The Adventurous Souls Team
Mikkel Dal Hende and Sophie Vartan
Adventurous Souls Aps is a Danish based company, operating from Copenhagen and wherever in the world the team happen to be travelling at the time. As well as The Adventure Festival, the company is involved in producing travel and adventure documentaries, offering travel advice in putting together incredible itineraries for your next adventure, running expeditions and anything that inspires people into their next ADVENTURE!
Mikkel Dal Hende is a Danish adventurer with a curiosity and a passion for people and places. He has travelled over many continents including Asia, South and North America, and hiked through the Himalayas, the Andes, Scandinavia and the Alps. Mikkel toured Vietnam on a motorcycle and Sri Lanka in a tuk-tuk. He cycled through Europe and Africa from Denmark to Cape Town, and is most comfortable on a bicycle. He has just completed his current adventure cycling from Los Angeles to Panama, through Mexico and the rest of Central America. As an outdoor instructor and enthusiast, he teaches skills in kayaking, climbing, hiking, skiing, mountain-biking and more. He is passionate about kite-surfing and surfing. Mikkel trained in the army for 5 years but since then has turned into a bit of a peace-loving hippie. Bringing people together, unity and connections are his main inspirations for this festival. He wishes to invite people to try new things and expand their minds, seeing new places and meeting new people. Music and festivals are what floats his boat.
Sophie Vartan has founded and successfully run large international Film Festivals, Music Festivals, a large Wildlife Photographic Symposium, a premier Wildlife Film-Making Academy and is responsible for bringing many internationally renowned Exhibitions to South Africa, such as the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition from the Natural History Museum of London. She also founded and ran a successful independent production company for many years and was CEO and Managing Director of the Natural History Unit of Africa for the independent Broadcaster, E.TV. Sophie has Executive Produced, Produced and Directed over 150 hours of adventure and wildlife programming for BBC, National Geographic, Discovery and Animal Planet. Sophie runs various Outreach community programmes and is heavily involved in the safari and adventure tourism industries in Botswana and Southern Africa.
Sophie’s adventurous life includes much travelling, emigrating to Africa and then living completely off the grid in the Okavango Delta for 12 years, building a conservation and tourist camp and working with the rural community. She recently bike-toured and camped through Mexico for 3 months exploring the country off the beaten-track.
Advisory Board
Helle Løvevild Golman trained as a ranger in Africa and a Near Eastern archaeologist from Kbh University. She is a renowned National Geographic Photographer and Explorer. Together with her husband Uri Løvevild Golman, she has travelled the world and photo-documented the Earth's last wild places and they are known from TV2 with the series "Our Wild World".
Helle is self-employed, entrepreneur, lecturer and author and a member of Kvindelige Eventyrers Klub where she also sits on the board there. The passion is nature with animals, photography, communication and believing in the impossible. She has a number of books behind her, for example the big book WILD. Helle is, together with Uri, the founder of the WILD Nature Foundation, where she currently works with nature conservation and communication.
Martin Lohmann Møller is a member of the Danish Adventurers' Club. In 2018, Martin hiked alone into the Wakhan Corridor, a remote corner of Afghanistan. This hike through the Wakhan Corridor was an incredible journey with visits to the Wakhi people and the Kyrgyz Normads who live above 4000m above sea level. Martin has cycled in 43 countries, more than 60000 km, in temperatures from -30 to +50 and over 4990 m high passes. Martin's biggest cycling expedition to date is a journey of more than 38,000 km that took 2 years and 9 months. The journey started in Rotterdam on 2 February 2014 and ended in Rotterdam on 10 October 2016. Martin is again on a cycling adventure in 2022 and is cycling from Argentina to Canada with Katja, his partner. A journey of just over 25,000km through 15 countries. They expect to reach Canada in the fall of 2023. He owns Denmark's largest and only forum for touring cyclists with almost 2,000 members who work to promote Danes on long cycling trips. www.rejsecyklisten.dk
Martin has climbed several alpine peaks over 4000 m, flies paragliders in the Alps, likes to stand long on cross-country skis and has crossed the Hardangervidda in Norway alone on skis. Martin is trained as an electronics mechanic and has built up extensive experience in the development of medical equipment. Martin runs his own company Bosai medical.
You can read more about Martin on his website www.martin-from.dk and follow his current adventures at www.americasbybike.dk
Bjørn Harvig was the youngest member of the Adventurers' Club and prefers to travel by bike or on foot - because then the pace is not too fast and gives him the best opportunities to meet foreign friends. Bjørn believes that everyone has a good story to tell, it's just a matter of telling it to someone who gives themselves time to listen.
Bjørn is a trained police officer and has worked with young people in Nørrebro for a number of years alongside his job. He is the author of the books "Igors Æblehave - stories from a cycling trip Copenhagen - Tehran", "Caucasus & Fountain - stories from a trip on foot", editor of "Udlængsel - 27 new stories from Eventyrernes Klub", where he has a story with from India, and now he is current with “Bosnian Brothers”.
