the advantages and disadvantages of adventure

Adventure Tourism is a term that is not easily defined. For one thing, different people will have different ideas of what is “adventure”. For one person, “adventure” may be something as simple as camping outside in a tent, or walking through a wilderness area for an hour. For another, this would be considered passive tourism or exercise, whereas adventure would mean participating in dangerous and physically (also maybe emotionally) challenging activities, such as climbing a sheer rock face or white water rafting in dangerous rapids. Traditionally, adventure tourism has been perceived to be a younger person’s activity. In recent years, however, older people are keen to enjoy new experiences once their children have left home. The degree of challenge desired may be quite different. Some will balk at undertaking potentially dangerous activities like walking on a rope bridge across a deep ravine, and find a trek through the jungle at ground level sufficiently challenging. Some will find another’s ‘adventure’ decidedly unpleasant, disagreeable, foolishly reckless, traumatic or boring. It is clear that adventure tourism has no distinct boundaries.
For the past two-and-a-half years, I have been writing about adventure topics for The Adventure Corner travel blog, on everything from the merits of bumpy roads to tracking devices on narwhals. From my own thoughts on adventure to the latest scientific research, we’ve covered a lot of ground together.
Looking over all of these articles since my first appeared here on February 9, 2010, I realize that one theme keeps showing up: Adventure travel is simply good for you. So I’ve compiled a Top Ten list of the reasons why.
While there are several physical health benefits to adventure travel (see Nos. 1, 2, and 3, below), the advantages for your mental wellness are just as impressive (Nos. 4, 5, and 6). Too, adventure travel can enlighten your soul (Nos. 7 and 8 ) and even help save the world (Nos. 9 and 10).
Can you think of