It is difficult to date the beginning of the Urban exploration movement. People have always explored. Before exploring the cities, explorers were searching to discover new lands to go always further. Christopher Colombus discovered Caribbean in 1492 , Vasco De Gama discovered an ocean route from Portugal to India in 1497, Jean Mermoz  was the first to over cross Atlantic ocean on a plane between Europe and South America in 1930… It is commonly said that the first French urban explorer was, Philibert Aspair, the doorman of the Val de Grace, a well know military hospital in Paris. A night of 1793, he went at night in the Parisian catacombs to find the treasure of a religion order named Chartreux. His candle went out on the way and he never found the exit of the catacombs. His body was found 11 years after. In 1971, Jean-Pierre Lanvin and his rebel friends infiltrated a military building site in France with a protesting banner in order to speak out the nuclear reactor. They became famous and popular afterward. Adventure and exploration are the result of man’s curiosity. Now that we have discovered nearly 95% of our planet and as modern times have seen migrated people from the countryside to the cities, most of us live in urban anthills. Those create new opportunities and a lot of secrets to discover for this new generation of explorers.

To explore our city, usually no specific equipment is requested. Pushing an open gate, jumping over a fence, or opening a window to access a rooftop give you a lot of urban exploring possibilities. For some explorations, few basic equipment can be useful like flashlights, pliers, old dirty clothes or good tennis shoes… A long as you go, you start being more and more equipped and exploring can turn as Ninja missions or Commando operations well prepared… with night vision, binoculars, ropes, harness Anyway, equipped or not , prepared or not, dangerous or easy, the keys rules of exploration described by Ninjalicious in his world famous book” Access all areas” are : Enjoy the place your visit, they may be destroyed in a few time , Do not leave any trail Do not rob the places you visit Currently Exploration is becoming more and more popular, we can ask ourselves if it’s not becoming a trend…. Some people even practice exploration as a tourism alternative as green tourism is. It could be possible to see in Exploration a new niche of sport/leisure market for a lot of companies. The future will tell us…   Be responsible of the risks you take & Enjoy being explorer because :

 

 

 

 

 

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