About The Trail Less Traveled
The Trail Less Traveled, hosted by Mandela, is dedicated to documenting humanity & planet earth by gathering stories & sounds from the most remote locations around the world. The goal for the show is to take you, the listener, back to mankind's earliest form of entertainment: story telling. Therefore, every week features an interview with an adventurer in their natural habitat in order to provide an audible journey packed with information & inspiration.
Everyone has a story & different perspective, we aim to share the stories from the world’s diverse cultures & unknown lands. We give back to each culture by doing outreach with local schools while recording on location.
The podcast and educational outreach programs are made possible due to the generous support of Xplorer Maps, a small family business based in Missoula, Montana. Learn how Cartography Comes Alive as we Connect People and Place through storytelling, conservation, culture, history and art.
About Mandela
Growing up, Mandela spent a season in South Africa, a season in Montana & various seasons traveling the world with her flight attendant mother & vagabond father. At an early age Mandela fell in love with juxtapositions between cultures, music, food & weather of the northern & southern hemispheres. Mandela started filming her adventures when she was 14 & by age 19 started studying Mandarin & interviewing Chinese citizens on the edge of the Yangtze River during the construction of the Three Gorges Damn project. Mandela started her radio career at age 18 with a live adventure-travel talk show on KBGA college radio. The show ran for five years until it was picked up by the award winning KDTR Trail 103.3 FM & Missoula Broadcasting Company. She is still producing short adventure films in her spare time and when not in the studio, Mandela teaches Ashtanga Yoga & works as an international adventure guide/instructor in the field of whitewater rafting, bush trekking, whitewater kayaking, sea kayaking & riverboarding. She guides 15-day expeditions through the rapids & tributaries of the Grand Canyon April-October & records on location wherever the rivers of the world flow.
Mandela was raised on a nature reserve at the most southern point of South Africa. Growing up in the bush cultivated a passion for wildlife conservation & human rights which is a consistent theme in her broadcasts & outreach programs. For the past decade Mandela has worked on a series focused on the genocide of African elephants & rhinos, the slaughter of protected species of sharks in Australia, the use of 1080 by the New Zealand government to control invasive predators & heritage theft/illegal wildlife trade across Asia.
Mandela’s family made frequent trips to Australia throughout her childhood. Mandela started studying Aboriginal anthropology & didjeridu sound theory in Australia in her teens & has continued these studies into her thirties. In 2007 she started an organization in Missoula, which continues to educate students worldwide in didjeridu & Aboriginal anthropology. Mandela presents adventure lectures at the University of Montana & other public/private schools around the world. In 2016 her outreach program was able to connect with over 10,000 students in Thiruvananthapuram, India.
In between her international gigs as a whitewater adventure guide & instructor, Mandela travels to remote locations in the world interviewing fellow adventurers who live in radical harmony with nature. She’s recorded aging raconteurs, living legends, camera-shy thrill seekers & people thriving in little-known corners of the earth. Their stories inspire & surprise. They give us new insights about our diverse & amazing world. That’s Mandela’s intention. She aims to thrill and engage audiences by taking them to places they would never go, sharing the stories of people they could never meet & learning about our mysterious, sometimes dangerous, world filled with wildness, diverse cultures, hardship, courage & alternative ways of living and surviving.
Adventure with Mandela!
The Tatshenshini River is an international wilderness river flowing from the northern boreal forests of British Columbia to the Pacific Ocean in Alaska. Roughly 140 miles in length, the Tatshenshini churns past Canada’s tallest mountains, around sprawling glaciers and through deep canyons on its way to the sea. Secure your spot now, trips are offered throughout June, July & August.
The Alsek River is an international wilderness river that flows from the Yukon Territory of Canada to the Gulf of Alaska. It is home to the largest concentration of grizzly bears in Canada and a wide variety of other wildlife. Secure your spot now, trips are offered throughout June, July & August.
Middlefork of the Salmon River, Idaho: one incredible week of whitewater rafting, hiking, hot springs and luxurious camping.
Secure your spot now, these trips are offered throughout June, July & August.
Colorado River, The Grand Canyon: One &/or two week whitewater expeditions through one of the natural wonders of the world. Secure your spot now, these trips are offered April through September.
The rest of the year, Mandela guides seasonally in:
Milford Sound, Fiordland National Park, New Zealand
The Orange River Gorge in Southern Africa
The Ahanssel River in the Middle Atlas Mountains of Morocco
The Zambezi River in Zambia/Zimbabwe.
Coming in late 2024: Maasai Mara Wildlife Conservation Safari (Book now!)
*Get in touch if you would like to put together an internationally chartered trip with Mandela as your guide!
