There’s no doubt that travel is a life changing experience that can make you a more accepting and tolerant person. But for a Middle Easterner, travelling abroad is often easier said than done. Between visa issuing complications and the difficulty of planning a trip on a budget, the average Arab traveller doesn’t have it easy when it comes to roaming the globe.

That being said, the MENA region is becoming one of the fastest growing travel markets in the world, and North Africa is even witnessing the fastest growth in international tourist arrivals next to Europe, according to the United Nations World Tourism Organization 2018 tourism highlights.

Despite these statistics, online content dedicated to helping new travellers from the region is seriously lacking, and it was out of this problem that Safareya.com was born when two young Egyptian adventurers noticed the gap. Ahmed Fares and Monica Gerges pitched their idea to the person they knew would understand its importance, Egyptian entrepreneur, mountaineer, and adventurer Omar Samra.

“Having worked in the travel industry for 10 years, I was aware of the gap in terms of having a publication dedicated to travel and tourism from the Middle Eastern perspective,” Samra, now a co-founder, says.

That was about to change when Fares and Gerges pitched their idea to create the first travel publication in the Middle East dedicated to discussing travel and the obstacles that face travellers in the region.

“It sounded super hard to do, so I jumped in full force,” Samra adds.

The gap between people wanting to travel and those actually doing it was huge, and the resources to help them in English, let alone Arabic, were scarce, says Gerges.

“All the perspectives we found online on travel were not from around here. There’s a huge spike in the number of people who want to travel from the Middle East, but there’s also a huge gap between those who want to travel and those who do,” continues Gerges, who’s co-founder and English editor of the venture. “And then there are those who think you need to have a ton of money or quit your job and all that.”

They started asking a few questions as young travelers themselves on how to make traveling easier for people from the region. From those questions a website came to life with about 10 sections. They started with the ‘Passports’ section, which offers visa information on a constantly updated list of countries. Then there’s the ‘Ultimate Guide’ section, which contains comprehensive guides on what to do in a certain city. The sections go on, each tackling a certain a problem facing a Middle Eastern traveler or telling the story of one.

The problems the digi-magazine hopes to tackle aren’t just logistics and visas.

“At a time when women face much stifling in Middle Eastern societies, we sought to inspire and help them travel and explore the world,” explains co-founder and Arabic editor Fares. “We’re trying to do so by sharing stories of women who travel the world and make a difference, and by also offering tools and tips that would make travel easier for a woman.”

True to that goal, navigating through the ‘Women’s World’ section of the website, readers can learn about the girl who travelled to foster lions and cheetahs in wild life sanctuaries, and the other who backpacked through Nepal’s mountains by herself. There are many other stories to read.

“I keep looking back and remembering this woman who commented on a post of ours when we first launched,” says Gerges. “She said she’s a mother and would really love to travel, but between income problems and restrictions of being a mother, she can’t. This is why we’re doing what we’re doing, and why we have a section like ‘Women’s World.”

Having engaging content and stories about travel and adventure are not just what the publication is about, however.

“I think we live in bubbles, and surround ourselves by just the familiar. Once you’re exposed to the world outside your bubble, it changes who you are,” says Gerges. “If we can - through equipping and inspiring them to travel - get people to see a world outside their bubble, then we’ll have created a ripple effect throughout the duration of that person’s life and the lives that they touch, and I think that in itself is life changing.”