After one day and a night in the train riding through the desolate Gobi desert you enter the concrete city Ulaan Baatar, surrounded by many hills. Everywhere you see the gers – the round nomad tents draped with felt – between the wooden and concrete houses. You can`t miss the statue of their great warrior Chingis Khan who conquered the world by horse and be amazed about the 26 meter high golden Buddha.

The next day we arrange a jeep, a driver and an english speaking guide / cook. In Mongolia there are hardly any roads and may abruptly disappear in the desert. If so, you find yourself driving through the grassy fields, over hills and along mountains … no signs, no villages only wild horses, camels, livestock and never ending landscapes.

They have GPS for many decades…the Ger Positioning system…if you are lost (our driver was only lost twice), you drive to a ger and ask the nomad family for some directions.

The first night we couldn`t find a  shelter for our tents, it was becoming dark and the weather was changing… it started to snow gently and the wind was getting stronger. We decided to ask the nomads if we could stay at their place. When you come up to a nomad family, you are welcomed by the barking dogs and the head of the family.

First you chitchat and if they like you they invite you in…this means they will give you their own beds, share their food and drinks and exchange stories. This family of 10 had three gers and we all sat around the stove in one tent while the guide was translating questions and their stories. We were offered some meat from a sheep’s head which lay in a steel bowl and the oldest boy was churning yak`s milk.

When it was time to sleep, we went outside to go to the toilet; a toilet is in this case a big hole in the ground about 50 meters away from the tents with some shingles over the pit. They span some canvas around it so when you sit only your head is in the open and you can see the horses run around on the steppe J.  When they move again in before the winter starts to more sheltered places they just dump the hole.

That night it was so dark you literally couldn`t see your hand in front of you like I have never had experienced before. When we walked those 50 meters towards i though was the toilet with the wind in our backs, we looked back to see if we could find the tent again and saw a very small line of light we could focus on, where the chimney of the stove left the top of the ger.

Outside it was now freezing and the wind was getting stronger and stronger….when we turned again the little line of light was gone! In the pitch black night we couldn`t see anything but blackness and told ourselves we just had to go straight into the wind and make about 50 big steps….but we didn`t encounter any tent. The next 15 minutes we became really lost; lights to our right suddenly turned away and we realized they were cars or trucks in the distance; dogs barked in a far distance but came from different directions, so we stood still and each 20 seconds we made a 360 and looked if we could see any light and suddenly there it was… strange….a yellow square painting hanging in the air. About 100 meters away opposite the direction we were walking…suddenly we knew! It turned out to be the back window of the jeep! The driver had turned on the light of the jeep to make his bed (he always slept inside his jeep). We have never run so quickly a 100 meter and were so happy to be back! …and nobody had not missed us; inside the ger we saw they were preparing for the night and they had closed the gap in the ceiling so no cold was coming in anymore…and no light was going out. We took some homemade vodka (made of fermented mare milk) and promised ourselves next time we would pee just around the corner of the tent when it was dark. During the night we heard some wolves howling in the distance.

Travelixer Story

by Edwin de Vries

Website: www.terapy.eu

By Miriam McIver

website: http://miriammciver.blogspot.com

Image this….

Someone offers you a ticket to the magical Italian Alps for an unforgettable trip. Explore the region with a group of great people, board on crispy snow and race in dog sleds…  Moreover you get a load of pocket money and coverage of all expenses…. only in return for your extremely epic travel video you’ll produce to scatter around the internet.

Too good to be true?

NO!  Because a brand new version of Digital Diary White Edition is a fact and the application is now open!

So, if you’re reading this and you already feel an adrenaline rush AND you are an extremely talented visual storyteller or a blogger with a huge influence AND  you think you are able to produce a wicked video that you’ll boast into your personal network to reach thousands of views.. Well then this might be your chance to make such an awesome trip come true.

Then apply now!!

But be quick!! Before 7th of february 2012 we need to have your completed application!!!

Where? Somewhere in the Italian Alps
When? In the week of 27 February to 4 March 2012

Procedure:
Complete the application form
The Tourismboard of the region will select:

• 7 talented visual storytellers .
 For,
• 7 days of exploring.
• To create a number of awesome videos need to be produced to carry out the region’s story, like it’s never told before.

What’s in it for me?

• 
Compensation: a couple of thousend euro
• All travel expenses being taken care of (flight, stay & food)
• Unforgettable experience and great opportunity for more of this

Arrividerci!

At the start of 2011 I found myself quite pale without energy, having spent too much time trying targeting Tourism Boards with good hope to sell storytravels. We found ourselves ending up in boring, energy draining email exchanges. That’s not storytraveling! It’s about exploring yourself and the world, stimulating the senses, experiencing and tell wicked stories.

We, me in particular, definitely needed some movement, a new stream.
So I came up with a personal years’ theme: “Wheels Up”.
The theme dared me “jumping off a rock having the trust being able to fly in time”.

Prompt an opportunity came along. A four month funded interchange with another entrepreneur, Mikaela Bandini, in the very south of Italy. She’s the creative mind behind a cool platform named Urban Italy, brilliant to post my stories.  After a few skypecalls I decided to go for the adventure. I arrived in Matera, a completely different world than the streets of Amsterdam, I was used to. A small city with an old centre where people used to live in caves untill late fifties; an “island” in Italy’s most vast region, named Basilicata. I’d made a voyage of discovery to create wicked visual stories.

I created visual stories of my local experiences and encounters.

Made friends and Italianized

After 3 months I decided to leave my appartement to really dive in the adventure. From then on I lived from a suitcase.

I moved from one agriturismo to another all around Italy. I told stories of from tomatoes that grow on classical music on Sicily to Mussels cooked in hot volcanic sand on an island off Napoli.

VIDEO

    

As I spent as little as possible, I was able to live from the stories I sold to some hotels and touroperators. Sometimes strongly believing in what I’m doing, sometimes with doubts coping with uncertainty where it all would be good for. I learned blogging and video editing from my best teacher: YouTube :)

 

Back in Matera I met Marianna and we fell in love immediately. We made a little storytravel discovering we have a shared passion discovering and telling visual stories. Finally we got our own little place in the cavy old centre.

In the meanwhile Mikaela presented some of my visual stories to the tourism board of the region. Finally they announced an open tender for a video stories competition that would promote the region called Digital Diary. I subscribed and was invited with 6 other young artist from all around the world.

I chose to tell my own story in relation to the beautiful lands I ended up living, finding a way to stay, to become one with, driven by love. I costed some blood, sweat and tears producing it, but it payed off. I became second in the competition with 14.000 views on youtube.

“Wheels Up!” worked. Just going for an entrepreneurial dream created a completely new chapter in my life.
I moved to Italy made over told numerous visual stories 20 videos and 9000 pictures of my travels. Learned to suvived with a suitcase and a camera. Brought my company StoryTravelers to a new level, gained 3000 twitter followers, I learned how to edit videos via youtube, made lot of new friends, gained 4 kilos because of the mouth watering food, I learned a new language, found the love of my life.

Moreover I learnt the following things:

• Never ever give up: most ideas wont make it because people give them up too early. I just kept walking on my path,  planting seeds. A some point the sprouts just must come out, nourish them and the will grow.
• I trust my talent: with little experience in blogging, videomaking/editing in a country in which I did not speak the language I managed to put myself on the map.Only with a deep trust I can do it. I believe in two talents I have: social skills and inventiveness.
• Be ready to make trade offs when you start up: if you hold on to the idea you need to a car, new clothes every month, a renowned job, a steady managers income, live a riskless life you’re unlikely to create your own succes from zero. Are you ready to: leave you comfortzone? to invest all your time? live with not even half of the income you are used to?

This years theme is “Next Level”. New horizons in sight. The competition entry boosted the value of StoryTravelers and more substantial projects are upcoming.

To be continued!

In this era of ever increasing noise and less attention relevant questions to all smaller scaled initiatives in the travel sector:

 
“How to inspire people to come over and spend their holiday?” BUT “How to ensure people will hear you?”

In this noisy digital era storytelling might be the strongest solution. Carrying out your story is of essential relevance of your survival as a travel destination. Otherwise you might end up being the best kept secret of the region.

But what is all this buzz about storytelling in the first place? Haven’t we been doing that for ages?
Yes! and that’s exactly why it’s so powerful. It’s in our system, we know it we love it, it triggers emotions and creates understanding. Most importantly: when your story is meaningfull is likely to be retold!

The only thing that has changed dramatically is how a story reaches us and how a story is told.

Good luck!

For any question don’t hesitate to contact me.
Feel free too use the slideshow, but remind to mention the autor :)
Credits to Jerry Ting to allow me us his awesome images of Barn Swallows

Crossing the globe on a tractor to collect dreams

Dutch theatre loving Manon Ossevoort once made up a story of a girl that would drive on a tractor from Holland to the South Pole. On her journey she’d to collect the dreams of the world. She’d build a snowman and place all dream on his belly.

in 2005 she realizes the made up story is her OWN story! And so she decided to live her story and lift off to the South Pole on her tractor.
 

 Now almost 4 years later, after a journey with ups and down, laughs and tears, she has arrived at Cape the Good Hope; ready for the last part of her hero’s journey.

“Coming year, 2012, I’m going to the South Pole, by tractor! My tractor is at the ‘Cape of Good Hope’ in South Africa. I’ve arrived here after driving more than 3,8 years and 38.000km’s, alone on a tractor, with my dog. During my journey I’ve looked for inspiring people, initiatives and amazing stories.”

Manons motivation

Isn’t she the the ultimate StoryTraveler?

Through my website thousands of people worldwide, and media, have followed the adventures of the ‘Tractor Girl. Coming expedition I’ll fill this website again with my adventures, stories and film-footage. (coming up soon)”

Manon Ossevoort

Balloons of Bhutan is a portrait of happiness in the last Himalayan kingdom.

..is a storytelling project of the of the brilliant mind of Jonathan Harris. He brings storytelling to a whole new level combining experiences, multiple perspectives, statistics, art visuals, technology to express the way we relate to eachother and the world around us. I simply love this project and J is has become a strong source of inspiration for StoryTravelers.

Enjoy and I suggest you don’t only stick to this post but dive into Jonathans work. Chapeau! Or skip this post immediately to dive into the balloons
 
“In Bhutan, happiness is no laughing matter — academics study it, spreadsheets track it, billboards tout it, conferences debate it, and every year, flocks of foreign intellectuals travel to Thimphu to share their ideas about what exactly makes a person happy.

Instead of “Gross National Product“, Bhutan uses “Gross National Happiness” to measure its socio-economic prosperity, essentially organizing its national agenda around the basic tenets of Buddhism. Bhutan’s fourth king, Jigme Singe Wangchuck invented the idea in 1972, to give his tiny country some international clout and guard against potential future invasion by its two mighty neighbors (India and China).

Given the seriousness with which this topic is treated, I thought it would be fun to do something a little bit silly, so in late 2007, I traveled to Bhutan and spent two weeks handing out balloons.

I asked people five questions pertaining to happiness: what makes them happy, what is their happiest memory, what is their favorite joke, what is their level of happiness between 1 and 10, and, if they could make one wish, what would it be. Based on each person’s stated level of happiness, I inflated that number of balloons, so very happy people would be given 10 balloons and very sad people would be given only one (but hey, it’s still a balloon). Then I wrote each person’s wish onto a balloon of their favorite color. I repeated this process for 117 different people, from all different ages and backgrounds.

On the final night, all 117 wish balloons were re-inflated and strung up at Dochula, a sacred mountain pass at 10,000 feet, leaving them to bob up and down in the wind, mingling with thousands of strands of prayer flags.

Here’s the finished story — enjoy”

– Jonathan Harris, October 2011

See Jonathan on TED
Jonathan’s website

This bench lives on an edge of the old village of Craco | Basilicata | Italy, wich was subjected to a massive landslide and subsequently abandoned in the late fiftees. You’ll find one ‘new’ building that survived with maybe two old souls that remind of whats once a lively village.

39D2H7YQBG7C

“My favorite natural phenomenon is one I do not even know the name of, even after talking to meteorologists and astrophysicists I am none the wiser.What I am talking about I have decided to call The Arctic Light and it is a natural phenomenon occurring 2-4 weeks before you can see the Midnight Sun.

The Sunset and Sunrise are connected in one magnificent show of color and light lasting from 8 to 12 hours. The sun is barely going below the horizon before coming up again. This is the most colorful light that I know, and the main reason I have been going up there for the last 4 years, at the exact
same time of year, to photograph. Based on previous experience, I knew this was going to be a very
difficult trip. Having lost a couple of cameras and some other equipment up there before, it was crucial to bring an extra set of everything. I also
made sure I had plenty of time in case something went wrong.
If you can imagine roping down mountain cliffs, or jumping around on slippery rocks covered in seaweed with 2 tripods, a rail, a controller,
camera, lenses, filters and rigging for 4-5 hour long sequences at a time, and then
having to calculate the rise and fall of the tides in order to capture the essence – it all proved bit of a challenge.

And almost as if planned, the trip would turn out to become very
difficult indeed. I had numerous setbacks including: airline lost my
luggage, struggling to swim ashore after falling into the Arctic sea: twice, breaking lenses, filters, tripod, computer, losing the whole dolly rig and controller into the sea, and even falling off a rather tall rock and ending
up in the hospital. As much as I wanted to give up, the best way Out is
always “Through”. I am glad I stuck it through though because there were some amazing sunrises waiting. At 1:06 you see a single scene from day to night to day which is from 9pm to 7am. Think about that for a minute.. 10 hours with light like that.

I asked the very talented Marika Takeuchi to specifically compose and
perform a song for this movie, and what she came up with is absolutely remarkable. Thank you very much Marika!”

Follow him on facebook.com/TSOphotography for more photos, videos & updates. TSO Photography Lives in Oslo, Norway ]]> http://www.storytravelers.com/cool-green-spots/the-arctic-light/feed/ 0 http://www.storytravelers.com/our-story/an-interview-with-caspar-diederik-on-digital-storytelling/ http://www.storytravelers.com/our-story/an-interview-with-caspar-diederik-on-digital-storytelling/#comments Tue, 22 Nov 2011 21:55:04 +0000 Caspar Diederik http://www.storytravelers.com/?p=23308 Original Article published on http://travelllll.com by Rich Withaker

Dutch visual storyteller Caspar Diederik has coined a new term: storytraveling. Storytraveling is the art of telling travel stories in a short, visual and catchy way.

His latest digital storytelling project, Digital Diary, includes the works of seven different artists who each produced visual stories of their own impressions of Italy’s off-the-beaten-path, southern province of Basilicata.

I recently caught up with Caspar (@StoryTravelers) to get a better understanding of what is involved in planning and executing such a project from start to finish.

[Rich] How long have you been a “digital storyteller”?

[Caspar] Well, actually, when I was 18, I made a road movie with friends while I was cruising around Australia. Later, during extensive travels through Africa (2008) and South America (2005), I told visual stories via my social network, and those following my updates always stimulated me to do more with the storytelling talents they saw in me.

Is this your first professional “destination” piece?

That depends on how you define “destination.” In 2010 we started doing projects for five high end eco-lodges in Costa Rica and we had various clients afterwards that were all lodges/hotels. This indeed is the first piece for a territory/region.

To what extent were the shots pre-planned, or did you just make it up as you went along?

Before I started, I knew I wanted to tell my own story about arriving from my country for a voyage of discovery and then finding a way to stay, all because I fell in love. So, roughly, I knew what kind of perspective and elements I’d like to have. Nevertheless, a journey unfolds as you go along, so I prefer to go with the flow and see what crosses my path. Also, because authenticity is a central value for me, it can’t be too arranged. While editing, new ideas also pop up.

How did it come about? Did you approach the tourist office or did they find you?

Basically, I brought the concept of storytraveling to Italy and the founder of Urban Italy took it from there. She proposed it to the region with her own wrap, http://cantforget.it, and I created content for them.

What did they want to get from it?

A different way to present the story of a region online.

What market/audience are they hoping to reach?

Everyone that seeks a ‘real’ travel experience online can be inspired. Travelers from western Europe and the States are most likely to be audience, although the Internet knows no borders. With keywords like “off the beaten track,” “different,” and “authentic,” we don’t expect a dull group of tourists, but independent travelers open for real experiences.

How long did it take to edit?

The entire process took fifteen days using Final Cut Pro 7 and Photoshop CS5.

What equipment do you use?

I use a Canon 400 D with a Canon EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 Image Stabilized USM SLR Lens for EOS Digital SLRs. I also used a Canon HF21 with Sennheiser MK200 mic.

What’s next? Will you be concentrating on travel in future?

I plan to focus on heaps of interesting visual storytelling projects in the smart travel scene. Also,I plan on building storytravelers.com and expanding our network of awesome storytravelers and like-minded partners, similar to you guys, to shake conventional territorial marketing. Ultimately, I plan to develop the way forward for digital storytelling.

Published by Rich Whitaker

Rich is Travelllll.com’s Digital Ambassador – He oversees the site’s North American development while searching for new and exciting ideas related to online travel marketing. From his base in Marblehead, Massachusetts, Rich also runs Brilliant Travel Media.