
Summit With Pride: LGBTQ+ Mountaineering, Trekking & Global Adventure With Nick Read
He rescues stranded hikers. He leads LGBTQ+ groups up Kilimanjaro. He teaches mountaineering by day and climbs remote peaks by sunrise.
Meet Nick Read, founder of Pride Expeditions—a rare breed of adventure guide who’s smashing stereotypes while scaling summits.
Whether it’s the snow-capped Andes, the deserts of Morocco, or a tea-house trek in Nepal, Nick’s trips aren’t just about adrenaline—they’re about creating inclusive, empowering experiences for queer adventurers around the globe.
In this high-altitude episode of Pride Nomad Unleashed, Ken and Nick hit the trail with:
🏕️ Behind-the-scenes stories of running a queer expedition company across 5 continents
🇹🇿 How climbing Kilimanjaro became a literal Pride March in a country where being gay is illegal
🏞️ The truth about Everest Base Camp, why Gosaikunda might be better, and how yak traffic is a real thing
🚁 Wild rescue missions in the UK mountains and what not to do when your knee gives out
💡 The secret to building lifelong friendships (and confidence) through shared adventure
📍 A full list of LGBTQ+ trekking destinations from Patagonia to Peru, Iceland to India, plus what’s coming next
🎒 Whether you’re a first-time camper or a rugged explorer, Nick’s trips are designed to be challenging but achievable. You’ll never carry your gear, you’ll always be supported—and you’ll come home with one hell of a story.
🌍 TRIPS & LOCATIONS DISCUSSED:
🏔️ Kilimanjaro (Tanzania) – A literal Pride trek in a not-so-LGBTQ-friendly zone
🇳🇵 Nepal – Gosaikunda Lakes trek + Trishuli River rafting
🇵🇪 Inca Trail to Machu Picchu (Peru) – With 3-course tent meals and sunrise views
🇲🇦 Mount Toubkal (Morocco) – A four-day intro to high-altitude trekking with Berber hospitality
🇮🇸 Iceland – The Laugavegur Trail: lava fields, steam vents, and glacier valleys
🇦🇷 Patagonia (Argentina) – Vertical granite spires, fewer crowds, epic solitude
🇪🇨 Ecuador & Galápagos – Coming soon
🇬🇧 Wales Adventures – Rock climbing, coasteering, and mini expeditions
🎒 FOR FIRST-TIMERS:
Never done an adventure trip?
Start with Morocco or Iceland. Both offer a perfect blend of challenge, culture, and comfort—with no altitude worries and plenty of fun.
You don’t need to be super-fit. You do need:
Stamina (think 6–8 hours of walking)
A sense of humor
A spirit of adventure
Zero diva drama (this isn’t Atlantis, darling)
🎁 EXCLUSIVE FOR PRIDE NOMADS:
Mention “Pride Nomad” when booking and receive:
A private consultation with Nick to match you with the perfect trek
A free gear checklist & training plan tailored to your trip
And a mystery gift you’ll receive on your expedition 🏳️🌈
Watch the Episode here
Listen to the Podcast here
Summit With Pride: LGBTQ+ Mountaineering, Trekking & Global Adventure With Nick Read
Ladies and gentlemen, meet Nick Read, the mountain climbing badass who turned his love for high altitudes into a mission for the LGBTQ plus community. As the founder of Pride Expeditions, he's not your typical tour guide. No, this dude's out there trekking, leading treks through Nepal, India, Morocco, Ecuador, and Peru, with credentials to back it up. He's both an international mountain leader and a mountaineering instructor. Pretty damn impressive, I dare say.
Here's what makes Nick different. While most adventure companies just focus on getting you up the mountain, he's created safe spaces for LGBTQ plus adventurers to conquer peaks and prejudices. Plus, he's a total nature nerd who can tell you about every plant and critter you'll meet along the way. This is probably Nomad Unleashed, where mountaineering meets inclusivity, and every summit conquered is another barrier broken. Nick, how is that?
That's a great introduction to me. You've done a bit of research.
I went to your website.
I was just thinking that I just let you read what you wanted probably, and I saw that, but it said that, but then I thought, “I'll just refer you to my website. It's all on there.”

We got some fancy-schmancy AI that makes anybody sound fabulous.
Is that all AI, then?
I took it like ten minutes ago off the website, popped it in, and it was like, “Write me something sexy about Nick.”
There were some good alliterations in there as well. I didn't think AI would be so creative.
This was very expensive stuff that we paid a lot of money for, but it's good.
I thought it would be mundane and boring if you say if the AI moved it, but that's pretty good.
It's interesting. AI has shifted so much over the past year and even over the past few months. It's gotten so much more sophisticated. Even for you, because you're out in the mountains when I want to talk about your whole business and your life and everything. For people that are whether they're on a roof or a mountaineer doing tours, do you now have the ability to actually run your office remotely with AI automation that will sound like a human, act like a human, be fun, and save you the cost of someone to answer phones or whatever, and you not lose any business. It's remarkable.
A lot of my clients say it's like, because product business is quite a personal service, they like the fact that it's like a family-run business, and they know who they're getting. I'm reluctant to go down that AI thing because my customers like to talk to me as the expert.
Here's the thing. I'm in the same way. I typically don't want to talk to a telemarketer, but what's happening now is that certainly, if you're on a tour, you cannot answer the phone. You're present with your clients. You can have the other Nick answering the phone, which by the way can be with your offices with your voice. You can be like, “This is the Nick bot. I'm correct up the mountain.
Let me answer some questions, and then I'll get back to you with the real Nick so you can get a fix on me.” You can do that and make it fun, which is what we're doing. We've got a bot that's going to get released in the next couple of days called Alex. It's an Automated lifestyle, experience, something or other. Alex will sound like RuPaul. Alex will sound like Winston Churchill. Alex will sound like Harvey Milk.
We've designed it to have different personas to make it fun rather than, “I am your computer, and you hate me.” We're turning that into something that's virulable and funnable as opposed to, “S***, he's just too much of a cheap ass to answer the phone.” When we get there, I'll share it with you. It's fun stuff. I want to make automation work but not remove the spoke stuff that makes us so personal. Speaking of which, I heard that you had some drama going on.
Mountain Rescue Drama: Real-Life Adventure Calls
The mountains are part of a community, and being in the mountains is to be on the mine rescue team. That's just part of another thing that I do. There are lots of facets to what I do. There's the the queer friendly adventures, but I also teach other people to lead others in the mountains. I also, in my spare time that I have, rescue people. We're part of Everest Mountain Rescue.
The highest mountain in England and Wales is just twenty minutes from my house, but it also happens to be the busiest mountain in Europe, if not the world. We've got three-quarters of a million people go up there per year. It's very busy, and it's quite a steep technical mountain with lots of cliffs. A lot of people go up with very little experience and get into difficulty. People go up with experience, and they just have accidents.
Anyone could have an accident. There's no blame most of the time. We feel like the local community get together and go and help them. It was a nice one because we could drive a Land Rover right up to them, a lady with a broken ankle, but we were able to drive right. There was no carrying lots of stuff and carrying her down or anything like that. It was a case of driving some Land Rovers up, getting in the Land Rover, and driving it down. It was that relatively easy one.
That's almost like, “That was no big deal as opposed to the helicopters. All the letters and stuff like that.”
The helicopter is always sexy when a helicopter gets involved.
It's good for TV, but I hate to pay the bill for that.
The government pays the bill. You can, because we're very lucky. Our government will pay for the rescue, and then all the people that rescue and mount is a volunteer. There is no bill for people if they get in trouble because they're saying if people are in trouble and they think they've got to pay, they might not call any help and then potentially could die.
That's very interesting because many years ago, I ended up having a little heart episode, a heart attack. I didn't want to ask anybody. I didn't want to call an ambulance because A, I didn't have insurance at that poin,t and B, it was like, I don't want the drama. I literally drove myself to the hospital. I see what you're going to get, which is stupid if you're having a heart attack.
When you're in that scenario, the last thing on your mind is, “How am I going to afford this?”
Yeah. Good news, I'm glad it wasn't someone on one of your tours, because that's I was like, “Poor guy.” Let me ask you, and I want to get a background on what you guys do with all your tours, but while we're talking about drama, have you ever had to do that rescue type of thing on any of your own stuff?
Kilimanjaro Rescue: Unexpected Challenges On The Mountain
My clients, generally, my aim is to equip them with all like the right equipment and get the right people with experience. As I say, everyone has accidents. Probably the most exciting one I can think of off the top of my head was someone who had a knee injury on descending on Kilimanjaro. It's the highest mountain in Africa, which is in Tanzania. He was like, “I can go down. I can continue.” He was going so slowly.
He wanted to, like say, “I can do this, I can get down.” When you've got fourteen other people also going down, I always keep the groups together for safety. Don't like to split up. The core was, wait in like this walks going to take instead of six hours, going to take potentially twelve hours. Do I get him in a stretcher? Luckily, on Kili, there was a deposit of some stretchers.
They are like on a bicycle wheel basically with a full suspension. Our team were porters, so we have from Kilimanjaro all our bags are carried by porters. They said we can carry him. We hurtled down the mountain. I've never gone so fast with him bouncing down the mountain. We got down ahead of everyone else. Everyone else was walking as fast as they could. We literally hurtled down the mountain to the end because luckily it was on the last day.
How do we structure our lives so that we have the lifestyle to be able to have adventures, and have fun, and enjoy -- as opposed to just being someplace else?
We got back to the base of the mountain on the final day of the trek probably like an hour. He was drinking beer, and he gave away all his equipment to the porters. The porters were like, “What are you going to give us in there?” Literally got his brand-new sleeping bag. “You can have this. You can have a boobs.” Almost stripped himself of all of the grip.
That's awesome. Tell me more about some of the tours. I've always wanted to do Kilimanjaro, but a number of people have told me they were going to do it. It was one of those bucket list things I never got around to.
Pride Expeditions: Creating Safe Spaces In Tanzania
Pride Expeditions started with Kilimanjaro because in Tanzania, it's illegal to be gay. It's illegal to have a different gender than your birth gender. In terms of LGBTQ rights, it's not as bad as Uganda. It's getting there. Uganda's got a bad name for itself, but Tanzania is the same East Africa along with Kenya. It's quite hard for queer people in Tanzania.
I was a member of a walking club in the UK and had people saying, “I want to go and do Kilimanjaro, but I don't feel comfortable with who I am being allowed to go to Tanzania.” I had a local guide in Tanzania that I knew. He used to work as a cabbie in New York, actually. He's pretty wordy-wise. Knows his stuff. He knows how the world works, like the Western world.
He's saying like, “Nick, you can come, and you can bring whoever you want. I will welcome whoever comes. Doesn't matter if they're gay, if they're queer, if they're trans, I'll welcome anyone. Everyone should be welcome to Tanzania, and I'll support you.” That was my link. I knew him because I used to travel a lot and had him like a long time ago, and he was like, “Come to Tanzania.” I wanted to go to Tanzania without people hiding who they are. That's why they're named Pride. It was like a Pride march basically up to Kilimanjaro for the first time.
How was that? I know you had him to support you, but how were the rest of the people in Tanzania? How did they respond to you guys?
You do get some strange questions from the less educated people. They started off going, “Do you have a wife? Where's your wife?” This stuff. By the end of the trip, they're like, “You don't want a wife, do you?” It's like, “No.” They're quite open to conversations, but initially, they thought pride is in the pride of lions. That's what they thought of pride. The rainbow flag was not a known thing to them.
You're demonstrating the point that I've been making for so long, which is that travel creates awareness and creates peace. For us to not go to places that are outlawing us and so on where people are ignorant, there's no way to affect change unless people get to see that we're not threatening, we're not a problem, we're cool people. Typically more fun than everybody else.
That's the thing, people, they'd never knowingly met a queer person. They never met someone who's open. They didn't know they had this no idea and then having met us, I would just make sure people give good tips, that stuff. They're very engaging in Tanzania. They're very chatty. They like to dance. They like to sing. They were totally welcoming. My local guide now, things are changing slowly in Tanzania, and they're changing by women getting involved in work. When I was there ten years ago, you'd never see a woman out working. Things have progressed so far that my local head guide now is a woman called Lucy who's a Maasai. She's so tall, she just like tells supporters, shouts at them, and then they'll like fall in line.
I know Maasai from being in Kenya. Is there Maasai elsewhere?
Yeah, so the Maasai Mara, the Maasai lands cover the Kenya-Tanzania border. The whole of southern Kenya and northern Tanzania are all Maasai.
I realize that. See, I'm learning something new. That's great. How many Kilimanjaro's have you done?
There'll be four Kilimanjaro's. I generally do that every couple of years.
Let's say I want to do Kilimanjaro. That's true. I want to do Kilimanjaro. They've never done it. It's been on the list of things to do. How long do you need to prep for that to get in shape for it?
I say to anyone who's a regular walker, as long as they're walking up mountains or hills, rather than walking on the beach. Anyone who's a regular walker can walk for like 6 to 8 hours comfortably, they'll find that fine. It's altitude. We go at a very slow pace, incredibly slow, because we have to acclimatize. It's a pride trip, but we're not marching.
I get it.
We have to go slow to acclimatize. The thing is, you do put in your summit day, you put in a twelve-hour day basically. You've got to have the stamina. It's not like sprinting fitness, it's just endurance.
I did Annapurna a number of years ago with my mom. At that point, she was in her 80s, and it was easy. It was up to Poon Hill and that was a great adventure. It was a good starter for us.
That's a lovely trip. Kilimanjaro is 5,800, so it's high. I do say to people they should do certainly add run trips to Tupkow, 4,100 or Poon Hill is 4,200. Something like that before they go on to Kilimanjaro because it's quite a step up in terms of altitude, and that makes it hard.
Now, is that the roughest trip that you do? You shouldn't say roughest in terms of the most exotic trip that you do.
Do you mean like camping or remoteness?
I don't know all the stuff that you do, so that was the same way into. We do all sorts of other things, too.
What's important about Pride is that we don't do, I guess, trips to Gran Canaria or the standard. You look at all the gay or queer trips that generally aimed at McInnis, Maspalomas, that stuff. Stay in a hotel. The core of pride is to one, you need to get into a row area. Get into either the mountains, desert, down the river, something like that. Two, you've got to challenge yourself. It's got to be tough. People have to feel like there are times when it's hard work, but obviously, we'll support people, but it will be challenging. Third, it's part of a team. You join a team of people you don't know when you go into the wilderness. You have an adventure. That's the core of it.
I think that's the great part about it. Having that adventure. If you're going to go to Ran Canaria or you're going to go to a beach resort or whatever, that's great, but you can do that anytime. When I did my safaris in Africa, you never forget that. You never forget that when you're visiting the Maasai and their housing and you cannot possibly forget that. Same thing with just getting up to the top of Poon Hill. I still have that. Actually the picture, one of the pictures on our website, when you subscribe to the Pride Nomad Letter, me doing like this, is me jumping at the top of Poon Hill. That picture will be around forever.

I think Nepal, what do you say, which is the most not adventurous, but Nepal is great because you stay in those tea houses. You're not camping. I would never camp if I didn't have to. I cannot go Kilimanjaro because that's the only choice. In Nepal, in tea houses, there's a lovely little family who'll cook for you.
Great food and Wi-Fi, and they turn the generator on. You can run your business as I did going up the mountain, because when you got up there and the people were so freaking nice.
That's how you get to know a country is to get probably into the areas with the local people who either the porters or the local families who cook for us or you get to know people in the country that way.
What are the trips do you do?
Exploring Machu Picchu: Inca Trail Adventures
My popular one is Machu Picchu. I have a good American contingent on that because of location. The way our trips work, you meet in the country, so you don't have to come to the UK. We're a UK-based company, but we take an international clientele. We meet in Cusco and then you acclimatize because Cusco's 3,800. Cusco's high. We spent a few days just sightseeing the Inca ruins around Cusco. We trekked the Inca trail, which is a four-day trek for three nights. That's camping again, because there's no other option, but our porters will carry the tents, the porters will carry a dining tent.
There'll be a chef who's normally Robert. My chef in Peru, who's an amazing chef. He'll do like a three-course meal in a tent, but you still have a three-course meal. You track each day. You're doing a different campsite every night, tracking from campsite to campsite. Everything gets moved from campsite to campsite. On the final day, you get up early and then you walk in through the sun gates of Machu Picchu, which means you're the first people in because everyone else has to get a bus up, but you walk into Machu Picchu.
I've heard that Machu Picchu is starting to restrict access in some ways. How does that affect you guys?
We book permits, and we have to enter Machu Picchu on the day that's allocated to us. You cannot just turn up at Machu Picchu and walk in. You've got to book it well in advance. They limit the Inca trail. Limit it to 500 people starting the trail per day. That 500, the last time I went, had 18 clients plus 25 porters. Just my team was about 56 or 60 people, and they're only allowing 500 per day. That's not many people on the trail, actually, because that's including all your staff. It's limited in terms of how many people can go on the trail and then to Machu Picchu. You get in there early, so it's not busy. As the day goes on, it gets busy.
That's awesome. I hadn't thought you've got more people that support your team that's actually a client, which is fascinating.
It's got to be a holiday at the end. I call it an expedition, but it is still a holiday. People will not kindly ever say, “This is all your food and your tent and your sleeping bag. You're going to carry this now for the next four days. It's got to be a holiday.”
You spend the day at Machu Picchu. I love that. I think I'd want to spend a year with you. What other places do you guys go to?
Nepal's Hidden Gems: Sacred Lakes And River Rafting
One of my favorite places in the ball is for the Everest Base Camp. Everest space camp is suffering from the fact that travel has gotten massively busy. It's increasing. We go to a park called the Gosaikunda. You've heard of Shiva, the Hindu god. They believe that Shiva's spear landed at Gosaikunda lakes. You trek up to these sacred lakes. It's a Hindu pilgrimage site. It's lots of prayer flags, beautiful statues. It's at 4,800 meters, so it's quite high up. Trek over to the lakes. That's a three-day trek to get up there. The two-day trek down to the Trishuli River. The Trishuli is Shiva’s Trident. We raft down that river. It's a combo trek trip. We trek, and then we walk down, then we raft. We ended up in Chitwan, which is like a safari park in the Terai, the flat parts of Nepal.
I was there. I forget where we were before we got there, but that's beautiful over there.
I designed that trip to Nepal buses are like travel in Nepal. The roads are horrendous. I designed that trip to make the most of the least amount of journeying by bus. You're actually trekking and then rafting all the way down to Chitwan and then coming back by plane.
Now, for those of us that have heard of basecamp and there's the whole piece of that is doing this trip, I don't want to say it's going to come out. Am I missing anything by not going to Basecamp, or is that something like, “That's touristy. We're doing something that's got a really a better result?” Do you know what I mean?
Basecamp is a beautiful place. The scenery is fantastic. You just have to go with not only people on the trails, but it's like yak trains. Everest Basecamp, they need to get all the stuff up there, and it's all transported by yak. You've got to jump out of the way of the yaks. You've got to get out of the way of the people. It's quite exciting, but if you were looking for a wilderness experience and getting to know your group and getting off the beaten track and go to Gosaikunda, is that, and it's still got what's called the Langtang range. Langtang is almost 7,000 meter mountain. You get right up close to. You still get the amazingly huge peaks close to you. You don't have a basecamp, but you are away from the crowds.
I'd rather be away from them than the madness that seems like a better experience, a more intimate experience. For those of us who have heard, all I hear is Basecamp. I've got a woman in Costa Rica, a friend of mine, that she's in her, I guess, late 50s or early 60s, and she trained. She did Basecamp last year. Which is like, “S***, I haven't done that.”
I think to anyone who wants to do Basecamp, the way we do it, we go up a side valley called the Goccio Valley. It makes the trek longer, but you get off the main Everest Basecamp drag because I know the Kumbu life. I've done a lot of trips there. I've worked out a route that will avoid the main route up and down. We will go up the Goccio Valley. Makes a trek, a twelve-day trek instead of a ten-day trek. In my opinion, it's way worth it.
You might get the best experience. That's no sense to me. What's your favorite trip?
Morocco's Atlas Mountains: Cultural Treks And Culinary Delights
That's a hard one. My favorite trip, I go to so many places. Somewhere, I went back with Peter Lee from Morocco to do the highest mountain in North Africa, Toubkal. That's for anyone in Europe. That's a great little trip because it's a short flight. You're instantly in a country that the culture is totally different to Europe with such a short flight. The people are so welcoming because we get into the mountains when the Berber people traditionally nomadic, but now they live in the Atlas Mountains. I have my burger guides.
I go back every year. The cooks and we just do a lovely four day. It's a short four day trek staying in Ajith's, which is a local house, and the mules carry the whole bags and Hassan, my cook, cooks the most delicious like fresh salads that you prepare just under a tree, with pomegranate and olives and freshly walnuts off the trees. The food is amazing, the scene is fantastic. It's accessible. That trip is great. Again, took hours 4,100. It's accessible. It's great for people's first altitude trek.
What I like about that is that, for example, we've got a client and friend that spent a month in Morocco. To be nomadic, and I forget exactly where he was, but he is in Morocco, then to take four days with you at beginning, middle, end doesn't matter. I have had adventure and the nomadic trip as well. You can still run your business. You're not interrupting things. That seems to me like a great place. What I was thinking as you were talking, Nick, is like, we should do a year with you and just figure out other than like Tanzania, but let's coordinate. Where can we go for a few weeks before, a few weeks after the trip, and then just do a year, six months, whatever, with multiple Nick trips? I think that would be it.
I've just run a trip to like seven point in South America, so Patagonia. A lot of my clients, I've been home a week now, chugging away at the computer and rescuing people. I'm still getting photos of them there. They're in Iguazu, and then they're in Brazil, then they're in Rio. Most people, I'd say, can extend and will do my trip alongside something else happening.
It's funny because I just recorded a video of another seven top places to go as an LGBTQ plus digital nomad. We were just talking about Argentina and Iguazu. I forgot to mention Patagonia. We have to do it with England Patagonia.
To truly get to know a country, you need to get into its remote areas and connect with the local people.
We have to go to Patagonia.
It just never made it into the video. I've got to go back now. See, now we've created a new video. We'll have to do an episode just on that.
In terms of the scenery in Patagonia, the granite spires that you get so close to, the trekking is well organized, well set up. You can trek to the most incredible scenery. It's unlike anywhere I've been. I've been to a lot of places. Patagonia, because the mountains are just so vertical. I've never been to Yosemite, but I imagine it's like Yosemite, but in a much more wilderness-like wilderness, less people.
You're reminding me of all the places that I've wanted to go. Now I'm like, “Where am I going now? Why am I still here in Miami? This is stupid.” Let's think about this. There are times to go and not go. You don't want to go in the rainy season because it's going to be slippery and just messy and so on. Are you following the weather as you schedule everything around the world so there's always a trip you can do?
Yeah. That's why Patagonia is now. You need to be in Patagonia in December, January, and February. That's why I've just done that now. Certainly have trips that can run at any time of the year. Nepal needs to run in what call the pre-monsoon or the post-monsoon. The monsoon period in Nepal is like May, June, July, and August. That's monsoon. In December and January in Nepal, it's freezing. You go October, November and then March, April, and a little bit of May to Nepal.
That's when I've got Nepal on. Kilimanjaro is good anytime. Morocco, it's got to be. Summer is so hot. You don't want to be trekking in the Atlas in 40-degree heat. That's October or May. If you go again earlier than May, you just expect lots of snow on the mountain. You need proper equipment like crampons and ice axes if you're going before May.
That's pretty amazing. This is pretty amazing. How many trips during the course of the year do you do?
Probably about 5 or 6.
Typically, they're 12, 13, or 14 people.
Yeah. Our average group size is 12 to 16 people. Sometimes I extend that a little bit to eighteen because I do have local guides as well.
That's pretty amazing. How are you filling the groups? How are you getting your clients?
The reason I've just done Patagonia is because I have so many repeat clients that I have to keep putting new trips on. Patagonia has been a brand-new trip for trial expeditions this year. I'd had so many clients that I'd done all my trips on my website. They've been to Nepal, they've been to Borneo. They've been to everywhere with me, and they're like, “We need somewhere new.” I put on Patagonia, and then probably the next one for them will be Ecuador, Galapagos.
A big one as well. That's what they said. A lot of repeat customers. A lot of people find me through word of mouth, or they want adventure. It's adventure travel and they're queer or gay. Gay adventure travel trips. That's how they find me because I'm pretty unique in terms of what I'm doing. I don't need too many keywords. I just say what I'm doing, and then those are my keywords.
You're doing great stuff. Trust me, I would love to go on any of your trips because you're like my bucket list guy. I had no idea. I mean, it was like, “This is exactly what I want to be doing. It's cool.” The thing is that it takes a special person to do this trip. I'm sure the people that are watching this they're going, “There's no way I'm going be camping. There's no way I need my moisturizer.”
This is not your trip. This is not an Atlantis cruise, but for those who want something that's off the beaten path, this certainly seems like it's for me at any rate. If it's exactly my bucket list, Galapagos was on my list. Kilimanjaro has been on my list for years. Not top of the list, but on the list. Patagonia, absolutely. You're dropping names of like, “Here's my credit card. This is what we got to do.”
I think that if we can coordinate as the Pride Nomad community, Nick, as we do that, we should do Pride Nomad. I don't want to say adventures is the word, and I'm not trying to compete with other travel companies. If we, as the Nomads, came down for a few weeks prior to and lived and hung out in Argentina or wherever else in Ecuador, because I put on the same video, Ecuador was in the video. I did a video on Colombia. You all these great places to be, and then, yes, we take our adventure trip along in conjunction with that. How cool would that be?
That would be amazing. I'm always keen to promote to Americans. There are so many Americans. It's just finding the right Americans. Like you say, Americans that want to venture, the Americans that don't. I'm not expecting a five-star hotel every night. Americans that want to get to know, want to get to know a community, want to get into a country and know it. That's always what I'm looking for. It's sometimes hard to get the message across to the right people. This sounds great.
Wait, there's a lump in my bed. I was out in Australia, out in the outback, well actually next to the outback at Broken Hill, New South Wales, where the Broken Hill Festival is held. As part of the festival, they have a glamping area. I'd never even heard the term before, but glamping is glamour camping. There was this giant tent, which I was used to seeing having been on safari, but in the tent was a queen-size bed with posts and nightstands and lighting. I'm like, “What's this? This is cool.” With quilts, I mean the whole thing. It was really neat. I felt like a rabbi. The problem with it was just freezing. I wasn't prepared for that, but yeah, it was cool to that extent, but I'd rather do the adventure. If you want to have an experience, do an experience.
I could almost call it a jam, but it's not like you have to carry your own tents. There's someone cooking for you. I need a better seat.
The thing about it is when my learning of doing like the Poon Hill trip was, we didn't carry our stuff. We had the whole thing with porters and so on. That was fine. They were fabulous. They were great. Some were so adorable. If only they were gay. It was beautiful. A distraction, certainly. It was great. It allowed us to experience the joy of it rather than the drudge of, “My back's killing me.” That was good. The way you're doing it makes all sorts of sense. What are your plans for the future?
Antarctica Dreams: Planning For Once-In-A-Lifetime Expeditions
My plans for the future? I'm just organizing Ecuador, Galapagos. That's a big one. We'll be in Argentina. What do people do when they go to Argentina? They go to Antarctica. That will definitely be a big future plan, but not for a few years. It's one of these trips where people say once in a lifetime, it's overused, isn't it? The cost of Antarctica does mean it's once in a lifetime.
For real, yeah. A number of my friends went this past year. They were on a couple of different ships, and I was like, “Why wasn't I there?” I want to be able to tell that story next year. Hopefully, I'll be able to do that. The nice thing is now that I can tell the stories for people and I can go and I can talk about it, which is cool. From a different perspective, I was playing tourist so much as I am, and life experience and lifestyle as it make it so very much different because we're still running businesses while we do this. This makes things so much more interesting.
These are my dream clients. The clients that they've worked hard. They've got the time. They've got the money. I'm just like, they basically look at me and go, “I need a trip.” I'm like, “I can do that.”
A little adrenaline on that.

There are plenty of people out there who don't want an alternative. They want adventure travel. They don't want just gay travel. If you Google gay travel, you get, like I say, standard stuff. I'm often an alternative.
There's nothing wrong with that. I love all that stuff. Whether it be the Atlantis cruise for that typical type of thing or anything else for that matter. The idea of adventure travel for me has always been something I've wanted to do. Look, I've done it. More fun when you're with people that you can be yourself with. The Nepal trip was great, and I went with my mom, so it wasn't like I was out there cruising. It didn't matter about being gay or not being gay necessarily just because we were in the space of being in the moment. What nicer would it be to be able to be with your tribe? I think that means a lot and takes away stress, too.
It's a feeling, a sense of community. I talk a lot to people who are booking because a lot of people are booking and they don't know anyone on the trip. I'm just like, “They're all part of the same community. You all going to have something in common just with your gender, your sexuality.” It just means that people are going to be the same, and everyone comes into the United Trips generally with a very open mind, like I'm going to make some new friends.
Now, do you typically have a bunch of couples or singles? How does that break down?
It varies from trip. I did a Peru trip last November. I had three couples on it, which is unusual to have that many couples. It's generally singles. When I say singles, it's not a cruisey trip. They are coming as people. We have maybe 1 couple and 2 couples occasionally, but it's mostly just single people. Sometimes friends might come, like 2 or 3 friends together, come on a trip and join others.
That sounds good. That sounds fun. Count me as a board. That's for sure. What should I have asked you that I haven't asked you yet? What have you got?
You've quite a lot. It's good. It felt like a conversation, and you've shown your passion for adventure travel, which is good.
Do I pass? Would I be accepted?
Yeah.
We'd love to have you come back because I want to talk more about some details of some of the places that you're going to. I want to hear about Patagonia adventures and that. I definitely want to. If you guys are based in a tour, I definitely want to come and play with you guys because I want to tell the story from like, “Here's what I did.” This is exciting for me and I think certainly for the readers, they need to find out more about Pride adventures.
What we're going to do is we're to make sure that in the show notes we're going to have links and all sorts of cool things that that and we didn't talk about anything that you want to do special for the Pride Nomad Community so we'll talk about that and maybe there's some special stuff you can do for these guys. We'll put it into the show notes. That way, you just come to PrideNomad.com to come to the podcast. Below the video, if you're watching it here, you'll see some links to Nick and his trips and so on.
Accessible Adventures: Iceland, Wales, And Coasteering
I think maybe talking about the accessibility, because something like Kilimanjaro, you're interested, but you've probably done a lot of travel. It might be something that's such a big step for people. In terms of people that are joining and thinking, “I want to do my first prior expeditions trip, I think somewhere like Morocco, I've got a trip, I've just put some on the website now for next year from Morocco or Iceland as well. I'm doing Iceland this summer. That's great.
I love Iceland.
No altitude. We are camping. Again, your stuff's being transported. It's summer, so it's actually not that cold in Iceland, despite the name.
That's the funny thing about Iceland. Iceland is warm, Greenland is cold. It's bizarre how they just misnamed the islands. If you've not been to Iceland yet, you want to go to Iceland now. Frankly, given the climate change situation, we need to get everywhere now while we can. I was in Iceland eighteen years ago, maybe, and it was fabulous. I was five days there. What was so amazing about it was that it's just driving on the road. Every 30 minutes, you get a completely different climate, from snow to rain to sunshine. It was crazy and nice.
Can we do a four-day trek? The famous, you wouldn't have heard of it. I got the name sorted now, but it took me a long time to learn these, but the Laugavegur trail, which is Landdannalaugar to Posmork. It's crossing an Atlantic with this steaming fumaroles and bubbling bedpools and all that stuff.
It's really crazy. We need to have the whole schedule laid out, and you probably have it on the website, but we'll want to lay it out with what we're doing, too, so that people can see how they can structure their lives. Honestly, my biggest challenge is that I want to do everything and still live in Sydney all at the same time, which is not realistic. Designing your world tour as to how you're going to, if you're going to do, for example, a month in Morocco and then sometime in Columbia and then we're to be in Ecuador or whatever, it makes all sorts of sense to do that and then bump it up against your trips so that it just makes sense. It's even more affordable to travel with. Do you do trips in Wales as well?
Yeah, so I do a lot of, like, more guiding. Taking people who's scrambling or rock climbing or taking people walking the mountains. Not such big groups, just 3 or 4 people, sometimes families. I do a lot of multi-activities in Wales. Coasteering. It's where the low tide and the high tide marks are on the sea. We climb across the cliffs and swim across zones where the seas are roated. It's like a big stretch of water you have to swim across. It's like wearing wet suits.
Like a big tide pool, a thing?
Yeah, like big tide pools.
That sounds fascinating. I've not heard that before. That's very cool. Nick, I could be here for hours with you, but bring this real close so everyone can get on with their day. This has been a treat. Thank you so much for joining us. We will put stuff in the show notes down below so everyone can get there and so we can have people filming your trips. If you're cool and if you're fun, call Nick. If you're not, call somebody else. Nick, thanks so much. I'm pleased to have you with us.
Cheers. Thank you.