How David Attenborough Are You?

To highlight the incredible achievements of Sir David Attenborough, we’ve undertaken the mammoth task of researching, evaluating, and recording all the filming locations we could find that he has travelled to as part of his incredible, seven-decade career.

Since his first show Zoo Quest to Guiana aired in 1955, our research shows that Sir David has travelled to at least 333 filming locations around the world!

Now, with our interactive new game, you can compare your travel history to Sir David Attenborough's to reveal how you measure up compared to the greatest travel documentarist and wildlife advocate of our time

Click the link below to the interactive map and list to get started.

PLAY THE GAME

Sir David Attenborough in Numbers

As experts in wildlife tours and adventures ourselves, we‘ve long been huge fans of Sir David Attenborough. We wanted to illustrate just how extraordinary his career has been, and this has really become apparent as our research team has spent weeks and months watching back documentaries from the 50s to the present day, to unearth just how well travelled the British icon is.

Our study looked at a total of 43 documentary series (we excluded shows which only featured narration without physical location footage). Within these shows, Sir David presents from some 333 distinct locations around the world, across 83 different countries, spanning all seven continents and the Arctic.

Most visited locations: California (8 locations recorded) and Borneo (4 locations recorded)
Most visited countries: USA (57), Australia (37), UK (29), Canada (9), China (7), New Zealand (7), Kenya (6), South Africa (5), Ecuador (5), Argentina (5)
Most visited continents: North America (80), Europe (63), Africa (46), Oceania (43), Asia (35), South America (33), Antarctica (7), Arctic (1)

At the start of his career, Sir David Attenborough travelled to the exotic lands of Java and Bali in Indonesia, as well as Australia’s Great Barrier Reef – which would have been an enormously enthralling and otherworldly learning experience for the 1950's viewer to watch at home. His Oceania adventures continued into the late 50s, with his show The People of Paradise taking Attenborough to places like Koro and Beqa in Fiji, as well as Pentecost Island in Vanuatu.

Fast forward to the 1960s, and African countries start cropping up in Attenborough’s documentaries; whilst filming Zoo Quest specials he visited Meru National Park in Kenya and Madagascar. Then in the mid-70s for the Tribal Eye his African adventures included filming in Mali and Benin City in Nigeria.

In 1979 Attenborough’s gargantuan series Life on Earth saw him visit 57 different filming locations, from Yellowstone National Park in the USA and the Galapagos Islands through to Tile Quarry in Germany’s Solnhofen and Mylodon Cave in Chile. During the seventies, Attenborough filmed in 63 locations across 33 countries, with Life on Earth contributing to most of his travels.

In the 1980s Sir David visited a fair number of locations in Europe for his documentary films; his show The First Eden included visits to Le Puy in France, caves on the coast of Malta, Greek islands, and Córdoba in Spain’s Andalusia. His 1989 show Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives also featured several UK locations, from Scotland’s Isle of Arran and the north of Wales, through to Dorset and the Leicestershire Quarries.

Attenborough’s The Trials of Life was aired in 1990 and saw him presenting from over 30 different worldwide locations. The wildlife habitats he filmed in included the woodlands of eastern USA, tidal rivers in Malaysia, the Samoa Reef, and Taiaroa Head on the South Island of New Zealand. Then in 1993 Life in the Freezer put Attenborough through wild and cold extremes, with filming locations in Cape Royds, Cape Evans, and the South Pole all in Antarctica.

The nineties continued to be an adventurous decade for Sir David, with The Private Life of Plants taking him to Ellesmere Island in Canada, Mount Roraima in Guyana, and Kinabalu Mountain in Borneo. Then in 1998 he was off to Trinidad Rainforest, the Seychelles, California, the Pampas of Argentina, and Thailand all in the name of producing The Life of Birds.

In the first decade of the new millennium, Attenborough’s career took him to tropical rainforests in Peru and Koros River in Hungary for Life in the Undergrowth. And in 2008 he visited Orange River in South Africa, Carnac Island in Australia, and USA’s Arizona for the Life in Cold Blood documentary.

Since 2010, Attenborough travelled less compared to his previous standards, but has still managed to visit 40 separate locations in the last 12 years. Even when he was over 70 years old the explorer still found the energy and inclination to present his shows from places like Lake Fuxian and Kungming City in China (Rise of Animals: Triumph of the Vertebrates), and the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the USA and the Taklamakan Desert in China for the 2022 series The Green Planet.

All this data has been inputted into our interactive map and list so you can compare how your travels measure up to the unparalleled Sir David Attenborough.

How 'David Attenborough' is Explore Worldwide?

So far, 55 of the Explore team have played the game – and we've got an average score of 45%. From relatively new joiners in the IT team scoring 10% to our Product Director who’s been with Explore over 10 years and, at 116%, is ‘more David Attenborough than David Attenborough’ – one thing is for sure, we’ve all got very long lists of places we’d still like to go.

Bang on Explore-average at 45% David Attenborough, Michelle Bisang joined the Explore marketing team last October as Marketing Projects Coordinator. Born and raised in Switzerland, she’s since visited 36 countries – her favourite of which has been Indonesia. Next on her list is our Botswana Wildlife Safari.

James Adkin, our Programme Manager for Asia, is responsible for designing our small group cultural, walking and cycling tours in the region. He’s also the mastermind behind our UK and cycling programmes. James is 76% David Attenborough having travelled to 62 countries. He’s recently returned from Japan but Spain continues to hold on to first place in his heart, for its food, landscapes and culture. On the bucketlist? It has to be Antarctica and South Georgia.

Our Digital Marketing Executive Amy Fiske is 17% David Attenborough. Having completed the game she jumped straight on a flight to Tokyo and joined our Simply Japan tour, already ticking off her next country.

Our biggest travel regrets and hopes

It’s not too late! On our interactive map you can also build your travel ‘wishlist’ – flagging all the destinations around the world where you’d like to travel in the future.

To compare your travel ambitions with the general public’s, we commissioned a unique survey to discover the travel hopes and travel regrets of respondents from different age groups.

The survey revealed that the majority of the over 70s have travel regrets, with 62% saying that there is somewhere in the world they regret never having visited.

Some of the countries mentioned frequently in the over 70s travel regrets include Australia, New Zealand, USA, Japan, and Canada.

Attraction, Place or Activity	% of Over 70s Who Regret Never Doing This
Seeing the Northern Lights	39%
Visiting the Maldives	19%
Seeing the Great Pyramids of Giza	19%
Visiting Machu Pichu	19%
Seeing Niagara Falls	19%
Visiting the Taj Mahal	18%
Walking the Great Wall of China	17%
Seeing the Petra ruins in Jordan	13%
An African safari	13%
Driving a Californian road trip	11%

Other experiences the over 70s said they regretted not doing included:

‘Seeing Japan in the Spring – to see the cherry blossom’
‘I would have loved to visit the Italian Lakes’
‘More long-distance train travel, like The Ghan’
‘Seeing the fjords in Norway’
‘Visiting New York and seeing a Broadway show’
‘Driving Route 66’

Our survey also asked the younger mid-life generation about the travel experiences that they hope to accomplish in the next decade or two. A massive 85% of people aged 40 to 55 say they hope to discover a new country, with Italy, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and USA coming out as the most popular places that mid-lifers want to visit in the next ten to twenty years.

Attraction, Place or Activity	% of Over 70s Who Regret Never Doing This
Seeing the Northern Lights	46%
Visiting the Maldives	35%
Lying on a beach in the Mediterranean	33%
Seeing Niagara Falls	30%
Going to Disney Land/Disney World	29%
A Californian road trip	26%
Doing a European cruise	24%
Partying in Las Vegas	23%
An African safari	21%
Great Pyramids of Giza	20%
Taj Mahal	16%
Gondola Ride in Venice	16%
Walking the Great Wall of China	16%
Visiting Machu Picchu	15%
Trekking the Inca Trail	9%

Other experiences 40–55-year-olds said they want to do in the next ten to twenty years include:

‘Going to see the cathedral in Florence, Italy’
‘Seeing a sunset in Ibiza’
‘Taking the bullet train in Japan’
‘Revisiting Bahamas where I had my honeymoon’
‘Australia for the amazing wildlife’
‘I want to visit Disney World at Christmas’
‘I would love to visit India as I’m interested in spirituality and Vedic astrology’
‘Touring the Scottish Highlands’

Survey methodology: Using Censuswide, we surveyed 502 British people aged 70 or over with questions about places and travel experiences around the world that they regret not having visited yet. Also using Censuswide, we then surveyed 530 British respondents aged between 40-55 years old to discover the places and travel experiences that they hope to achieve in the next decade or two.

Map research methodology: Using IMDB, Wikipedia, BBC iPlayer, YouTube and more, we counted the number of locations David Attenborough has visited whilst filming travel shows and documentaries throughout his career. The research looked at his extensive filmography and counted each different location, country and continent Attenborough was seen to have visited during every episode. Shows which are only narrated with a voice over were discounted from the final research numbers. Data correct (to the best of our knowledge) as of February 2023. Think we've missed something? We'd love to hear from you if you've got evidence he's filmed somewhere else. Please send it to HDARU@explore.co.uk

Filming location sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Attenborough_filmography
IMBD.com
Daily Motion
BBC iPlayer
Youtube.com

List of documentaries/shows:

Zoo Quest to Guiana
Zoo Quest for a Dragon
Quest for Paradise Birds
Zoo Quest in Paraguay
The People of Paradise
Festival in Adelaide
Zoo Quest to Madagascar
Zoo Quest Special: Elsa the Lioness
Quest for Capricorn
Zambezi
A Blank on the Map
The Tribal Eye
Life on Earth
The Living Planet
The First Eden
Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives
The Trials of Life
Life in the Freezer
The Private Life of Plants
Attenborough in Paradise
Survival Island
Cities of the World
The Life of Birds
The Lost Gods of Easter Island
The Life of Mammals
Life in the Undergrowth
Life in Cold Blood
Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life
First Life
Frozen Planet
Kingdom of Plants
Galapagos
Rise of the Animals: Triumph of the Vertebrates
Life Story
David Attenborough’s Conquest of the Skies 3D
Great Barrier Reef
Attenborough and the Giant Dinosaur
Life That Glows
Attenborough and the Giant Elephant
Attenborough and the Sea Dragon
Life in Colour
The Green Planet
Dinosaurs: The Final Day with David Attenborough