MEET THE TEAM
WORLD ADVENTURE GUIDES is a digital publishing company creating apps and digital books for adventure journeys around the world. All our products come with digital mapping and guidebook information, and are created by experienced outdoor professionals who have walked, climbed and biked each route many times.
Our registered office is in the highlands of Scotland, but our Directors are based all over the UK. We hope you enjoy using our apps and books and would be happy to receive any feedback about them. You can do this using the contact form on the front page of the site, or email us direct on worldadventureguides@gmail.com.
Between us, our team has an enormous wealth of experience across every aspect of the development and creation of these products.
We thought you might be interested to know a little bit about us all, and what we have done with our lives to get us to this point in time, so here are just a few words…….
- THE TEAM
Issie Inglis
Founder and Director
My dad had a big passion for walking and, as a young child with my family, we walked a lot. I remember going out most Sundays, walking on some of the hills around Edinburgh…….I used to hate it! However, my dad persevered and eventually I came to love the hills as much as he did.
Growing up with the outdoors it was inevitable I would pick up a few more sports on the way through school and college – orienteering, sailing, canoeing, skiing and climbing. I have always been a pretty competitive person in sport and, went on to represent Great Britain in both orienteering and cross country skiing.
I am qualified in all my sports and have continued to participate and to teach them in some form or other all my life. I am an International Mountain Leader and was the President of the British Association of International Mountain Leaders for six years standing down in December 2014.
In my life I have climbed, trekked, skied, paddled and sailed in some of the most amazing places in the world and through these journeys have seen and experienced beautiful places and sights which will live on in my memory forever. My love of mountaineering and walking though has always stayed with me and has remained a constant in my life in which ever country I have worked and whatever job I have been in.
For seven years, up until 2011, I ran a charity (White Mountain Dreams), which I created, to improve the health and well being of women in the Highlands of Scotland through an ambitious walking project – WILDWALKS. Sadly however, funding for charities became harder and harder to find and I had to take the difficult decision to finally close it down. But, as one door closes….
Throughout my time with the charity I had been continuing to work leading trekking groups in the greater ranges of Nepal, India and Bhutan and it was wandering along some quiet mountain path in Nepal that I came up with the concept of World Adventure Guides, having spent ages researching new trips and sometimes not finding very much information at all.
And well, the rest is history.
Creating and launching WORLD ADVENTURE GUIDES has been one of the most exciting journeys I have ever undertaken. I hope you enjoy which ever journey you decide to take with us.
Rob Fraser
Director
I have been a photographer for three decades since leaving school in the early 80’s. I’ve worked for a local newspaper in my hometown of Tenby, been a photographer for the RAF and then became a freelance location specialist in 1990. I’ve dangled from the bowsprit of a tall ship, faced a charging elephant and felt the rosy glow from a spluttering volcano. I still get the same pleasure from making a great image now as I did back in my early teens.
A chameleon by nature, spurred on by new opportunities and an innate curiosity, I followed my passion for the outdoors and became a guide for a well-respected adventure travel company in 2003. Since then I’ve led 60 plus treks on four continents and been fortunate to stand at some of the planets most spectacular places. I don’t ice-climb on sheer frozen faces, dangle from precarious cliffs, or leap from a mountain summit strapped to a flimsy paraglider. I just trek and haul my camera gear.
For me just being in such inspiring landscapes and breathing in the quiet beauty is more than enough adventure.
Travel is in my blood.
Sarah Allan
Director
I am a keen outdoors woman, who has clocked up thousands of miles of trekking and climbing from Scotland to Nepal. Raised in a diplomatic family, our frequent moves encouraged me to develop an interest and respect for different cultures, customs and cuisine from an early age. Then whilst serving in the British Army, I developed an insight into how adventurous activities and exploration encourage personal development and awareness. My thirst for adventure has led me to work around the world, on trips and expeditions; as scuba guide, instructor and mountaineer; and I particularly love encouraging people to do more than they believed themselves to be capable of. A former geography teacher and qualified mountain leader/instructor, I now work with groups of adults and young people as a trekking guide and outdoor instructor, with a particular focus facilitating personal development through outdoor adventure and travel around the world. Qualifying as a cave diver has allowed me to reach some lesser visited places on the planet and acts as a balance to the other extreme of scaling mountains. When not working, I can be found in the mountains of Scotland or the Alps, or relaxing with family and friends in Blackheath, London
Our Partners
SBP creative is a marketing and design company based in Edinburgh. With their help and support building the apps, we have managed to move our business forward and create more products.
Geocenter was created in Santiago in 2009. It is a business dedicated to GPS data collection and specialises in trekking all over South America. One of its other aims is to create the most accurate, complete and exact database of outdoor routes in Chile.
Virginia Sanz
GEOCENTER
Passionate about nature, sport and tourism, she has done walking tours and mountain biking in Europe, the Andes and Patagonia. She studied for a masters degree in tourism in order to grow professionally and also took a cartography course. She would like to thank the partnership of Geocenter with World Adventure Guides for giving her the opportunity to create this digital guide.
“I hope to make this park better known, to provide useful information and convey the beauty and thrill of knowing this part of the world.”
Cote Cerda
GEOCENTER
Cote, also known as Mr. GPS, photographer, lives in Chile between Santiago and Patagonia, he has lead treks in Patagonia, The Andes, Mont Blanc, Kilimanjaro, and Milford Track in New Zealand.
“My dream has been to promote the chilean Patagonia in a book, and I thanks Adventure Guides for giving Virginia and me this great opportunity to begin with this amazing place, Torres del Paine.”
Authors and creators
Will Stark
Everest Base Camp
Previously creative Director at Edinburgh-based Multi-media agency Bluemungus, Will now has his own design agency Somerville & Stark - and has been designing Apps and digital books for a number of years now. Will is also a published musician/producer with credits that include BBC, Sky Sports, Warner Bros, Universal, Disney and now World Adventure Guides
Cshiring Sherpa
Everest Base Camp
Cshiring Sherpa is a climbing sherpa who was born in the Khumbu area where his family still lives. He works now for Himalayan Expeditions and is a long time friend of Issie, having worked on many treks together. Cshiring worked on the detailed GPS survey of the upper Khumbu, necessary for the detailed mapping, with Issie in January 2012.
Graham Moss
Tour du Mont Blanc
Graham works as an International Mountain Leader and has taken many groups round the Tour du Mont Blanc. Guiding has also taken him to a number of the “Trekking” Peaks in Nepal and some of the large glacial crossings in Pakistan. During the winter Graham works as an avalanche forecaster on Ben Nevis for the Scottish Avalanche Information Service. He can also be found guiding mountain bike trips in Scotland and sailing the high seas
Mandy E. Rush
Speyside Way, Great Glen Canoe, Powell River Canoe, Oregon Coastal Trail, NC500
Mandy E. Rush, having lived for many years abroad including Kenya, Germany and Central America, now lives in a beautiful and remote part of the West Highlands of Scotland, "the last house before the lighthouse." Her passions are travel, adventure, photography, blogging, running, fitness and wildlife.
To find out more about Mandy:
Cory Jones
Speyside Way, Great Glen Canoe, Powell River Canoe, Oregon Coastal Trail, NC500
Cory Jones has worked in the outdoor industry for over 20 years. He trained as an ecologist and worked for Field Studies Council running field trips in the UK and overseas. He was also involved in writing many articles concerning environmental issues and went on to work for worked for RSPB and The Wildlife Trusts. Cory gained a master's degree in Environmental Management and has successfully attended the Wild Scotland Wilderness Guide Training Programme.
After qualifying as a teacher he chose not to teach in schools but in the outdoor classroom. After qualifying as an International Mountain Leader in 2007 Cory lead expeditions across the world (Africa, Middle East, Himalaya, Bolivia, Patagonia, China and Tibet) for a range of expedition companies. He has also undertaken his own expeditions which include a month long trip sledge hauling across the Patagonian Ice Cap and in 2017 walking the Pacific Crest Trail and the Oregon Coast Trail.
In recent years Cory has been running adventure first aid training courses and is the founder of Outdoor First Aid Limited and the First Aid Training Co-operative. Cory is a Wilderness Medic after passing the prestigious WEMSI W-EMT course.
Cory now lives in Wester Ross and as well as running outdoor first aid courses he works as a mountain walking and sea kayak guide in the Highlands.
Jess Brooks
Mongolia
From the UK, Jess has been based in Mongolia since 2006 and is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society - awarded for her work in Mongolia. Jess is also the founder of Eternal Landscapes Mongolia - a registered Mongolian business and social travel enterprise that focuses on providing travellers with a real 21st Century insight into Mongolia that supports the local communities.
What impacts Jess the most about Mongolia is the vastness of the land and the way the local people make their lives within that immensity. For her, Mongolia is about travelling through the middle landscapes (the everyday landscapes rather than those considered highlights) and understanding how the landscapes and the challenges that the locals face within them have helped to form the Mongolian personality – the individualism, hardiness, endurance, self-sufficiency, tolerance and their spirit of freedom.
Glen Cousquer
The Way of St Cuthbert
Glen Cousquer is a writer, photographer, International Mountain Leader and veterinary surgeon who actively uses narrative and photography to help individuals, communities and organisations understand, explore and reimagine their relationship(s) with animals and the environment.
His work is informed by deep listening and mindfulness practices, privileging genuine meeting and dialogue. As such it is about connection, systems thinking, holism and sustainability. Glen's interests cover a number of subject areas including human-animal relations, wildlife, birds, mountains and mountaineering, wilderness journeys and responsible travel and tourism.
Glen is currently based at the University of Edinburgh, where he is Programme Coordinator and Lecturer for the Master's programmes in Conservation Medicine and One Health.
