Joe Rea-Dickins
Joe Rea-Dickins (Author)
At age eighteen, Joe headed to India to work as a journalist for the New Indian Express, and with that his love affair with India began. After a second gap year, Joe moved to Aberystwyth, a secluded Welsh town, to study international politics. In his second year of studies he was selected for the British Universities Kayak Expedition team and travelled to Venezuela for his first taste of expedition kayaking. In the years since graduating from university, Joe has spent almost as much time in South Asia as he has in Europe. Joe has raised money for women's education in Northern Pakistan through the release of two British-made kayak films High and Too High. He has worked in Delhi as a video editor for the Outdoor Journal, India's first international active-lifestyle and adventure magazine. Joe shot, edited and directed The All India Kayak Expedition, a six-month-long rolling expedition to explore many unpaddled rivers in India. In 2016, Joe was part of a team that kayaked the Panjshir river in Afghanistan. They paddled around 130 km of whitewater in this war-torn area and, since the trip, have raised awareness about the unique and often-misunderstood region. Now in the UK, Joe runs an aerial-photography business while formulating grand plans for more exploratory trips to far-flung locations.
Dan Rea-Dickins (Author)
Dan has worked as a river guide in Scotland, Kenya, Uganda, Iceland and Switzerland. He has some notable descents to his name, including the first and only descent of Charnia Falls in Kenya He has been a safety kayaker and photographer for the first commercial rafting descent of the Murchison section of the White Nile, crossed Iceland by traversing the Vatnajökull glacier and packcrafted the Jökulsá á Fjöllum river. Dan achieved all of this in between seasons in India. He has now shifted his focus and is training to be a
paramedic in Liverpool, enjoying regular laps on the rivers of North Wales during his time off.
Zorba Laloo (Author)
After his studies in Shillong and Darjeeling, Zorba worked with independent documentary film-makers for the BBC, National Geographic, and other leading Indian and European television. He was researcher and cameraman for the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, a documentary that received an award from the Royal Television Society, UK, in 2010. As a crew member for the Swiss-owned expedition company Ribexpeditions, he completed several source-to-sea expeditions under the tutelage of seasoned leaders. Inspired by rivers, he started paddling in Meghalaya and North-east India with friends for sport and exploration. They were the first in India, and among the first in Asia, to start using packrafts. In 2012, he received the 'Golden Paddle Award' from the American Packrafting
Association for his contribution in promoting paddlesports and river conservation. Disappointed by the lack of opportunities for students to experience the outdoors in Meghalaya, Zorba co-founded Campfire Trails,
which has, to date, catered to almost 2000 students. Campfire Trails also works closely with villages to help design and develop sustainable ecorural tourism projects, for which it received the NEDFi Award for social entrepreneurship in 2015.
