In the past year, we have added 200 new DARE places and our DARE list has now reached an impressive 1701 items. While our NomadMania Region Masterlist is very carefully and rationally constructed, giving every country a ‘fair’ share of regions based on careful consideration of criteria, DARE puts the ‘mania’ into NomadMania by being a collection of unusual, mainly hard-to-get-to places that are the ultimate challenge for the discerning extreme traveller.
The idea here is to play around with the world’s geography while ensuring that tiny islands and obscure oddities are not on our Masterlist which remains a stricter way of dividing the world into meaningful regions with geographical substance.
The DARE list encompasses 5 main elements:
1) All sorts of small exclaves, like Sokh or Shohimardan in Uzbekistan that formed the basis of our NomadMania Conference in May of this year;
2) Geographical extremes that are also geographically distinct and ‘special’, such as the westernmost point of the 48 US contiguous states or the southernmost point of India at Kanyakumari;
3) Out-of-the-way small islands or archipelagoes that do not merit being full regions for being too small – examples include places like Annobon in Equatorial Guinea or Miangas island of Indonesia and of course Kapingamarangi in Micronesia;
4) Disputed pieces of land where sovereignty is or was contested;
5) Other geographical irregularities, such as the Massachusetts jog, panhandles within administrative divisions of countries or areas only accessible through ‘unusual’ ways.
In short, the Distinctive Alternative Remote Extremes (DARE) list is an effort to make travellers explore countries in a way they never ‘normally’ would by inviting everyone to attempt off-the-beaten track areas. The only criterion with DARE is that an area must be unique somehow, and an effort has been made for almost every country to have at least one DARE region, even the likes of Nauru or Liechtenstein.
Not every DARE is hard to reach
We would argue that at least some of the European or North American DARES are very accessible – places like the Isle of Wight are even popular with holiday makers. As is Neum, the miniscule coastal area of Bosnia and Herzegovina. ‘Slovak areas west of the Danube’ just requires a short drive across the bridge in Bratislava.
At the Austria – Slovakia – Hungary triborder point
Some places may require a considerable amount of driving in rural areas but should be quite accessible and a great way to explore a country beyond its obvious tourist traps.
Summary
In general, of the 1701, the main idea is to have more or less:
- 10% relatively easy regions;
- 20% generally accessible areas with some effort;
- 40% accessible but relatively challenging;
- 20% highly challenging;
- 10% almost or totally impossible without very difficult-to-get permits or extreme logistics
Unlike our main Masterlist, we believe DARE is not reasonably ‘completable’ and even reaching 50% is unlikely. It is telling that, as of now, only one traveller has visited more than 25% of our total DARE count of 1701.
For now, we will rest at this number of DARE regions for the next year or so, as we focus on other geographical projects. We continue to elicit suggestions from you for this list for a future time when we continue its development. Meanwhile, take the time to discover the quirky world of NomadMania’s unique DARE regions by ensuring you fill in the ones you have DAREd visit!
