Explorer Mikael Strandberg

Rohimi and his friend, two taxi drivers doing his living from catching the few travelers who cross the border between Turkey and Georgia from this check-point called Türkgözü (The Turk Eye), were waiting on a mound, resting in the shade of a tree and smoking quietly. As they saw us, they came down from the mound riding their cars and surrounded us as if they were wild horses. They were driving two aged beige Lada 1600, the Soviet version of Fiat 124, built in the late 1980s. I could have said the cars smelled of perestroika, or the decline of Soviet Union (although Lada is one of the best selling car firms of the world), but it remembered me the musty smell of dust and lint from my uncle's old car.

I met guest writer number 10,  the Spanish journalist Andrés Mourenza, the first time when I had a stop over in Istanbul on my way to Yemen. And then again, a month ago in Antalya, Turkey at this journalist conference on Travel writing. He is a young lad, full of life and laughter, many opinions and he is a really good story teller. Read this intrepid story about travelling in Georgia:

Riding the wind of Georgia in a Soviet Lada

In september 2008, the Turkish president, Abdullah Gül, accepted the invitation of his Armenian counterpart, Serzh Sarksyan, to watch the football game between the teams of both countries for the qualification of 2010 World Cup. It was an historic move as Turks and Armenians share a common history, but plenty of cruelties, especially the sad events of 1915 when Ottoman government deported hundreds of thousands of Armenians to the deserts of Syria, where they most die, what its defined as the Armenian Genocide. This visit, the first in history of a Turkish president to Armenia, was the beggining of rapprochement between the two countries.

Five journalists based in Istanbul decided to go to the match but by road because we wanted to know better the social geography of the Caucasus region. As the border between Turkey and Armenia remains closed since 1993 Nagorno-Karabakh war between Armenia and Turkey’s ally Azerbaijan, we had to travel through Georgian territory. The problem there was that, just a month ago, there had been a short war between Georgia and Russia, where the first were defeated, and the wounds of conflict were not yet healed. I had the pleasure of being part of that expedition through Southern Caucasus and this is a part of my experience…

Once we left Turkey on foot, the Georgian side of the border between the two countries was a messy succession of dilapidated buildings. In the first control, a fat, sweaty border guard wearing an old uniform stamped the visa. “You are not born to be sold” a poster against sexual exploitation warned the female immigrants who travel to Turkey. Every day, entire Georgian families crowd around the buses departing from Tbilisi or the villages near the Turkish border. They argue, haggle with the driver and one or more take the vehicle to Istanbul, more than twenty-four hours journey in search of a better future.
After asking for a taxi to take us from the Turkish-Georgian border to the border of Armenia, in the second checkpoint, a chubby customs official, with a little more breading suit his military colleague had, pointed one hundred meters further down the hill and said, accompanied by big fuss, “Rohimi, Rohimi”. Some elders, sitting on what a decade ago was a sidewalk, corroborated in German that what they called Rohimi-something that still we did not know for sure what it was- waited behind the fence.

Before leaving the border buildings, our passports were checked by a third soldier who lived in a filthy hut whose half-broken glass window had been filled with foam rubber. He slept on a cot next to the window.

Apatheticly, the young recruit checked our passports and stamps and flipped a lever. The border gate opened, then closed behind us, with a wrecky noise, leaving us in front of a bucolic summer landscape: mild hills, fields of grain and stubble, dusty roads and houses dotted here and there.

Rohimi and his friend, two taxi drivers doing his living from catching the few travelers who cross the border between Turkey and Georgia from this check-point called Türkgözü (The Turk Eye), were waiting on a mound, resting in the shade of a tree and smoking quietly. As they saw us, they came down from the mound riding their cars and surrounded us as if they were wild horses. They were driving two aged beige Lada 1600, the Soviet version of Fiat 124, built in the late 1980s. I could have said the cars smelled of perestroika, or the decline of Soviet Union (although Lada is one of the best selling car firms of the world), but it remembered me the musty smell of dust and lint from my uncle’s old car.

The men emerged from the Lada with an air of a creepy brothel pimps and came to us offering to ride us to Armenia in their two taxis for US $ 300. We, five passengers, and the driver had not entered in one. Or maybe yes, but then we were taking the serious risk of being drawn into any ditch. The five travellers-journalist we were made a short meeting and offered them US $ 200. They gathered and said no. 250. Crickets were murmuring their late August song. “What if we paid in lira?”, we asked in Turkish. 400. That surpassed all exchange markets. “US $ 210?” This time we tried to speak in Russian.
There was a harsh light, the sun at three o’clock, illuminating everything with a white light, flat, with shrunken shadows, making the roofs of the sheds, somewhere in the distance, glittering points. Two cars came out the fenced Turkish-Georgian checkpoint. The driver of the first car was an eastern Turkish looking like a coarse Paul Newman, his cigarette dangling from his lower lip We had spoken with the drivers earlier, but their route passed through Tbilisi and they were going to reach Armenia on the next day, the day of the match, too late for us. Their plan did not coincide with ours. The men drived on and beat us up with a cloud of dust as a greeting.

The route ran, in part, by a similar route to the famous BTC (Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan) oil pipeline, but the road was not as modern as the energy project: just a stony dirt road that ran between villages of houses with large barns. The makeshift taxi, probably without a license (but who cared about that), raising clouds of dust at every turn. Those roads might become a quagmire with the autumn rains and snows of winter, making an awful daring adventure transportation through the south of Georgia, a country whose main route is a two-lane asphalt road that connects the main ports of the west coast, Poti and Batumi, with the capital Tbilisi, in the east.

Cri, cri, cri. Georgian Taxi drivers consulted and kept their offer. We did the same knowing that our margin for maneuver was limited. Cri, cri, cri. More cricket sounds, enduring tension. That began to resemble a Quentin Tarantino movie, only that the excitement was not assured because in the desert Georgian border they had all the time in the world and everything to gain. In the end we negotiated the transportation for US $ 220. Marta, my brother Daniel and I entered Rohimi’s taxi; Martin and Robert took Rohimi’s friend’s. The car doors shut with a broken glass noise.

The driver’s seatbelt was riding in the back pocket of his seat next to a half empty bottle of vodka. The co-driver’s one was broken, but Rohimi played down its importance in pidgin Turkish:
- Bah! No matter, this is Georgia, not Europe-. So the man started his car and headed to the neighboring country.
The route ran, in part, by a similar route to the famous BTC (Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan) oil pipeline, but the road was not as modern as the energy project: just a stony dirt road that ran between villages of houses with large barns. The makeshift taxi, probably without a license (but who cared about that), raising clouds of dust at every turn. Those roads might become a quagmire with the autumn rains and snows of winter, making an awful daring adventure transportation through the south of Georgia, a country whose main route is a two-lane asphalt road that connects the main ports of the west coast, Poti and Batumi, with the capital Tbilisi, in the east.
-These are Armenian villages-. Rohimi told us, noting the small towns close to the Turkish border.
The Armenians are not enemies of the Georgians, but that does not guarantee that they are loved by them. In fact, the tone of Rohimi revealed some revulsion, disgust, contempt. “These neighborhoods looking so poor are Armenians” I would hear a few days after, walking around the old town of Tbilisi, from another Georgian, Misha, with the same disdain.

Just as in the Georgian side of the border with Armenia live the Azeri persecuted and expelled in 1993 by the nationalist furies of Yerevan, in this area we were traveling through, the Samtskhe-Javakheti region, most of the villages are inhabited by Armenians who escaped in the First World War from the hatred of the Turks and the desire for revenge of the Turkish army commanded in the Caucasus and Central Asia by the dark and intriguing Enver Pasha, known for having participated in the organization of the Armenian massacres of 1915 and who tried to raise all Turkic Muslims from Anatolia to Xinjiang (China) against the revolutionary Bolsheviks. He and his handful of men were killed in 1922 in the steppes of Central Asia, in a village near Dushanbe, Tadjikistan.
The Armenians of Samtskhe-Javakheti region, one of the poorest communities in Georgia, pushed hard against Tbilisi in the early 1990s when, amid the rending of the Georgian state (and the wars against Abkhazia and South Ossetia, repeated in the summer of 2008), they began to demand autonomy for their territory.

Curiously, in this same region lived about 120,000 Meskhetian Turks until they were deported to Central Asia by Georgian-born Soviet leader Josif Stalin, and could not return to his homeland untill the 1990s, with strong opposition of the Armenian population. The nationalist hatreds have written the most horrible pages of history but certainly in the Caucasus, an area with the extent of Spain, have earned a separate section because of their own cruelties.

We left aside a mound topped by a cross.
-What’s that, Rohimi?

-Well… a cross, can’t you see?-  His logic was unquestionable.
Being alerted to the presence of the sacred tumulus, Rohimi crossed himself. Then accelerated. A church. Rohimi crossed himself again and further accelerated. Glasses clinked up almost out of the windows, bodywork creaked. The paved sections were a relief for our bodies, but the road was still so full of holes, and sometimes of large stones, that some drivers preferred to drive the dangerous stretches out of the road.

People was taking full fuel cans from the gas station when we arrived, just in case, because due to disputes with Russia, gasoline had gone through the roof. While we were filling the car and Rohimi was chatting with the employee, cigarette in hand, a yellow city bus maintaining its beauty despite the rust, came to the station. Its occupants, old, young, men, women, tried to show all the dignity they could in a disastrous car that might well remind the middle decades of the twentieth century.

People was taking full fuel cans from the gas station when we arrived, just in case, because due to disputes with Russia, gasoline had gone through the roof. While we were filling the car and  Rohimi was chatting with the employee, cigarette in hand, a yellow city bus maintaining its beauty despite the rust, came to the station. Its occupants, old, young, men, women, tried to show all the dignity they could in a disastrous car that might well remind the middle decades of the twentieth century.

Our Georgian guide returned to the car and patted Martha’s knee, which might well be considered offensive but he felt loving.
-Are you married? -He asked. Despite its appearance of recalcitrant bachelor, Rohimi had a happy marriage and began talking about his children.
The two Lada were going at full speed, all they could, beside a beautiful stream that sparkled in the afternoon sun. One overtaking the other, and back again; hopping on every bump as if the road was a roller coaster. The disturbing beauty of the moors and summits of northeastern Turkey had given way to a more familiar one, lush valleys and rocky mountains.

The wind puffed Rohimi patterned shirt. On our left the clouds riding on the mountains of the inner Georgia. The air hit us in the face.

-It’s beautiful, Georgia -I thought aloud.

-More beautiful is Abkhazia, that’s why the Russians have taken it -Rohimi said and his face showed no sign of joking.
Soviet-era trucks were repariring the poor infrastructure of Samtskhe-Javakheti. There were still signs of former Russian dominance around towns of Armenian majority, especially Akhalkalaki, and even the abbreviation for the USSR was still painted in what was once a collective farm, now abandoned. In this area, forgotten by pro-western Mikheil Saakashvili government, the remnants of Russian influence remain high, annoying, like a pimple in the ass, the politicians from Tbilisi, engaged in a policy of de-russifying the country and selling it to Western investors. In the capital, Tbilisi, the town hall a beautiful building in early 20th century neo-oriental style, has been awarded to a foreign company and the city council moved to a back street.

It was half a day since we started our trip from Istanbul and we had only eaten some biscuits in Ardahan, so we were starving. But still it was going to be a mor starving and tiring day. A tickling sleep overcame me. I do not know why, but I can not sleep while the vehicle is stopped. In contrast, the violent jolting Lada rocked me and I fell asleep. When I awoke, the sun had moved forward and walked into the sunset. Daniel told me a we had passed a picturesque Georgian landscape during my nap: an old railroad wagon was used as a bridge over the creek. Rohimi also had news: our travel mates in the other taxi had a puncture so we had to wait.

They arrived ten minutes later and I asked Robert about the incident:
-Well, the trip was not particularly comfortable before the puncture … neither it was after -he said in his stolid British.
The sun was setting, we approached Armenia. The Ninotsminda check-point was the skeleton of a warehouse and several containers used as huts: that was the end of that dirt track that, for hours, it had seemed endless. In one of the barracks was hung a poster with a picture of Saakashvili in military uniform, ostensibly to instill value to their troops, even if during the war against Russia in 2008, the Georgian president panicked so much at hearing some Russian fighters flying over Georgian city of Gori that he ran and throw himself under the knees of his bodyguards. In another container, painted light green with big white letters of the beautiful but unintelligible Georgian alphabet, a young soldier with no shirt and dirty khaki trousers was trying to wash.

We left the car and, almost immediately, the first order was to turn off all cameras. They did not want us to take pictures of the dilapidated environment in which lived the last soldiers, the last outpost from a country that had just emerged from a lost war and was trying to show a certain air of triumph. Perhaps it was just military orders coming from the top, or more likely, an awareness of their own misery.

We entered a small room where three officers were asking for passports, smoked, and scowled at us. A fat and unshaven man in military dress was responsible for stamping the seal of departure. The other two were dressing as civilians -one of them sitting on a cot, the other in an old office chair-, pierced the cigarette smoke to scan us, looking ahead to a possible failure, a mistake, or perhaps it was just a learned sight. A border sight.
There was a smell of wickedness in the clouds of smoke of that room. That could be partly the result of years of their own bad practices, and partly the result of negligence from the state towards its last troops. They may feel being left aside in the middle of nowhere, where the closest man is not your officials, or the one above your officials , or the supreme commander of the army in which you serve, but the one in front of you, which could be your enemy: the soldier serving in the army of another nation, on the other side.

Soldiers returned our passports with a half smile, chewed between the jokes of the younger recruits who, might be, were still not given the time to gross out their jobs or be perverted.
The last border of Georgia was just a rope tied to a stick that a soldier untied to every crossing vehicle. He opened the cross point and we drove briefly through no man’s land. On the field, parallel to us, a tractor was driving on loaded with hay and, on the top, there was a whole group of laborers. They raised their hands in farewell.

- Are we in Armenia, Rohimi?

Andrés pondering life at the border....

- One moment … – The car stopped rattling. The road was paved .- Now we are!

This is an excerpt of Transcaucasia Exprés, an e-book available in Spanish and free of charge on the websitewww.noticiasdesdeturquia.blogspot.com

Andrés Mourenza (A Coruna, Spain, 1984) is a free-lance journalist based in Istanbul since 2005. He collaborates mainly with the Spanish ’EFE’ news agency and ‘El Periodico de Catalunya’ newspaper, but has worked also for the Spanish speaking version of BBC Radio and Deutsche Welle TV, and other radios from Spain and Latin America. He has travelled the neighbouring region to inform about the situation in northern-Irak, the Kurdish conflict in south-eastern Turkey, the post-war period in Georgia, the tense relations between Turkey and Armenia, the longstanding division of Cyprus or the riots in Greece. Before he worked in local media in Spain and covered the natural and social consequences of Prestige oil tanker sinking in Galician coast in 2002.

Reaching Ambarchik Bay May 2006 changed both Johans and my life. Mine, dramatically....it is very difficult to be an explorer in todays society!

Saying that you are honored is kind of a dirty word in Sweden, but when I was included in the book Faces of Exploration 2007 written by Justin Marozzi and photographed by Joanne Vestey, both good friends of mine, I felt honored indeed! I don´t belong there at all amongst some of the most inspirational people on earth like Dame Jane Goodall, Sir Ed Hillery, Buzz Aldrin and so on, but I did feel honored. Anyway, I have returned to Sweden now, eventually, and I am trying to figure out life and came across this interview that Justin did for the book and thought it might be interesting for you readers to read. (I am very happy to say that there plenty of readers every day on this site, more than i could have dreamed about a few months ago. Mainly Swedes, Americans, Brits, Turks and from the Gulf countries!)

1. What does exploration mean to you?

For me, the true explorer is unselfish, curious and ready to sacrifice his life in the quest of discovering unknown areas and human limits. An explorers life is a mission to make this earth of ours a better one to live in. For everybody.

2. How did you get started in exploration, was there a decisive moment that shaped what drives you?

I was brought up in a working class environment, where the basic values of life was hard physical work, loyalty to your employer, never forget where one came from and stick to your own kind. For this reason, we only had two books at home, The Sea Wolf and White Fang by Jack London. My father had them on loan indefinitely from the local library, for the simple reason to show our neighbours that our family had ambitions beyond the village limit. I wouldn’t have touched those books if I hadn’t caught the measles as a bored ten year old and with plenty of time to kill, I started reading them. I just couldn’t stop.  Once finished, I knew I had discovered an unknown, very exiting and important world. That discovery, in combination with a mother who loved me above all, gave me a self-confidence and a sense of uniqueness, to know that my future lay beyond the limits of the village.

Consequently, as quick as I turned 16, after spending most of my time avoiding the utterly boring knowledge taught in school, I set off for India, prepared to spend a year studying Mahayana Buddhism. Those studies only gave me diarrhoea and gut pains. Instead, I ended up hiking, reading and travelling around. When my money eventually ran out, I returned home with a wish to build bridges of understanding between people by writing, lecturing, filming and through photography. I met a total lack of interest. At that moment I realized, that I had to do something that nobody else had done before. So over the next 7.5 years I cycled from Chile to Alaska, from Norway to South Africa and from New Zealand to Cairo. I pedalled a total distance of 90000 kilometres passing through difficult terrain as the Sahara Desert and the Darien Gap. Since then, I’ve been privileged to live a dream.

The Huli Whigman of Papua New Guinea impressed me a lot with there attitude to life. A lot had to do with their hair.....

3. Why do you explore?

I explore to understand the meaning of life. I am looking for an answer regarding the eternal question, why in earth did we humans end up on earth, dominating it the way we do, but not fully understanding it. And I believe that to be able to understand fully, you have to understand the basic values of people who live very close to nature every day of their lives. And, I feel I have a mission, trying to get people in my own world to understand other people, for them unknown and often, misunderstood. Basically, a builder of bridges between cultures.

4. What do you remember as being your most exhilarating moment in the field?

The day I arrived to the small Siberian settlement of Kolymskaya was the happiest moment of my exploring life. It was the end of the most demanding part of my Expedition along the Kolyma River, one of the coldest inhabited places on earth. I had, together with my assistant Johan, spent most of the past 5 months hauling 660 pounds of necessities, mainly in utter darkness, experiencing a terrifying cold with average temperatures around -50°F, day and night. A reality which made sleep almost impossible, giving us plenty of frostbites on both fingers and cheeks and it ruined most metal parts in our equipment. Like our ski bindings, and therefore, we arrived walking, not skiing, to the village. It seemed like every inhabitant were there to greet us with customary warmth, joy and most of them were dressed in their colourful traditional dress. We saw Chukchis, Even, Yakuts, Yugahirs and Russians. After the traditional welcoming offerings to the spirits, we were brought into the local museum, where more cheerful and hugging villagers awaited us, around a table full of local delicacies. After having survived mainly on moose meat and raw, frozen fish during most of the winter, we nearly cried when we came across big plates of fried reindeer brain and cooked bone marrow. At that stage, I suddenly realized, after spending 20 years of exploring extreme parts of our world and trying to understand the meaning of life, from now on, I’ll stop thinking about the big worrisome issues and simply concentrate on the uncomplicated ones. Like the thought of some more cooked bone marrow.

5. What do you think the future of exploration is?

I worry quite a lot regarding the future of exploration. There’s an awful lot of young male dominated quite ridiculous adventures today, were focus is purely on showing off a male hero image. The type who’s gone to the North Pole and back sitting in a shopping cart from Wall-Mart using an oar to move forward and keep polar bears at bay. A bloke whose selling point is dirty underwear, ice in his beard and modern polar clothes packed with sponsors and whose lecture theme is “Everything is possible!” I hope this awfully trivial way to travel in the name of exploration will disappear soon and I look forward to the return of good old Exploration in the name of documentation, building bridges of knowledge whilst doing research and tests of the human limits. There’s also a need of much more women in Exploration, especially the classic adventure genre, to give a much better, and more serious, perspective of it all. I think, and hope, this is the future of exploration.

"A good quality knife. You can do a lot with a sharp knife. You can hunt, skin, prepare meat and other types of food and than use it as an eating utensil. And many more matters concerning pure survival." Siberian straganina here!

6. What is your most trusted ´Don´t leave home without it`piece of kit?

A good quality knife. You can do a lot with a sharp knife. You can hunt, skin, prepare meat and other types of food and than use it as an eating utensil. And many more matters concerning pure survival.

7. Could you share a message to empower future generations to continue to explore or do you have a favourite quote to encourage young people?

Even though everything has been discovered geographically today, there’s an enormous amount of important things still to discover, since the world is forever changing. Don´t think, just go. You will make a difference. It is the best life one can imagine. The life of an explorer.

Well, that seems a loooong time ago….things have happened since then, some really good, some really bad. Read this article in Turkey´s biggest daily Sabah!

Explorers are in fact the lineal descendants of those hunter gatherers who went in search of new game and plant rich areas. They were curious, flexible minded and courageous. Courageous because they were going outside the comfort zone of the tribe.

Guest writer number 9 is a British explorer named Robert Twigger and a very British one. His philosophical text below is funny, very interesting, gives a perspective and really touches the subject exploration. He is a writer and explorer who in
2009-2010 was the first person to walk across the great Sand Sea of the
Eastern Sahara. He has a website www.roberttwigger.com and his latest book is
Dr Ragab’s Universal Language.

What is Exploration?

It is quite simple to say who an explorer was in the past- he was someone who went where others had not been and brought back information. But in fact this is a modern definition, the scientific definition so to speak. In fact, if you look at explorers from Marco Polo to Richard Burton they were people who ‘tried to get places’. No more articulate than that really. They wanted to get to a new place by a new route, a shorter one usually. Their motives were usually economic. Or territorial- claiming land for their own country.

We forget all that now and teach in school that explorers were like modern scientists but in funny clothes. The fact that modern scientists, with aeroplanes and helicopters and skidoos and special clothing can go where any of these old explorers, who suffered such hardships, went, makes the scientists imagine they are cut from similar cloth. Not a bit of it.

The old explorers brought back news, information about things they found, rocks, plants, lost cities- but all this was by the by. They simply wanted to go somewhere no one had been before or get somewhere by a new route, a route no one else had used before. Or no one from their culture has used before.

Explorers are in fact the lineal descendants of those hunter gatherers who went in search of new game and plant rich areas. They were curious, flexible minded and courageous. Courageous because they were going outside the comfort zone of the tribe.

There is survival value in going outside the comfort zone- whether it is psychological or physical. This, is, in fact, what explorers do. They explore regions beyond the culture’s comfort zone. They may or may not bring back their discoveries in a form that is currently called ‘scientific’.

I used to find it odd that Buzz Aldrin shut in his space suit and tiny rocket capsule and Ranulph Fiennes making the first polar circumnavigation of the planet could both be labeled explorers. Yet they are: both have gone outside the comfort zone of the culture.

Maybe the journey involves an interior path too. Becoming initiated into a remote tribe counts as exploration- with both and internal and external journeying out of the usual comfort zone.

It is a slippery concept, exploration, especially in a world that many, wrongly, believe is fully explored. But what does ‘fully explored’ mean? That it has been photographed for Google earth? That someone has flown over it in a jet plane? That it was driven over in a jeep? We confuse map making with exploration. We have great maps of places that remain unexplored. My own view is that somewhere is not explored until a human being has looked at it closely and moved over it at walking pace. I have been in desert wadis where there are no vehicle tracks. The valley is unexplored- by any definiton- and I was the first person, since the previous wet period 5000 years ago – to visit such a place. That a car passed within two kilometres of this valley but didn’t see it and stop means nothing. They might just have well not have been there.

Maybe the journey involves an interior path too. Becoming initiated into a remote tribe counts as exploration- with both and internal and external journeying out of the usual comfort zone.

The other form exploration in the modern world takes, is to do an old route in a new way, or to link up several old routes. To do it using less gear and in a less complicated way counts as exploration- why? Because this is a more intimate way of experiencing the landscape. You find out new things about yourself. You necessarily leave the comfort zone. In the challenge, say, of towing a sledge solo to the North Pole in winter, you discover, because you are the first to summount this challenge, a whole range of new solutions. That is the discovery element of this exploration.

Discovery without challenge- for example buzzing around Antarctica on snowmobiles looking for dinosaur bones- though fun is more science than exploration. When there is no challenge, physical or psychological, the results obtained don’t ‘change’ the discoverer. He hasn’t ‘earned them’ in the way an explorer has. I think we are drowning in information these days we haven’t earned.

Captain Kirk, of course, summed it up rather well, “To boldly go where no man has gone before!”

You can read more about Robert at his hilarious and enjoyable blog at www. theexplorerschool.com!

Why do we explore? Is there still white spots to be discovered on the global maps?

Lately I have had a lot of emails regarding, why do we explore? Is there anything left to explore? And who is an explorer? It has been a hotly debated issue. It is the second most read report I have written. I am also in favor of a new view on Exploration. Therefore I will republish this article below here as well, after receiving plenty of attention from Great Britain after this piece:

The other night I went to the monthly lecture at Travellers Club in Stockholm. I try to go there frequently. I like the surroundings at Sällskapet, the atmosphere, the lectures, but most of all the people, the members of the Travellers Club. A great lot of people with the most extra ordinary experiences from all over the world. I also go there to get inspired and maybe find an idea to what my next Expedition will be. This time it was a young fella who lectured, a great guy, very friendly and an interesting lecture. Technically. BUT, I am so fed up the attitude of todays adventurers and so called explorers. They are always the best on earth and they only talk about themselves. Incessently. And it is always the same message:

Everything is possible!

We´ve known this for the last 150 000 years, maybe even 3.2 million years back whenLucy went out for a excursion. I don´t know why it is so popular today to listen to this kind of extremely no-good-for-mankind-talk. And that lecture reminded me of the one in February 2008. Same deal. Then I remembered I did write an article about the same issue two years ago after having had the honour to lecture at Explorers Club in New York. This is what I wrote for Utemagasinet:

”…and then the mountain spoke to me, saying: ´Have faith in me, Ed, and you will reach your final 8,000-meter peak.´ And look, there I am on the mountain top!”

This is, more or less, how the famous American mountaineer Ed Viesturs closed his lecture at the Explorers Club´s 102nd Annual Dinner at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. Before him, a young guy named Andy Skurka, elected Man of the Year by Backpacker Magazine, had recounted the story of how he crossed the U.S. by foot from west to east in record time.

”Nothing is impossible! Anyone can do it!” he summarized, displaying a photo of himself posing in the sunset; his gaze fixed beyond the horizon, his muscles flexed and back held straight. An extremely traditional, male image of Adventure and Expeditions. I think I saw Buzz Aldrin, astronaut and second man on the moon, smirk. Woman kosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova simply left when the so-called adventurers entered the stage. Passionately, she had told her own story, filled with fear and amazement at the incomprehensions of life while she, as the first woman ever, rampaged round the moon 48 times.

The Annual Dinner carried the theme ”What´s Left to Explore”. And how this should be brought to an audience. I think very few of the 1,100 spectators enjoyed the adventurers´ talks. One of our neighbours at the table, the editor of a wellknown American outdoor magazine, said:

Papua New Guinea felt like one of the last places on earth I have visited, where there might at least be some white spots of discovery to be made. On the knowledge front.....

”Every day, as I receive letters and articles from people making expeditions and wanting to sell their material, I ask myself: ”Hasn´t Adventure come further than this? Is it still just white males with icicles in their beards dishing out the same old silly story?”

The reason why I´m bringing up this very important subject, is that every week I get a number of e-mails from men and women, young and old, who want to take off on an expedition or adventure. The majority want to know three things: ”What kind of equipment should I use?”, ”How do I get sponsors?” and ”How do I get the media interested in me, so I can make a living selling articles and lecturing?”

There is only one answer: Our view of Adventure and Expeditions must be renewed. Firstly, there has to be an interesting story. The times are gone when a spectator finds it interesting to listen to the hackneyed theme of ”anything is possible”; a story centered around dirty underwear, heroic struggle and white men with icicles in their beards who have managed to reach the North Pole, using a shopping cart and an oar as their only means of transport. Secondly, we need more women narrators. We need a female perspective. Men have to start thinking like women. I think this is crucial to whether the public will continue being interested in expeditions at all.

There are still considerable differences in how a story can be told. For example, I was searching the internet for stories about Swedish expeditions in the Himalayas. A couple of men report as follows:

“It´s been tough and troublesome. Our backpacks weigh about 15 kilos, but all has turned out well. Today we struggled for six hours. Tomorrow we will continue, and then we will use our final camp at 7,500 meters. We will rise at about 12 o´clock local time, put our tents up and melt snow for water. We won´t sleep much, but we are feeling all right.”

Incredibly boring for everyone except the storyteller´s closest relatives or someone else in the know. To be compared with another account from an expedition on the same mountain, at the same time, written by a woman in the same situation:

“Why am I never satisfied? I´m thinking I should have exercised more. Actually, I´ve been exercising at least five days a week. I think I should have been more mentally prepared. Actually, I´ve been preparing for five years. I don´t think I´m a good enough climber. But that´s the way I am in everyday life as well. I could be better at cooking, decorating, fashion, my job. I could be a better wife, friend, and so on. Maybe I need the inherent power of dissatisfaction to be able to hold on and not give up my dream of climbing an 8,000-meter peak. Because it has been necessary – but now I´m going to give it a try.”

Wonderfully thrilling and dramaturgical! The fact that the men reached the top and not the woman, is utterly unimportant. What is interesting is her story. This is how tomorrow´s adventurers on expedition must think to survive. Even better is to tell a story of someone else but yourself. Which is what I did in New York. When I took the stage after Ed Viesturs, the first thing I talked about was how ridiculous all the clever white males with icicles in their beards are. I continued by informing the audience about the Siberians and their everyday life, which makes a contemporary expedition look like a school outing by comparison. The response was fairly good – a ten-minute standing ovation.

Please continue to discuss the subject here!

Please continue the debate on the meaning of exploration and how we should look at it in the future!

"Had the earthquake really been that big? Or was I just imagining it?" Both those questions could easily be ignored when I saw the scenery outside. There were 1-2cm pieces of rubble everywhere, and many large windows of banks had exploded into small pieces laying below. I live in a modern neighborhood so I could see none of the destruction hitting older houses in other parts of Santiago and the country. After checking that the tallest building in Latin-American was still standing I went back. It was still very dark although traffic lights worked. Like many others I stopped next to a car that had it's radio on and could hear that the epicenter had been further south, and that six people had been reported killed.

Guest writer number 8 is an old client of mine, a good friend today,  who I met as a tour leader, Christian Jansson, who lives and works for Ericsson in Santiago de Chile. He wrote this thrilling report to his friends just after the earth quake!

Hi everybody,

Here’s an extra travel email, I want everybody to know I’m ok, and also say thanks to all that have worried. Maybe you are also interested in how it felt.

I woke up in the middle of the night, wondering why. From looking at the lit-up screen of my mobile I knew it was 03:34 and I was thinking there are strange sounds from the outside: humming, buzzing, dogs barking, and other sounds I couldn’t identify. Then the shaking and the noise started. First a little bit more than usual, but moments later it got strong. “Shit this is the one”, I remember thinking as I walked to the door frame of my bedroom. It became very loud: the sounds of things hitting the floors, walls cracking, furniture moving around, and I don’t know what. Hearing things falling made me think this is strong. Hearing concrete cracking made me think this is bad. In the darkness I went into the guest room and with one arm managed to keep my laptops from leaving the desk, while with the other holding on to the doorframe. Normally ”a strong one” refers to a 6-7 on the Richter, like living very close to a subway track where one can feel vibrations, plants shake their leaves, and water in glasses move. The Sunday shake is better compared to sitting in a sailboat when extra big waves hit and one unsuccessfully tries to keep all plates on the table, while holding on to whatever. With the loudness of a discoteque. And without seeing almost anything. It felt like the shake would never end. I remember thinking “ok, now I know what the big one feels like, it can stop now, please”. But it just kept shaking. I have no idea if the shake lasted 45 seconds or three minutes, but suddenly it was silent and calm. And pitch dark.

At Ericsson Chile we must attend a safety course so I knew the recommendation after a big shake is to leave the building, in case it got damaged and a second shake brings it down. I couldn’t immediately find a flashlight so I put in my contacts helped by the screenlight of the mobile, dressed, grabbed my passport (not sure why). I then quickly inspected the apartment  (many things on the floor, drawers pulled out, the refrigerator had moved 15cm into the kitchen door) and walked down the nine stairs to the street. All electricity was gone except in the building entrance, so the walking down was a mix of seeing siluettes of people, feeling with hands and feet where to go, and avoiding bumping into persons entering the stairway from lower floors. There were many people outside. Some wrapped in blankets, some in pajamas, couples and families hugging each other. All very quiet. To have something to do I decided to walk around the neighborhood. “Had the earthquake really been that big? Or was I just imagining it?” Both those questions could easily be ignored when I saw the scenery outside. There were 1-2cm pieces of rubble everywhere, and many large windows of banks had exploded into small pieces laying below. I live in a modern neighborhood so I could see none of the destruction hitting older houses in other parts of Santiago and the country. After checking that the tallest building in Latin-American was still standing I went back. It was still very dark although traffic lights worked. Like many others I stopped next to a car that had it’s radio on and could hear that the epicenter had been further south, and that six people had been reported killed.

Ahu Tongariki, located 5000 km:s from the mainland, silently watched the quake....

Back at my building, inspired from not seeing any fallen houses, I walked up the sixteen stairs to the top of the building where the swimmingpool is. The darkness made the stars shine brightly and I could see that the only lights in the city were likely powered by local generators. Then came the big aftershock. I sat down on the roof, not too close to the building edge and could see how the pool water was moving furiously from one end to the other like in a filled teacup held by someone walking with a bad balance (as I’m writing these words from my livingroom couch I can feel another shake start, maybe a five, now it is calm again). When the aftershock subdued I returned to my apartment and after again failing to call my family in Sweden (to let them know I was ok) I turned on the mobile radio to follow the live reporting from around the country. The electricity returned at maybe eight in the morning and I could watch the catastrophe-reporting from CNN. At this time I was also able to communicate with colleagues to learn everyone and their families were alright.

Later in the day I met with friends and walked around the city, had lunch and then we made dinner in my apartment. Things were back to normal, but suddenly when we were drinking whisky on the balcony (the beverage for moments like these) everything went dark again, or rather my apartment went black. Everywhere else there was light. Probably something with the fusebox, I need to wait for an electrician tomorrow. But I have bought a long extension cord and plugged it into a socket in the stairway so at least I can power the refrigerator/freezer and charge my laptop and write this. Hope you enjoyed the read.

Saludos.

/Christian

On a totally different topic though, look at this, friends who are doing a great job of connecting cultures!

Paula Constant gives a very interesting perspective of exploring, from a female perspective. Vital and needed.

Guest writer number 7 is another impressive explorer whom I have gotten to know through my Expedition planning to come in the future, Paula Constant, from Australia. She is quite a powerful personality as well with strong views and a big heart. And she has been great help in pretty much everything, especially the emotional aspect of failing to do what you planned to do. And we have talked quite a lot about the differences between the sexes when it comes to exploring, so I asked her to write a piece about that. She has an impressive record and back in 2004, with no previous expedition experience, Paula began walking from Trafalgar Square with a backpack.  Since then, she has walked over 12000 km through eight countries, including nearly 8000km through the Sahara with her own camel train.  Married when she left Trafalgar Square, Paula’s husband left the expedition a year later, when the couple were just 1000km into their desert trek.  Paula carried on with two Arabic, nomadic guides, and went on to gain sponsorship and go over halfway across the Sahara in a bid to make a West to East crossing of the desert when she was stopped by civil war in Niger in 2007.  She is the author of two books – Slow Journey South, recounting her European walk; and Sahara, detailing the desert journey.  No female adventurer has walked so far through the Sahara alone but for local guides.

I never set out to become a ‘female adventurer’.  Actually, 5 years ago, if you had asked me exactly what a ‘female adventurer’ was, I’d have been relatively unable to answer.  I could probably name a few mountaineers who happened to be women; because I planned on walking, Ffyona Campbell also sprang to mind.  But I would have wondered why anyone actually needed to state that the adventurer was female.  What on earth does gender have to do with anything? I would have thought.

Perhaps this has its roots in my own background – growing up in rural Australia, jumping on horses and skis with as much energy as the next bloke, and always in competition and company with men, it had never really occurred to me that as a woman, my experience should or could be any different to them.  When I read the tales of adventurers of old, the only reason I saw for there being no women on the honour rolls was simply that most great exploration occurred before the Women’s Liberation movement really happened, and so it was just not feasible.  But to be honest – I never really thought about it.  Occasionally I would hear about women who were pioneers in one way or another, and I always knew we were absolutely capable of anything; I simply saw that now, the opportunities were open for us to pursue them, where before, they were not.

When I set out walking from Trafalgar Square in 2004, however, I wasn’t planning on doing anything solo.  I was married, so despite planning on heading into Muslim Northern Africa and through the Sahara with camels, it never occurred to me that I would be doing any of it solo.  It was something of a shock to find myself alone.  My marriage broke up after 6000km, and only several weeks into a 7000km desert trek.  Suddenly I was running a camp of two Arabic men and four camels, with no man beside me.

But apart from the emotional distress of a marriage breakdown, the reality was in many ways a relief.  To finally be in control of my own walk, and team, was wonderful – what I felt born to do. It was I who had spent years reading and dreaming about the region, and who felt a real connection to the place and cultures within it; this walk had always been particularly my dream.

But it most definitely was a world of men.  Week upon week of living not only immersed in another culture, but confined to the company of two men I barely knew, and neither of whom spoke my own language, was exhausting – both in those first 6 months, then when I returned for a further 8.  Was it harder than if I were a man?

"When I set out walking from Trafalgar Square in 2004, however, I wasn’t planning on doing anything solo. I was married, so despite planning on heading into Muslim Northern Africa and through the Sahara with camels, it never occurred to me that I would be doing any of it solo. It was something of a shock to find myself alone. My marriage broke up after 6000km, and only several weeks into a 7000km desert trek. Suddenly I was running a camp of two Arabic men and four camels, with no man beside me."

No.  I don’t actually think so.  Travel – and especially the kind of travel expeditioners’ and adventurers do – relies chiefly on the ability of the individual to work with others.  Whilst we must lead, we must do so with empathy, humour, humility, and determination.  I had to run an expedition whilst also learning on the job; despite being the centre of attention at every nomadic tent, I must always be patient, friendly, and conversational with the women – even though all I may have wanted to do  was throw myself down by the men and talk camels and grazing.

But what an opportunity!  How many men are invited into the women’s’ tent?  An entire world virtually hidden from men was immediately open to me – but as a white woman, I had the privilege of being welcomed by the men also, mainly out of curiosity.  Perhaps even better, when it came to choosing guides, men of a certain caliber would see me in the same light as a member of their family – which meant they would lay down their life rather than see me hurt or insulted in any way.  I felt a profound gratitude and respect for such men, and found that if I conducted myself with honour, that I would meet with exactly that in return.  Only very rarely did I find behavior to the contrary.

When those situations arose, they were tiresome, and sometimes depressing.  One of the things I dealt with as a woman in a desert, Muslim environment, was being offered marriage almost daily – from pretty much every nomad I met, if they were single.  There is no offense taken in these situations – one simply declines politely, and with respect.  But I made it very clear to the men I hired that once in camp, we were family, and I was not remotely interested in marriage or any other liaison.  On a couple of occasions the guides, through ignorance or malice, made the mistake of pushing the issue, or treating me as a slave rather than an employer.  This is where it is tough as a woman; and where one treads very carefully.  Polite but firm is the starting point; sack the guide and get another if they don’t get the message; and if that is non-viable (for example when you are very isolated) be tough if you need to be.  But what I learned as the most important thing was never to lose my cool, never to show vulnerability, and to treat most scenarios with a great deal of humour.

I suspect this is the simple rule for women.  It just isn’t ok to plead weakness, to throw up your hands in despair and ask someone else to solve a problem for you.  If you have chosen to get out there in a man’s world – then you have to play by the same rules, even if you think at times it is twice as hard.  Remember, you have many advantages – women, I believe, have a natural ability to empathise and comprehend subtleties in behavior.  Where we struggle is to communicate calmly, assertively, and with authority, when things get tough and we feel boxed in. Flying off the handle, or behaving irrationally or tearfully because we feel misunderstood and bullied, helps not a jot.  Lifting out of that is what leadership is about; no less for a man than a woman.

The most common question I field from journalists is how I felt out in the desert ‘as a woman’.  The answer is fairly simple – I was out there as an adventurer, and team leader.  I felt as any leader would have done in a situation where I had to react to changing circumstances daily, often under duress.  It was hard and lonely, and at times I felt I got it wrong.  But being a woman was not something that stuck in my head as a hardship.  We all fight personal demons out in the field, no matter what our background or gender.  We all struggle with being the leader we know we should be, and performing in an honourable, courageous way in tough conditions.  At times being a woman was an advantage – and at times very tiresome.  But I suspect the same could be said of any man.

I have met men and women who journey as much for the personal journey as the external one.  I have read quite a few times recently that women do this more than men, but I would dispute that.  I think women can be just as goal oriented – in fact, sometimes, even more so – than a man.  I just think that women are happy to describe their personal journey in more detail than many men, partly because their emotional life is ever present – well, it is for me, anyway.  What intrigues me is that most men are as aware of the emotional as women – they just don’t tend to write about it in the same detail.  Yet, in my discussions with men who may appear on the surface to be the archetypal hairy adventurer, scratch the surface and there is an overwhelming need and desire to talk about how they felt out there.  It is no coincidence that throughout the history of exploration, personal feelings, group dynamics and emotional turbulence have dominated the diaries, successes, and failures of explorers both male and female.  Being in such tough circumstances brings out the best and worst in us all.   Knowing ourselves is perhaps the greatest challenge in adventure, and the only way we truly begin to succeed.

Some of the hardest times on my walk were moments when all I wanted was to sit down with a group of girlfriends and talk about how I felt, something that is rather difficult at times for nomads.  On one such occasion I was resting and watching the sunfall, at the end of a particularly tough day on a very tough stretch.  I’d been out for twenty days, supplies were running low, the heat was intense during the day, and we we’d had to walk over thirty km each day to make wells.  As I watched, the sun dropped, and the sweet cool desert breeze washed over me like a miracle, just as the first stars shone through the gloaming.

My guide – a wonderful old man who had never gone even beyond the regional boundaries of his grazing area, and prior to me had never met a white woman – smiled softly, and said in Arabic:  “the desert night is the nomad’s reward for surviving another day.”

He tapped straight into how I was feeling, and we sat in silence and watched the night grow.  Finally we ate together, and tumbled into our beds.  I never forgot those words – because in what he said I knew that he had done it tough too, and put my experience on the same level as his own.  As a person, a leader, and a woman, I could have asked no greater compliment, and the simple line conveyed a beautiful truth: whether man, woman, Christian, Muslim, Arab or Australian, on expeditions we are made equals by our ability to conduct ourselves with strength humility and patience under the toughest of conditions.  Do so, and you render questions of gender irrelevant.

Fail to do so, and it matters not what you are.

Read more about Paula here!

I wrote an article about the issue here and another female explorer added her views to it!

Paula began walking from Trafalgar Square with a backpack. Since then, she has walked over 12000 km through eight countries, including nearly 8000km through the Sahara with her own camel train. Married when she left Trafalgar Square, Paula's husband left the expedition a year later, when the couple were just 1000km into their desert trek. Paula carried on with two Arabic, nomadic guides, and went on to gain sponsorship and go over halfway across the Sahara in a bid to make a West to East crossing of the desert when she was stopped by civil war in Niger in 2007. She is the author of two books - Slow Journey South, recounting her European walk; and Sahara, detailing the desert journey. No female adventurer has walked so far through the Sahara alone but for local guides.

Antalya has 9 million visitors per year, which is amazing. Still you do get ripped off too often when wanting to sit down at a café or eat food. Unnecessary.

Right now I am in Antalya at an International Symposium for Travel Writers, great set of people, great contacs for the future, and during a lecture a few days ago I was asked to talk about connecting cultures. So I wrote these ten tips as a base for my lecture. As below: (I thought maybe, in this stress to get things together for another lecture, I´d like to share it with you readers.)

1. You need to travel, visit other countries, smell them, feel them.
2. But don´t travel with your own country men, find ways to travel to meet local people on their terms, motorized vehicles do not help.
3. Remember you are a guest, if you don´t like what you see, go home.
4. 

   My old friend from Cyprus, Kemal Darbaz, turned up and made life very enjoyable in Antalya! He´s got the best olive oil on earth!

   When you don´t understand, ask and try to see things from their perspective.

5. Listen more than talk. But be curios.
6. Humour and don´t take yourself to seriously.
7. Don´t judge, have an open mind, what you see might not be the truth.
8. Communication, Try to learn the language, if not try to communicate.
9. Inform your self. Read and research a lot, but keep an open mind, read authors from that country. Remember objectivness doesn´t exist.
10. Write, document and talk about your experiences, we need to inform others. Ignorance is dangerous.

Turkish Biggest Daily English Newspaper, Todays Zamam, published this article yesterday.

Interviewed at Göremes Open Air Museum in Cappadocia. Interest, media wise have been surprisingly high, during the Turkish visit. All due to my friend Dogan Tilics work.

Cappadocia - one of the Wild Wonders of The World!

I remember every place I set up camp 16 years ago when I cycled from Ankara to Antalya via Kayseri and Cappadocia on my New Zealand to Cairo trip. Most camps where pitched on the backside of a restaurant since Turkish food easily belong to the best and tastiest on the globe. It was a really demanding crossing because the headwinds were so tough so I couldn´t move more than 5-6 km:s per hour. It took ages to get to Antalya. This time it was easier. I took the bus, invited by the Cappadocian Tourist Organisation, to asses its possibilities to draw more tourists world wide. All arranged as usual by one of my best friends, Dogan Tilic, one of the nicest human beings I have ever met. And I met him 16 years ago not far from the Black Sea Cost.

First early in the morning when I started my climb up a very long steep hill. he and his extended family went to the beach and on the way back, they passed me once again, still climbing, but the car was full, 10 people in a small WW Bubble, so they couldn´t stop. They were all hungry. However when I reached the top, they passed me once again on the way down and stopped. It was the first time I met Dogan. His mother had taken pity on me and wanted to feed and rest me for a few days in a summer house they had. And ever since that day we have been in regular contact and I have been several times to Turkey, lecturing at different Universities, even writing articles for Birgun. Dogan is today one of Turkeys most influential journalists. But, most of all, he is a genuinely good human being. He has been in prison, tortured for his political views, during the 70´s, but his life is still plagued by laughter and joy and not bitterness, he is uncorruptible in every way and he is a story teller in the Yasar Kemal tradition. And the most amazing things happen every time we meet!

Dogan Tilic, around 50 in age, an amazing human being with an extraordinary net of contacts all over Europe. His claim to fame is being photographed together with Fidel Castro. This is, however, his son Toprak...

After leaving Oman with sadness, it was great to end up in Turkey with Dogan and his family in Ankara. There are such an inspirational couple, he and his great wife Helga and they have such a healthy perspective on everything. Plus, of course, Dogan have an eastern touch to everything he says and agrees with the quote of the Arab World:

“In the East, if you have patience, everything will eventually come true.”

Life does becomes easier to a certain degree if one thinks like this…..but, one thing is for sure, Turkey is in many ways the perfect bridge between the West and Arab East and that was one of the reasons we came here.  The other to lecture and be part of a big conference on tourism in Antalya with journalist from all over the world. And, surprisingly enough, the news of the Expedition Arabia had spread to Turkey and I have spent a fair amount of time getting interviewed by media all over the place and what thrills me with Turkey, is also that they, compared to many Muslim states, genuinely listen to what you have to say and are ready to discuss Islam at length without getting stuck into set phrases and beliefs. This is another reason Turkey is perfect for the cultural bridge. If the expedition ever will happen….

I have received hundreds of emails from people all over the world which thinks it is a pity the expedition is off. I appreciate that a lot. Even though I have abandoned the Expedition until things happen, who knows if they will, I will still keep working on keeping the project alive and continue to do research.  And this area of the world, just ain´t easy. Another Swede, Christian Bodegren, just gave up his dream. He feels like a failure, I told him not to. He has at least put his dream in motion, most people never do. One always tries to find faults about oneself when things doesn´t go the way as expected. Same here. But not this time. I have really done my best. Another friend, Paula Constant, tried to do Christians trip the other way around and failed, thought it was not due to that she was a woman. Paula, it is just this part of the world. It is difficult and complicated with a lot of red tape. And that is why so many people have problems understanding this part of the world, when it closes borders and complicates unnecessarily for nothing to gain. Building borders, not bridges, doesn´t make a better world.

The mayor of Cappadocia, Hasan Unver, proclaims me Honorary Ambassador of Cappadocia!

I will write a long article about Cappadocia next week after the conference, but I just want to say that I met some great people there and one of Turkish best known photograpers, Baris Koca, joined us and made the visit even more pleasant. Most surprising of all, was that i was made Honorary Ambassador for Cappadocia! And that is an extra-ordinary honor and let me just say, i will do my best to high light this extra-ordinary place to the rest of the world. So do see this slide show from the visit! 5 of the pictures belong to Baris.

I just sent out another newsletter for February, read here!

And, if you have more time to spare, read my report at http://www.wideworldblogs.com/explorer-blog/

Arita Baaijens, one of the worlds foremost camel travellers! Photo by Joanna P Pinneo

Guest writer number 6, Arita Baaijens, has been very helpful when it comes to advice on all topics regarding the desert. Once I asked her, since she speaks Arabic and is as much Bedu as the Bedu themselves, are you Moslem? Arita got slightly upset and answered: I am a free soul! Indeed she is! She is also a biologist, author, photographer and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. Twenty years ago she gave up her job as an environmentalist, bought camels and made a solo crossing across the Western Desert of Egypt. Today she has made over 25 expeditions (3-6 months at a time) with her own caravan of camels all over Egypt and the Sudan. She travelled the Forty Days Road twice with trade caravans of camels. In the eastern desert of Sudan she and archaeologist Krzyzstof Pluskota discovered a hidden valley with hundreds of petroglyphs depicting cows. She just came back from Darfur (Sudan), Egypt and Mauritania. Although she knows everything about camels, she intends to travel on horseback from Siberia to Afghanistan. Her most recent book Desert Songs, a woman explorer in Egypt and Sudan (AUC Press, 2008) won an award in the Netherlands.

Female leadership in the desert!

Venus and Mars in the desert

During the past twenty years I’ve spend most winter seasons exploring the desert of Egypt and Sudan on camel. Sometimes friends kept me company during a leg of the journey, which was great. Camels are wonderful animals, but a conversation with them can be boring because they are only interested in food. So it was fun to have a friend around, although, to be honest, with some of them the fun didn’t last very long. A week at the most. After that the top-dog type of guys – never seen a desert, let alone knew a thing about camels – would point out how I could and should organize my caravan in a much better and more efficient way.

“This is the limit,” one of them shouted with a face turned purple. I was repairing a broken saddle without consulting him. A terrible insult, according to him. “Well, do you know how to do it?” I asked genuinely surprised. “No, but you don’t have to rub into my face.”

"Needless to say that I had the time of my life in Mauritania, where I met a lot of bold, bright and strong women. The Mauritanian caravan model functions, these role models taught me, because next to every strong woman stands a gentle man."

Another friend was annoyed because I made him feel insecure whenever he walked with the camels. Why? Picture the following scene: my friend climbs steep hill after steep hill with heavily laden camels and after two hills I, of course, tell him to circumnavigate those hills. Something he would have done automatically if he would have been the one to carry the load. Anyway, my friend was not amused and our never ending arguments threatened the relationship. So in the end I decided to give it a try and shut up in order to let him learn from mistakes. It worked. Until one of the camels seriously injured herself because of a stupid and unnecessary mistake my friend make. ‘No more soft approach,’ I decided there and then.
My top-dogs friends had a problem with female leadership, I decided. But as the list of incidents grew doubt crept in. ’Maybe it is me,’ I thought. After all, I was the only constant factor in all those stories. A man in my position would never question his leadership style, but being a female, I wondered what I could do to avoid future fights. I searched for female role models in the desert and hoped they could teach me a few tricks. But alas, female caravaners were hard to come by. All the local desert guides where male and they couldn’t care less about the feelings of their staff. On the contrary. A guide, or chabir, does not accept any criticism during a dangerous desert crossing. Which makes perfect sense. A guide is responsible for the lives of people and animals in the caravan and conflicts create tension and confusion, which in turn may affect his judgement.
Imagine my joy and disbelief when about five years ago I came across a thesis about trade in west Africa. The historian who wrote it claimed and proved that women in the region played an active role in caravan trade. As a merchant, investor and even as a caravaner.

Recently I travelled to Mauritania and met two female caravaners, both well into their seventies now. I also met the sons and daughters of a locally well known woman who had worked as a trader and a caravaner. One of her sons, now a grandfather, rubbed his knees and shins with a painful grimace when he talked about the long journeys with his mother. The whole family went together, parents and children, and they were on the road for several months. The children walked or sat on top of salt loads, hour after painful hour. The caravan would only come to a stop after sunset. And after such an exhausting day the mother still had to cook. Women were also responsible for selling goods at foreign markets. The profit was used to buy local products they could sell back home.

"When I explained to a few young women that their Dutch sisters, in order to keep their marriage intact, pretend that their husband is the boss, the girls laughed and laughed. They just couldn’t believe what I said. In Mauritania, they giggled, it is the other way around. Men like strong women. Indeed, if a spouse bosses his wife around she knows something is wrong. Very wrong. When a husband acts out of character he usually fancies another woman."

When I asked men and women about the daily routine in a trade caravan, nothing indicated that women had an inferior position. “Men and women worked together,” an old man commented. Many others confirmed this. In I learned that in Mauritania women have always had a very strong position in society and within the family. Women are also well educated. When I explained to a few young women that their Dutch sisters, in order to keep their marriage intact, pretend that their husband is the boss, the girls laughed and laughed. They just couldn’t believe what I said. In Mauritania, they giggled, it is the other way around. Men like strong women. Indeed, if a spouse bosses his wife around she knows something is wrong. Very wrong. When a husband acts out of character he usually fancies another woman.

Needless to say that I had the time of my life in Mauritania, where I met a lot of bold, bright and strong women. The Mauritanian caravan model functions, these role models taught me, because next to every strong woman stands a gentle man.

You can read more about the fantastic personality at http://www.aritabaaijens.nl and http://www.linkedin.com/in/aritabaaijens

In the news in Oman.....the media has been very helpful to promote my vision. This time Muscat Daily. Click on photo to read.

“It is written in the stars, your journey is meant to be!”

A decision has been made!

I have decided to go back to Sweden right now. I feel empty. I won´t get any further at this moment and it seems like I have put all eggs in one basket. Maybe a serious mistake. I just can´t afford to stay in the Gulf anymore and I am forced to relocate to Sweden and kind of start life from scratch again. Build up an economic strong base again. And continue my wait there. And hope that the saga is written in a positive way in the stars. I have heard that phrase so much since I first arrived in Oman.

“It is written in the stars, your journey is meant to be!”

This time I have been a week in Oman, met most of my great friends, and I have had one lecture for the ESO at Crowne Plaza, too early to say how it all went, met a potential backer and finally been able to get a message sent through to the power, which I have worked for since I first came here.

When I arrived to Oman first time in January 2009, I felt like a president. I stayed in luxury hotels, was shipped around in limos, met with the wealthy and powerful and most important, it seemed like everyone I met loved my vision of building a bridge from the Arab World into the West (and the other way around) through an Expedition by camel. The positive atmosphere was electrifying! And I just loved everything which had to do with the country. The people, the Bedu culture underlying everything, the heat, the desert, the food and the dignity that people behaved with. I often get emails from people that think I am naive and say:

“You always love a new country you come to and say it is the best on earth!”

After the lecture at ESO at Crowne Plaza. From left, Marcus Rydbo, Gejrangers GK, Lamees Daar, president of ESO and married to His Higness Sayyid Tarik bin Shabib Al-Said who is next to me. A great couple who makes a major difference on many levels for Oman!

I still feel very strongly for Oman, but I have been here, I think, at least 7 times during a year and the issue have been setting up an expedition, get the needed funds and start working on finding camels and two Bedus too join me. And, to tell you the truth, even though I feel I have done everything in my power, I have invested everything I have, I have had many people like great friends like Talib Omar and Wael Lawati to back the Expedition and promote it, when I think about it, when it comes to the Expedition and getting it on its feet, I am basically at the same stage as a year ago.

What mistakes have I done?

Most likely that I bought all the enthusiasm I received initially as a sign that things would happen fast and easy and fully didn´t realize that things take time in this part of the world. They, the Omanis, really want to know you before they believe in you. I can understand and appreciate that. But it takes time, money and stamina of world class strength. Maybe I didn´t sell my vision good enough. Well, we still don´t know this. But right now, I just feel empty. Like I have walked into a wall. I am totally free of any energy right now. It has been a hard expedition in itself. Coming to Oman with hopes to do my little bit to make life more understandable and peaceful through education and information.

Do I regret anything?

Nothing, absolutely nothing. This time of trying to get an Expedition on its feet has been with the best in my life and I have really already found what I was looking for on a personal level. And most of all, I have learned a lot about this part of the world and fallen in love with it. And I have met some extremely good new friends and I am sure Oman will be a part of my future in one way or the other. But right now, there´s nothing more I can do than wait and see and that is best to do in Sweden. But I do love Oman, see this little slideshow of this spectacular country!

So this is the death of the expedition?

Not at all. Just run out of steam, funds and ideas. I am just at loss of words right now. And I am off to Turkey for a few lectures and a conference on tourism. As my very good friend, whom I will visit, Dogan Tilic says:

“In the East you don´t have to work for anything, it will come to you if you just have the patience to wait.”

Initially it was all like a dream with possibilities in every corner, now it is just a mental void.....the question is, what will happen next?...