haha, I’ll have to download it. Yes, many people I’ve seen on travel shows going there have bodyguards, and survival training. Once you’re there though you immediately realize how absurd that is!

I was thinking one of the larger think tanks might be interested in doing some research on extended travel – and potential economic benefits somehow. I will definitely send you any contacts I come across.

I would have to say the same it would sound crazy, But your podcast interview with Chris @AmateurTraveller really changed my mind on Iraq and I would love to visit. The Northern Kurdish area sounds like a real adventure. Have you seen the top gear episode when they go to Iraq? Download it for sure you would love it. They take off there bullet proof vests when they understand they don’t need it in Iraq but put it back on when they are in Turkey! very funny show.

No – no plans for a survey at this time – but I’d love to. We started talking about it last year – but to get a really wide audience – it’s hard and we gave up at that time as we had to focus on other things. We’ll see what comes up this year and see if we can partner with someone to do it! If you have any suggestions – let me know!

It was a very good guess, in fact in most Middle Eastern countries the number at the beginning of the year were much higher than normal. I think if you had predicted widespread uprisings in the Arab world in December 2010 people would have said you were crazy 🙂

As for extended travel, I think it is happening, although measuring it is very difficult like you say. I suppose you have to look for the outliers on any survey to get good numbers. But when I met up with documentary folks they were telling me about hundreds they had met all over the world doing extended travel/location independent lifestyles. Many, many more than they had expected when they set out to meet those people. What was interesting is how popular it’s becoming in the third and newly developed world countries.

Any plans for Meet, Plan, Go! to work on compiling statistics on extended travel in the near future?