21 Best Travel Vloggers & YouTubers That Are Uniquely Different In 2023
/It is strange when we can’t pack our bags and be knee-deep in adventures especially when half of the world is stuck indoors and not being able to travel, this is where we turn to YouTube to find personal journeys of vloggers who have traveled to remote corners of the world.
While I own a travel blog and have had similar adventures, my preferred medium to share has always been blogging.
Vlogging is where I turn to for inspiration from others; travel Youtubers who are deeply charismatic and find new places and see so much potential in a map.
Whether it is the solo female, black explorer or the survivalist lone traveller in the outback, or a vlogger just like you and me who is learning about a new tribe in a remote corner of the world, travel vloggers have managed to inspire me to hit the road and seek offbeat adventure in places I have never been to.
Here’s my list of travel vloggers and YouTubers who are different yet wildly inspiring!
Best Travel Vloggers and YouTubers Who Are Uniquely Inspiring
1. Eva Zu Beck
It goes without saying that Eva Zu Beck has taken vlogging episodes to new heights.
Her documentary styled-videos and engaging way of connecting with audiences have led her to amass a huge following and almost becoming popular overnight after she visited Pakistan!
She tries to deconstruct how people should travel and focuses on life lessons, historical values of these places and her philosophical way of seeing the world.
Her 7-day journey horse trekking in Mongolia and episodes of visiting Syria and even Afghanistan are done with a lot of heart, thought and meaning.
By no means does she romanticise their lives, but tries to give a deep dive into their stories, culture and traditions.
2. Allison Anderson
Allison Anderson spent her childhood snapping away on point-and-shoot cameras and making goofy videos with friends but found her love for photography, storytelling through YouTube’s broadcast medium.
Her storytelling and photography are topnotch — her videos tug at your heartstrings especially her solo trip to Alaska as she cruised from Vancouver to Anchorage on her wilderness excursion.
You will find her sharing her experiences through stories and cinematic videos as she hopes to encourage other women to embrace the adventure of exploring by themselves.
3. The Cottage Fairy
If your country is nothing like the lush landscape that you live in, concrete, buildings and incessant noise, then you will love Puerto Rican American Paola videos and her aim for a calmer, healthier life that steers away from the never-ending city mentality.
Paola videos help us to remember our childhood, and those yearning for a slower and more peaceful life in nature, far away from my current stressors.
In a world of do-more, hustle-more, visit more places, Paola shows the opposite end of what it means to live close to nature.
Her videos show the world that we can live any way we want as long it makes you happy.
4. Ronnie & Barty
Ex-film makers based in India in a mountain town known as Manali, Ronnie & Barty show the cultural lives of those who live in the Himalayas. They explore new sights, sounds and sensations.
It is nice to see the Himalayas through the lens of their own people, rather than foreigners, and this is what makes Ronnie & Barty’s storytelling come alive.
They feature stories about restoring an 80-year-old mud house in Lahaul and how beauty can be found in unlikely places such as Tirthan Valley.
5. Kamran Ali
Documentary styled vlogs are rare on YouTube and Kamran Ali, aka KamranOnBike showcases what it is like to see the world on a bicycle.
He is a photographer who has been travelling around the world by bicycle for the last six years.
He has cycled 50,000 km in 43 countries. Recently, he finished a three and a half year bicycle journey from the tip of South America to Alaska.
Most of his footage features travel encounters, short stories and 4k footage of the mountains.
He believes that empathy should be at the centre of our hearts and that the stories have the power to change the behaviour of people for the better.
6. Wheels To Wander
Cycling has gain momentum during the pandemic and there’s a strong urge for people to be closer to the outdoors.
Eric & Maudi are a bicycle touring couple who started their world cycling tour to the Far East.
If you want to know what’s it like to ride at high-altitude or even stay with the nomads at Tajikistan or cross the Persian Gulf, Wheels To Wander have many wonderful encounters filled with amazing landscapes of what’s it like to discover a world full of hospitality and wonders.
As someone who has bicycle toured in Kyrgyzstan, I find their strength and perspective to be immensely contagious.
Watching their short films makes me want to ditch everything and travel on a bicycle for one year!
7. Nomad’s Trails
Another bicycle touring couple (probably the last on this list), but Nomad’s Trails helmed by Peyman and Matilda, have been cycling around the world for at least 10 years, currently pedalling across Africa.
For most of us, Africa is a continent that is largest unexplored and undiscovered, Nomad’s Trails pushes the envelope and features unthinkable adventures of what’s it like to cross the Sahara desert on a bicycle and what happens when you run out of water or if you’re stuck in the middle of nowhere.
We may not be able to travel far and wide, that too on a bicycle but we can live precariously through Peyman and Matilda’s adventures.
8. Kombi Life
Imagine packing all your life belongings and travelling around the world on a vintage classic VW Kombi!
That’s what UK-based travel vloggers did, they packed their belongings and started a world adventure travel series about #vanlife, overlanding and alternative living.
Their videos features the Van Life in parts of Africa, Mexico and Europe focusing more on what’s like to live off-grid and be on the move in a tiny home.
9. Mari Johnson
From completing the Pacific Crest Trail to living an adventurous life in New Zealand, Mari Johnson inspires many solo women to hike all day and enjoy the great outdoors.
She shares what’s it like to experience life on the trail from the Pacific Crest Trail and living an outdoor lifestyle in New Zealand.
Although she has not uploaded any new videos in the last few months after being a new mother, her space is worth watching to know what’s it like for women who continue having an outdoor lifestyle with a family!
10. Elina Osborne
As more women explore trails, countries, and mountains, there are some who make it a lifestyle.
Elina Osborne is a thru-hikers who started her long-distance hiking trail when she flew from the suburbs of West Auckland to walk from Mexico to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail.
Inspired by Cheryl Strayed’s novel ‘Wild’, she filmed her journey of how she walked 2650 miles with a single backpack.
Feeling the pains of lockdown in 2020, she decided to hit the trail again but this time on her home turf, New Zealand.
Some of her adventures featured how she walked from the top of Aotearoa, New Zealand to the bottom, on Te Araroa, New Zealand’s Trail where she explored 3,000 long kilometres of farm, road, and mountain ranges.
11. The Planet D
If you love a mish-mash of travel videos featuring things to do such as travel guides, tips and adventure videos, Dave and Deb from their popular website The Planet D take you around the world in their weekly video series.
They are a married adventure couple who live by the motto "Adventure is for Everyone" and their travel videos are often filled with fun, humour, inspiration and information.
You’ll see them showcase the best travels of what the globe has to offer from places as far as Antarctica, the Caribbean and the South Pacific.
12. Yes Theory
Bonded over a desire to shake things up and get people to step out of their comfort zone, Ammar, Thomas, and Matt met in 2015 in Montreal, Canada through a series of serendipitous encounters.
They decided they would do 30 things they had never done before in 30 days, and make a video about it everyday.
They even met the Dalai Lama and travelled to the least visited country in the world. Some of their videos may appear over the top, but their philosophy has always been to show the extreme sides of the world with their energetic videos.
13. Got2Go
For all the motorcycle adventures and those who are inspired by solo women who take up grand big adventures, Lea Rieck stands out among the rest.
She rode 90,00 kilometres around the world on a Triumph Tiger 800. How bad-ass is that!
She recently started her Round Africa journey on a gorgeous Yamaha T7. While she was in Germany, having a break from her travels, the COVID-19 outbreak began and she could not return to Benin.
Her aim is to visit tourist destinations and go to places where most people don’t.
She even circumnavigated the world solo from 2016 to 2017 and her channel showcases all the places she visited and missed on earlier.
14. Itchy Boots
More bad-ass females and more motorbike adventures, this time with Itchy Boots by Noraly who is passionate about motorbikes and solo adventures around the world.
She quit her job, sold her stuff and she’s now travelling the world full-time by motorcycle.
She first rode on a Royal Enfield Himalayan for 3,000 kilometers through the Himalayan mountains.
With this motorcycle named “Basanti”, she rode 36.000 kilometers from India to Malaysia and via the Middle East and Iran, through the ‘Stans’, Russia, the Caucasus and via Turkey back to The Netherlands.
She shines through in her storytelling as a former geologist where she unpacks unplanned discoveries such as South Africa’s Diamond Mining territory while on her overland trip!
15. Li ZiQi
I first stumbled upon Li ZiQi for her wonderful cinematography that looked like it came from Avatar’s movie set.
She intricately weaves her traditions in Sichuan province with her deep knowledge of food, nature and Chinese culture.
Working in the remote Sichuan countryside, Li ZiQi performs the work of a farmer with the grace of a fairy and emphasises what’s it like to live in a beautiful countryside filled with ancient traditions.
Her meals are often elaborate and she finds inventive ways to use flowers, ginger or green plums to create delicious meals.
With many of China’s rural villages being disappeared completely due to the nation’s urbanization, watching Li ZiQi videos are a reminder of the vast rural areas in China that encompass a huge diversity of experience and traditions that are largely ignored and underrepresented.
16. Kraig Adams
For those who are genuinely looking for some respite from the daily hecticness, Kraig Adams a solo hiker and minimalist focuses on shooting hiking videos focusing on the experience, nature and what draws him to surroundings like these.
He further illustrates his minimalist approach to life in vlogs, videos of his travels to places like Panama, Iceland, and Japan.
Some of his greatest videos are these 4 hours long silent hiking videos weaved with scenes of the mountains, rolling clouds, sunset rays behind a mountain and of him hiking which are perfect on days where you want to get work done but miss the call of being outside.
17. A Nordic Herbal Shaman
Wildness escapades have grown in popularity as more people experience a different kind of life!
Whitney Alison at the age of 27 decided she had enough and wanted to live her life to the fullest, so she left Holland for the wilderness in North of Sweden to reconnect with nature and ancient practices like herbalism and shamanism.
She documents life in the most artistic and deepest way questioning existentialism, living in a forest, loneliness and what’s it like to forage for your own food.
18. Exploring Alternatives
As more people ditch living in a house after two years of being shut off from the world, Exploring Alternatives provides a hub of what’s it like to travel and live in tiny houses such as vans, RVs and boats.
This may birth new ideas especially if you’re someone who wants to explore long-term travel, minimalism, zero waste living, off-grid living and more.
19. Green Renaissance
I would say this is not necessarily a travel channel but the content put together here may make you want to question your life and ditch your routine for a meaningful, possibly slower life filled with adventures.
On a journey to inspire change and create beautiful and meaningful stories, the Green Renaissance channel put together by Michael and Justine are passionate filmmakers, living off-grid and dedicating their time to making films that explores what it means to be human — they share conversations with ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
Each film touches just one person, fills them with a bit more hope, or leaves them feeling more inspired.
I particularly liked their stories on remote island living and how they captured one guy’s story of the island of Saint Helena. He chose to lead a life that is very different to those of us who have grown up in big cities
20. Julia Sheehan
A true-blue thru-hiker who did something that changed her life forever: Julia Sheehan hiked the entire length of the Appalachian Trail and decided to document it!
Largely inspired by ‘Into the Wild’, she decided to carve out her own true adventures by documenting all her thru-hike tales in the US.
She has recently completed the Arizona Trail, the Oregon Coast Trail, Laurel Highlands Trail among others.
21. Karl Rock
From shedding stereotypes about the South Asian continent and highlighting the different gems in this region, Karl Rock left his career and life behind as an IT consultant in New Zealand to take viewers behind the scenes of incredible India.
In his vlogs, he shares tips for people to help them travel confidently & safely in India and updates the world on its outdated perceptions about the country.
He has visited every state and union territory in India, and its culturally similar neighbours – Pakistan and Bangladesh, and aims to make others fall in love with India and the subcontinent.
That’s all for now in this list. Do you have a favourite? Share with me in the comments below on which YouTube vlogger you really like!
Also Read: Best Underrated Travel Shows & Documentaries On Netflix
