| Meet Ben Southall – founder of Best Life Adventures
Adventurer, presenter, author and digital journalist are just a few of the titles I’ve collected in recent years. Ultimately, though, I’m a guy who has an intense passion for global travel, adventure and gruelling outdoor challenges. Colonel Mustard, my veteran Land Rover has been my partner in crime since 2004.
| Round the World Yacht Race
After twiddling my thumbs in the UK until the age of 21, I finally threw off the shackles of a normal life, and set to the mother city of Cape Town for a life-changing adventure working at the Round the World Yacht Race, representing Champagne Mumm as their Events Team Manager.
| Afritrex
In 2008, I plucked up the courage to live a lifelong dream and created an independent self-expedition to circumnavigate Africa, raising money for charity along the way. Afritrex was three years of hard planning, saving and training to complete a one-year journey around the continent, climbing five of the highest mountains and running five marathons along the way. 32 countries and 65,000km later, I rolled back into the UK without a care in the world, and no job lined up. Life was about to change irreversibly.
| The best job in the world
As my African journey was coming to a close, I came across a little ad in a newspaper, seeking applicants for “The Best Job in the World”.
Somehow, I managed to rise above 35,000 other Best Job seekers and quickly found myself spending nearly two years flying, diving and sailing along the Great Barrier Reef as an Island Caretaker. Life hasn’t slowed down since.
| World-record adventures
In 2011, I kayaked 1600km along the Great Barrier Reef, in a Hobie kayak. In 2013 set a world-record running up the tallest mountain in each state in Australia and then in 2014 raced around New Zealand’s Nine Great Walks in a record nine days.
| Best Life Adventures
By now, my reliable Land Rover, Colonel Mustard, was residing with me in Australia, so it was about time to embark on another great overland adventure – a drive from Singapore to London. In February 2015, my partner and I set off for a year to drive through 32 countries enroute to Christmas in the UK with my family. It was a chance to dig deeper into our souls and work out what the next few years would look like, and from the maelstrom of opportunity, Best Life Adventures was born.
| Inspiring others
In that time, I’d fallen in love with making the impossible, possible, and in 2017 started creating adventures for the Office of the Chief Entrepreneur (with the Queensland government) to take entrepreneurs on life-changing adventures to wilderness areas of the state, country and world. Since then, we’ve led groups to Uganda, Mongolia, the Arctic Circle, Tanzania, New Zealand, India, the high Himalayas and around the islands of the Torres Strait.