My name is Ali. I am an Afghan American Internal Medicine hospitalist doctor from Washington, DC. Approximately three years ago, I began feeling unsatisfied by the impact I was having on my patients. I worked hard for twelve hours a day, every day, with almost no days off, for many years, to try to save lives as best as I could. I found that no matter how much effort I put in, no matter what I did, the impact was minimal. Patients still got ill, and still passed away. I became disillusioned by the dichotomy of Western medicine, where illness had become a business. This was not the medicine that Hippocrates had intended. For months, I wrapped my mind around finding better ways to help humanity on a bigger scale. I backpacked and volunteered as a physician in multiple third world countries with my own NGO, Global Shout, to find a greater purpose. All the while, I’d look around only to witness more violence, more hatred, more illnesses, more discrimination, more everything. The world was falling apart before our blind eyes. And I couldn’t take it. Enough was enough. I had to do something. So, I quit my job three years ago to travel indefinitely around the world in search of humanity and to figure out a grander way of world change.
I have now travelled to 76 countries and 6 continents, with the sole purpose of documenting the unique characteristics of each nation, whether it be culture, politics, science, art, sport, or anything, on film. Along my journey, I’ve witnessed the beauty that life has to offer, as well as the horrors that we aren’t meant to see. I’ve come to believe that people truly can change the world if we unite together and attempt to understand one another. In our modern day, the power of media is more influential than any other power available to us, as it can reach from one end of the earth to the other, instantaneously. The diffusion of knowledge and ideas is our most powerful tool, a tool I wish to harness for the greater good by giving the voiceless a voice through a documentary series called “The Backpacking Doc”, filming the reality of troubled areas all over the world. So, I’ve traded my car for a camera, my safety net of salary and security for the dangers of the road, and my apartment for a backpack, to capture life abroad and share it for all to see.
Follow along as we travel inside the hermit nuclear kingdom of North Korea as the last American tourist, into the war with ISIS in Philippines, across the Taliban occupied mountains of war-ravaged Afghanistan, through the refugee camps of the Rohingyas in Myanmar, and within the jungles of Boko Haram in Nigeria. As the journey continues beyond these regions, believe me, we will change the world together, one life and story at a time.
