari of her early days with World Expeditions, “we had this big Telex machine in the office that was continuously churning.”
“We had this feeling that Australia was a leader in adventure travel,” she adds, “with the likes of Tim Macartney-Snape, Greg Mortimer, Jon Muir, the late Lincoln Hall and the late Sue Fear being pioneers in the field.”
Making dreams come true
In the mid 1990s, in the infancy of my travel writing career, I remember attending an inspirational slideshow given by mountaineer Greg Mortimer at World Expeditions’ offices, in York Street. Vividly depicting his ascent of Everest, it leaves me yearning to see the planet’s tallest peak at some point in my life, and though it takes me three decades, I finally do so, aptly, on a World Expeditions trek, in 2024.
My first close-up sight of Everest, set among a panoply of other huge peaks like Lhotse and Nuptse, is literally among the high points of my life, and having suffered from altitude sickness the previous night, I owe it to the support and encouragement of trek leader, Bir Singh Gurum.
Bir Singh, who has led Himalayan treks for World Expeditions for 25 years and guided one group to safety during Nepal’s devastating 2015 earthquake, is typical of a company in which, according to Badyari, “local relationships are very, very strong”. After the earthquake, World Expeditions immediately mobilised to ensure people had food and shelter.
“They always had a responsible attitude that mixed client and local care,” says John Borthwick, a seasonal group leader on early treks run by Australian Himalayan Expeditions.
“I have a photograph from that time of a Nepali porter working in thongs in snow, at 10,000ft, which, sadly, wasn’t unusual. The company stayed ahead of the curve, making sure their porter teams were properly equipped, issuing footwear and socks. They eliminated logging for campfires early in the piece, carrying kerosene instead.”
Stories from the early days
Among Borthwick’s tales from his time guiding for the company is a story of discovering a young Japanese man close to death from acute altitude sickness after he’d ascended rapidly, without acclimatising, to almost 5000m, in Nepal. His life was saved by two wiry AHE Sherpas who carried him back down the mountain overnight in an improvised wicker basket. This occurred during a 28-day trek in the Everest region, with Borthwick working alongside local lead guide or sirdar, Gyalzen Lama.
“As ‘group leader’”, explains Borthwick in his travel memoir The Circumference of the Knowable World, “my job is to keep an eye on the general well-being of trekkers…Our group consists of seven men and four women from the usual Babel of occupations: accountant, lawyer, student, technician, etc. Ages range from the late twenties to mid-fifties.”
“Originally,” says Badyari, who became CEO in 1999, “it was hairy-chested bushwalkers we catered for, but that changed rapidly over the first ten years, with more and more unlikely travellers joining the tours.”
As the clientele evolved so did the scope of available adventures. Among other trips Borthwick captures in his memoir are a camel trek across the Great Thar Desert in India’s Rajasthan, a 1984 expedition along the silk routes of Xinjiang Province, in China’s far west, to what he describes as “one of the most distant points on earth from city or sea” and a reconnaissance journey into Tibet, in 1986, after China briefly opened its borders.
“Lhasa, last summer:” he writes of that odyssey, “streets full of Khampa cowboys with red braids flashing in their thick ponytails, maroon-robed lamas racking up their millionth muttered mantra, and Buddhist pilgrims prostrating themselves before the thousand-roomed Potala Palace. And then something really unusual. More foreigners on the street than the total to have reached here during the previous millennium.”
Global firsts
World Expeditions’ global firsts in its initial 20 years of operation include running the earliest camel trips in India and inaugural commercial biking trip to China, in 1978, the introduction of commercial trekking groups to Mongolia (1980) and Tibet (1981) and, in 1990, undertaking the first commercial cycling tour of Vietnam.
“These were wild frontiers, and we were all about creating pioneering itineraries,” says Sue Badyari, “our reputation was forged on the basis that we were trailblazers but that we did it properly.”
For me, as a travel writer with thirty years’ experience, trips with World Expeditions have provided many enduring memories, including cycling through Sri Lanka, kayaking down the remote Manambolo river during a three-week tour of Madagascar and trekking toward Everest base camp, last year.
While I’ve always been adventurous, the truth is that few of us have the determination, courage, tenacity, resources or time to emulate Hillary and Tenzing, Tim McCartney-Snape or Australian camel trekker Robyn Davidson. So, having a company like World Expeditions to do all the organising helps me keep exploring the planet, and do so safely, important now that I’m a father and in my sixties.
Expert local knowledge
What is also crucial in this interface is expert local guides providing insights and a conduit into other cultures. I’ll never forget my connection with Malagasy river guide, Dada, in Western Madagascar, or the understanding he gave me of the gun-wielding Zebu (cattle) rustlers along the Manambolo. I shed a tear too when we parted from our tireless Nepali support team after ten days trekking in the Himalayas. Their gentle “jum, jum” (“let’s go”) mantra helped get our group through the trek and tour leader Bir Singh gave us an understanding of both local Sherpa and broader Nepalese heritage and culture.
“One element that is outstanding about the company” comments Garry Weare, “is that way back in 1985 I talked with Goronwy Price about how we needed to empower local leaders. 90% of World Expeditions treks are now led by locals.”
Responsible travel
“Active holidays, trekking and cycling, they take people into a different headspace, a different emotional space,” said Sue Badyari in 2018. “It’s a very therapeutic type of travel, and aside from the cultural experiences and dramatic landscapes, when you are travelling in a group, their sheer joy is infectious.”
In my experience, the clients on these small group tours are invariably mindful and caring, no coincidence given that “responsible travel” is at the core of World Expedition’s charter. It’s a blueprint that includes the stated aims to “respect the environments where our adventures take place, with genuine sustainable practices and conservation” and “be a force for our travellers to support communities in delivering local employment, friendship and fostering cultural tolerance.”
“It’s part of our DNA to never cut corners,” says Badyari, “from the beginning, World Expeditions set itself apart from Western travel companies by prioritising ethical travel practices that extend far beyond the trail.”
Fair conditions
“For 50 years we’ve believed that adventure should never come at the expense of those who make it possible. That’s why we’ve championed fair conditions, including health insurance, superannuation, and ongoing support for our staff worldwide. Our clients understand that their premium investment ensures every guide, porter, and support team member is treated with the dignity and care they deserve.”
“Our tours tend to attract like-minded souls, people seeking a deeper experience of the world,” adds Badyari, “if I was to characterise a typical World Expeditions client it would be somebody who wants an authentic experience, to get out of their comfort zone, to help create jobs locally and have a minimal footprint.”
As well as spearheading community-based tourism in countries as disparate as Nepal, Bhutan, Australia and Peru and taking measures to minimise waste across its tours, the charitable World Expeditions Foundation, begun in 2007, receives $5 from each booking. This is then invested in regenerative projects like restoring wetlands in Bolivia and improving literacy in Botswana.
Adventure has grown up
We’ve certainly come a long way since 1975, from when “there was virtually no Australian adventure travel industry”, according to John Borthwick, to the present-day when nearly all corners of the globe are accessible to those with the curiosity and resources.
“Back then,” says Borthwick, “you had a sense that you’re going to experience something extraordinary” and while travelling with tour companies like World Expeditions these days takes the work and worry out of a trip, the potential for life-changing journeys remains.
So, as we celebrate 50 years of organised adventure travel and Australia’s role in its development, we can be grateful for its evolution from its formative “cowboy days” in Nepal, in 1975, to a safer, more sustainable leader in global tourism.
As Sue Badyari, who has been at the helm at World Expeditions for over 25 years, puts it: “Adventure has grown-up – it’s no longer about adrenaline, it’s about meaning.”