Hello and welcome to this episode of Tripology.

It's the only backpacking show where the hosts don't even bother to take their belts off when they're going through airport security.

I'm Alan and I'm here with the ever decisive Adam.

Ever so nice to be back mate.

Thank you everyone for joining us.

We really do appreciate it.

Wicked show today we're going to have a little catch up as we normally do.

I've been making some decisions on my side.

I know you've got some decisions to make on your side.

And then we've got rice for breakfast back by popular demand, we're going to cover a dish that's very buttery and very chickeny.

And then of course, we've got Tales of a trip where we're going to hear from one of you guys.

Well, I'm excited to hear your review of chicken with butter on top of it.

Very, very nice.

One of my old Mancunian favourites.

I bet it's a good good Curry scene up in Manchester.

Of I mean we have a literal mile of Curry stretching all the way off into the distance.

So they call it Curry Mile.

Sometimes people say that.

Yep.

That's not the morning after anyway.

It's too early in the episode to to do a poo joke anyway.

We've been making some decisions haven't we made?

What's going on in your side?

Well, I'm just sort of trying to weigh up whether I stay in Shagao.

I I want to go home for Christmas basically at the time of recording, this is sort of piercing through October with with alarming rate.

So sort of I gotta go home for Christmas.

Do I leave Shagao and try to desperately get some more Philippines in, or do I make sure I experience everything I want to experience in Chagao before leaving?

You know what I'm like because there's two schools of thought in there.

I'm like, OK, look, you're in the Philippines, you've got rented accommodation.

It's really nice.

You've got friends, you've got training here.

Just stay put.

And then you like, have everything you need to go home for Christmas or do you leave?

But then once you get on the frame wave or I'm going to leave, you're like, oh, well, oh, I'll go to here in the Philippines.

But then Borneo is quite close by.

So I'll go to Borneo really quickly.

And then, oh, God, you're not that far from Georgia.

Remember Kuala Lumpur, that time you spent in the jungle with those?

Koalas.

Yeah, no, of course.

Well, this is the big dilemma that a lot of travellers have is when when they do stop and they either stay in one place for a long time, recharge the literal and metaphorical batteries and also maybe try and accrue a little bit of money in order to go to the next destination.

You end up making decisions, making friends.

You, you basically like, I don't know, you make commitments, you have jobs, contracts, cars, all these different relationships and things.

So it obviously is much more difficult to RIP yourself away from it.

Once you've been somewhere for a little while.

I've been here in Chagao since July.

The, the things that you accumulate that make it a little bit harder to leave.

Obviously it's not a huge barrier to leaving, but part of it's like, oh, well, you know, I've got that.

I've got that big bag of, of rice.

So I don't want to waste that.

So I'll stay just another few days.

I bought that liquid soap that's quite a lot.

So I'll try and use that before I go.

And you know, I've, I've paid rent up until this day.

It's hard to stay up until then.

You like, it's so easy to put up barriers.

I basically think what I'm going to do is stay in Shagao until the end of October and then get another month of travelling the Philippines in and I'll I'll just go home in December.

And do you think that you've explored Shagao at sort of a, a slow pace?

You've just done things as and when do you feel like you've become accustomed to what it's really like to live in Shagao?

Or did you do loads of stuff at the very beginning and now you're and now you?

There was that obviously that middle section in the middle where you now you're just living your life, going to jiu jitsu and surfing and there's still a stack of shit to do and you're like, oh fuck, I really should have been ticking some of that stuff.

Off.

Yeah, kind of.

I mean, there's not Charlie Gow's not known for having a a bunch of stuff to do other than surfing.

Oh, right.

But I will say I've probably seen and done less than you would if you were only staying for three weeks.

Seen and done less, really.

I think that's normal because I like, for the first two weeks I packed a bunch in and then I was like, Oh well, you know, I'm here for so long, I'll just live for a little while.

And then there's other things up north and stuff that I just haven't done because I just didn't need to because I was here for a long time.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, just so we can visualize it, me and all the listeners, how long does it take to drive from one end of the island to the other?

Like 2 1/2 hours.

Oh, OK.

And you?

Is there a road that goes all the way round the outside?

Kind of, it gets a bit sketchy as you go up north.

Oh yeah, Well, because of the people there, because of the quality of the road now.

Because of the roads A.

Load of wild pigs trying to get their own back.

OK, Well, well, yeah.

I mean, whatever you, whatever decision you do make will be the right one, I'm sure.

I don't know.

I don't know if I'm really in a position to tell you to do one or the other, to be honest.

I I think maybe can I just throw the cat amongst the pigeons and ask you a question?

That's not going to go well.

Is it a cat among pigeons?

It'll have somebody's eye.

Out.

But we've spoken about this a few times on the podcast before, and it is sort of a question that I've been, it's been at the forefront of my mind over the last few weeks because I'm about to make a big decision as well.

Do you think you're going to go back to shotgun?

Listen mate, I suppose the problem is I've always thought I was going to go back to somewhere.

If you told me when I left Hanoi for the first time in 2015 that now in 2025, I wouldn't have been back, I simply would not have believed it.

Yeah, yeah, it's the trouble.

Like categorically, I just been oh, you're an idiot.

Who are you?

Cassandra, the ancient Greek soothsayer?

Why don't you fuck off?

But lo and behold, you'd have been correct, wouldn't you?

And now it's very easy to be like, oh, I know I've got my jiu jitsu here.

I'll come back whenever I'm in the area.

But the fact is I am here.

Japan, I ain't been to South Korea, I ain't been to North Korea.

I've never set 1 foot in Papua New Guinea.

There's just so many things that I want to do which are always going to have a novelty factor for me.

So perhaps the likelihood is I won't return to Shagao in the near future.

And I'm kind of entering this new phase of my travel life where I'm not so concerned with making sure I've done everything I used to really want to check all the boxes and be like, oh, that waterfall, of course I've been there.

That little pygmy rhinoceros up in the north, of course I've seen him.

But that's not necessarily the case anymore.

I think I would go and see the pygmy rhinoceros, but the waterfall I'm not bothered about you've.

Obviously lived a very different experience to a lot of people that just go there for a couple of weeks.

Yeah, exactly.

If someone's like, did you not see that waterfall, you idiots?

Amazing.

I'd be like, did you not have that little hello, hello on that stand that you only know if you've been there for three months, did you not?

You're an idiot.

Well, the last, the first and last time I've had a hello.

Hello was of course with you when we were in.

I think it was my last day, wasn't it?

In Manila, Exactly.

Bloody abomination, The thing is.

Proof, if proof needs be.

Well mate, you will keep us updated, won't you?

Of course I, I don't know what you're going to do, but I think you have got a lot of things you want to do.

You got a lot of places you want to see and the shark girls not going anywhere, not anytime soon.

So maybe it's time you pop on a plane and get over to Borneo.

Well, I've just paid another month's rent, so it seems unlikely.

The flights are going to be so much more expensive towards Christmas.

Alan, what are you doing now?

You haven't got access to my credit card.

I, I think I'm in a phase of life where it's more important that I learn to stay put and achieve all the things that I want to achieve from the base before I go making excuses and like, oh, I've not quite achieved all the business things I want to achieve.

Quick, go to Borneo.

Look at orangutan is like, no, no, stay true to the course.

Start some businesses.

OK.

No.

So, so are we going to see you sort of moving from base to base now?

Are you going to be in each location for longer?

That's probably the case, yeah.

That's awesome mate, I can't wait.

Well, a little birdie told me the next one might be Japan, so you know, I don't need too many excuses to get over there myself.

Yeah, I appreciate you calling me a little birdie.

It makes me feel self-conscious.

Self-conscious.

Most of the things I know have been told to me by you, actually.

So yeah, everybody in in Queenstown thinks I'm so wise.

I like it when you do it.

You got a little birdie, told me, oh, did he, About my life.

This is a very informative bird that keeps on flying on your windows, though, and espousing information that I also have told you just moments before.

That bird must be, well, frustrated every time it comes up to you.

You're like, I already know I got it from the horse's mouth.

So don't call it that.

Yeah, my goodness, mate, I've been making some big decisions myself as well.

Tell me about them.

Well, I can keep it pretty short and sweet.

I've fallen out of love with Queenstown, I think, and I don't really know if I was ever in love with it.

I don't know how long I wanted to stay here, but I don't think it's quite the town for me.

And it's incredibly difficult to live here and make huge sums of money, as all the other backpackers will tell you.

So I've sort of got to that stage where I'm just living here and working to exist here, which isn't that fun.

And there's so much to see.

And now I've got the camper van on the driveway.

I mean what my what am I even doing?

I'm sorry to hear that mate.

Would you like to do maybe a brief role play in which I play Queenstown and you break up with me?

Why not?

Why not?

Yeah, Well, I have to.

Don't know that the rules of improvisation, you just say yes to everything.

You go with it.

Yeah.

Adam, it's been so nice to have you inside of me and you've been such an excellent inhabitant and I'm just glad you're having a lovely time here.

Well, that's that's the thing, I'm afraid.

I've I haven't been having a lovely time.

There's been, but we've got we.

Well, we've got Ferg Burger and we've got, you know, work opportunities and the rent is, you know, somewhat.

Extortionate.

Yeah, yeah, there's one too many brownouts for my liking in Queenstown.

Problem with this relationship.

Yeah, but you've got a self-contained van with that can store it to 24 litres of human shit so.

I mean, I just think the time's come.

I think the relationship's run its course.

I, I did think that, you know, in obviously at the beginning, there was that initial attraction there.

I was very fond of you.

You said all the right things.

But now, after getting to know you, I've actually seen that it's all sort of surface level and it's not really much to you at all apart from a few bells and whistles.

OK, it's getting a bit real for me in this role play.

Hold on, are you from Belize?

Oh God, there'll be some long time listeners who will like that reference.

But no, in all seriousness, mate, it's, it's a good place to have some fun if you've got eye watering sums of cash to, to blow, because there are some wonderful things to do around Queenstown to use it as a base.

I, I really do mean that.

I mean, there is a lot of stuff to do here and it is fantastic.

But if you're going to live and work here in order to try and generate any sort of money to then propel yourself off into doing some, some really exciting stuff, then it does get a little bit difficult.

There's a core community of people here.

But I have found, actually I'm going to go on record saying this, the backpackers I've come across which are, I don't know, I would say quite significant in terms of size.

We're talking in the hundreds for sure.

They tend to be people that either came here Once Upon a time on a working holiday visa and just stayed and they've been here for 10 years, or they're people that are very new to travel and then have just arrived here and haven't gone and done anything else just yet.

So very rarely do you come across someone who's been on the road non-stop backpacking through like Central Asia or any of this sort of stuff in Queenstown.

It tends to be one of the two groups I mentioned from my experience.

Well, I personally never understood the appeal of Queenstown.

I was surprised when you told me that you're going to be living there.

So there's no great news to me or a shock.

If anything, I'm rather happy for you for just sort of seeing it for what it is and choosing to leave, and I'm very excited to.

Again, I'm desperate to hear about your adventures in that van, so please make use of it and get inside it.

That'll be it mate, so you know what comes next.

It's going to be the dismantling of another life and moving on to the next one your own.

And this time, I hope, after the legal complications.

A little birdie told me that that was all being swept under the carpet.

Oh, yeah.

No, no.

My own life, of course.

Yeah, it's.

Yeah.

Everything's got to get sold.

I've got to all get all the money out of the bank accounts.

I've got to quit all the jobs I've got, you know, all the stuff.

You you become an expert at this sort of thing.

What people think it's going to take six months, including all of the difficult goodbyes.

Usually takes a matter of days.

There you go.

Well, I'm excited.

At least one of us will be doing some hectic kind of travel, so I'm excited to hear about that.

You know me though mate, Whenever I think about travel, whenever I think about getting on the road, dismantling a life and just moving about, it makes me ever so hungry.

I'm glad you said that mate, because I'm absolutely starving.

It's rice for breakfast.

Rice for breakfast.

You come and have rice for breakfast.

Here it is mate.

It's the latest addition of rice for breakfast.

Have you missed it?

I.

Have missed it because oftentimes when I'm eating eggs for breakfast I think what an idiot.

Are you still doing the eggs your way or my way now?

I know, but I do think about the way you cook eggs often and it makes me feel sick.

But how many people have you met that have had your eggs that have said they're the best eggs they've ever had?

Well, this is yeah, because, because I wanted to tell you this, because I really, I'm going to use this.

They're just.

Going to shut the argument down.

Yeah, I am, because I think, I think it's a hollow compliment to get because I, I think basically it's just so difficult to even communicate this.

But I I think what you do is make them eggs and look at them so expectantly that they feel uncomfortable not saying anything.

The person that's eating them, you eat.

Because it's you, I think you go and sit down that you like serve them the egg.

What I do, I make them the eggs.

I go there you go mate.

Got you some eggs.

Much love.

And then I walk off.

What you do is make them this mosh handed to them and then sit looking in their eyes like as if to say, are these the best eggs you've ever had?

They get increasingly uncomfortable as they're eating.

And then just go, yeah, they're the best I've ever had.

Stop looking at me like that.

And there you go.

You're not the first person who said that to me.

The common denominator denominator actually being me staring them down until they have to say something complimentary.

Well.

There, that's what I think happens.

There is a lot of butter in my eggs.

That's the secret, guys.

If you're wondering at home, what's the difference?

I put a hell of a lot of butter in those eggs and serve them wet.

And there's a lot of butter in this dish that we're going to be talking about today.

It is, of course, the very iconic, the very famous, the ubiquitous and loved the world over.

It's a butter chicken, mate.

Wow.

It was the last time you had a butter.

Chicken would have been when I was in India.

Yeah, I did have a butter chicken when I was in India, but it might have only been one.

And it's the well.

No, it wasn't because you went to deli and basically I'm led to believe, bullied everyone you spoke to there and to tell you where the best deli but a chicken restaurant was and went to every single one on the list.

No, no, no, no, no.

I didn't do my own.

My own sort of discovery, deadly discovery through butter chicken.

I just got a recommendation from my ex-girlfriend who whom I was with at the time and we went together and that's the one I talked to you about now.

I mean not.

Just to 1 though.

I think I only had what?

I just went straight in at the top.

I know it's not like me, is it?

It's not like me at all.

If you don't know what butter chicken is and you're listening to this podcast, I'll be very, very surprised how however it is.

Of course a bit of marinated chicken and a tomato based gravy, Few spices in there of course.

And then your coconut and cashew cream.

That's how you have it on Curry Marl in Manchester.

Isn't it sweet?

I'll bet.

Well, with cashew cream, yeah, I'll bet it's sweet.

We've never heard of cashew cream in Manchester mate.

And then and then of course, loads of butter or ghee.

The history is really interesting.

The history are you?

Laughing at the word gay.

The word gay.

But am I going to have to explain what gay is now?

Clarified butter.

Yeah, just carry on.

Anyway, the history is really interesting mate.

It dates back you.

You will find this interesting, I know you will because it involves a little place called Peshawar in in Pakistan.

Oh.

Home of the Peshawar Re Naan.

Exactly.

Yeah, quite a sweet style of naan actually.

But there's a there's a restaurant called Moti Mahal Mahal in Old Delhi and people think that they created this dish in the 1950s.

If you go on the Internet, that's what they'll say.

However, there were people involved in opening that restaurant way back when the the IT actually moved location to Delhi after the Partition around 19471950, whatever.

But the family involved in that restaurant say they were making the butter chicken long before that in the 1930s in Pakistan.

Now obviously there are some other Indian restaurants that are challenging that, so much so that this restaurant have filed A lawsuit against one of the other restaurants to the tune of 240 thousand U.S.

dollars in damages.

U.S.

dollars.

Wow.

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's a lot of money in it over, over the province and the the sort of legacy.

Of the butter chicken well.

If you created something as as world renowned and as as iconic as the butter chicken, the original recipe, and then someone else is trying to claim it for themselves and then obviously winning business potentially off your restaurant as a result, I can understand how that would that would do some damage it.

Wouldn't have gone that far mate.

Don't think so.

You think it would be shut down, You just get I'll go in there, wouldn't I?

I'd eat both and I'd say no, there's it better, sorry.

OK, so there's big disputes over the butter chicken.

Yeah, etymology.

Big disputes, but how interesting that it maybe comes from Pakistan as well, because we didn't have anything like that over in over in Pakistan from memory.

I didn't see the a chicken in but I mean I could believe that the buttered lamb came from Pakistan.

I think you can have it.

I think you can have it.

But yeah, I mean, the best butter chicken that I've ever had in my life was in Delhi.

It was in a restaurant called Gulati.

I will put the description and in the description I'll put obviously the notes and the location, that sort of stuff.

If you happen to be in India, in Delhi and you want a butter chicken.

But honestly, the one I had was nothing like any butter chicken I've ever had.

In a bad way.

Like it was, it was.

It was unrelated, almost.

Like maybe I'm going to echo what a lot of people listening to this might echo, which is I don't if you're choosing a butter chicken, a Curry house, the the chances are you haven't had that much Indian food.

And I know I said that about the pad Thai for Thailand as well, but the the pad Thai to Thailand is what the butter chicken is to India is very rarely outside of India, the most interesting thing on the menu.

It's what people who don't like Curry.

Yeah, that is true.

It's the, it's the.

It's that or a korma, isn't it?

Yeah, or a tikka masala, which apparently does have its roots in in the UK.

Yeah.

Do you like Curry?

Yeah, I love coconut and butter.

I think you like sugar actually, and not much spice at all.

What's your favorite Curry?

Dairy Milk.

This was head and shoulders above most of the most of those chicken dishes I've ever had made.

It was served in a copper pot.

This gigantic thing comes out chicken legs bone in.

You never see that in a Curry house, do you?

No, no.

You don't eat Curry that often, obviously.

I thought about it, but no, turns out you don't.

Huge chunks of chicken bone in and the sauce, It was just unbelievable.

It was much spicier than you probably would have imagined, which is not something we found in India very frequently.

Yeah, because we famously both think that Curry in India is not spicy and that the word spicy is a bit of a mistranslation, meaning fragrant.

Yeah, I think there's probably some truth to that.

Although, you know, I was obviously with my ex-girlfriend at the time who is Indian.

So I said can you please make sure it just comes however it's supposed to come.

It doesn't need to blow our heads off, but I would like it to come as it's supposed to come.

Very, very rich.

It was, it's a bit smoky as well.

I would have said super concentrated sort of tomato flavour.

But the the flavour of the butter, I remember having the first taste and I thought, oh, no wonder they call it fucking butter chicken.

It was unbelievable.

It was so, so buttery, almost to the point where it was overpowering.

But because of the previous butter chickens, I'd had.

Not because it shouldn't have been that buttery, but because I'd obviously become accustomed to just.

Are watered down butter chicken, Yeah.

Cashew cream, coconut cream, whatever sugar and and I don't know like tomato soupy kind of artificial flavour or whatever it's they use.

Anyway, it was absolutely sensational and I would highly recommend if you are in Delhi, go to Gulati restaurant.

It is a bit more upmarket.

It is middle of the road.

You do have to put your name down and queue outside and this sort of stuff.

It's not that this local joint, there's just a few chairs by the side of the road.

It is a proper brick and mortar restaurant with, you know, fancy weight is walking around and that sort of stuff.

But it is absolutely amazing.

And guess how much it cost me?

I've forgotten what the exchange was, so I'm going to say.

You can say in pounds.

₹500.

No, it's more than that.

₹1000 But.

Yeah, it was just under ₹1000, which is about £7.50.

It's pretty good to have got that on the second guess, considering I have no idea how much that is, yeah.

Well, I think maybe you won't remember, but we were having some Talies, which are, you know, these big platters where you get multiple dishes and comes with a little bread or whatever sometimes for about 300, three ₹150.

OK.

Yeah.

So 1000 is quite expensive.

Yeah, Is it certainly expensive for your average Indian fare in India.

But this, like I said, is is a sort of middle, middle of the road, middle class restaurant, a bit a market and one of the most famous ones, it's got thousands of reviews of lots of Indian people saying it's the best butter chicken in Delhi.

So.

Why did you not go to Mata Mahal?

I didn't know about it until I started researching this feature actually a couple of days ago, so.

That's a shame, isn't it?

It is a.

Bit of a shame because it is like me to try and to try and go to those sorts of places that have got cultural significance or whether there's, you know, sort of dish to sort of try by the person who used to make it or whatever.

So yeah, bit of a shame you'll.

Have to go back to Delhi.

I would like to mate, I'd really like to.

I don't know if you're going to be heading to, I don't know anywhere around there on your way, on your way back home, it's on the way.

I don't know, it's so annoying.

I like the time moves so quickly because I would love a little slow roll to the UK now over land through India.

Yeah, that's there for you mate.

Have you not even got the time to do that if you left early?

I mean it's October, middle of October, I've only got a month and 1/2.

No, not.

Really.

Yeah, you've been moving a little bit too quick.

Yeah, especially if I want to swing by Barnier.

So there you go mate.

There you have it.

It's got an amazing history, steeped in history, absolutely delicious.

And if you are the sort of person that orders butter chicken, maybe till the guy in the kitchen next time you go for one, just make it like they do at Galatis in Delhi, would you?

Quick star rating please.

It's a four out of five.

Probably because, well, it is the best part of chicken I've ever had, though.

Well, as a dish, maybe rate the dish as a whole.

The dish.

I think that's how rice for breakfast should work.

You just rate the dish.

Just rate the dish as a whole.

Conceptually.

Oh.

Just that.

You mean like the generic dish?

Not even the one I have.

Well, no, I think.

That that one should be the one that you review, but like you should, you should raise like the concept of butter chicken and that is the ambassador.

OK, I mean, it's because of how iconic it is and how popular it is and how much better that version is than all of the other ones that I've had in the UK.

It's a real food memory that I'm, I'm going to remember for a long time.

I like, it's inspired me to have more and more Indian food.

So I'm going to give it a solid 4.5.

Goodness me, the highest score we've ever had on rice for breakfast.

Knocking Pad Thai so far down the league table it's fallen off the bottom into a heap on the floor.

Looking forward to the next time we do a rush of breakfast review, Adam.

But now it's time for that little special section of the show where one Brave and Bolden listeners taken to their laptop or their phone.

They've gone to tripologypodcast.com/tales of a trip and they've decided that they've got a real blinder of a travel story.

3 minutes in which to tell their greatest travel story of all time.

Perhaps it's the tale of the time they found that perfect handbag in a shop and just selected it out and went boldly down the High Street on the chandelier in Paris.

Or perhaps it's the time they saw that ever so rare creature lurking in a jungle forest.

Who knows what tale of a trip we're about to hear, but one thing's for damn well sure we're about to hear one right now.

What sort of mood are you in?

What's up Tripology podcast This is at homeless dot digital nomad reporting in from Taipei, Taiwan.

You guys tasked me with giving you an incredible travel story.

And the best thing that I could think of is how I managed to solo summit the highest mountain in South America, which is the highest mountain outside of Asia, the second highest of the seven summits, almost 7 kilometers.

Akankagwa.

And I came over with this idea because I really fell in love with high altitude trekking when I was in Peru, in Nepal.

And it really surprised me how much of a difference it made when I lived in high altitude for a while before I did these tracks.

So I figured that I would just work remotely from high altitude cities and it would give me a big advantage.

Now the death rate of occogwa is about one in 1000 because 3000 people attempted every year, 1001 in three make it to the top and about three people die.

It's a little bit risky, but I figured everyone who dies hiking this mountain dies from altitude sickness, so I'm just going to acclimatize first, right?

First I spent a month at 2800 meters in Kilo, Ecuador, where I summed it debatably the highest active volcano, Cotopaxy.

And then I also summed in what's debatably the highest mountain in the world if you measure from the center of the earth instead of sea level, because sea level is different around the globe, and that's Chimborazo, but 6400 meters above sea level.

And then I spent a month in Juarez, Peru, where I did the Y Wash track.

And right before, before that trek happened, I had severe food poisoning for 8 days and messed with all of my training.

I was running to the bathroom every 30 minutes, pooping blood.

It was horrible.

And then I recovered from that, lost 7 kilograms and got back to training.

Then I spent 5 weeks in La Paz, Bolivia, where did a 5 or 6 kilometer peak every weekend.

Still lived a regular digital nomad lifestyle outside of that.

Then I went to Mendoza and I flew in in San Diego, Chile, took a bus to Mendoza and I began to summit.

I began am I trek to summit Akankagwa.

It was 8 days up, two days down.

Some challenges that I face going up there was boredom is 1 issue because you have to boil snow in your tent once you make it past the base camp and that was like day 4 the seven that was just in my tent boiling snow over and over again for fresh water.

And then another challenge is that you have to bring poop with you everywhere.

And literally like ever since I reached 3600 meters the Paz Bolivia, I had non-stop diarrhea for like 6 weeks and it was just a bag of diarrhea.

One time I broke it and like fucking diarrhea just oozed outside the bag.

And then I had to embarrassingly just go to a tour group and be like, hey, can I borrow a bag Necesito Bago?

Hi guys.

Anyways, I made it to the top and I actually spent an hour at the top, which is incredibly unhealthy for you, but I felt no headache.

And then when I made it back down, they actually reported me as missing because it took me 18 hours to hike the mountain.

But then they realized I wasn't missing and that was okay.

It was all Gucci.

But yeah, highest mountain in South America.

That was an adventure.

Wow, what a.

My good.

What a tale.

Loved it, man.

From from zipping around acclimatizing to altitude to scatological chaos atop a mountain.

What?

What an interesting story.

I'm almost lost for words.

I absolutely loved it.

The energy, the language used, the the fast pace.

We have, of course, met him.

We we met him in Pakistan.

He was lovingly referred to as short man.

If you haven't listened to that episode, go back and check it out.

And I do remember him being fantastic at hiking in the sense that he was not messing around at all.

I mean, he was, he was pacey, wasn't he?

You were surprised at how quickly he did the Everest region.

Yeah, he certainly zoomed around that Everest region from what he described.

If you thought that was a compelling voice message, go and scroll through tropology history and find the episode called Is Fairy Meadows Worth the hype?

That person you just heard speak is the guy with the incredibly short shorts who we really go on and on about in that episode.

Yes.

Yeah.

Incredibly fast hiker.

Very, very interesting.

Have you had much experience with altitude sickness from memory?

I don't think you have.

With altitude sickness, I felt at the very top of Petundus, I was, I was feeling pretty rough.

Certainly the morning after we'd done, I think we ascended, what was it, 2 1/2 thousand meters in one day?

Something like that was a bit too.

Quick but you've never like thrown up or had any severe symptoms?

No, but, but, but I think just because I haven't been at altitude like that for, for long enough, maybe it does worry me because I'm so inspired to hike the Everest region and because, you know, meeting Joey and stuff.

I know all the cool stuff that he gets up to.

And I I just think is it a case of you being susceptible or prone to it or or not?

No, I think anyone can get it.

I think that women get it slightly worse than men and I think that it just hits you, don't it?

I've had it a couple of times.

Was sick in when I was hiking the Everest region, although very briefly, and it was sick a little bit in Ango in Guatemala.

So I know the feeling can be dangerous.

I mean, you've not been to South America, so that's probably one of the reasons why you've not experienced a La Paz.

Of course, in Bolivia, the capital city, highest altitude capital in the world.

And even if you just fly in there, there's rough.

Oh really?

So even just visiting the city, some people suffer from altitude sickness.

I mean the Paz is high, it's like 3000 meters.

Oh my goodness.

Wow.

I mean, he's what a guy to be around, though, Joey.

I mean, he's got a wicked story and the way he tells it as well was so funny.

I could imagine him bowling around just doing his own thing because we kind of met him.

Do you, do you understand what I mean when I say this?

And Joey, if you're listening, I, I do still feel this way.

He's the sort of person that if you met them travelling, would end up, but you'd end up forming a group with them like he would have.

I thought he was going to, like, join us too, and we were going to be a little trio.

But he's like doing his own thing.

He's off on his own.

Yeah.

So I mean, he's so sort of decided.

And you got to love it.

You got to love it.

It's great stuff.

Yeah, he has all sort of unusual tattoos and sort of a vibe about him.

A very go your own way vibe.

And, and I do want to take the opportunity to say this.

He's such a wonderful example of a content creator who's he's very talented and he's flies a drone and he puts great reels together and they're very aesthetic, the sort of things that you see all over Instagram.

He puts so much work in and I think his his views are in the millions.

Sometimes he's putting great content out there and maybe not getting the recognition he deserves.

So go and support him.

He's doing some fantastic stuff.

I'm a big, big fan of what he's doing.

Yeah, go and check him out at Homeless dot Digital Nomad on Instagram.

Very nice to see his reels.

And we're excited to see what else you come out with in the future, Joey.

It's all very good stuff.

Now, though, Adam, I'm afraid we're simply running out of time, so we're gonna have to blast off to the Patreon section as The Lost and Found happens after the theme music ends for those that choose to pay for it, and we'll see everyone else next week.

We'll see you there.

Bye.