Meet the Adventurers of the Year: Educator Khadija Bahram

Last week we announced the 2009 Adventurers of the Year, selected for their extraordinary achievements in exploration, conservation, action sports, and humanitarian work. Now, for the first time ever, you can vote for the Readers' Choice Adventurer of the Year. To help you get to know them, we are going to highlight a different adventurer daily. You can only vote once, so make sure to check out each adventurers' profile, video, and photo gallery, before firing up our voting machine.

Face of Hope

The gunmen came from the center of the village, each carrying a Kalashnikov assault rifle. They looked at the vehicle, a dusty SUV with the battered logo of an aid organization: IRC (International Rescue Committee). Inside, three women sat with their driver. The group had just arrived from Gardez in eastern Afghanistan, where they were working to establish a project to aid disabled children. The gunmen knew this, and opened fire.

Khadija Bahram was in Kabul in August 2008 when she heard that four members of her team had been murdered... Continue reading this story >> 

Sebastian Junger, Scott Anderson, Chip Brown Read ADVENTURE

Some of our favorite writers will be reading from our new anthology, The New Age of Adventure, next Monday night at the Half King in New York City. Here's the lineup:

SEBASTIAN JUNGER, reading from “The Lion in Winter,” his profile of Ahmad Shah Massoud, an Afghan warrior who fought the Taliban in the years before September 11, 2001.

SCOTT ANDERSON, reading from “Coming of Age at Band-iAmir," a story about a year-long road trip he took across Asia with his father.

CHIP BROWN, reading from “The Last Cairn," a profile of Johnny Waterman, the mad genius of Alaskan mountaineering, and his mysterious disappearance.

Attendees will have the chance to win a Timex Expedition watch and other great prizes.

We'll post pictures after the event. Stay tuned!

GET IT NOW: Preorder your copy of The New Age of Adventure: Ten Years of Great Writing here.

Where Next: Iraq and AfghanistanTouring Mess-o-potamia

When Geoff Hann led the first tourists back into Iraq last March, people thought he was nuts. Until, that is, the trip became a headline-grabbing hit and Hann booked sold-out return excursions to Iraq—and Afghanistan—departing in October (hinterlandtravel.com). Could the British guide be onto something? 

—Brendan Spiegel

ADVENTURE: Let’s start with the obvious: Why guide trips in Iraq and not, say, sunny Costa Rica?

Geoff Hann: Thirty years ago, before Saddam was in power, I did a London-to-Kathmandu overland and fell in love with the region. There are thousands of archaeological sites left behind by the likes of Alexander the Great. This is where our civilization began. I’ve led tours here ever since.

A: What makes you think these places are safe? There’s still near-daily violence in both Iraq and Afghanistan. 

GH: If you listened to the media all the time, you’d never go anywhere. If anything happens to us in Iraq or Afghanistan it will be quite by chance, just as it would be anywhere else.