Alex Malcolm’s love for adventure started at a young age in the English countryside where he grew up. He would spend days hiking through idyllic trails and going camping with his uncle. He later moved on to climbing mountains in far-flung locations. “I like going to remote places where I can develop a real connection with its people and the land, and where life is a bit simpler than in the city,” says the founder and managing director of luxury travel firm Jacada Travel, which tailors immersive trips to both popular destinations and those off the beaten track.
The one trip he remembers vividly involved climbing the ice-capped 1,666m-tall Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland in 2015. Just as the active stratovolcano’s name is tough for non-locals to pronounce, the hike up its varied terrain is no walk in the park either. If the name sounds familiar, that’s because it was the volcano that erupted in 2010 and created an ash cloud that stopped air travel for six days across western and northern Europe.
