NEPA native shares adventures abroad in ‘Gaycation Travel Show’

A simple suggestion for his first trip out of the country transformed Ravi Roth’s career.

The Lackawanna Trail graduate and Dalton native has made a name for himself over the last few years as host of several travel shows, including ”Ravi Round the World,” where he highlights gay travel experiences near and far. And getting to share those moments as part of the LGBTQIA+ community himself “means everything to me,” he said.

“For ‘Ravi Round the World,’ my goal with that was to be an out and loud version of Anthony Bourdain … with a little splash of Samantha Brown and make it gay,” Roth said. “That has been perceived, and that has been received from everywhere in the queer community.”

Growing up in Northeast Pennsylvania, Roth said, he didn’t have any role models who were “out and loud and … queer.” But he did have a supportive family, which includes brother Yogi, sister Maya, father William and mother, the late Devorah.

“(Maya) was an amazing musician, and (Yogi) was an amazing athlete,” Roth recalled. “I was really just that awkward kid that was finding my way.”

Nevertheless, the siblings “all got to blossom” and go after their dreams the second they graduated from high school.

“My mom emigrated to Scranton from Israel. She’s like, ‘We came here to give you a life,’” Roth said. “Their whole mission was, ‘We’ll support you no matter what you do.’”

For Roth, that dream involved acting, and after graduating from Boston Conservatory at Berklee with a degree in musical theater, he moved to New York City, where he continues to live when not traveling. He landed roles in touring productions and in the musical comedy ”Altar Boyz,” and after that show closed, Roth tried to figure out to do next. He ended up heading to Barcelona for a culture shock of a first trip abroad.

“I just learned a lot in that I didn’t really know anything,” he said. “It was definitely a shock for me, but it was really eye-opening. It was really exciting, especially trying to navigate what the queer culture is outside the United States.”

 

His brother suggested Roth film his experience, and Roth later showed the footage to a talent manager, who noted Roth had what it took to host a travel show. Roth compared that early video to ”An Idiot Abroad,” a 2010s show from Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant that followed a somewhat sheltered Brit traveling across the globe.

“I had no format, no idea what I was doing,” Roth recalled.

He started figuring out how to set up a show and began attending travel conventions, where he said he “schmoozed my way in with a bunch of tourist boards.” Over the last eight years, he’s traveled to more than 30 countries — a big change for someone whose early travel consisted mostly of annual family beach trips.

“I never left the country until I was 26 years old,” Roth said. “It was never something that I was actively trying to pursue. And then once I found it, I was like, whoa. I was obsessed with it.”

Roth’s visit to Berlin, his first time traveling solo and the focus of his first video, proved eye-opening.

“I could do whatever I wanted, and I really started to get the local perspective from that point,” he said. “That was when I realized I loved talking to everyone and anyone.”

And travel is in his blood, he said. His brother, a fellow world traveler, has appeared on some episodes and also made a documentary with their father, “Life in a Walk,” after William Roth’s battle with prostate cancer. As the film followed their journey through Portugal and Spain on the Camino De Santiago, Yogi Roth asked his father questions about his life. And after losing his mother to cancer last year, Ravi Roth teamed up with his father for a road trip from Texas to California. He and his sister, who lives in Staten Island, also have gone on road trips, and the siblings joined their dad on a trip to Tulsa earlier this year, which Ravi Roth called “an amazing bonding experience coming out of COVID.”

Even though the pandemic put Roth’s career on hold for many months — “I literally lost any kind of job as an actor and any kind of job doing travel,” he said — the pandemic pause also gave him a chance to re-evaluate his life.

“I was able to really hone in on what I wanted to do,” he said.

He nabbed the role as host of “The Gaycation Travel Show,” available on YouTube, which took him to several cities.

“I’m diving into locations, but the real stars of each episode are the cities,” Roth said. “There hasn’t really been anything that’s like what I’m doing because I take myself out of being the center.”

Roth also recently launched a new series, “Ravi’s Road To Pride,” on his personal YouTube channel, where he explores what Pride means to people in different cities and what makes them so welcoming. It took him to Memphis, Tennessee, for Tri-State Black Pride, which he called the “most welcoming Pride I’ve been to,” and the “Pride in the Skies” celebration with Alaska Airlines, which involved Pride parties at different airports — opportunities he never could have imagined having as a kid.

“Being able to highlight that for the generation growing up, that’s what really means a lot to me,” he said.

 

His shows let him highlight queer history sites and offer advice to LGBTQIA+ travelers, especially about places where being gay might be an issue. He encourages travelers to do their research ahead of time; iglta.org in particular has “amazing resources on places that you can travel that are safe,” Roth said.

“Definitely be careful,” he said.

For LGBTQIA+ travelers, he recommends checking out Provincetown, Massachusetts (“It is a place for misfits and weirdos and everyone and anyone in the LGBTQIA+ community,” he said), and Austin, Texas, a spot he called “incredible, liberal, super fun (and) super inviting for everybody.” Cedar Rapids, Iowa, turned out to be “an amazing, surprising little destination that was so queer-friendly,” Roth added.

Roth’s work has made an impact as well. During a recent trip to Columbus, a man told him how his show made him want to move to Provincetown. GayCities honored Roth as the “Best Insta Traveler of 2019,” and Metrosource named him to its list of “People We Love in 2020.” Roth has collaborated with Orbitz and spoke at the New York Times Travel Show, too.

Roth hopes to continue traveling and filming with the goal of visiting every country in the world. He wants to get as many people to see his shows as possible and to continue to provide content and a safe space for people.

“I really get something out of everywhere,” he said. “It’s all been so exciting because it’s all so different.”