Curious Worldview

119: Charlie Walker | Lessons From The Ultimate Rite Of Passage Adventure

• Charlie Walker • Episode 119

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🎙️: https://atlasgeographica.com/charlie-walker/

Charlie Walker has… rode his bike through a winter Tibeten plateau. Rafted the hippopotamus dwelling backcountry of the Congo. Cycled his way through India, China, Iran, Africa, Kazakstan. Walked the length of Mongolia. Completed a 8000km triathlon from the Russian Urals all the way down through to Turkey. In Papua New Guinea, he stumbled upon some of the most remote tribes in the world. He walked two months down frozen Siberian rivers camping at -50 degrees. And to top it all off! Charlie Walker sat across from the baldest man in podcasting – the GOAT, Joe Rogan.

This podcast explores the adventures teased above, but as well the contents of his two books; Through Sand & Snow and On Roads That Echo.

Links To Charlie Walker

Episodes Of The Curious Worldview Podcast Mentioned.

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  • 00:00 – Introduction.
  • 01:56 – Hiding From Guinea Rebel Terrorists.
  • 10:11 – Why Did Charlie Decide To Do This In The First Plae?
  • 16:23 – Romania Confrontation.
  • 22:35 – Serendipity & Human Kindness.
  • 28:18 – Cycling The Tibetan Plateau In Winter (Unbelievable Story)
  • 40:11 – Podcasts & Audio Books While Travelling.
  • 44:10 – Dealing With The Impossible Cold.
  • 45:52 – Mongolia & Alcoholism On The Steppe.
  • 53:31 – How Charlie Thinks About Risk & Rolling The Dice.
  • 57:55 – The Democratic Republic Of The Congo.
  • 1:02:39 – How Does Charlie Relate To People?
  • 1:14:07 – The Economics Of Charlies Life.
  • 1:16:11 – Me Wasting Everyones Time.
  • 1:18:26 – Explorers & Adventurers Charlie Admires.
  • 1:21:13 – How Does Charlie Want To Be Remembered?
  • 1:22:29 – Country Charlie Is Bullish On.
  • 1:23:28 – Conversation Between Any Two People Of History.

🍻☕: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/ryanhogg


SPEAKER_03

The fella I'm about to speak with has completed some of the most remarkable adventures of anybody living today. Just to name a few. He rode his bike across the Tibetan plateau in winter. He rafted the hippopotamus dwelling backcountry of the Congo. He cycled his way through India, China, Iran, Africa, Kazakhstan, and many, many more, walked the length of Mongolia, completed an 8,000 kilometer triathlon from the Russian Urals all the way down through to Istanbul, Turkey. In Papua New Guinea, he stumbled upon some of the world's most remote tribes. He walked two months down frozen Siberian rivers, camping at minus fifty degrees. And then to top it all off, the fellow that I'm about to speak with sat across from the baldest man in podcasting, the GOAT, Joe Rogan. Anyone who knows a thing or two about me, which is slowly becoming you, my dear listener, will be able to tell just how much I project a heavy dose of romanticism onto the adventures and explorations of this guest. I'm, of course, speaking about Charlie Walker, and in this podcast we speak about the combined journeys of his two books, through sand and snow, and on roads that echo. For more on Charlie, check out his four-part series on the Adventure Podcast, which will be linked, and of course, check him out on the great Joe Rogan. I hope Charlie becomes a regular guest on this podcast. So therefore, pump your good juice into the algorithm and let him know that it was this podcast that drew you in his direction. This podcast took me five hours to put together, but will only take you five seconds to review. So therefore, and again, pump that sweet, sweet juice into the algorithm. Leave those five stars on Spotify and a beautifully written review on Apple. And therefore, with absolutely nothing further, here is the great explorer, adventurer, Charlie Walker. Charlie, I I wanted to start uh with this story from when you were 19 in West Africa, I think it was Guinea. Um, because you told that story in the book to make a point about not being a traveller for travelers' sake. Um it's a remarkable story, so I was I would wonder if you could tell it and then uh explain why you included it in the book. Um sure.

SPEAKER_00

Well uh I was backpacking around West Africa. I flew into Bamako in Mali, and f a fairly short time after arriving, I heard that uh the sort of southwest of Guinea, down in the Sierra Leone border region, was quite an interesting, albeit slightly sort of dicey, place to visit at that time. And of course, being a headstrong hubristic idiot, I immediately rushed down there the second I heard that, and by immediately rushed down there, I think I probably spent something like six or seven days cooped up in the back of bush taxis. Um but when I got down to this town called uh Kisadugu, I think this is so long ago, it's either Kisidougou or Nzerakori, one of the two. Um I met this this Sierra Leonean woman, and I hadn't really spoken uh English for a little bit. Um she was an English speaker, I've been getting by on my terrible French. Um and she said that she was a refugee from Sierra Leone, and she was living in a um sort of officially abandoned refugee camp out in the forest just by the border, um a sort of two or three hour motorbike ride away through just on footpaths through the jungle. Um and she said, you know, come and come and visit, you know, we're we're we we've got quite a sort of you know, we're in quite a bad situation and we'd like the world to know. And I had to make sure that she was under no aspersions that I was a journalist or anything, I was just a student. I was I just finished my first year of studying English literature in in Newcastle. Um but I said yeah, you know, I'll I'll come down and visit. And when I got down there, there was this camp in which I think a few thousand people uh used to live, um, and they all arrived there when they fled the you know the fighting, the the rebel united front, the you know, the sort of the fellows in Sierra Leone who were pretty um gung-ho with cutting off um hands and feet. And yeah, it was a it was a very nasty civil war. And these people uh were still living in the jungle, but the the UNHCR, or the UN um sort of uh human rights commission, had perhaps it was even the yeah, the uh the Uh the UN Refugee Commission um had sort of officially closed these this camp, I think a couple of years before, or a few years before. But the people and said that, you know, that's it. The people in this camp can now r return safely to Sierra Leone because they're you know the war's over, they're safe there, or they can just integrate into life in Guinea. Um slightly overlooking the fact that the majority of the people here, if they were to return to Sierra Leone, would be viewed by their communities that they return to as um sort of uh rebel sympathizers, or somehow, you know, where have they been all this time? You know, what what what have they been doing? Of course, they've been with the rebels and they're you know part of the problem in the country. And to um just integrate into a country in which you don't speak the language, not just the lingua franca or French, but any of the local tribal languages, equally difficult, more so when the Guinean soldiers keep coming round to the camp and essentially threatening people, occasionally shooting and killing people. Uh that you know the Guineans do not want these people. Um so I spent a couple of days in this camp. It was it was a very sort of bleak and upsetting experience, frankly. Uh the people were desperate and destitute and starving and living in ruins, the sort of remaining ruins that uh you know, most of the buildings, there's about 900 people, most of the buildings had been destroyed by the Guinean soldiers. Um but uh while I was down there, I mean it instantly became clear to me that all the people there saw me as some potential uh salvation. You know, he's he's a white guy, he's from outside, he he'll know how to sort things out. And of course I didn't, and I instantly felt terrible for sort of inadvertently providing false hope for these people. Uh but while I was down there, suddenly uh there was uh a lot of uh motorbike engines audible sort of gunning in the trees, and someone ran up and said the the troops are coming, and they didn't know what they would do, the uh uh Ghanaian troops if they found a white person in the camp. Um so I was uh sort of you know uh dragged off to one of the few remaining buildings and stuffed in a cupboard to hide. And for the I don't know how long it how long I was in that cupboard, maybe an hour or so during which there was shouting and screaming and the odd gunshot, and I was just you know getting more and more terrified, feeling more and more out of my depth. Um I heard someone come into the room at one point and noises and voices and shouting, and then they left. Uh and eventually um Wata, this woman who had been sort of you know chaperoning me during this visit, the woman I originally met, uh, came and let me out and said it was alright, the troops had gone. They hadn't shot anyone, they've been firing their guns into the air. Um but it really shook me up that experience. And um it's a lot easier to write about this than to speak about it because it it doesn't it doesn't reflect well as a story. But I you know it it it quite profoundly impacted me and I felt very determined that I could and should and would do something uh for these people. Um and uh a month or so later I returned to the UK and I started looking into how to help and and hit quite a lot of sort of resistance at every turn. But then as a as a sort of young and uh as a young man who's not perhaps particularly uh good at committing or dedicating to things, dedicating myself to things, um it wasn't particularly long before it just sort of fell onto the back burner and um I mean as far as I'm aware now the the refugees have left one way or another, they've either gone into Guinea or returned to Sierra Leone, or as some of them as everyone was holding out for, I believe some of them were resettled eventually in in Western countries. Um but it became because a as time went by, as the months turned, I I sort of occasionally caught myself telling this as a story in which I was kind of the central character as opposed to the people who were, you know, who were the central characters and who were having such a hard time, and it became a bit of a kind of lesson to myself to to try and avoid doing that. Um the reason I included that story in the book is it seemed relevant at a point when I was in a town in southwest China, in Yunnan province, where I met other people who were perhaps at similarly early stages in their life or were recounting events from having been at similarly early stages in their life where they were equally as sort of you know rash and headstrong and and naive and full of shit, frankly, as I was back then. Um and as best I can remember, because it's been five or six years since I wrote that book, that's why I included it. Sorry, not the uh not the tightest uh not the tightest explanation.

SPEAKER_03

No, that's okay. Um, but it does leave you know a little bit uh more on the table, for instance, details about the camp, uh details about this woman who was chaperoning you around. Um, I suppose, you know, these were as well morbid-ish tidbits that would have added a lot of flavour to your story. Um, but the point was why did you include it? Why did you feel like uh telling it at this point in the journey in the book?

SPEAKER_00

Oh, well, I suppose uh at that particular point of the journey in the book, I mean the uh the main thesis of that book, if there was one, was being on this journey and not being entirely sure why I was on this journey and trying to figure out, you know, there were so many possible and plausible answers to that question. I was doing it because I wanted a challenge, I was doing it because I wanted to explore the world, I was doing it because I wanted to see what I was physically and mentally capable of. Um and all of those were true, but none of those were the entire truth, and it was really hard to work out exactly what the what the the impetus and the goal of this journey were. And I suppose I I tried to explore the evolution of my uh experiences with travel, what brought me to doing ever more kind of off-the-beaten path and eventually ever more physically challenging and even dangerous things. Um and this was I I wanted it to be a very warts and all book. Um uh uh travel logs are usually essentially autobiographies, and so some people can leave uh the reader with a very misleadingly varnished account of themselves, and um I suppose including this story that doesn't reflect at all well on me um was a way of ensuring that uh I showed all the ludicrous aspects of myself that bought me to the journey that I was on and recounting in the book.

SPEAKER_03

On the question of uh of why, much of the first book, like you said, was was sort of in pursuit of answering this question, and uh you went through a lot of uh potential explanations, you know, was it just a big ego? Was it because you said you committed to do something, were you running away from something? You know, a lot of um really rational explanations for why you might be doing something like this. But then there was barely a word of it in the second book, and I was eagerly awaiting the final chapter to reveal this wisdom, and you go from Mauritania up to the UK in like three paragraphs, and that was it. And I was like, oh, where is the you know, where is the why? Um, and there doesn't have to be a why, but I'm just curious. I mean, like what what was the why in the end? Did you ever come to a conclusion on it?

SPEAKER_00

Um well I I suppose I I the best conclusion I could could come up with, because it's I mean the essentially my conclusion was 80,000 words long, and it wasn't that was the first book. Um you know, I I I explored that idea, and while on the journey, I was exploring that idea in itself. But by the time I got to the end of the first book, which is midway through the journey, but by that point I was no longer questioning quite so so often and so sort of fervently why why the hell I was doing this thing. Um but by that point I suppose I had I had uh decided or perhaps realised that it it was none and all of the above. Uh the it was it was the people I'd met, and yet it wasn't just that, it was the challenge and the growth I was experiencing, and yet of course that didn't sum it up entirely. And perhaps it was in some sense just the the the time and the opportunity to have that sort of long, inflective uh experience and thought pattern, um, and the fact that there was not necessarily a uh finite or pithy answer at the end didn't matter so much because having put myself through that thought process and having realized that uh life isn't black and white like that was possibly one of the bigger lessons that I picked up along the way.

SPEAKER_03

Have you read elsewhere finite, pithy, poetic answers that you really, really identify with?

SPEAKER_00

Uh yes and no. Yes, in that uh you know, I frequently read a uh uh an epilogue to a book or even just a quote with which I I really identify, but none of them, almost by default, can be the whole picture, the bigger picture. I mean I I filled my books at the start of each chapter with uh a quote that I felt in some sense uh chimed with the content of that chapter and hopefully with the kind of broader thrust of the book, but no one of those holds all the answers, and a lot of them are you know arguably uh cliche or um overly reductive, but that's what um you know quotes are for really. They are for reducing something, boiling something down to its essence.

SPEAKER_03

And I was happy to see Tim Butcher Brandish, one of the Congo quotes, he uh he he came on this podcast and did Blood River um back last year, and I think is actually you know um one of the most naturally storytelling people I've ever come across. He speaks in prose. It is actually remarkable. And his other journey where he walked through uh Sierra Leone and Liberia as well, you know, like in the heart of Africa's broken heart, in the search of Africa's broken heart.

SPEAKER_00

I shall have to look that up, uh look that out rather, listen to it. I've I've actually not heard him interviewed, I would be very interested to. I met a small handful of people in Congo who met him uh when his journey Congolese, a Greek guy, a couple other people who met him when he was on his journey. Um so that would be interesting.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, 100%. I think you'll yeah, I mean, you have had such a uh rare experience, um, which you do share with him, which is this uh you know extraordinarily off-the-grid, risky type of adventure travel movement throughout that country. Um, but on to the the Unreal Adventure, I uh which is two books through Sand and Snow and on The Roads That Echo. Um I just sort of wrote questions around the highlights of the trip. I don't think it makes sense, you know, following it linearly or anything like that. Um but the first one that stood out was Romania. You coming across it like out of a cheap Western film, this this standoff. I haven't thought about that for years.

SPEAKER_00

Um shall I say what happened first? Absolutely. Well, um again, in brief, I was I was cycling through Romania uh towards the end of summer, um, but it was still very hot. Um, but it was it it was at a time of year when it's just uh sort of like a a picture of a late summer Sicily from the 1930s or something, it's just scorched plains and fields, everything's just parched and bleached white. Um but I camped on this hillside uh one night and I woke up in the morning, if I remember rightly, I woke up, opened my tent door, and was in the middle of a herd of sheep that were sort of passing by. But as they passed, uh these two shepherds, um quite sort of uh rough, fairly sort of lugubrious looking characters, um, wandered over and started uh in Romanian, which I don't speak, um asking all sorts of questions and they seemed quite sort of th threatening. I think uh I think one had a knife. But they they started grabbing at everything, and I sort of quite quickly just started packing up and I just wanted to get you know out of there. And as I was packing up, once I was done, they both just grabbed me, one arm each on either side, and just frog marched me um into uh this sort of farm, uh probably about 10-15 minute walk away, this sort of farmyard. And I while I was packing up, I had um just s slipped my sort of um camping knife into my pocket, uh sort of a uh uh flick knife. Um and I guess I I put it there because I didn't want them to grab it, but also you know you never know where things are gonna go. Um anyway, we arrived and I was sort of marched into the middle of this crowd of men who were loading crates of plums onto the back of a truck, and they all stopped as I approached and just gathered around me in this kind of you know yard with white dust. Um and with no no one spoke, it was completely silent, and um one of them sort of stepped towards me and they all closed ranks around me, so I was in this circle of Romanian plum farmers. And this guy who stepped out in front of me, he sort of looked, you know, he was the most physically imposing of them, and sort of seemed in some i I suppose with hindsight, maybe it seems sort of strange thing to assume, but it was plainly obvious to me just from a physicality perspective that he was the boss, he was top dog. And he stepped towards me and he um pulled out a knife, quite a sort of threatening looking knife and then he bent down and picked up a plum from one of the crates, and he jammed the knife into the plum, sort of scooped and flicked, and uh so pitted the plum, the stone flew out. And then he just put the whole plum into his mouth, just opened his gob, um he had a quite big mouth, he shoved it into his mouth and just chewed it and just stared at me without smiling, but with this quite sort of challenging, triumphant look, with you know flecks of plum juice kind of dribbling down his stubble. Uh and then there was just silence, and everyone just looked at me, you know, sort of you know, with anticipation. So I thought, alright, and I picked up a another plum. I believe it was like slightly bigger, somehow felt like the you know, the one-upmanship. And I reached into my pocket and pulled out my knife and sort of flicked it open with a bit of a flourish and managed slightly less slickly than him to kind of pit the plum and then shoved it in my mouth, and then just looked back at him with the same sort of look of you know triumph. You know, I yeah I I can eat a plum too. Um but while I was chewing, I sort of maybe I smiled at him a bit too much or the plum was too big, either way, like a little bit sort of went down the wind windpipe, and I suddenly started coughing and choking and spluttering. And yeah, I was I I I sort of have a vague sense memory of being on on all fours on the dusty ground, kind of you know, spitting and sort of nearly vomiting this this plum back onto the ground, and immediately they all gathered around me, patting my back and rubbing my back and saying, Oh, he's alright, he's alright. Um, and uh and then I was presented with a couple of kilograms of plums in a bag and wished good morning and sent on my way. It was and it was all over, and no one, you know, no one had went I hadn't really spoken a word to anyone. It was very strange. But that those little experiences, and there were probably a few others like it over the years, um which to this day I don't understand, but again, that doesn't really matter to me. It's just a sort of a bizarre, it's part of the colour of being in places where you normally aren't, because different things can happen. Anything can happen when you're out of your element, and uh yeah, those sort of um little uh streaks of colour are to me what makes some of these uh journeys worthwhile.

SPEAKER_03

I uh I remember um I was walking home listening to that chapter and like uh having a f physically reacting with almost nervousness or anxiety because I've never been in a situation as um confrontational as that, but you know, on a lesser scale, everyone to some sort of degree has. And I was thinking, would I is it bravery or is it luck that you decided to just imitate the guy and assume he was playing along? Or was it this sort of like I'm going all in, if this ends up in a confrontation, you know, fuck it. I mean, is it bravery or luck that you behave that way rather than trying to plead with them, hey guys, I don't know what's going on here, you know, I'm just a guy riding my bike.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I know what you mean. Uh but I I don't think it's bravery or luck, I think. I think it was in the moment it seemed to me like that's the only thing to do. Uh and I and I don't think that was bravery, um but it ju it just seemed like instincts. But i th there was no question to me that there was anything else to be done except to eat a plum. Cause I suppose perhaps because of that slight pause when everyone just looked expectantly at me, I thought, right, well I've you know I've got a what are they expecting? It looks like they're expecting me to eat a plum, I'll eat a plum. Um as it happened, I couldn't eat the plum, but that that was probably luck. Maybe that was luck at the end.

SPEAKER_03

It's impossible to listen to the the story of you riding a bike around the world and not just be confronted again and again and again with what the role that serendipity plays, like the just impossible randomness to predict the future, no matter how certain you might think the path is.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I think I mean I'd probably serendipity, luck, unexpected happiness, I suppose the definition. I'd certainly had a lot of that, but I imagine most of that, probably most of it, stemmed from not so much luck as uh just people's broadly speaking, people's kindness. Um there were so many times where it feels, oh so lucky that in this moment the one person was there happened to be helpful or kind. But that is what most people are, actually, when you get out into the world. Um and perhaps even more so when you are an oddity, uh sort of an exotic foreigner, uh, which makes you that little bit more interesting, so people are perhaps more likely to kind of approach you and ask who you are and what you're doing and and offer any help should you need any.

SPEAKER_03

Are you prepared to say what the most friendly country you went through was, or the most friendly culture you interacted with?

SPEAKER_00

Oh, yeah, easily. Um Iraq. Uh sorry, Iran. Um yeah, I've I've I've been to Iran, I think, three, three or four times now. And I've been, I don't know how many countries I've been to, probably ninety or so. Uh and Iran comfortably stands out as the friendliest I went to. Um that's not to say it doesn't have uh plenty of its own problems. And of course those are being played out and confronted and hopefully to some extent improved upon at the moment, although that remains to be seen. Um it's a tricky one with with what's going on in Iran at the moment, because it seems like they're potentially on the edge of an err of a revolution, but things can't really get better there without probably getting a bit worse in the meantime, because I don't particularly imagine the regime will just stand down and kind of allow um liberalisation and change. But um so many people in the country, and and now it's becoming apparent just how many of them um want to be part of the wider world and uh they don't feel at all represented by the uh frankly fairly hateful regime that sits in power in the country. Iran's a country where on a daily basis, more than once a day, total strangers would approach me and ask me to stay the night in their home or uh you know, or it's all it's very hard as a foreigner to pay for food. Because if you go into a restaurant, firstly they have this system called Taroff or Toroff, uh I forget the exact pronunciation, but it essentially means it's it's a it's a social etiquette aspect. Uh and I believe through Toroff, a lot of tourists or foreigners accidentally take um take advantage of uh you know take liberties, frankly, without meaning to. Uh Toroff dictates that when someone not it's not always um sort of followed, but when someone even just in a shop goes up to the counter and puts what they want to buy, uh, let's say a packet of feta cheese on the counter, the shopkeeper will say, No, no, no, just take it. And uh of course you say, No, no, no, I need to pay for it. And they'll say, No, no, no, it's nothing, just take it. And you say, No, no, no, I'm I I I insist, I would like to pay for this. And if they say a third time, no, no, really, take it, then they do actually mean that. But it is this kind of socially mandated system of three times, and if someone says something three three times, then they do actually mean it. So it means a lot of time is wasted in very, very good natured back and forth, which is really nice. Um, but uh, you know, I would eat in a a cafe or a restaurant and I'd be there for a while and I'd go up afterwards and say, Um, yeah, uh how how much is it? And they said, I don't know, it's nothing. And I said, No, no, really, I I I want to pay. You know, I know I know Tarov, no, but I would like to pay, thank you. And they said, No, no, no, there's nothing. They said, No, really, I want to pay. No, no, no, that man paid for you, and you just see some car leaving and a man waving back at you as he disappears. Um, so people really just uh go out of their way to help you, even if it's kind of in a slightly stealthy, stealthy backhanded manner. Um, so yeah, I've never been anywhere that that quite compares to that incredible level of of uh of kindness.

SPEAKER_03

It it sounds uh like an unbelievably kind place. There was another funny anecdote of a man who was guiding you out of Tehran because you didn't know how to get onto the you know the highway in the right direction or whatever, and I don't know, it took him an hour or something, slowly guiding this cyclist through, and then you get to the outskirts and he goes, Now I insist you must stay at my place. And you're like, Alright, then where do you live? You know, back in central Tehran. Yeah, that that happened on a couple of occasions. Are you still in touch with the uh the woman? I forget her name, but um you know, she sort of she liked you um in a country where she wasn't allowed to like boys. I mean, so yeah. What's happening in Iran from her perspective?

SPEAKER_00

Um I've been uh briefly in touch. I mean, we've kept in touch over the years, yes. Um, and I have seen her on on a subsequent visit to Iran probably five, four or five years ago. Um we've been in touch recently, she's she's she's well. Um her family are well, uh broadly speaking. Um but uh we we're not sort of frequently in contact um anymore. But uh, you know, she's she's I believe been you know out marching as uh as so many have.

SPEAKER_03

Wow. Um on to a moment which surely luck is involved here, um, but it's your experience on the Tibetan plateau. So it was hard to listen to the bitter, impossible cold, uh, the dogs, you know, the wind, the isolation. So if you could just give the cliff notes of you cycling across the Tibetan plateau and that one particular evening where where had you not stumbled across the hut, you you would have died.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, uh well I I suppose firstly I chose the wrong time of year to go to Tibet.

SPEAKER_03

Uh exactly that that's so funny. Who's crossing in winter on a bike?

SPEAKER_00

I mean that that was partially just because that's the time that I arrived there, but in the back of my mind, I I I think that I wanted to experience some real extreme cold during this journey to see what it was like. Uh, I probably bit off a bit more than I can chew with Tibet uh in January, up to five and a half thousand metres. It is um it's yeah, it's really cold. I I think I experienced somewhere down to around about minus 40 degrees with the wrong equipment. I didn't have proper gloves, I was wearing Wellington boots. Um I had a sort of a one person, I had the world's lightest tent when I'd bought it a couple of years before. So that's I mean, you lightweight isn't necessarily what you're after when you're in essentially polar conditions. Um but uh I also increasingly struggled to get hold of food because I entered Tibet illegally. I snuck through a uh military base in in the night to get in, and from that point onwards I I couldn't the the settlements tended to all have military checkpoints, so I had to kind of sort of uh sneak through them in the night. Uh so I lost actually while I was up there, I lost roughly a quarter of my body weight, which is not good to do generally. Um probably starting to metabolise your organs by that point. Um but I uh I had one particular day where I uh cycled up towards a mountain pass, and as I got sort of over the pass, it wasn't down the other side, but instead I came onto a sort of a big open plateau, and then very quickly there it was just snowing everywhere, and within the space of perhaps half an hour, maybe a little more, I forget exactly. It's a while ago, um, I I got entirely lost in uh in a complete whiteout. Um I lost the road um and I found myself kind of trudging through shin deep snow. Um and the sensation was just receding from my fingertips. So I was getting colder and colder, my feet were entirely numb, and I thought this is it, I'm gonna die. You know, for the first time in my life, I thought I am going to die now. Um and I I didn't, you know, it was too windy to try putting up my tent. If I had done so, then you know my tent would have been whisked away from me. And I've I spent a fair while panicking and freaking out. Which doesn't help. But at the same time, with hindsight, the adrenaline caused by panic, if you are then able to master that panic, probably does help keep you warm a little bit. Um adrenaline is is is good for that. Um but I sort of struggled around and stumbled around and wondered what to do for a while, and eventually decided that I was just gonna keep going in whatever direction it was that I was going. Um for I think I told myself keep going for half an hour, and if by the end of that time you find nowhere to shelter, you're just gonna have to dig a hole in the snow, get in your sleeping bag and bury yourself and kind of hope that that's enough to to insulate me through the rest of this storm. And you know, night was approaching. Um so I sort of pushed on, just you know, freezing and afraid, and miraculously, shortly before I was, you know, sort of my allotted time to dig my own icy grave arrived, I uh this kind of grey shape loomed out of the whiteness, and I dumped my bicycle and stumbled towards uh what turned out to be a little hut. Uh really, really truly in the middle of nowhere. And I uh I wrenched the door open, and um this family were ter terrified at first. With hindsight, I suspect the children might have taken me for the Yeti. I had um sort of a big beard of ice and I think possibly a snot uh icicle hanging out my moustache. Um but they uh they you know they they had a home, it was warm, they took me in. Um I I was uh I was frostbitten on my fingers and uh my toes were a bit damaged as well, I believe. But um they took me in for the night and uh and I lived. Um and yes, you were right, on that occasion there was a tremendous amount of luck. Uh it it wasn't lucky that they turned out to be very kind and helpful. I think just about anyone in the world, really 99.9999% of people would, of course, not cast you back out into the elements. That's just humane, that's humanity. Oh, it's casting someone to death. Well, exactly, exactly. There are very, very few people in the world who are who are happy or able to do that. Um, but it was very lucky that I did stumble upon their home because no one was out looking for me. Um, you know, I didn't have a phone. If I did, it wouldn't have worked up there. You know, I was I was really lost. Um so yeah, that was that was very lucky.

SPEAKER_03

Uh I believe the the the title of that chapter was called Fear. You just mentioned fear and panic. I mean, I've is this like a traumatic experience for you to relive those 30 minutes of walking in presumably just white and dark, knowing that my chances are next to Slim here.

SPEAKER_00

Um that's a very good question. And I d I mean just now, no. Um I spoken about this to friends, to audiences, but I do remember writing that chapter. I do remember revisiting the journal I wrote that you know afternoon with my or struggled to write with my fingers. Um and I I do remember that being quite a difficult experience. And I suspect if I because I mean I haven't read that book since I recorded the audiobook shortly after it was published. So I suspect if I picked up that book now and read that chapter, it might have a slightly more visceral effect on me. But as it is, I'm uh you know, I'm I am British and I'm very good at tamping down emotions, so I think it's all safely suppressed for the time being.

SPEAKER_03

Safely suppressed. Good. Um and maybe is there anything worth saying about uh what it was like to experience that level of fear and panic? I mean, and I'm not asking for like you know godly re revelations or anything, um, but nor am I asking for practical advice, but just is there anything interesting that happened in that moment, what you were thinking about? Some yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Um well there was certainly no uh divine revelations or or you know turning to faith, which um there are a few occasions on this broader journey, and perhaps in my life since then, where I've been in in similarly dire circumstances, and the more times that I don't turn to a deity, uh you know, as I was sort of taught to do when growing up, I suppose, um, the more certain I become that that's not for me. So that's one element of um revelation would probably be the wrong word to use in this instance, but uh that was revealed to me in those cases. Um I mean the experience of just being that afraid, um I mean it's hard to recall it instantly to mind, um probably because as I uh not purely flippantly said just now, I think you do uh as a coping mechanism with things like that, but also with lots of other things, with um uh with a breakup or uh the death of a loved one, or uh even frankly, uh science seems to suggest with giving birth, we we our minds train us to forget trauma. Um and if you're uh unlucky or you go through something particularly traumatic or both, then you can be left with PTSD. I don't believe I have experienced PTSD, or if I have not for more than a very short period of time, and I don't think therefore it would classify. Um so I I think there are both conscious and con subconscious coping mechanisms for having experienced things like this, and thankfully my subconscious ones seem to be fairly intact, and my conscious ones get better honed with every uh experience along these lines that I've had. Um sorry, it's a slightly sort of uh technical, dry answer, but um yeah.

SPEAKER_03

That's okay. Uh it makes me think of um the book Thinking Fast and Slow in it. Uh Danny Canneman talks a little bit about how we remember pain. Um and so you know, the reason why in a childbirth you don't remember how horrifically painful or traumatic it might be is because at the end you are flooded with the um joy and emotion of this child. In your case, I suppose you're flooded with the relief of a of a warm dung fire to to warm you up. We don't actually remember the the peaks of our pain, we more remember um how it turned out. And so you while remember it was painful to get there, but it's not traumatic because it turned out fine almost.

SPEAKER_00

Um yes, I well I actually I I I've I'm I I do have it somewhere. Um I'm yet to read that book and I've been meaning to for a while. Um, but I do think I listened to him speak about exactly that point on uh an interview perhaps on the radio a few years ago. Um and it was particularly interesting because there are certain things that we have, there are certain types of pain or fear that we have almost a culturally learned memory of for you know for evolutionary purposes, you know, fire, hot, bad. Um, you know, height, dangerous, bad. You know, there are certain things that are ingrained within us. And interesting, I mean, from an evolutionary perspective, it's it's essential to forget the pain of childbirth because that's the only way that um female the female of any species is able to propagate their genes, and that is, you know, the the driving force behind evolution. Whereas on the sort of converse to that is uh I mean the stupid things that I do, arguably for a living or for self-gratification or for sundry unexplained reasons that we referred to in the first um first question, they probably should stick with me. Um they probably should teach me not to do these things. But uh I think our sort of the cultural framework that we've built around our lives perhaps slightly better enable us to rationalise or if convenient, irrationalise some of the fear and pain and trauma that we've experienced to be able to go on doing things that we want to do as opposed to things that we need to do for survival. It is not uh a case of survival for me to go off and do these journeys. I do it because I want to.

SPEAKER_03

Uh speaking of uh podcasts, uh it was 2014, right? That Tibetan moment?

SPEAKER_00

Uh no, that would have been 2011.

SPEAKER_03

2011, okay. So 2011.

SPEAKER_00

February or February 2011.

SPEAKER_03

So yeah, well back. You then recovered in a hostel for four days and said you got to listen to your um more than 30 minutes a day allotted podcasting time. Who are you listening to back in 2011? You were truly an OG podcaster if that's the case.

SPEAKER_00

Uh well, the podcast landscape back in 2011 was I mean, from what I remember listening to, it was largely um stuff from the radio that was then put onto podcasts. Right. Um so I was listening to a lot of documentaries from Radio 4, BBC Radio 4, um Crossing Continents and the Weekly Comedy Show, and Start the Week. It was quite a lot of sort of cultural and documentary-based stuff, arts and culture. Um I'm trying to think who else there was. I mean that yeah, there weren't a great deal of podcasts around back then, but there were some. I mean, actually they were already I think I mean where did they start? I guess they would have started about two.

SPEAKER_03

I think it really kicked off in like 2015 with Sam Harris and Joe Rogan really kicked off, and and then everyone came around and saw how much you know audience and reach they were getting.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I I didn't listen to well, I suppose there weren't that many that I got, it's actually I'm really struggling to remember. I think it was a lot of BBC stuff.

SPEAKER_03

Right, cool. No, it's just uh it was an interesting side note.

SPEAKER_00

I also found um iTunes U, which I think was sort of iTunes University, uh, and on there I found uh there was a an American I think he was maybe he was just a reader, or maybe he was a professor, I'm not sure, but uh Rick Rick Kissner, uh who had read and recorded and there and then it had been posted uh lots and lots of like classic novels. Um so I listened to uh Moby Dick before audiobooks were really a thing, and the Count of Monte Cristo and various other things. And um I've always been I remember back at the time thinking I should really find his email address and email him to say thanks. Um it was really old school. You could hear the tape deck sort of, you know, when you press play and record at the same time, you could hear that sort of clunk sound and the sort of dusty creaks of the room. Um I'm not sure if I ever did email him. I I suspect I may have and never heard back.

SPEAKER_03

Uh do you now, um, when you go on these really, really long expeditions, do you still limit the amount of time you'll listen to something every day uh to try and maybe stay in the moment a little bit more, or do you find yourself, you know, just sunrise or sunset listening to stuff?

SPEAKER_00

Um no, I do I do build in uh rules for myself because otherwise it's very easy to um I'm aware of uh some people going, you know, across Antarctica, for example, and they will listen to a complete audiobook every day as well as a bunch of podcasts, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. They are, after all, trudging across a very plain, barren, blank white nothingness. Um but trudging across a plain open barren blank white nothingness is also quite informative and is a good time for the mind to wander, sometimes in positive ways, sometimes in negative ways, but always in interesting ways, I think. Um so I I it's different every time. But on the most recent visit, uh most recent journey, I think I allowed myself an hour in the morning, uh an hour during the afternoon at some point, as as a maximum. Uh and then perhaps half an hour before bed, because where I was it was too cold to read anything, and the nights were so long that you'd be just in, you know, you you couldn't have your hands out the sleeping bag to read, so I'd just be lying there in the darkness for eleven hours, ten hours, with nothing to do. So it was sort of uh that was uh that was um something I allowed myself as a last you know late night treat.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Uh there is there is I mean about seven pm.

SPEAKER_03

There there is a lot I'd like to ask you about the Russia expedition, but it was kind of Covered so well uh in the adventure podcast, and as well your own Joe Rogan, and I I mean you also did many other shows I saw, but um maybe one thing worth asking you is dealing with that bitter, bitter cold, you know, uh getting to the end of the day, putting up the tent and realizing there is no respite. You're gonna sleep in this, you're gonna still be breathing in the frigid air. How do you do that? How do you prepare yourself mentally for that?

SPEAKER_00

Um, the best mental preparation for that, I suppose, is prior experience and having been in the extreme. So extreme cold is obviously extremely cold, um, but having been in it can slightly demystify it because if you've got the right gear and you've got the right sort of uh tools, I suppose, mentally and literally to survive it, then you absolutely can. I mean I I camped in down to about minus forty-nine degrees, I think, earlier this year. Which is which is the coldest I'd been in. Um but I now know that if I've got the right gear, down to minus forty-nine degrees is is fine. It's not pleasant, but it's survivable. And it basically just involves huge amounts of patience. And there is respite in that if you've got the right sleeping bag, when you get to the end of the day, once you get in it, you do warm up. Even if you don't feel warm, even if you don't get toastly warm, even if the tips of your toes actually don't regain sensation for the night or for the following week or whatever it might be, you if you're out trekking and it's cold or skiing or whatever it might be, and then you finally get in your giant, you know, sarcastically large sleeping bag, um, then your core warms up, your body warms up, and uh it might take time to do so. But that is respite in itself, even if you don't feel actually snug and you know totally warm.

SPEAKER_03

Sure. Mongolia. So you uh bought a horse, you rode it across the country. Um let's talk about uh or at least tell us about Mongolia and as well some of the horrific alcoholism you experienced across the whole Eurasian steppe.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, well Mongolia, uh one of my favourite countries in the world. It's um it's massive. It's at it's it's uh about the same size as Spain, France, and Germany combined. But the population is only about three and a half million, I think, now. Um roughly half of whom live in the capital city, Villambata. So the rest of the countryside is massive, and it's the most sparsely populated country on earth. There's something like a square kilometre per person, if everyone's based out evenly. Um so uh I went there with well, I I planned to try and buy a horse and ride for a couple of months and about six hundred miles or a thousand kilometres across the sort of the grasslands in the centre of the country, and um quite quickly found out that the horse that I had bought was a stubborn bastard and wasn't particularly uh able to carry me and my bags, or willing. It's probably more a matter of willing rather than able because he physically could, he just didn't like to. He you know, he would he would he would throw you. Um and so for the for the first month it was just me with this horse trying to kind of you know chivvy him along. For the second month, a uh a Spanish guy I'd met previously came and joined us and we just you know walked together. But during this journey, I you know I would go a day or two without seeing any anyone, but then every couple of days, uh at least really, you'd pass the rivalry and you'd see some yurts in the distance um and go and say hello or you know, top up in water or ask to buy some food or whatever. And people were always very friendly, but just everyone drank all the time, it was really shocking. Um I remember going to one small town, rural town, um, when they were having their summer festival or Nardim, which just means festival. People call it the Nardham Festival, it's like the Sahara Desert means the desert desert. Um but at Nardham in this small town, Bulgan, uh I arrived, I mean I felt like a cowboy sort of strolling into town with a small hatchet axe slung through my belt and leading a horse behind me and wearing a cowboy hat and found out on the step. Um but I just watched for two days as the entire as people gathered from the huge region around, they all drove in or rode in, arrived, and just drank and drank and drank and drank. Um to the point where you know people got quite violent. I noticed a there was a lot of kind of I had a few times in Mongolia where people were sort of mischievously irritating when they were drunk. They would uh cut my horse loose or you know, untire it and scare it away. So I spent quite a lot of time just chasing this damn horse up and down the sort of dusty, sort of, you know, one-horse streets of little villages. Um yeah, I think the the well, I remember arriving in the border town uh between China and Mongolia, roughly halfway between the Mongolian capital and Beijing. At that point I was just hiking without a horse. Uh and I arrived in this town, and in the there was two supermarkets, I think, in the centre of town, and I went to one of them to stock up on food to sort of get me as far as I could across the desert. And in the supermarket there were just two aisles, one had food and one had vodka. Um and while I was in there, two men in the vodka started fighting, and they started neither was wearing tops, or perhaps one tore his top off the other one, I I can't remember. But they were both absolutely hammered, and they started beating the shit out of each other. Uh and one of them, I think, knocked or tackled the other one into a shelf of vodka bottles. So they cut you know, the whole this this kind of stack of shelves of vodka bottles collapsed on them, and they were just lying there on the floor amongst all this broken glass and sort of pools of vodka. And you know, you know, if you get a cut and then put it under a tap or in a bowl of water, you know, it looks like a lot of blood, even if it's a small cut. Suddenly these guys were lying in a big bloody pool of vodka, still fighting, and a policeman came along and just started hitting them both and eventually dragged them out. Like it was and and no one else really sort of looked twice at that. It was it was bizarre. And there were a number of occasions in Yurts, in towns in the capital where people were just so drunk, far too drunk for their own goods, and um it's a real blight to the society there. Um and I actually think and hope there's been a bit of a movement among younger people to kind of try and moderate alcohol a little bit more, uh as arguably there has been in the West as well. Um, but uh I haven't been back for about five years, so I'm not entirely sure what the state of affairs is now.

SPEAKER_03

What were the explanations people would give you for the alcoholism?

SPEAKER_00

Um I mean, addiction, definitely, as a starter, uh cheap abundance of it. Uh a bottle, a litre, or a 70cm litre bottle of vodka is available for a dollar less, even. Um I mean it's paint stripper, it's it's really unpleasant to drink. They do have some very nice vodkas as well. Uh Chingis Black springs to mind as the nice one. Um there's there's every it's a bit like John Chingis is the Johnny Walker equivalent. There's every colour of Chinggis Khan vodka. Nice. Um it's a it's a legacy from uh being a sort of Russian satellite state. Mongolia wasn't officially part of the USSR, but it was a protectorate, it was controlled by Russia, it was a sort of buffer zone between China and the USSR. Not that there still wasn't a big border between those two um regions. But um, yeah, I mean there's all sorts of different regions, uh reasons rather. Um also there's not necessarily a great deal for some people to do nowadays. You know, formerly herding would have taken a lot of people a lot of time on their horses chasing their herds of goats and sheep and camels and horses, you know, keeping tabs on them around the the valleys across the steppe. But uh now with binoculars and motorbikes, um one man can do what formerly you know six or seven or eight men would have done, and uh so and and that man can do that drunk, and often does. Um so I I I mean I'm not someone to to speak uh authoritatively on this, but uh I think there are a lot of reasons as to why it's why things have happened that way. But that's the case across uh a lot of the former Soviet world. Uh you go to Kazakhstan, you go to Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, you know, Georgia. It doesn't really matter where you go. In all these countries you will most of them perhaps uh you will meet people who are you know outrageously drunk at 9 30 a.m. on a Wednesday. Um alcoholism is is a is a massive problem in these countries and and indeed in Russia.

SPEAKER_03

Forgive me if it feels like I'm just uh jumping around topics here, but there's 30 minutes left and I uh we still haven't gotten through to the Congo. Um Robin. Before we enter Africa, uh I just wanted to see how you thought more about risk. Um there was a couple you met at some point during the journey who had uh um passed away because they were hit by a lorry, no fault of their own, just the risk of rolling the dice when you roll the when you ride the bike. You went 50,000 kilometres with no helmet on. Presumably there were many times where in uh you know nine alternative universes you were wiped out. So, how do you think about risk uh when you're making decisions like eventually you know rafting down the Congo River?

SPEAKER_00

Um well I think the truth is I didn't used to think about it. Um I did used to be quite cavalier with these things, and funnily enough, someone um someone sent me a an email just the other day who's considering a long bicycle journey, and they asked about this exact thing, uh the dangerous driving, whether or not to wear a helmet. Um and I'm I'm trying to remember the name of this this poor couple from Guernsey that I met. It was Mary and I think Chris, um, who who I met in Kazakhstan briefly on the side of the road. We were going opposite directions, we had a chat, they seemed like the most charming, joyous, full of life couple. I remember thinking I, you know, I look forward to bumping into them at some you know future cycling festival and you know reminiscing. And then a few months on I heard that they'd both been hit by a sort of wayward driver accidentally in uh not far from Bangkok and have both been uh instantly killed. And that's probably the first time I started really thinking about uh risk, despite having already cycled through India and China, which for my money were probably the two most dangerous places to cycle. Um from a from a sort of you know motorist perspective. Uh every year about a quarter million people die on India's roads.

SPEAKER_03

Um quarter million die doing what?

SPEAKER_00

Uh in road traffic accidents in India annually, which is a pretty astounding statistic.

SPEAKER_03

Can you put that into perspective? What would it what would that be in the UK, for instance?

SPEAKER_00

Ooh, good question. Uh you would probably be better at the mass than me, but uh a quarter of a million out of a population of 1.4 billion, I think would still come out probably uh I would guess 20 or so times higher than in the UK. No, surely higher. I'm just curious. I I imagine a hundred times higher than Sweden. I'm I'm not really sure. Uh in Australia, Australia. Are you from Australia, by the way? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. In Australia, I think it's quite rare that two vehicles meet, let alone crash. Um but uh with regards to risk, I did start to think more about it the more near misses I had, and and frankly, uh you know, cycling through the winter in Tibet or you know, paddling down a river in Congo, or you know, the various dangerous things I did, most of them arguably pale in comparison to the sheer amount of time I spent on roads where people did drive very dangerously, and and and I had a lot of near misses on roads, which um you know I think I got very good at just kind of forgetting about half a day later, because you just can't you can't keep thinking about those things and go on doing what I was doing, and I suppose what I was doing was more important to me than being overly well to my mind at the time at least overly cautious. Um but I I mean now I wear a helmet. Um I I cycle all over London, I cycle pretty much every day, and I wear a helmet always. Um and I I think it's definitely a good idea too, regardless of the I mean there are arguments about you know motorists have in studies have found motorists give an extra you know eight inches of of uh of clearance to cyclists without helmets than ones with helmets. But even so, you if they still hit you, you're you know your your chances are a lot better. Um so I I'm not I'm not really getting to to to to the answer here. I suppose it's something it's it's an open conversation I have with myself and it's it's always adjusting. Um I try to take calculated risk nowadays rather than just you know foolhardy you know thought. Just fuck at risk. Exactly. Yeah. And occasionally that still happens, but uh I try to avoid that.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Then uh wheel us into the Congo, describe this amazing, bountiful country to us.

SPEAKER_00

Um well firstly it's massive. Congo is um I'm just putting out stats about the size of countries now, aren't I? We've done Mongolia. Well Congo is um it's well, if you fly from the westernmost to the easternmost points in from one to the other in Congo, that's the same distance as London to Moscow. And it's the same from the northernmost to the southernmost point. So Congo is give or take, the size of I mean it's bigger than Western Europe. It's absolutely huge. Uh I'm sure Tim Butcher would have been able to give uh actually I probably got that stat from his book. But uh it's it's a fascinating place, it's had a an uh unbelievably tumultuous history. It's been just uh shit show after shit show after shit show for well, I'd say you know 200 years. Um I was visiting with a friend with a uh Scottish fella who was motorbiking down the east side of Africa when I was cycling and we met a few times. This guy called Archie, Archie Leaming, a very good photographer. If anyone wants to check out his photography, archieleaming.com, I believe. But um Archie and I were staying in the broadly speaking safe parts of uh DRC. You know, the the east is well, actually there's fighting again now, right as we speak, um the last couple of weeks. The uh I think already a few hundred thousand refugees have gathered on the slopes of uh of uh the volcano uh to escape their villages. But uh we were staying in the south and the west, which are comparatively safer. Um but frankly, with what we were doing, the danger came from uh environment and animals. We we bought a pirog or a dugout canoe, um sort of a five or six metre long hollowed-out tree trunk, with the plan to paddle it down this little tributary, the Lulu, um as far as we could in the time that we had, and just sort of see what happens. Um but it turned out that this river had um rapids and waterfalls and hippos and crocodiles, and uh on one or two occasions arguably hostile people, although it's very hard to know exactly what happened in sort of you know at night and what were people's intentions or not. But um yeah, we had one of the most fraught months of my life barrelling down this river, and it turns out there's a good reason why no one else uh paddles up and down this river, because it is sort of technically impassable. You know, if if you had a a raft, an actual raft, uh you might be able to bar, you know, bounce down it quite nicely. But with a um, you know, essentially sitting on a log with two bicycles and a bunch of heavy gear uh that would all float off in different directions every time we sank, which was frequently, frequently, um it was yeah, it was really challenging. It was quite a frightening time. And I'm very, very glad that I I actually I don't think I would have done that journey if I hadn't had the company. Um I was very glad to have a friend with me for that uh one month on the river, uh, but actually more broadly for the three months in Congo. Um, because we had a few sort of you know dodgy encounters, and then I got quite badly ill. I got typhoid fever and uh sort of malignant malaria or you know, severe strains of malaria. Malaria. Well, yeah, that's the kind of the simplified term for Plasmodium falciparum, which is the there's kind of two, broadly speaking, two grades of malaria and a bunch of strains different within them. But I had the kind of the dangerous, the more dangerous form of malaria. Um so I got really quite ill and was um, I've been told by doctors since was very lucky to sort of get by um without uh more serious or lasting consequences. Did you ever see a hippo? Uh we heard them a few nights. Um we to the best of my memory, we didn't see one. We had to camp a couple of times on the bank in sort of uh channels of elephant grass or next to them that had been trod down by hippos by the looks of things quite recently. Uh there was one night before when we were in Zambia before we crossed into the Congo, the same two of us where a hippo walked between our two tents, and that was quite frightening. So we did see a hippo there, but not on the river later in the Congo. But yeah, we heard them a few nights, and I remember one night camping on an island and hearing them all around us, and that was uh it was kind of it was kind of cool, but at the same time a little bit frightening.

SPEAKER_03

So the sense of adventure um to you know think about doing something like that, to then plan for something like that, but then to actually go through and do it. Um I'm sure you know whether people tell you, whether you realise yourself, it's extremely rare. So do you ever find it difficult to like get people to relate to your experience or you to relate to them, how they might not have this sense of of of adventure, of doing something unknown, a little bit risky, you know, pathless trodden type thing?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, well, I suppose I mean, so it's it's become normalized to me, of course. And I know people who do I mean, I've I've got a couple of friends who are base jumpers, you know. I know I know people who do arguably much more risky, much more stupid, frankly, things than than what I do because that's their passion and they pursue it. I probably do sometimes struggle or or get a bit sort of thoughtless or lazy or complacent about sort of um making the effort to explain or express or qualify uh the mindset behind doing things like this or the level of risk involved. Um yeah, sometimes that probably can be quite difficult.

SPEAKER_03

I'm less I'm less asking about risk and more the um where the motivation comes or just the sense uh wonderlust is a lazy word. I wish I had a better one, but you know, the sense of wanting to do it in the first place. You imagining going down this river, hearing the sounds of the Congolese jungle, potentially having interactions with other people, you know, the risk um we've spoken about, but more that side of things, why would you even do it in the first place? People not being able to maybe relate to on that level.

SPEAKER_00

Um, well, I suppose, you know, we sort of in some sense come full circle there because that that does um refer back to the first question where if I'm not particularly able to at least pithily answer why I do these things myself, it's definitely therefore by extension hard to explain to other people why I do them. And again, to me, it's no longer I don't question why I want to do them particularly for myself because I just know that I do, but obviously, understandably that's not really good enough for most people. Um, so yeah, I mean I I think my motivations have changed over time, perhaps from ones that are less explicable, you know, just wanting to struggle, uh, to ones that are perhaps more understandable, because what nowadays m with the journeys I've done in the last few years, they tend to be about getting to a place where there are interesting people that uh you know you might not get the opportunity to come across in day-to-day life, say a New Guinean highland villager, you know, far off the beaten track, or a reindeer herder on the tundra in far northeast Arctic Siberia. Uh, and and and it's those people that as much as anything else drive me. You know, I really want to get to visit them to learn about them and to understand them. And I think people find that quite understandable. I think that's a relatively relatable instinct. Choosing to do it in the difficult ways that I do when you could do it um, you know, in a four by four. um or a boat or whatever. That's a little bit more complicated, but there is sort of an answer to that as well. Which is if I turn up in a you know if I got winched in out of a helicopter into a small village up in the highlands in New Guinea, a 10 day walk from the nearest, you know, drivable road. Um I would immediately create or build a distance between me and the people I'm about to encounter because I would be this I mean there's there's a distance anyway. I'm a a white guy, a foreigner I'm from the other side of the world. I've been able to afford to fly you know you know possibly three or four flights to get there. You know, there there's already huge amounts of distance but uh adding to that just makes it that much harder a for you to seem approachable to them but b for them to find you in any sense relatable and if you are interested in learning about people and their lives then they need to feel relaxed and comfortable around you which actually is why the bicycle is such a great m medium for exploration from a sort of cultural perspective I suppose because a bicycle is the it's the global vehicle you know bicycles are there's very few parts of the world that aren't aware of a bicycle or really where frankly lots of people use bicycles to get around however rich or poor they might be and so it's it's a great means to you know it's it's so it's relatable.

SPEAKER_03

You turn up in a in a small Namibian village on a bicycle people are going to say oh hey nice bicycle and they're going to want to know about the bicycle and then you've got a conversation whereas if you're in a 4x4 they might be very interested in it but you it instantly builds a sort of uh a wealth or a power dynamic and differentiates you rather than relates you to the people you encounter and also I can't afford helicopters or four by fours no and and your your these two books we're covering in this podcast you know you traveled on the most shoestring budget imaginable like the um experience of you getting in that lorry in the Congo you don't have to retail we don't have time uh maybe it's a hook for people to buy the book it is horrific you know unimaginably claustrophobic disgusting um so yeah it's definitely not done on a on a on a on a budget flying in flying out um but I wanted uh this question sort of just came to me because you're explaining your motivations for why you want to do thing and uh do what you do and then as well um this leads into a a text exchange we had before there is um you just explained you wanted to maybe go to see interesting people at the end of a journey as the reason why you do theme you've been on the Joe Rogan experience um you're you know you I mean I sp I don't know how this makes you feel but maybe famous guy like you have a big profile now which means the economics of your next decision change and that surely must influence the motivation um what about like the ego? How's the ego affected? You know is this now just like what's the next cool adventure Charlie can do um and forgive me if it's too like personal or combatitive of a question but um yeah I just I wonder I well I think it's a valid question but um I I mean so I I I I am not and don't consider myself you know famous in any sense.

SPEAKER_00

I suppose more since doing that you know podcast with Joe more people know who I am but you know that's that's certainly not fame. Um I I don't think it's really changed the economics of things. It might be or hopefully will be a little bit easier to find uh you know sources of funding but um you know with every uh journey I do with every um every time I have a near miss or fuck something up uh the more it you know just brings home to me how I'm you know I'm just an idiot sort of you know grasping around and so the you know ego-wise you know every journey I've been on has largely been a a shattering of rather than a bolstering of ego. I think I probably set out into this this world with a lot more ego than I have now. So it's been a a downwards trend there, thankfully I think and I and I do think that a a large part of kind of growing up and maturing is the sort of quelling or taming of one's ego or at least maybe that's a very male thing I don't know. But no I haven't really struggled with that and with regards to what's next I I I I mean I don't actually have a specific answer for that yet at the moment there's a couple of ideas knocking around but um my you know thought process for that is is is very little changed from how it would have been a year ago.

SPEAKER_03

Cool that's uh that's uh really interesting to hear that perhaps the economics weren't affected that much and the the Joe Rogan experience might be like a a very narrow spotlight right like how many people who listen to that went on to m buy your books for example um did you see an obvious spike there?

SPEAKER_00

Oh yeah definitely there was I mean it's it's exposure more you know um if you go on a uh podcast and people are interested they hopefully um read more. Buy my books, buy my books, buy my books um no but uh um no yeah definitely there was a spike there but um I I mean the the journeys I do are also uh I mean to a greater or lesser extent um you know shoestring budget journeys anyway and I'm not really um so I'm not unattracted to the idea of you know going to the South Pole or climbing big mountains or all these sort of you know big expensive expeditions that cost huge amounts of money. It's just I don't for me at least and people are welcome to do whatever they want, no judgment but for me I don't really see the financial incentive to spend ages raising or earning money to go and do something that frankly to certainly to me and potentially to potential audiences will be less interesting than going somewhere lesser known with people lesser known and and hopefully learning a little bit about them and being able to relate that because um you know more people have been you know more uh explorers or adventurers have been to the top of Everest or been you know to the South Pole on skis probably than some of the villages that people like me or uh or or equivalent other kind of adventurers or travellers or whatever have been to in some you know countries like uh you know New Guinea or Russia or or or wherever and um you know tracing your own blail is uh traising your own blail is a spoon resin blazing your own trail is to me and hopefully to a lot of people if not most people more important than um I suppose uh sort of uh box ticking exercises.

SPEAKER_03

Amazing uh we've got 10 minutes so I want to give you I want you to give me quick answers to these so we can get them out there. But we've left on the table East Africa, South Africa uh Southeast Asia which is an entire thing in itself as well for you the relationships so there is so much in these books and I sincerely meant what I said to as well as like incredibly engaging. I listened to shitloads of audiobooks um and yours really was right up there. I in fact I bought um through sand and snow and sent it home to my brother who's turning 22 next year and so hopefully I can uh really piss off my parents and get him to do something crazy like that. So yeah um I accept no responsibility for anything he may do. Speaking of finance uh you know how does one finance these trips so I maybe it's even just a not even an important question to ask.

SPEAKER_00

Oh no I mean this is something I don't mind talking about at all I I I'll answer in brief because we're we're getting to the the pointy end. But the first journey long journey I went on four years or so on a bicycle I saved uh let me get this right I think £8,500 and I managed to raise I was very lucky to do so but I managed to raise another £3,500 through some sponsorship from a tea company but that money I managed to string out for four years and so had I not got the sponsorship I you know could have got quite far I'm sure would have found another way to raise or earn a little bit more. It doesn't cost a lot to do these things um more you know as time's gone by I've become more able to raise funding through uh travel grants expedition grants there are various organizations out there that um that do offer grants to people doing things that they find interesting or valid or worthy um and you know the more time goes by the more it becomes possible for me at least to um get some kit sponsored uh so yeah there's no there's no big secret to funding but there's also no shortcut.

SPEAKER_03

So you're cold emailing people for kit and back before you had a profile and and expeditions to lean on to as a proof of of authority I will actually do this. It is as well just really long application processes that are really well researched and like a good essay type deal.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah that kind of thing and also being willing to put some of your own money into it. You know I I I I I if I feel that if I want to do these things then I I you know put my money where my mouth is I you know I I do these things and then I have stories I can write and speak about afterwards give you know lectures to audiences and write books or whatever and um you know a a little bit of uh speculative money is is you know is fine by me uh hopefully not all of it. Um I want to get a real gut check response from you and please tell me if you if you think it's a terrible idea or if you think it's unethical or anything walk around Taiwan so go there with no money uh just a tent and almost ask for and just embrace the hospitality the people and walk around the perimeter of the country gut check response from you am I doing this just because look how special and cool I am or is this actually could this be an interesting story to tell the difference between Taiwan and China um the hospitality and everything else um my gut instinct is I wouldn't want to do that um I'm I'm aware of various people over the over the years I've met some uh doing journeys um along those lines um you know cycling the length of South Africa without money or I've met a few cycle tourists uh you know doing things along those lines I don't think there's anything wrong with it but I do think it it has the potential to be or at least be perceived as or accused of um an abuse of privilege frankly although if you were to do it um with the intention to uh you know by stealth uh sort of recompensate or leave little bits of money for pe anyone who helps you out behind afterwards that would certainly change the dynamic um Taiwan's not the developing world it is it is a wealthy country so you know it I suppose arguably doing that in Sweden or Taiwan shouldn't really be different from each other. In Sweden you can just pick up bottles and cans and live off that that's fine. That's really exactly so I I feel a little uncomfortable about it but I don't think it's necessarily wrong to do. I would just build in ways to mitigate if I was to do I just I wanted to mitigate those slight sort of you know um qualms.

SPEAKER_03

I wanted to get the gut check and I kind of got the same answer um the other times I asked as well.

SPEAKER_00

So quickly um explorers and adventurers who inspire you there are many of course you've got the the you know the historical ones um who over the centuries have gone out and done amazing things mostly bearded men but not exclusively and not all uh not all from you know Western Europe or North America either uh more and and then I suppose you've got the sort of the intermediaries the the um Ranolph Feinzes of this world who seem to somehow to some extent connect the kind of Edwardian age of adventure to the modern day um more recently I I'm a huge admirer of Benedict Allen um who you should get on your podcast if you can he's great uh he goes and spends um long periods of time with uh with communities he's he's um he's about 60 now he's been doing this for a very long time himself uh but he really beds in with communities he looks about 40 bastard um he really beds in with communities spends ages and then tends to go off on on a on a journey um sort of to uh apply the things the sort of methods of survival that he has learnt from them uh so he's definitely up there um I love the writing and journeys of Redmond O'Handlon I strongly encourage anyone looking him up if they get the chance um I I suppose I mean the the travel literature I read tends not to be so much in the adventure sphere. I've read you know a lot of Thhubron and Theroo and um yeah there's I mean there's a lot out there I particularly enjoyed uh Kate Harris's book Lands of Lost Borders which was a cycle touring book as well um I thought that was very beautifully written um yeah I mean all sorts there's so many people doing interesting things and all of them you know appeal for different reasons to me. Fictional uh adventurer you admire um have you read the the Ascent of Rumdoodle it's a sort of a spoof book uh it's it's not really a fiction fictional adventure I I admire but it's sort of a spoof book set in probably about 1920 about the ascent of the highest mountain on earth called Rumdoodle which is you know sort of 12,000 metres high or something and it's about these hopeless chancer sort of you know British people trying to climb this mountain and uh I suppose the key message is they're absolutely hopeless and they're carried at every you know juncture of the way by their um by their sort of you know Sherpers um it's it's very very funny it's definitely not something I admire um but it has raised to mind uh Morris Herzog and The Ascent of Anna Purner which I read a couple of years ago and particularly loved so those two would make a good sort of box set between them of uh of the real deal and the absurdity of some of these older figures.

SPEAKER_03

So there is um you know real eclectic mix of different travel memoir writers, adventure writers also sort of anthropology sociology writers there and there's a hundred percent a sense of it in your two books and I actually noticed more in um the second half of the book you lean into that a little bit more try and give more explanation of economic development in a place you might be cultural tensions and so forth and it became less autobiographical so I wonder what type of writer you want to be remembered as do you want to be this sort of like cultural anthropologist or do you want to be pure travel memoir?

SPEAKER_00

Uh somewhere between the two I suppose my next book uh the one I'm working on at the moment will sit somewhere in the intersection between I suppose history politics adventure and um current affairs so I think I I just find uh history and history relates to the present day as well absolutely fascinating so the the how places are and why they are like that and how they became like that I find that uh the the marriage of all those questions is is uh I find most interesting but uh frankly I would like to be remembered as a readable writer that's the goal nice beautiful final two a country that you're particularly bullish on bullish on how? Uh however you want to define it but um whether it's economically culturally something good's happening to them your definition of bullish but basically you think it's got an upward trajectory oh okay um Kyrgyzstan uh I think it's uh it's a it's starting it's standing out a little bit from the other starns in that region of the world um it's somewhere now that foreigners can visit from so from about 60 or 70 different nations uh for two months without a visa it's a beautiful place it's kind of uh it's not becoming an economic powerhouse or anything it is it is still a uh uh you know very much a developing country but it is developing fast and it is uh it's one of the places I would most recommend people visiting if they do like the big wild outdoors with an interesting cultural milieu amazing finally Charlie if you could witness a conversation between any two people the history dead or alive no language barrier so a podcast who are you listening to um that's a tricky one to spring on someone when we're up against the clock give me a minute let me just look around at my collection of books and take some interesting characters um uh I would like to see Livingston in conversation with yeah I would like to see David Livingston in conversation with a prominent British slaver of the time I don't care who just to see at that time you know 150 years ago those arguments played out before they became you know we we now all have I think hopefully a a common understanding about the issues at the core of slavery but to hear people sort of trying to back it up back then would have been very interesting.

SPEAKER_03

Fascinating response I love it um Charlie I think you get the sense that I could have gone over a lot longer. I really really um yeah loved the books and uh am uh grateful that you've been generous with your time and uh done this podcast with me. Thank you sir.

SPEAKER_00

It's been an absolute pleasure. Thanks for having me Ryan. Cheers mate