"We live in a world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open."
​                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    ​Jawaharlal Nehru​

​The Harvard Travellers Club is an organization that has provided a venue for adventurous travelers to gather and socialize since 1902.  

The club meets 8 times each year, holding over 850 meetings since inception. Our speakers include many legendary explorers, scientists, mountaineers and adventurers. 

An affiliation with Harvard University is not required for membership.
873rd Meeting  
JANUARY 8, 2019

The Pyramids of the Sudan
Rita Freed
​Rita Freed has led numerous expeditions through Sudan.  She is one of few Americans granted access to some of Sudan’s most incredible archeological treasures. 
 
Rita  is the John F. Cogan and Mary L. Cornille Chair, Art of Ancient Egypt, Nubia, and the Near East at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where she oversees important collections
of Egyptian, Nubian, and Ancient Near Eastern art. She is also Adjunct Professor of Art at Wellesley College. Prior to her work in Boston, Freed was Founding Director of the Institute of
Egyptian Art and Archaeology and Associate Professor of Art at the University of Memphis.  She graduated Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Wellesley College and received her Certificate in Museology, Master of Arts, and Doctor of Philosophy from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University.
 
A historian of Egyptian and Nubian art, Freed is best known for her organization of several international traveling exhibitions, 
​including Pharaohs of the Sun: Akhenaten, Nefertiti, Tutankhamen an examination of Egypt’s Amarna Period, Ramesses the Great: The Pharaoh and His Time featuring the many works of Egypt’s greatest builder and A Divine Tour of Ancient Egypt which examined Egyptian religion in a geographical setting. She has served as chief curator of The Secrets of Tomb 10A: Egypt 2000 BC, an exhibition showcasing the material from the tomb of the Governor Djehutynakht, the largest known burial assemblage of the Middle Kingdom. Currently, Freed is working on an upcoming exhibition of the MFA’s illustrious collection of Nubian art.
 
Freed has participated on archaeological excavations in Egypt (Bersha, Saqqara, Giza, Mendes, and Karnak), Israel (Tel Qasile) and Cyprus (Idalion), and has authored many books and articles
The meeting will be held in the Massachusetts Room of the Harvard Club  on Commonwealth Avenue. Cocktails (cash bar) will be served at 6:00 PM, dinner ($71) at 6:45 and the presentation will commence at 8:00. Club meetings are attended by members and their guests. If you are not currently a member of the Harvard Travellers Club, but would like to attend this meeting as a guest, or would simply like more information about the Club, please contact Ted Wendell, tedw@HarvardTravellersClub.org.  
The 2018-2019 Season at a Glance
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Click date for details.​
Speaker
Subject
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OCTOBER 9
Vendée Globe Races
Richard Wilson
​On February 21, 2017 Rich Wilson crossed the finish line of the Vendée Globe solo round the world yacht race after 107 days, 48 minutes and 18 seconds at sea. Wilson, 66, was the oldest skipper and the only American in the race, and finished in 13th place. His progress in the singlehanded 27,440 mile race from Les Sables d’Olonne on the coast of France was followed by over one million people in 79 countries around the world. ​
Wilson is the 2018 winner of the Cruising Club of America’s Special Recognition Award.  The award honored the highly meritorious and extraordinary nautical accomplishments of Wilson in two Vendée Globe Races. The solo, non-stop race around the world is the toughest sailboat race of all, and Wilson is the only American to have finished two of them.  In 1990, Wilson created sitesALIVE.com to use ocean sailing, as an exciting and engaging educational tool for teaching children about science, geography, math, and history.

​Richard Wilson

Vendée Globe Races
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NOVEMBER 13
Around the World: A SlideShow in Technicolor
Peter Guttman
​Peter Guttman is a photographer, author, app creator, fine artist, television personality, lecturer and adventurer who has traveled on assignment to more than 230 countries. He's the recipient of the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Exploration and Storytelling, has three times won the Lowell Thomas Travel 
Journalist of the Year Award, was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the New York Travel Writers Society and a George Eastman Power of the Image Award, cited as one of “20 of the World's Most Influential Photographers”.
 
A visual storyteller, Guttman has sought out the world's hidden corners through decades-long explorations.  His body of work often investigates indigenous peoples and exotic wildlife, is supplemented by substantial elements of writing and research while employing innovative shooting techniques. Long before the GoPro, drones and selfie sticks, he created surrealistic mid-air suspension shots, either utilizing his tripod as a fishing rod or attaching his camera to the wings of Allagash Wilderness floatplanes or the sails of Mojave Desert land yachts.  Guttman’s annual travel ‘slide show’ hosted in New York City apartment has been dubbed by NPR’s All Things Considered as one of the ‘hottest tickets around’.
 
Guttman will lead the club on a journey to places far away and close to home. ​

Peter Guttman
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Around the World: A SlideShow in Technicolor
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DECEMBER 11
*Permanent Fund Grant Recipient
​Sedna Epic Expedition to Nunavut and Greenland
Susan R. Eaton
​Susan Eaton is a Canadian geologist, geophysicist, science journalist and conservationist who explores the world’s oceans—from Antarctica to the Arctic—in the snorkel zone, a unique land-sea-ice-air interface where charismatic animals and snorkelers comingle.  She studies the interplay of plate tectonics, oceans, glaciers, climate and life in polar regions.
 
Eaton is the founder and leader of the all-female Sedna Epic Expedition, a multi-year underwater project—involving the study of climate change via snorkeling and diving—that takes places in the High Arctic (Labrador, Nunavut and Greenland).
 
Team Sedna is comprised of an international team (50 percent of the women are American) of ocean scientists, explorers, educators, artists, movie-makes, photographers, and scuba diving and medical professionals. Sedna’s sea women scout, document and record climate change in the Arctic.
 
Sedna Epic’s objectives extend beyond scuba diving and snorkeling activities related to exploration and studying climate change in the Arctic—rather, at its core, the Sedna project involves women ocean professionals working with Inuit girls and young women with a focus on health, wellness, environment and empowerment issues.
 
In 2015, the Royal Canadian Geographical Society (the “RCGS”) named Eaton one of Canada’s top 100 modern-day explorers and trailblazers. A year later, the RCGS named Eaton one of Canada’s 25 greatest female explorers.  She is a Fellow of the RCGS and a Member International (2011) of the New York-based Explorers Club. For the past several years she has volunteered as an executive member of the Canadian Chapter of the Explorers Club, where she is currently the Regional Director of the Prairies and Northwest Territories.

Susan R. Eaton

Sedna Epic Expedition to Nunavut and Greenland
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JANUARY 8
​The Pyramids of the Sudan
Rita Freed
​
Rita Freed has led numerous expeditions through Sudan.  She is one of few Americans granted access to some of Sudan’s most incredible archeological treasures. 
 
Rita  is the John F. Cogan and Mary L. Cornille Chair, Art of Ancient Egypt, Nubia, and the Near East at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where she oversees important collections
of Egyptian, Nubian, and Ancient Near Eastern art. She is also Adjunct Professor of Art at Wellesley College. Prior to her work in Boston, Freed was 
Founding Director of the Institute of
Egyptian Art and Archaeology and Associate Professor of Art at the University of Memphis.  She graduated Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Wellesley College and received her Certificate in Museology, Master of Arts, and Doctor of Philosophy from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University.
 
A historian of Egyptian and Nubian art, Freed is best known for her organization of several international traveling exhibitions, including Pharaohs of the Sun: Akhenaten, Nefertiti, Tutankhamen an examination of Egypt’s Amarna Period, Ramesses the Great: The Pharaoh and His Time featuring the many works of Egypt’s greatest builder and A Divine Tour of Ancient Egypt which examined Egyptian religion in a geographical setting. She has served as chief curator of The Secrets of Tomb 10A: Egypt 2000 BC, an exhibition showcasing the material from the tomb of the Governor Djehutynakht, the largest known burial assemblage of the Middle Kingdom. Currently, Freed is working on an upcoming exhibition of the MFA’s illustrious collection of Nubian art.
 
Freed has participated on archaeological excavations in Egypt (Bersha, Saqqara, Giza, Mendes, and Karnak), Israel (Tel Qasile) and Cyprus (Idalion), and has authored many books and articles

Rita Freed

​The Pyramids of the Sudan
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FEBRUARY 12, 2019
 
Members' Night: Three reports from afield 
LOOKING BACK 100 YEARS -THE HARVARD TRAVELLERS CLUB "HANDBOOK OF TRAVEL" REVEALS HOW OUR NOTIONS OF "TRAVEL" HAVE EVOLVED SINCE 1917.
 
By Edmund Summersby
​
​An interesting little book recently came to my attention that I had not seen before, and it occurred to me that it might very well be of interest to other members of the Harvard Travellers Club as well. It was Lansing Fair who last spring loaned me a copy of this little red volume titled "Handbook of Travel" that was published  by the Travellers Club first in 1917, with a revised and enlarged Second Edition issued in 1935.  I had not known about this literary project at all and I was immediately fascinated to read how utterly different from today were the descriptions of the kinds of travel members were undertaking, and how different was the equipment being used, and the variety in the methods of travel undertaken and how much they found it necessary to carry with them, not to mention how much easier we Travellers have it today, with greatly improved clothing and equipment of all sorts.
 
The stated purpose of the Handbook of Travel was two-fold: "First, to offer the prospective traveller a great variety of information which may be helpful to him while planning his expedition, and second, to provide a compact volume which will be useful in the field".  (Present-day readers will note the use of masculine gender, but it was customary in 1917).
 
Clearly, the Handbook was not aimed at Travellers signing up for packaged group tours organized by professional trip operators taking tourists on the Grand Tour of Europe.  Rather, it was intended for those undertaking their own independent expeditions under their own leadership with friends in remote regions. A look at the subject headings in the Table of Contents will be instructive in this regard, and will make clear how our ideas of "Travel" have evolved over  the last century.
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2nd Speaker TBD
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3rd Speaker TBD

Members Night

​Three Presentations by Club Members

 Description coming soon


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APRIL 9
The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon’s Last Uncontacted Tribes
Scott Wallace
Scott Wallace teaches journalism at the University of Connecticut and covers the environment, vanishing cultures, and conflict over land and resources for major media organizations. His assignments have taken him from encampments of native reindeer herders in the Arcticto combat missions in the jungles of Central America. Formerly a correspondent for the Guardian and CBS News, Wallace has written several stories for National Geographic magazine about the Amazon rain forest. 
He is author of the New York Times best-selling book, The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon’s Last Uncontacted Tribes, based on a National Geographic assignment into the deepest redoubts of the rainforest to track and protect a mysterious, seldom-glimpsed tribe: “at once fantastic and horrifying, an untouched Garden of Eden and an unmitigated Green Hell.”
He is a recipient of the Explorers Club's prestigious Lowell Thomas Award and an expert for National Geographic Expeditions.
 
Scott’s work on the Last Tribes of the Amazon appears on the cover of the October 2018 National Geographic.  In it, he tackles threats to conservation and culture and the protection of the few remaining isolated tribes.
 
www.scottwallace.com
​​

Scott Wallace

The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon’s Last Uncontacted Tribes
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MAY 21
Daniel W. Senecal
Exploring Northwest Namibia with the Himba People of Namibia
​
​Dan Senecal will travel to the Himba Tribal Region this February/March and report back in with his findings.  The Himba are indigenous people living in northern Namibia, in the Kunene Region (formerly Kaokoland). They are considered the last semi-nomadic people of Namibia.  The majority of OvaHimba live a distinct cultural lifestyle in their remote rural environment and homesteads.  Their traditional dress, intricate hairstyles, and use of otjize paste to protect their skin from the hot, dry climate and mosquito bites make the tribe particularly compelling visually. Their history, structure, and daily practices will be fascinating to consider. 
 
Dan became a member of the Harvard Travellers Club in 1976.  He was named a club Fellow in 1989 following valiant efforts to journey off the ordinary routes of travel.  Dan’s travel biography is as lengthy as it is diverse.  He has led extensive travels off the beaten track, particularly in West Africa where he has traveled to every country in the region.  He has also spent time in Chad, Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Angola, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Zambia.  He’s traveled to every country in Central America, South America, and Western Europe; he’s also visited Oman, Israel, Syria, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, New Guinea, the Philippines, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and Nepal.  His biography in the HTC Directory is required reading for inspiration of the most adventurous sort. 

Daniel W. Senecal

Exploring Northwest Namibia with the Himba People of Namibia