Founder
Dave Reynolds
Dave Reynolds is the founder of RAW Travel.
Dave credits his incurable wanderlust to his Celtic ancestry and a strong desire to escape the rainy north of England where he grew up! He started mountain walking at 12 years old exploring the Welsh hills where his grandparents lived and the English Lake District. With incurable wanderlust Dave spent all of his 20s working all around the world and exploring off the beaten path through every corner of Asia, Alaska, South America, Europe and Australia. With a growing realisation in the 1990s that interest in adventure travel was about to boom Dave decided to carve out a career in an industry he was really passionate about.
His first foray at leading hiking groups was along the Great Wall of China, which he became somewhat of an expert on from having walked it repeatedly and having a real love for history. While leading and organising challenge groups from the UK in 1999, Dave experienced the power of this concept to inspire individuals while helping charities and communities. A move to Australia with his wife Mel led to establishing ‘Intrepid Challenges’ in 2002 (later to morph into RAW Travel in 2006), which grew to become the leading operator of Charity Challenge trips in Australia and New Zealand. In recent years Dave refocused RAW travel to concentrate on iconic walking adventures that can offer the most unique experiences for our travellers.
Nowadays Dave indulges his incredible passion for active adventures by researching new trips for RAW around the world and local adventures hiking, kayaking, mountain biking and exploring all corners Victoria where he lives with his family. For a man so well travelled what are Dave’s favourite treks? Any and all treks in the Himalayas (he even took his honeymoon trekking Nepal!) but especially the higher altitude areas of Tibetan culture. Other favourites are the Simien Mountains of Ethiopia, the Le Puy Camino, Asian hill-tribe treks and the Tour du Mont Blanc. His two daughters are now old enough to strap on the boots and pack, so recent family hikes include New Zealand’s Milford Track, Switzerland, the Camino Del Norte, the Lake District and Everest, Mardi Himal and the Langtang Valley in Nepal.