Welcome to DP3, the third annual edition of Fielding's The World's Most Dangerous Places. In this edition you'll find contributions from enthusiastic adventurers who helped flesh out this ever growing tome. European based Roddy Scott and Jim Hooper covered Kurdistan, Albania, West Africa and the Horn of Africa. Their input makes this book a lot more interesting. DP contributors have had in-depth experiences that CNN would envy. I spent time in the south of Afghanistan and Pakistan being the first North American to meet with the taliban, while Coskun was in Kabul under siege chatting with Massoud. In Sierra Leone, Jim Hooper was riding in the gunships with the mercenaries of Executive Outcomes while Roddy Scott was the only outsider humping with the rebels in the rain forest below. Coskun Aral and Anthony Morland watched fighters dance in front of bullets in Monrovia while I was trying to track down Western hostages in Kashmir and Wink was examining the devastated Karen refugee camps in Myanmar. Later Hooper visited with the SPLA in Southern Sudan while Roddy was cooling his heels in an Ethiopian jail, fresh from his jaunt to Albania. We managed to cover most major wars and insurgencies firsthand. All in all it's been a busy year for everyone.
Loyal readers will be happy to know that we did lash ourselves to the mast and avoided the siren song of TV deals for reality shows (we were offered and passed on a half a million to do a blood and guts version of DP) and the saccharine "based on a true story" deals which will have to wait until I am longer in the tooth and can romanticize a little better.
Rest assured we stuck to our knitting and spent our time doing what we do best. We have been on the ground in Afghanistan, Algeria, Bosnia, Cambodia, Chechnya, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Kashmir, Kurdistan, Laos, Lebanon, Liberia, Myanmar, Pakistan, the Philippines, Russia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Syria, The Sudan, Thailand, Turkey, Vietnam and many other nasty and not so nasty places. We also have been doing our homework in the United States, in Los Angeles, Miami, New York and Washington, D.C.
Along the way, we have met with a lot of extraordinary people in fascinating places-old ladies that live in caves, gardeners that sell machine guns, snake charmers, skateboarders, spooks and other colorful people are part of our travels.
We have met with Nasrallah and Fadlalah of Hezbollah, Subcommandante Marcos of Mexico, Francis Ona of BRA, Abdullah Ocalan of the PKK, Massoud, Rabani, Dostum and the taliban of Afghanistan, the KDP and PUK of Kurdistan, the FIS of Algeria, and warlords in Liberia, Afghanistan,Turkey and Tajikistan as well, the Chechen, Albanian and Lezgi mafyia, the Moros in the Philippines, mujahedin, commandos, drug smugglers, police and a whole lot more people we really don't talk about.
When we weren't on the road, we hit the books, the Internet and made plenty of phone calls in our efforts to keep track of and make sense out of this crazy world.
As our loyal readers know, we hold no political affiliations or any political agenda sacred. That's why you won't see verbatim interviews, religious haranguing. pithy political comment or flatulent PC commentaries, and you definitely won't see any fair reporting. We aren't journalists. We aren't pundits. Hell, we're just passable writers.
I used to have a real job. My idea of a vacation was to spend two to six weeks under demanding physical and mental conditions to relax from my office job. When I returned I was refreshed, invigorated, educated and thankful to be back home. I now realize that I needed this high level of intensity to make me pay attention. I was completing my "education," albeit under bizarre circumstances, but nonetheless I would return with a smattering of a new language, an understanding of another byzantine political problem and a list of new friends who might range from farmers to nomads to warlords. As I continued to drop in and out of these places my friends and associates would suggest that I should put down the stories and tips on paper, so I began writing articles about my trips.
It might be disheartening or enlightening to learn that my first published piece was in Four Wheeler Magazine followed by a major article in Soldier of Fortune. So much for literary aspirations.
Then I wrote this book. I didn't mean to. I didn't want to. I just wrote an outline to show to other far more capable writers than I. All of them looked at me and politely explained that traveling to the world's most dangerous places just to write a travel guide was in a word, stupid.
So I kept writing, researching and traveling. Along the way I met an ever growing circle of adventurers in war zones and on expeditions. Finally I reached a point where the book sucked me in. I spent late hours, early mornings, long airplane flights and endless weekends polishing the keys on my PowerBook to create the first edition of DP. After two years, a lot of trips, and help from Coskun Aral and Jack Kramer, the first rambling edition of DP arrived.
When I proudly presented my magnum opus to booksellers, they coldly asked me, "Robert, why would anyone want to buy a book about places they don't want to go?" I had never really thought about DP in that light. Taken aback by the world's indifference to what I thought was an important book, I had to ask myself: Why would anyone explore the Lost World in Borneo when they could stay home and watch Spielberg's dinosaur version at the theater? Why would anyone risk their lives to meet Massoud or the taliban when they could watch Rambo defeat the Russians in 90 minutes from their BarcaLounger? Why would anybody want to do anything that was the slightest bit dangerous, uncomfortable, strenuous, or frightening? I was about to find out.
When DP first appeared, it sold out in two weeks. During the first year DP sold out four times and although we increased print runs dramatically for the second edition, we sold out three times leaving us an uncomfortable amount of time without a DP on the shelf. I knew that there were other people like me who knew exactly why this book was written and rejoiced in the pure sense of adventure for adventure's sake. More importantly, like-minded readers sent me dozens of tips, stories and comments that continue to shape and sharpen the book. So the next time you catch yourself wearing your Mr. DP shirt under your business suit, relax, you are not alone.
This is a book for adventurers or those to want to understand what real adventure is about. What is an adventurer? I asked the same question when I read the results of an Aptitude and Interest test in high school. I had only qualified for three jobs: astronaut, advertising man and adventurer, and none of them were listed in the guidance counselor's office. I went into advertising and migrated into the adventure scene by default. I was in Kashmir when an old man explained to me that I was an astronaut because I go alone into places that nobody has been to. A rather cute but self-serving anecdote to show that adventurers are made not born. You don't need a Banana Republic correspondents vest ($95 by special order only) and a bullwhip to be an adventurer. You can be a regular guy or girl. Start small and work your way up. This book will give you enough background and information to help you decide whether you want to be Indiana Jones or East Hampton Hanna.
The people who practice sky surfing, bungy jumping and street luge can not truly claim to be adventurers but rather thrill seekers. Big wave surfers, mountain climbers and base jumpers seek a short jolt that affirms their need for thrills, but these sports are designed to create television commercials rather than meaningful accomplishments. They are out to scare themselves within their own perceptions of fear within a narrow, well-defined and statistical definition of danger.
There is also a hardcore group who, like Winston Churchill, feel that nothing beats the feeling of getting shot at and surviving. These are the hard core ex-SEALS, ex-Special Forces, ex-DEA, ex-Delta Force, undercover narcos, ex-Legionnaires. This book will provide some insight into the military and non-military world of adventure and introduce them to some positive outlets for their skills and energy. Like the group Spinal Tap, our amps go up to 11. But only if we can do something meaningful or illuminating.
Those who have an unabashed curiosity about the world may be looking for a central source of information on dangerous places. This book can never compete with the files of the world's intelligence agencies (but DP has been called by one U.S. military trainer as "the best single source of nonclassified military information in the world") but it makes for good reading on a 20 hour plane trip, and reading will add a little color to your daily dose of CNN. We have no budget, are not journos and have no agenda. For now DP is nondenominational, fun and completely our view of the world.
Journalists were once portrayed as hard-drinking, cynical idealists complete with dangling cigarette and battered notebook. Today, the people you see on TV are more likely hairsprayed, talking heads whose only scars are from plastic surgery. But there is also an unseen group of journalists out there. The shooters, stringers and Beta humpers who take the pictures, check the facts and interview the combatants. They don't make half a million a year, some don't even make $20,000 a year risking their lives only to have their work end up on the cutting room floor. They do it because it gives them an excuse to explore the outer limits of our world and hopefully make some sense of it. For them, this book will provide a leg up, give them a friend and maybe even stop a bullet if they stuff it in the front of their flak jacket.
Expats are those emaciated, short-sleeved, Iowa Sunday school families who seem to end up loaded on Marine helicopters every time a dangerous place falls apart. Hopefully, 15 minutes thumbing through DP can provide a little more insight into just what is really going on in that oil rich, skanky little cesspool you are being paid big bucks to move to. This book is also a good primer on where not to go hiking on weekends, how much you should really pay for that souvenir AK-47 and where not to bring that Barbie Doll. It'll even tell you where you can run your Toyota diesel on coconut oil.
Anyone who wonders how to make an emergency I.V. out of a green coconut, or what kind of sneakers the PKK wear needs this book. You could stomp anyone at Trivial Pursuit (The Apocalypse Version) with all the esoteric trivia contained herein. More importantly, you can learn a whole heap more about the world and the people that live in it. For those who want to actually make the world a better place, we provide hundreds of resources and contacts that will let you do more good than just singing "We are the World" or even "I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke."
It seems that this book has a special place on the bookshelves of writers, film directors, TV producers and scriptwriters. Most are shocked to find that we are quite normal people, devoid of headbands, scars, cammo Hummers, steroid-sized muscles or even a publicist. We get about two calls a week from people who want to turn us into the next Rambo, Indiana Jones or Marlin Perkins. They suddenly realize what we see and do is far too cerebral and too real to sell Jenny Craig or Pontiacs. (Oh, you mean you actually go to these places?). When TV transcends The Grind, Jerry Springer or even EyeWitness News you will see DP on the box. But for now it's a book.
If you decide to wax up your Discover card and actually go to some of the locations described in this book, please remember that visiting these places may likely get you killed or earn you the nickname Stumpy. On the other hand, since more people are injured in their homes than outside them, you may be safer traveling to some of the places in this book. So remember, this is a book about dangerous places, dangerous people and dangerous things. If you are one of those people who doesn't know the difference between phone sex and everlasting love, quickly put this book back on the shelf. Nothing in this book will get you out of a Somali jail and no one in Chechnya gives a damn if you really are a nice person and make a mean chocolate mousse. War zones reek of the smell of diesel, death, vomit and musty blown-up buildings. There is nothing photogenic, amusing or entertaining about other people's suffering. We do not (as we have been accused of in the Sunday London Times) endorse, encourage or approve of travel to dangerous areas unless you are there for a purpose and fully understand the risks involved.
Areas of conflict change daily, land mines are laid every night, and dictators move in and out of presidential mansions faster than summer replacement sitcoms. We've been taken to task by institutions like Outside magazine for our overly verbose disclaimer, but the bottom line in DP is about how to avoid danger.
Although we have traveled to (and continue to travel to) the regions in this book, much of the information is gathered from secondhand sources when we feel it is more accurate than our firsthand reports. War zones, Third World countries and nasty places are very mercurial places with no one really knowing what's going on at any one time. Situations change by the hour. We ask a lot of questions, and we write down the answers that make sense. We avoid recounting our interviews with politicians and zealots, and sometimes people tell us the wrong answer or, God forbid, just lie. We check out as much as we can, but we use a lot of common sense and street smarts in translating what we see and hear. So use this book and other sources as pieces of the puzzle. If you choose to travel to dangerous places, get your information updated by knowledgeable people before you go. Ask the embassy, police, locals, bus drivers and farmers what's going on. But remember, even if you think you have all the pieces, you're still part of a puzzle.
Our official disclaimer for people who didn't get the subtle point of the paragraph above: Due to the nature of this book and the unusual sources of information, we ask that you do not make any decisions based on the material presented here. In fact, this book is about places where you should not go (they are dangerous). This book is written by a group of people with help from correspondents, friends and contacts around the world. To protect many of our sources (we do have to, uh, break, or rather bend, some laws), we have not credited all of them. We cannot guarantee this information is accurate or reliable simply because by the time we get back and write it down, the situation could reverse. Do not use this book for the planning of any activity. We encourage you always to investigate thoroughly and use as many sources of information as you can find regarding areas where you wish to travel. Although we have an uncanny knack for predicting wars, massacres and kidnappings, Fielding and the authors cannot take responsibility for any misfortune, liability or inconvenience due to your interpretation, application or even understanding of the information in this book. Let's do it again in all caps now:
THE AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS ASSUME NO LIABILITY NOR DO THEY ENCOURAGE YOU TO DO, SEE, VISIT OR TRY ANY OF THE ACTIVITIES OR ACTIONS DISCUSSED IN THIS BOOK. THIS BOOK IS INTENDED FOR BACKGROUND INFORMATION ONLY AND MAY NOT BE RELIABLE AFTER PRESS TIME.
This book is not all doom and gloom. There are sections on how to "Make a Difference" and "Save the Planet." We show you how to actually connect with other people and organizations to effect change. It might be clearing land mines in Cambodia, finding the parents of Rwandan refugees, guarding food shipments in Sierra Leone, or even teaching people how to vote in Algeria. In all cases, I hope that this book encourages you to dig a little deeper into lesser-known regions and peoples of the world.
We do not support any cause, back any fight or endorse any activity that uses violence. But like spectators at a Brazilian soccer game we're not supposed to play but sometimes we get awfully close to the action. We can't afford to be partisan, but we encourage you to root and support your favorite cause. Don't be shy about contacting the resources listed to find out more.
So remember DP's primitive formula: present knowledge in easy to understand packets, educate people to what is really going on, then show them how to fix it. Knowledge fights fear, builds hope, exposes cowards, supports the just and makes the world a better place.
These are the most commonly asked questions asked of us.
Many people ask why we use the laughing skull as a mascot. Well, Mr. DP (as he is affectionately called) came into being because we needed something simple, memorable and small to give out as gifts to soldiers, freedom fighters and anyone who helps in our work. So I designed a mascot and printed a pile of stickers to slap on everything from AK-47s to APCs. Mr. DP is sort of Kilroy for the nineties. Either a not so subtle jab at the meaning of life or just another goofy sticker. Our T-shirts were created to provide memorable clothing that we could give out to our favorite people. They are XL, heavy duty and totally fashionable because we wear them. We just sell the extras because people think they are so cool. And of course some people just scratch their heads and wonder at it all.
I once said that "neither I nor my coauthors have any interest in becoming celebrities or motivational speakers," but guess what we've become? Right now I appear in front of an average of 25 million people a month through articles and television appearances. We are surprised to find ourselves presented as pundits. Before Cambodia fell apart Wink was on CNN with his precise, condensed and deadly accurate prediction of the meltdown. Coskun and the ever-smiling Mr. DP has one of Turkey's top rated weekly shows ( Haberci on ATV). So bear with us as we enjoy our 15 minutes of fame and if you do bump in to us make sure you buy us a beer and say hi. We always enjoy talking to people.
Between the three of us and our correspondents, we get to most of the interesting and most forbidden spots. We travel to places that are rarely covered or that we predict will change dramatically. Algeria, Bougainville, Sudan, Afghanistan,Tajikitan, Albania are just some of our stops. We use the phone a lot and take a lot of trips to find out exactly what is going on.
This book exists because no one else would write it and I was surprised that there was no book on areas where travelers really need one. Once I started, I became enthused with the absolute coolness of wrapping up the big bad world within a thousand pages. I would compare the experience to doing a hard tour in the worst of the world's war zones and writing a doctoral thesis at the same time every year.
Send in whatever you want. But we just don't have the budget to pay more than a T-shirt if we like what we read and publish it. We also seek out travel tips from the world's wild places. I didn't write this book for money or for fame so you shouldn't expect it either. We do it because we live it. Some readers have said they are "itching for action" and want to get in on what we do. We don't engage in any armed combat, we do not carry any firearms, and we do not harm, injure or kill people in our travels. We get shot at, abused, scammed, beaten, blown up, sick, bored and bashed, but we don't reciprocate. (Sounds like a bad "Kung Fu" episode.)
Judging from the letters I get and the people I meet, if you put all our readers together in one room it would be a great party. Surfers, combat photographers, graying intellectuals, politicians, soldiers, missionaries, grandmothers, young girls, Legionnaires, Trans sahara bikers, mountain climbers, mercenaries, embassy staff, movie stars, aid workers, college students, DEA trainees, spooks, security analysts and just regular folks who groove on adventure and discovery.
We are in the business of providing information, not promoting tourism. If any book could be criticized for discouraging travel, it is this one. The uniqueness of DP is that we rarely cover any attractions or provide any reasons to visit any of these countries. We only cover what is potentially dangerous and along the way open our readers' eyes. The underlying message of this book is to encourage people to better understand their world and not accept the traditional clichÈs. If that encourages you to brave the world's dangerous places, so be it.
We continually travel, research, check facts and interview people. We are truly information junkies, scanning thousands of documents every month. We are also completely unafraid to get on a plane or a camel and go directly into a hot spot to find out what is really going on.
Some adventure magazines have tried to portray us as tough guys cruising the world looking for trouble. Magazines, newspapers, television and radio like to bestow titles like Dangerman, The Guru of Adventure Travel and The Real Thing. I can tell you that, from experience, trouble hurts and that tough is for leather and overdone steaks. I consider myself a seeker of knowledge, a far more cerebral occupation than "adventurer." We don't go looking for danger, we go looking for answers.
As for DP being a "guy" thing, sorry to disappoint you, over half the mail I get is from women and not one of them wants to be a guy. I like to say giving gender specific tips to war zones is like using alcohol swabs before lethal injection. It is politically correct but you're going to end up dead anyway. Women are as adventurous as men, but it seems they are restrained by their rather developed sense of self preservation and common sense. It would be fair to say that the male sex has a reputation of not being burdened with prudence or even common sense.
I truly can't answer this. There is no Dangermeter on my wrist and most people don't even know when they are in real danger. My pick for illustration purposes might be as mundane as surviving a plane crash in Borneo, Coskun hitting a land mine in Afghanistan or Wink riding his motorcycle through war-torn Cambodia. We really never set out to do anything overly dangerous. But we do pride ourselves on knowing how to handle ourselves in dangerous situations, and we have done a lot of fast talking at gunpoint. I have been described as "very lucky," Coskun as "charming" and Wink as "crazy," so that's as far as I can analyze it. So far, the gods have been smiling on us. We must be doing something right.
Back to Fielding's DangerFinder Intro |
The authors and publishers assume no liability nor do they encourage
you to do, see, visit or try any of the activities or actions
discussed in this site. This book is intended for background information
only. ©1998 Fielding Worldwide, Inc. All rights reserved. This
material is not to be reproduced or transmitted without the written
permission of for more information see our official disclaimer |
