Sunday, July 15, 2007

The World's Most Dangerous Places


Canadian author and filmmaker Robert Young Pelton has made a career out of traveling through the world's most dangerous places. His recent journeys have taken him to the siege of Grozny in Chechnya, the battle of Qala-I-Jangi in Afghanistan, and Baghdad's "RPG Alley". He has been kidnapped by right wing death squads in Colombia, survived a plane crash in Indonesia, and gracefully endured numerous detainments and attacks. He is perhaps most famous for his world exclusive interview of the American Taliban, John Walker Lindh, in December of 2001.


I met (virtually) Robert Young Pelton in 1999 when, among other things, he had a column on ABCNews. I liked the guy, because he actually went to dangerous countries to bring back stories the media weren't covering or were reporting from far away. Moreover, he has a very personnal way of writing. I remember one of his paper on the military: How to travel the world for free, meet interresting people and then kill them.


RYP has writtten numerous books, but his most widely know is Fielding the World's Most Dangerous Places, an account of the most dangerous countries in the World.


To learn more about this iconoclast adventurer, visit his Website Come Back Alive.


There are also good interviews with him here and here.

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