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| Dave and Deb at Everest Base Camp |
TRAVEL INTERVIEW WITH THE PLANETD
Dave Bouskill & Debra Corbeil of ThePlanetD are known as ‘Canada’s Adventure Couple,’ and for good reason. They’ve been immersing themselves in epic adventures all over the globe in places like Africa, the Nepal Himalayas and New Zealand. They’ve been cycling, hiking, mountain climbing and sky diving to name a few exciting activities. Now they’re about to embark on yet another epic journey.. Before they head out, let’s find out what they’ve been up to and how they’ve taken their adventure travel blog to the top of the charts…
Our first real international adventure was in 2000 when we took our first trip to Thailand for 5 whole weeks. That changed our life. We had been to Europe, the Caribbean and Mexico before that, but it was the extended trip to Thailand that made us realize that we loved travel.
2. What are your 3 favorite adventures to date? Why?
Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro – The incredible sense of accomplishment that we felt after that climb was overwhelming. It was a beautiful 6 days but the final day really will test anyone. It is difficult and you are pushed to your limits. Once you reach the summit, you are too tired to really enjoy it. But once you are back down at camp, the feeling is incredible. Did I just really make it to the top of Kilimanjaro?
Trekking to Everest Base Camp– The Himalayas are the most beautiful place on earth and every day was magical. It was also an experience where we pushed ourselves physically, but it was more about having stamina. 11 Days at altitude is taxing on the body and mind. But if you take it slow and steady, you will make it to base camp. It was surreal being there. We had read so many books and seen so many documentaries and TV shows on Everest and never thought that we would ever get there. Yet there we were standing where Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first walked half a century ago.
Cycling from Cairo, Egypt to Cape Town, South Africa – It was the most difficult thing we have ever done, but it truly changed our lives. It was the start of our full time travel and by doing something extraordinary, we stood out in the Travel World. Instead of backpacking around the world, we were this crazy couple that cycled 12,000 km in a race through Africa. We also fulfilled our goals during that race. Deb won the women’s race and Dave placed 5th in the men’s race. But more importantly, he was a part of the EFI club meaning he cycled Every “Fabulous” Inch. It is more difficult to cycle every single km of that race that to win. If you take a day off or need to catch a ride or if your bike malfunctions and you can’t get into camp without hopping on the support truck, you lose EFI. All that happens is you get a 12 hour penalty added to your time for the race which can be made up in that amount of kilometers. But once you hop on the truck or don’t make it into camp before sundown you lose, EFI. So it is a big honour to achieve.
dave-deb-theplanetd- cycling in Africa
3. Do you travel continuously as global nomads? Or do you have a home base from which you head out on your world adventures?
At the moment we are homeless. We travel full time and return home every summer for a month or two. So far our families are very accommodating and let us stay with them. We eventually want to buy a small place to lay our heads when we do go home, but will still spend most of our time traveling. It is difficult not having your own space after long travels. When we return home we would love to be able to drop our bags and just sleep for a couple of days without doing anything. But when visiting friends and family we can’t completely relax. That is a goal for us in the next 2 years.
4. If you’re traveling from a home base, how long do your travels usually last? How much of the time are you ‘home’ and how much on the road?
It has worked out that we travel for approximately 6 or 7 months and then go home for the warmer months. We can’t keep up the technical aspects of Travel Blogging on the road and definitely can’t keep up with the social marketing. Going home allows us to take care of the details. When we travel, we seem to travel hard. Other people can take it slow and stay in one place for months on end. We like to keep on the move. If we are going to stay put for a couple of months, we would rather be at home near our friends and families. When we are home we catch up on all our work
5. When did you start your travel website ThePlanetD ? How long have you been working on it more seriously?
We started it for our cycle through Africa in 2008. But we never planned on Travel Blogging. We wanted to have our own TV Series. The Blog was for the race itself. Every contestant started a blog to update followers of the Tour. Once the cycle was over, we never had the intention of blogging again and didn’t touch it for almost a year.
It was in the Spring of 2009 that we started exploring Travel Blogging. Our TV Series fell through and we didn’t know what to do. We had put a lot of money into publicity and a lot of time into developing the series. We knew that we wanted a life of travel so we looked into Travel Writing and Photography. I took a night school class at a community college on Travel Writing and Dave had already taken courses in photography and had a lot of experience from lighting feature films so we decided that we would like to be a travel writing and photography team. We re-started the Blog to use it as a CV for our work, but then as we did more research, we saw that Travel Blogging was a new possibility.
After reading everything that we possible could about it, we decided to put 100% into the Blog. We decided not to pursue writing and photographing for other people but to focus on ourselves and our own product. We felt that we could have better success focusing on one thing rather than spreading ourselves too thin with writing queries and photography assignments.
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| Dave and Deb at the top of Mt Kilamanjaro |
6. ThePlanetD is unquestionably one of the most high profile, famous and successful independent travel blog/websites. Congratulations! How did you achieve this amazing success?
Wow, thank you very much for the compliment. We worked really hard I have to admit. We didn’t go into travel blogging for a career break. We went into this as a new career with the same plan and goals that you would have for any career when starting out. We especially worked hard networking and writing content. We easily spent 40 hours a week on the blog. I remember watching CNN at work where they were interviewing a person who stated that he was highly successful because when we started his business and still had his job, he spent his nights working and every single waking moment on his business. While other people are going out for drinks with friends or watching TV, he was working and that stuck with me. We both worked at full time jobs for a year and then went home at night and worked full time on the blog.
When we are traveling we can’t do those hours, but when we are home we do that and more.
We reached out to the most successful travel blogs and interacted with them. You would be amazed at how helpful and giving people are and we try to pay it forward to other Bloggers that are starting out now. We constantly read other blogs and leave comments and spend time on Twitter, Facebook and StumbleUpon. Having a network is very important.
We also felt that we had something to offer. We had nearly 10 years of travel behind us before even starting the Blog and we had a unique niche of an adventure couple. Being different is very important in our opinion.
We also feel that we need to keep traveling. We like up to date information when we are scouring the net and feel that our readers think the same. We don’t plan on rehashing old travels and resting on our laurels. We will keep exploring the world and providing people with information.
7. Do you have another job/ career or do you earn your living entirely from traveling/ photography/ blogging ?
We live off of our Blog. We are making enough money to travel on and we are getting by. If we stay in Asia, we can live comfortably but we don’t make enough money to keep a home in Canada. That is our next goal. We feel that Bloggers should be making larger amounts of money and we are looking into partnerships and business opportunities to make that happen. We are happy with our progress so far, but are planning on making more happen. We want to keep this as our career and love every minute of it, so we need to explore ways to have a comfortable life.
8. Traveling long-term with your partner can be really difficult, as you point out on your website. In addition to being together 24/7 there are issues such as type of accommodation, preferred comfort levels, pace of travel, daily schedules, differing interests, emotional stresses and so on. You’ve actually written several excellent articles on traveling successfully as a couple, advice you’ve clearly taken to heart since you’re still traveling well together after many years.How do you deal successfully with those types of travel-induced issues?
As we get older, we can’t stay in hostels and dorms and we have a higher standard now. We no longer will settle for cockroaches in the sheets and bedbugs in the bed (yes, we’ve had that in the past) We like to have more creature comforts when traveling. Staying in a cleaner and more comfortable place keeps us sane.
After traveling together for so long, we have a comfort level with each other and know one another inside and out. Dave knows when it is time to get some food into Deb before she get’s too cranky and Deb knows when Dave doesn’t want to deal with another tout and have to haggle with someone, so she’ll take over. We can read how each of us is feeling and deal with it before it escalates out of control.
There will always be stresses at some point, so we both know that we will get angry with one another and we know that we will make up. We have learned to let things go and we definitely don’t sweat the small stuff.
9. You’ve just finished up a big adventure in New Zealand. Could you please tell us about that trip.
We were just in New Zealand with The Flying Kiwi, an adventure tour company. It was an amazing trip where we explored both the north and south islands. We were there to share the Flying Kiwi experience with our readers and show them the awesome adventures that they can do when traveling there. We did some of our dream adventures of a lifetime like Flying a Stunt Plane, Sky Diving, Bungy Jumping and Swimming with Dolphins. New Zealand is the adventure capital of the world and it made total sense for Canada’s Adventure Couple to go there.
10. You guys have another upcoming travel adventure that I’d term MAJOR EVENT, namely, Mongol Rally. Can you please tell us about that.
The Mongol Rally is a Charity Rally where we drive a car from London, England to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. It starts on July 23rd and at the end of our 15, 000 km journey (about two months later) we donate our car to the people of Mongolia. We are driving with two other travel bloggers Rick Griffin from Midlife Roadtrip and Sherry Ott from Ottsworld.
You can follow our adventures from the planning stages to the actual event at Here are our tips for driving the Mongol Rally It is going to be epic! We are driving through 15 countries.
11. Do you have any other trips planned after the Mongol Rally ? If so, what/ where/ when/ how long?
After the Mongol Rally we are probably going to take a breather for a couple of months. We have a lot of plans and ideas for the Blog and need to stay in one place to make all of the changes that we have in mind. So we are probably going to sit down and work, catch our breath and plan the next adventure.
Dave Bouskill & Debra Corbeil
Email: theplanetd@gmail.com
Visit us at: www.theplanetd.com
On Twitter at: @theplanetd
On Facebook: The Planet Ds Round the World Adventures
YouTube: YouTube/Wegobyebye
StumbleUpon: StumbleUpon/ThePlanetD
LinkedIn: Dave Bouskill
LinkedIn: Debra Corbeil
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Thanks Deb and Dave for telling us about all your amazing adventures. I’m really looking forward to following the Mongol Rally and your future journeys. cheers, Lash
Hi! I'm Lash, an American nomadic world traveler who's been traveling solo since 1998. I’m passionate about traveling the world nomadically and then sharing it all with you. I hope to inspire you to travel the world, to entertain you with tales from the road, and to help you reach your travel dreams. Welcome! 
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travel bloggers interviews
2012/03/07 at 4:19 am (UTC 8) Link to this comment
[…] travel bloggers to more fully be incorporated into the industry. A few notables include: Canadians Dave And Deb of ThePlanetD, Australians Caz and Craig of yTravelBlog, American Matt Kepnes of Nomadic Matt, American Gary […]