Maximum Biomes visited by an Individual

By Sanjana Bhowmick

An adventure traveller, nature & wildlife photographer, a published writer and poet and a business management professional, that’s Nitin Gairola, an India Book of Records Holder. He travelled to many remote places on Earth, exploring all-natural biomes or ecological regions, continents and nearly a century of countries. It is his quest to document and better understand the planet and its inhabitants.

Talking to IBR about his passion for travel, Nitin says, “My greatest passion was learning about the planet first hand through world travel. Over the years, I started focusing a lot more on the natural world than the human one during my travels. That greatly influenced my choice of destinations and I started visiting more and more remote places on the planet, such as the polar ice cap in Greenland, the dense rain forests of Central Africa, or the barren deserts in the middle of the Australian Outback or the great Sahara.”

The 15 biomes he visited have been named and recognised by WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) as - The Polar Ice biome, Tundra, Montane Grasslands, Boreal Forests, Temperate Coniferous & Broadleaf Forests, Temperate Grasslands, Mediterranean Woodlands, Tropical Coniferous Forests, Tropical Dry & Moist Broadleaf Forests, Tropical Savannah, Flooded Grasslands, Mangroves and Deserts & Xeric Shrublands.

Nitin believes that throughout history, we have always had world maps classified by Man-Made political borders (from Kingdoms in the ancient age to Empires in the middle-ages and Nation-States today). But now, mankind witness maps classified, by natural boundaries as popularized by WWF, National Geographic and David Attenborough.

Following passion comes with a fair number of challenges as well. “One was the financial challenge of funding trips and transport to places where most people refrain from exploring. The cost of wildlife activities is also generally a lot more than routine city-based travel, as it is a lot more of a tailored experience for you, besides there is a cost for safeguarding the traveller. Moreover, some places also have their own fair share of risks despite being accompanied by guides; such as the trek into the rain forests of Central Africa or savannah of South & East Africa and many road trips into absolute desert wildernesses such as in the Atacama, Bolivia, Australian Outback, Arctic Ice Cap and more,” shares Nitin about the challenges he faced.

Reminiscing about his travel, Nitin shares an interesting incident from his travel diary. “This incident occurred while tenting in the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania, East Africa. It was around 5 am and completely dark when I heard lions roaring very close to our tent. Our tent was a basic small non-luxury one, placed at ground level. While I was woken up by the roars, I gently placed my hand on my wife's mouth to ensure she wouldn’t accidentally scream. Just when I thought the situation was under control, her mobile phone alarm went off for the morning safari. I fumbled with the phone in the cramped-up tent and finally, after 5 seconds, was able to switch off the alarm. After that, we just stayed still (almost like playing dead) till sunrise and when we couldn’t hear the lions anymore, we stepped out of our tent,” narrates Nitin about their narrow escape.

For his next record, he would want to be the first Indian to visit all the major deserts of the world i.e. the 17 largest deserts on the planet, which are more than 200,000 square miles each in area. The list also includes the icy ‘frozen’ deserts such as Antarctica and the Arctic ice sheet beside the hot ones (classic sand or rock deserts) and the cold deserts (such as the Gobi in Central Asia or the ones in the Western United States).