More power to you, your elbow and your camels. Wishing you Godspeed, a Happy Christmas in the desert and may Allah watch over your caravan safely in the weeks and
months ahead. It will be a great journey.

Who knows, by the time you get back, we may even have got the Royal Geographical Society exploring again!

Salaams,

Justin

The name of Strandberg is already well known for good reasons. His ambition is bottomless, his photography in many cases incomparable and his guts – in the words of a surgeon I know well – are beauties! I was privileged to introduce him at a remarkable talk he gave us in Norfolk. Do not underestimate this man.

Keep up the good work Mikael – those who have gone before know to some extent what you are going through. Cuchullaine got it right – let the grumblers and moaners grumble and moan till they are blue in the face. When they have done their trip of a lifetime we look forward to hearing about it.

God speed!

John Labouchere, FRGS, Founder Member, Long Riders’ Guild.

What’s wrong with that ?

He lectured on his expedition to Siberia, an area of the world I knew nothing about and although I have no intention of repeating his expedition I learned a lot about the region, history and people of that area. Had Mikael not conducted this expedition I would be less informed and somewhat poorer in my knowledge of the world. Is it not the duty of explorers to go out and then come back and educate people of their stories and adventures ?

Isn’t that what Mikael does ?

The element of his lecture that stuck out the most was that his expedition was not about himself – it was about the people he met along the way, their reaction to him, his interaction with them and the relationships he built up with them. As many of the land based the firsts have been eaten up by now (Everest, Poles etc.) isn’t modern exploration about forging relationships, bridging cultural divides and educating those unlikely, unwilling or unable to undertake difficult journeys (whether you want to call hem expeditions or not) ?

If you’re lucky enough to see Mikael give a talk then go and see him and meet him, he’s a great guy and very amenable and has a really great outlook on life and I’d hate to see him stop exploring and coming back and telling us his great stories.

This person who sent this email to you does not love Yemen. Real Yemeni’s love tourists – explorers – journalists – etc. etc. and on and on, and they love people that love them! They love attention and they love being hosts to everyone and anyone! sooo do not listen to the words of this worthless person, they have no real meaning what so ever…..

My first opinion is, since I myself have been an ex-pat in Saudi-Arabia (which I loved!), Dubai and Bahrain (I loved these countries less) and I stopped being one, I got fed up with the negative people, and started a life as as a traveler and in my job as a reporter and salesperson I have met many ex-pats. I have to say that especially English speaking ex-pats are cynical, tired of living an ex_pat life, and negative to anyone who shows optimism and they spend too much time watching satellite tv.

Secondly, go through his CV. For Christ sake, he has been honored as an explorer. Medals, books and so on. And the British Explorers Club thinks he is the contemporary best explorer in the world. Why shouldn´t he than call himself explorer? And why do you negative lot only focus on his upcoming venture, have you noticed what he has done up until now?

Please, leave your ex_pat lives and go home where you come from. And, Mikael, get on with your life. Don´t give them anymore air with their silly, poorly researched thoughts so full of negativism. I don´t even understand why you started this silly debate.

We are quite a few who have spent parts of our life travelling to different places, by different means.

Had our little adventures.

Seeing things from our original perspective gives a wider span to our experience.

However much we try we can never be locals. But we can drink, sleep, dress and eat like they do. And to some extent even talk and share the perspective on life.

What happened to the good taste in granting others their harmless pleasures.

Why shall it be a shame to use a gps or a satphone if we have the means or feel we need to. Is it something to die for?

The one who makes the trip has the right to his own formula, that is what it means to be independant. Self relient.

If you like the lokal cloathing why not don it, it is often appreciated and a way to feel more a part of the local picture, as well as a way to adopt to the climate.

Wish you a good trip Mikael.

Kind regards

Abdul

For myself – the reason I wear a Mongolian deel (traditional coat) in that country is because I feel it is the ultimate solution to their severe and unpredictable climate. The design has been worked out for centuries. If I had worn one the two times we were lost in the Gobi and if we had not found our way out, it would have prevented hypothermia that could have been a life-threatening issue.

Mongolians never go without their deel – even in the hottest weather. It serves as a blanket, a windbreak (double fabric across the chest), a raincoat, a sun protector and even a serviette during meals! (Nomads wipe their mouths across the skirt) And with the super long sleeves, a rider never needs gloves in winter, (the perfect answer for a travelling photographer – no gloves and a warm camera in his/her hand all the time.)

If it had not been for my winter deel – a fur lined deel – I could not have slept night after night comfortably in cold conditions which, after the end of September, were hovering at and below freezing. My nylon sleeping bag was cold to the touch, shifted continuously and made noise against my ears, interrupting my sleep greatly . Having the fur-lined coat on hand when we woke to ride in the snow was a real plus. It is actually foolish to consider travelling in the Mongolian countryside without one.

Unfortunately my riding helmet was a dead giveaway that I was not Mongolian and I cannot tell you the countless times I wanted (and should have) hidden it, to remain anonymous. I was a target for anyone who wanted to know details of what we were about, where we were going or had anything else in their minds like horse stealing or general theft.

And on the subject of travellers donning local hats and turbans, it must be remembered that head wear has been designed and adapted by local people for protection from the sun, wind and dust storms – for millennium. In European and North American cities we do not need head protection so we don’t think about it. Under extreme weather conditions like sand storms, not only does it become next to impossible to see without an unwrapped turban but it is also needed to help one breathe. A turban insulates; it is worn in the heat to keep the head cool and in the cold to keep the head warm.

About being given a local name? I believe it is the greatest compliment a person can have. In Mongolia, my Canadian birth name means absolutely nothing to Mongolian people. They have no association to the sound or spelling and therefore do not even try to remember. If they hear my Mongolian name “Altai” however, not only do they remember me and the name – but it bonds our friendship immediately.

My motto as a traveller is this: when you put your foot inside another country, you become an ambassador of sorts for your own country. Anything even as simple as being given a name affectionately by local people will firm up friendships and open many doors.

Thank you for your interest.

I have had more than 900 visits to this page since this debate began, but very few comments outside these above here. I welcome a debate on what is exploration. As we see above here, opinions are many. The only comments I have had, which I have not published, is one from an acquaintance of mine from the documentary scene, who was very unhappy with me, just because we didn´t do a deal on this Expedition, but it included too much personal things which you readers have nothing to do with. The other one not published, is the guy who wrote the first piece on which this blog report was set up. To create debate. If I was worried about critique, why would I than bring it up? Anyway this guy sent me another batch of anger, jealousy, threats and bitterness this morning, but signed under another name and email address, edward schissorhand this time, as to appear as it came from another person. I just want to say that everyone who leaves a comment, also leaves their real trace, an IP-address. Which have helped me to conclude that Aisha, who is a woman I have met there in lovely Sanaa, and the other a bloke with a British background. They know each other very well. For example, it is not only the IP-addresses, just half an hour after Edward Scissorhands second try to get published, she wrote her piece which ends with, I quote:

I truly hope you are posting all the comments you receive and not just those that support you fully!

So from now on, for an open and continued debate on a very important subject, please publish your proper E-mail addresses if you want to get published here.

Like Alistair, I just don´t know why you two spend so much energy on writing on this subject and why don´t you start your own blog about a subject which interest you and create awareness for what you think is right or wrong? Or is it maybe a case of that you don´t have that capacity? Spending too much time complaining about others maybe?

That is my last word on this issue!

M – aaah, life is great!

Dear Madame,
I read your last posting with a growing sense of remarkable sadness. Though you made an attempt at understanding Mikael, you clearly do not comprehend either the importance, nor the inspiring intrigue, of travelling with animals, be it horses, as in my case, or in camels, as in the case under discussion.

You wrote, “Does the fact that I drive a car and not a camel disqualify me?”

No, but it puts your views into perspective by implying that you have spent the majority of your existence sealed in a metal cocoon, speeding from one place to another as fast as possible via the use of machines, cut off from nature as your body is transported like a slab of meat from Point A to Point B. Is that what you are advocating, the energetic efficiency of machines?

You go on to state, “I simply want to deconstruct this concept of land exploration in the 21st century – which in my opinion does not exist.”

I beg to differ, Madame, and will point out that in less than a decade the Long Riders’ Guild has grown from five members originating in three countries to the stage where it now has members in forty countries. And lest you rush to judgment again, by perhaps implying that this is a white boy’s club dedicated to pony picnics, allow me to state that the latest people to join are a woman from Canada and two men from Mongolia.

In fact every single person who is a member of the Guild stands as a certified argument against your misguided view that those who travel by horse – or camel – are either glory seekers, pretentious peacocks or simple fools. All of the women and men who have joined the Guild have done so after making a qualifying ride of at least one thousand miles.

Every major equestrian explorer alive today belongs to The Guild, including Hadji Shamsuddin of Afghanistan, who recently rode a thousand miles through that war-zone, Jean-Louis Gouraud of France, who rode 3,000 miles from Paris to Moscow, Claudia Gottet of Switzerland, who rode 8,000 miles from Arabia to the Alps, Adnan Azzam of Syria, who rode 10,000 miles from Madrid to Mecca, and Vladimir Fissenko of Russia, who rode 19,000 miles from Patagonia to Alaska.

No one forced this wide array of humanity to make those harrowing journeys. Like Mikael, they were lured out onto the road because their souls longed to experience things not to be found inside a air-conditioned machine.

This concept was voiced by the Canadian Long Rider, Bonnie Folkins, who just completed a difficult and perilous equestrian journey across Mongolia. Despite the hardships, upon her return “home,” Bonnie had this interesting insight.

“I was looking out the window, day-dreaming and all I could think about was, I wish I had a horse to ride. But having a horse to ride is not the issue. It is the travelling and the day to day adventure on horseback. Having a horse and travelling by horse, especially if you are en route to an unknown destination, are absolutely separate. I knew at the end of the first week of our ride that because the adventure was on horseback it was completely different than anything I had ever done in my life. Later, when we driving back to Ulaanbaatar by van – over territory we had already covered by horse – it was on a different / lesser dimension. That’s when I suddenly realized how much I had missed in my life by traveling on wheels.”

Which brings me to your next inaccurate observation.

“Would Ibn Battuta have traveled on foot – or Shakleton by canoe – in an attempt to experience travel in a way that preceded them? As a form of adventure? Why the camel?”

Madame, this exercise is akin to explaining colours to a blind woman.

Has your mechanized existence so cut you off from the delights of the animal kingdom that you no longer realize the immense gifts which are found by those of us who willingly travel in this manner?

Allow me to draw your attention to that most intriguing of modern day camel travellers, the rightfully famed Arita Baaijens of Holland. Like Mikael, I consider myself lucky to count this incredible woman among my friends. Like Mikael, she too practises humility in her life and brotherhood out in the field. For also, like Mikael, Arita has successfully undertaken a number of astonishing solo journeys, only hers have been with camels.

Arita is regarded by the vast majority of the international exploration community as being the most knowledgeable female camel traveller alive today. Having already made various difficult and dangerous camel journeys into the Sahara that would break many a cartoonish television explorer, now she’s off to Mauritania so as to research the role of women in the trans-Saharan trade caravans. As always, Arita will be travelling with her beloved camels, not because she is looking to perform a stunt but because of her deep abiding love and respect for these magnificent animals.

As Arita demonstrates, the lure of travelling with animals is something that predates the mechanical age. The car has been with mankind for less than a hundred years. Yet mankind has been exploring the world on horseback for more than six thousand years. That experience still resonates deeply in the soul of many of us, including myself, Arita, Bonnie and Mikael. Plus, it is important that this discussion not overlook the vital fact that the Bedouins, Nasir and Salim, as well the young woman, Pamela, are also involved in the forthcoming camel expedition.

Their presence reveals the true nature of this debate, which is not actually about the validity of camel, horse, or other means of animal travel, the appeal of which still resonates in the souls of countless humans, regardless of race or sex. No, the debate is actually between the villager, who has never understood the desire to travel towards the horizon, and the nomad, who refuses to be subjected to the taboos placed upon him/her by the voice of authority, be it the modern day Department of Health and Safety or a priestess of caution such as yourself.

The history of humanity is full of forgettable people, who, for one reason or another, urged, warned, forbade, or declared illegal the movement of others. Twenty years ago the Berlin Wall, that great symbol of injustice against the human need to travel, was knocked down. Yet the repressive desire to thwart the travel plans of others continues to simmer.

Your denunciation of the plans of these four humans to travel on camel is such an action. The fact that you don’t understand either its appeal, or its importance, is only a reminder of how tragically prevalent is your attitude and belief.

There are a wide variety of reasons for this discouragement, all of which are a variation on the same theme. It’s dangerous or deserted, cold or hot, infested with beasts or crawling with bandits. One of my favourite excuses was the one told to the young woman who wished to ride across England in 1939. Her outraged critics reminded that she couldn’t possibly do such a thing “in this modern age.”

Yet there is a new type of danger now in existence, one introduced by people like you, and that is the danger of ridicule. Now, instead of being told that it is too dangerous to go, Mikael is being told he is silly. Instead of bandits, he is forced to waste valuable time defending himself instead against mockery aimed at him by stay-at-home pedestrians.

Mankind is currently suffering from a world wide case of animal travel amnesia. Though it took thousands of years to learn how to travel with camels and horses, in less than a hundred years, not only has the knowledge been largely lost, as your letter sadly proves, the very value of this experience is now no longer understood.

Thus, it was very revealing when you asked if Ibn Battuta or Shackleton could return, would they choose to travel as they once had, given today’s mechanical alternatives?

What would their choices be? To enter into the mini-police state which airports now represent? To be lined up like cattle, then driven and degraded from the ticket counter into a cramped seat? To be shuttled, shuffled and sullied? To pass through the world in a climate-controlled envelope of steel? Ah, that sounds like a system designed to provide comfort and serenity.

Travel by any type of machine and your journey is firmly rooted in the industrial present. Travel by horse, or camel, and you travel by time machine. The new world slows down and an old world opens up before you. This is the world of the Long Riders, and the camel travellers, one of the first lessons of which is that the bond which occurs between you and your animal will come as a result of the two of you having survived the unknown elements of the trip together. For when people, like Salim, Mikael, Nasir and Pamela make such a journey, they will be no different than their 6,000 year old ancestor who first swung his/her tentative leg over the back of a wild pony and galloped toward his/her own distant and dangerous horizon.

Even in this age of anonymous air travel, which forces one to travel within the confining steel cocoon of a plane or car, riding a horse or camel links one to the incredible world around us. You don’t watch the world flying by. You interact with it. You don’t travel at the speed of sound. You sashay along at the pace of the wind. You don’t suffer through security checks. You slow down your heartbeat to join the rhythm of the horse’s hoof beats.

It was the great English Long Rider, naturalist and passionate horseman, Charles Darwin who argued that the migratory urge is one of the strongest of instincts.

Sadly, the majority of humanity live their lives like worms, content to die in the same clod of clay in which they were born. That explains why as long as some humans have been attempting to ride towards the sun, sedentary people have been busy urging them instead not to leave. These are the pedestrians who divided the landscape into “wild” and “domestic.” They saw their “inside” life as representing security, all the while denoucing mounted life as uncouth. Such people betray their own dreams and become ghosts not to be remembered.

In conclusion, camel, and horse, travel is a craft, which is represented by a guild whose mission is to preserve, protect and promote a type of inter-species experience which you seem destined not to understand. The validity of travelling a great distance over the surface of the earth, thereby traversing incredible hardships, surviving unforeseen dangers, all the while in the company of an animal that loves, protects and transports you, is an experience which all too few humans will ever enjoy. That is sad. Yet to denounce it out of a lack of understanding is sadder yet.

CuChullaine O’Reilly FRGS
http://www.thelongridersguild.com
http://www.theworldride.org
http://www.lrgaf.org