But, I have only slept three hours per night!

————Actually, I was so tired, so I fell a sleep writing this, which means, three more days, we have gone from Cusco to Puno to Lima, where I am sitting at the hotel waiting to finish the trip with a half day tour of the town which Fransisco Pizarro made the capital of Peru, Lima.——-

There´s so many details, except supplying the group with as much interesting stories as possible and details of everything, but you have to tend to everyone in the group with lots of care, attention and love, plus settle the wake up calls, see to that all the luggage get  picked up and moved to the rooms, see to that you as a tour guide looks neat and clean, always in a good mood, no matter how tired, well, it does work.! But it would be so much harder, without the help of the local guides.the ones in South America is the best in the world. One ends up with quite a few new good friends! They´re knowledgeable, funny, helpful and kind. And you learn so much from them yourself!

Well, this trip has been really great, and this is due to the clients and the local guides. Of course, Peruvians and Ecuadorians are really great in every way as a people as well. Best of all was Metropolitans great Faride Altamirano which made our trip a dream!

Aah, as regards to the negative sides of travelling the world, passing through Schiphol in Amsterdam is a really bad experience. The border police there, is becoming as unfriendly and arrogant as the Americans in the US, which by ease are the unfriendliest on earth. These two countries must have misunderstood the meaning of officers being employed by the people.

Naw, better you watch the videos and see the photos here!

My answer to this email was simple and direct: “You lost motivation and you hadn’t prepared enough!”

His email was similar to hundreds I have received in the last 25 years. After reviewing all of them at length, I realised these failed expeditions often had three things in common: Explorers had lost motivation, and they had failed to understand the need for good sleep, and the benefits of good food.

When the going got too tough, they proved not tough enough to keep on going! Key to any successful expedition is understanding why you go through all these hardships – at the most difficult of moments remember what it is that drives you, and draw on this, it can be your motivation.

Good sleep and good food are the two most important pillars of a successful expedition. If you don’t know how and where to pitch your tent, you will eventually fail due to lack of sleep.

The tent is your fortress and your home, where you spend most of your exploring life. This is where you rest, feed and recuperate. Don’t set off on an expedition until you can sleep very well in your tent. I have spent over 2500 nights in tents – many of them before even setting off.

As important, is being able to cook a great meal. You need energy and rest to be able to make the right decisions. So don’t leave before you know how to cook a gourmet meal on your petrol stove!

That said, you could just get out there! Trust me, this advice is only complementary; you really need to be out on the ground learning the lessons of exploration, if you want to succeed.

Have you ever bathed an elephant?

By

Gillian Birch

Being married to a Master Mariner I suppose I have had the opportunity to travel the world more than most. I am often asked what my favourite place in the world is, and I have to say that Sri Lanka has a special place in my heart. It is indeed a gem of a country, in more ways than one, but it stands out from the rest as I had so many amazing encounters with wildlife during my trips.

One such opportunity presented itself when our local guide, Sam, suggested we should go and bathe an elephant. One up on swimming with dolphins, I thought as we set out, and I was right! It was one of the most emotional and magical moments I have ever had in my life. Watching myself later on video I could see that I was totally engrossed in washing that elephant and nothing else in the world mattered at that moment. It was an unforgettable, strangely emotional bonding experience.

Let me tell you first about Sam. He was one of the local guides who came down to the beach every day, carrying his album of guided trips to show to tourists. Forget the usual pushy touts that you may encounter elsewhere in the world, these were well-dressed family men who spoke excellent English and were proud to show you their country from the local perspective. They wore polished shoes, pressed trousers and immaculately ironed shirts as their uniform. When we later visited their village and realized they had no electricity, and running water had only recently been provided to each home, how they managed turn out so immaculate and well-dressed was a credit to them.

Sam picked me up in an air-conditioned crossover vehicle with a driver and we headed off into the jungle. The first stop was always at the gate of the local temple where Sam would hop out and leave a small gift of money to ensure our safe journey. We arrived an hour later at a shady pull-in where a shallow river ran through the forest. Moments later the clanging of chains announced the arrival of the mahouts bringing their working elephants down to the river for some refreshing R&R. Each elephant waded into the river, knelt ponderously down and then rolled over on their side on the stony riverbed. You could almost hear their sighs of pleasure.

I took my coconut shell halves and approached warily. Scooping up the clear flowing water I began to splash it over the elephant’s side and legs, scrubbing with my coconut shells and gradually working across his enormous hide. It was so quiet and peaceful and I became totally engrossed in the task, splashing and scrubbing. The action was so relaxing and therapeutic – and not just for the elephant!

After 20 minutes or so, the elephant began to roll over and rise and the mahout signaled for me to climb on the elephant’s neck. I hauled myself up on the rope around his neck as he began to stand. Everyone except me could guess what came next – he began to hose up the river water in his trunk and then sprayed it over his back – and me – time and time again. I was soaked and laughing as we rode together up the riverbank, me riding high and feeling better than if I had spent a morning at the spa!

Gillian Birch is British and has travelled all over the world with her husband, who is a Master Mariner. She is now a full-time travel writer and uses her personal journals to write in detail about her many experiences worldwide.

The why and how I made interactive Google Maps of Historic Events

by

George Stiller

I began making interactive maps of historic events because I kept going to Google Map to find the locations in the various books I had been reading. It struck me that it would enhance my reading if I created my own Google Map of the book.  Thus, I was able to zoom in on and track the locations and people while I was reading  about in both fiction and non-fiction books. Having developed several of these maps, I decided that I should share them with others who might find them interesting and try to teach others to map their reading. So I created my blog MyReadingMapped.

After a period of time, I noticed that the maps that got the most attention were those of historic events. So, I modified my blog to contain only maps on historic events. Then it dawned on me, that without a college degree, I have no credibility and that I am not a recognized authority on history. To solve that problem, I decided to find 100+-year old eFree Google Books, or online journals, written by the explorers themselves and even Wikipedia pages on the exploration that my map locations could be linked to on a by page basis for credibility.  Thus, the map becomes a library portal to all the knowledge on the Internet.

My first map of this type was the Interactive Civil War Map. I knew there would be great interest in the subject and I found the links and coordinates I needed on Wikipedia’s List of Civil War Battles, which was very confusing to use and required the visitor to use a complicated and time consuming process to get to a Google Map for each and every battle one-by -one. On the other hand, my map was designed to be easy to use, enabled you to zoom in on the battle and made all the battles visible at once so you can see how they relate to each other without the complicated process.   These maps enable you to zoom in on the actual locations, see the buildings, the forts, the ancient ruins, etc. and read the actual words of the explorer, see the terrain as they saw it 100+ years ago in terrain mode, and what it looks like today in satellite mode. These maps can even provide directions, hotels and other points of interest. Some maps include links to National Archive photos, Wikipedia pages, and animations from CivilWarAnimated or AmericanRevolutionAnimated.

After placing a few referrals on various online forums, interactive maps of historic events began to take off. My hope is that teachers would use it to inspire reading and writing to students who are currently fixated on an online media, and that travelers and followers of explorers would use these maps to plan their next vacation.

My most popular maps are the following:

• Interactive Civil War Map
• Sunken Ships of the Atlantic
• Explorations of Charles Darwin, Marco Polo, Mungo Park and Henry Morton Stanley
• The American Revolution
• Environmental Disasters

Until recently, all my maps were about explorers who had died a long time ago. The map on Mikael Strandberg’s 2004 Siberian Expedition was my first living explorer who was kind enough to allow me to do so and provided the materials I needed.  I now have twenty-nine Google Maps on historic events and two Google Map games called “Day of Atonement” and “Prag’s Google Street Road Rally.” It is of interest to note, the research involved and the creation of these maps has uncovered some errors in commonly held facts on history. I have found what I believe are errors in traditional exploration maps on Wikipedia in regard to Marco Polo and Cortès, and located odd details mentioned in books that affected history and you can read about them on my blog.

So today, start experiencing history digitally by making your own maps of an historic events and uncover your own discovery of little known facts that only a Google Map can reveal.

George Stiller is a retired marketing communications manager who began his 35 year career in advertising and marketing as paste up artist. As an ad agency art director, George has helped to establish Agfa-Gevaert as a worldwide leader in diagnostic medical imaging systems. As a corporate graphic design manager, George’s workflow improvements helped United States Surgical Corporation to become one of the fastest growing companies worldwide.  As a marketing communications manager for MechoShade Systems, George helped to establish the MechoShade brand as the third most recognized brand in the commercial shade industry and helped to develop the ImageShades you have seen at Levis and the Gap. Now that George is retired, he developed his blog, MyReadingMapped, and its 30+ interactive Google Maps on history.

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Why ‘I’ climbed Mount Everest, and maybe why you shouldn’t

by

Ben Thackwray

This is an abridged extract from a chapter of the book I’m writing that also includes the stories of how ‘a whale’ smashed our rudder off our ocean rowing boat in the middle of the Atlantic and how we were hunted by two Polar Bears for two days in Greenland:

I’m not going to lie to you; I’m not the first person to climb Mount Everest!

For me climbing Everest wasn’t about doing something that would grab the headlines and it wasn’t about doing something completely contrived or exaggerated to seem more interesting or grandiose than it actually is.

I wasn’t going to ‘do it for charity’ (I worked hard and saved up for it for ten years and still had to borrow a large amount from the bank as I didn’t pursue any sponsorship), and I wasn’t going to do it on a pogo stick or be ‘the first person to carry a bottle of Reggae Reggae sauce to the summit’. (And now I’ve done it I’m not going to claim some stupidly specific title like ‘first man to row the Atlantic, ski across Greenland, run the Marathon des Sables, traverse Denali, climb Mount Everest, be 5’ 8” and live in Leeds’, because I don’t know, or care if I am or not’!)

I climbed Mount Everest purely for the love and experience of doing it.

Climbing Mount Everest has simply always been something that I have wanted to do ever since I can remember, but I remember specifically when I committed to it. It was the 13th of May 1995 (my 15th birthday) and there was a piece on ‘Newsround’ about Alison Hargreaves reaching the summit of Mount Everest. I remember standing there watching it, knowing, that I was going to do that one day (and secretly hoping to summit on my 30th birthday).

Climbing Mount Everest was actually part of a long list of things which formed naturally through childhood that I ‘knew’ I was going to do and which I’m working my way through. The big three (which are public knowledge) of the longer list were to Row the Atlantic, climb Mount Everest and Ski to the South Pole, which I grouped together into a personal project which goes by the name of ‘The Adventure Trilogy’. The idea with the Trilogy was that I would have to, ‘to some extent’, master three very different disciplines in three very different dangerous environments and I would get to experience firsthand everything that goes with that. It’s never been about doing ‘something’ out of the ordinary for me, it’s always for me been about certain specific things and I’m pretty sure once the list is finished I give it all up and go and live in a log cabin somewhere away from everything. I think if you don’t inherently already know what the majority of your next c10 projects are going to be, and you’re searching around to create ‘something’ to do, maybe whatever you end up doing perhaps doesn’t mean that much to you and maybe, you’re just doing it for a different reason? – Which is fine, I understand that, and each to their own.

Having rowed the Atlantic in 2008 I had planned to go to Everest in 2010 but due to a set back out in Greenland in 2009 on an expedition we were using as a precursor to our South Pole attempt (The ENDURE MORE expedition), Everest had to be put back to 2011. When I finally got to base camp this year in Tibet it was everything I had imagined and planned for, for all those years.

Sitting back at home now feeling fine I could find it easy to say it was a piece of cake but I have to admit it was a lot more difficult than I was expecting! It is difficult, anyone who thinks because it’s a popular mountain these days that it is easy, is an idiot. (And as you can probably tell I’m pretty tired of hearing things like ‘more people have climbed Everest than….rode a bike along this obscure coastal track whilst wearing a tutu’, or something to that effect).

I climbed Everest via the North East Ridge which is the route made famous by Mallory and Irvine’s 1924 ill fated attempt. For me because of the history and the actual climbing en route to the summit this offered the most interesting climbing option as opposed the southern route first climbed by Norgay and Hillary in 1953. (Who along with Mallory and Irvine, having been there now myself, my already gushing admiration for has grown significantly).

Above the mass of crevasses, over hanging seracs, avalanche hazards and ice walls that is the North Col and the deceptively steep (and seemingly never ending) snow slope of the North Ridge, the climbing really gets interesting! But I can’t really tell you anything about the route that you can’t find in a book somewhere else, other than maybe; there is “a big rock” at c7200m!

What I can tell you is that my summit day and the events that unfolded I’ll never forget and may have changed my life a little.

Summit day really starts from camp 2 at 7800m as you spend so little time at camp 3 at 8300m (the highest campsite in the world) before the final push for the summit. When we started out from 8300m in the dark at around 21:00, it was cold but not too cold (about -20 centigrade) it was snowing a little but there was hardly any wind. Even though I was already tired, being well above my previous altitude record I started strong, but it wasn’t long before things started to go ‘downhill’.

There are around 12 dead bodies of climbers on this route above 8300m, one wrapped in a tent just a few yards from where we started in camp 3 but mostly they’re up high on the ridge above 8500m. After a few hours we made it up onto the North East Ridge itself and ‘took a right’ just before the famous ‘landmark’ of the body of an Indian climber, Tsewang Paljor, now referred to as ‘Green Boots’. I’m not going to sugar coat this, the route is so narrow at this point you have to pass within 2 feet of his body, and although I’m not squeamish or affected by things like this it is a very real reminder that you are pushing the limits and should things go wrong in the next 12 hours this is where you’ll stay!

After passing Green Boots, on the ridge there are just the three famous rock ‘steps’ to negotiate and over a mile in length of highly exposed ridge. “What could be simpler, there are fixed ropes and ladders, it’s just a walk” – I have to say that this view which I’ve heard a few times is not only flippant and uniformed it’s a little bit stupid!

The three steps each produced events that I will never forget. It was still night as I made it to the first step and below us, a long way below us, we could see the flashing and cracking of thunderstorms in the clouds over in the distance towards Cho Oyu.

I committed to climbing the first step in my smaller gloves as it appeared a lot more difficult than expected and as it wasn’t particularly cold I’d benefit from the added dexterity. Unfortunately climbing the first step took longer than expected and my hands got extremely cold due to a combination of a number of contributing factors, and because of where I was, hanging off the mountain over a substantial fall I couldn’t stop to either warm my hands properly or get my biggest mitts out. I was a little bit unlucky, and by the time I reached the top of the step and a place where I could stand and stop, my hands were frozen! When I removed my gloves to assess the damage I could see my right hand in particular had no blood in any of the fingers past their base at the palm of my hand, I had frostbite!

I now had the difficult decision to make, do I go back down and try and save my fingers, or do I carry on to the summit and risk losing them all?! After warming my hands the best I could, stood there on a knife edge ridge over 8500m in the dark, I managed to get blood back almost right to ends of my fingers, and as I was alone at the top of the step I simply radioed into Advanced Base Camp, “Just climbed the first step, moving on toward the second’. I decided to carry on toward the summit.

Although the summit was still around 7 hours away at this point and the decision resulted in me losing the distal phalanx of two fingers when I got back home (which I’ve had made into a very nice, albeit macabre, pair of cufflinks) I don’t regret it one bit, because to me, it was worth it! (Anyone that says climbing Everest isn’t worth losing the ends of a few fingers for maybe isn’t as passionate about climbing it as I was, or maybe to them it isn’t worth it, which I understand. To me it was. I certainly wouldn’t advise making the same decision as I did to someone else though, I’d tell them to go down immediately, as would the guys I was climbing with, absolutely, which is why I kept it to myself!)

So with a frozen hand I moved along the ridge towards the second step, famously the crux of the route. Because it is the crux, it is a lot more discussed than the other two steps so before you get there, you will have seen pictures of it and discussed it in more detail, and generally will be well prepared for it. What I wasn’t prepared for was what happened whilst I was climbing it.

The oxygen masks we were using which are the best performers at high altitude have a rubber valve on the right hand side to allow ambient air flow into the mask to mix with the flow of oxygen from the oxygen system itself. The valve itself is covered by a small piece of plastic which keeps your down jacket from obstructing the valve. When I was climbing the second step I noticed that this plastic cap had fallen off, and the reason I noticed it was missing was because the rubber valve which it covers was now completely frozen and not allowing any air into the mask at all. I was gasping and again found myself in a position not conducive to sorting problems like this out.

Then, when not only was I climbing the most strenuous section of the route, with a frozen hand, and a broken oxygen system in the dark at c8700m, all of a sudden my guts woke up for the day! I’d had the shits for the last few days and at this point with everything else going on I wasn’t going to be able to stop here, loosen all my  down clothing and under garments and relieve myself (at least, outside my clothing). So I literally, and quiet happily at the time, shit myself!

At the top of the second step I managed to unfreeze the oxygen masks valve by removing the mask completely and breathing as hard as I could onto the valve to defrost it. This was only a temporary fix though and every 20 minutes or so from then on I had to stop as the mask collapsed against my face as it repeatedly froze , inevitably when I needed air the most, and try again and again to defrost it. This was a less than ideal situation to be in above 8700m at the top of second step where there is an obvious scattering of dead bodies, most of whom I believe were attempting to summit without oxygen, and again I had to assess this time whether my now less than perfect oxygen supply was reason to continue or to retreat. This will sound bad but, I never had any doubt that I was going to reach the summit so even though things were going far from ‘the plan’ this was just another thing at the time to accept and deal with, and I carried on.

Shortly after this the sun came up and we could see the curvature of the earth and how beautiful everything was so far beneath us, although this was only appreciated in hindsight looking back at photos taken, because at the time, as everyone is at this point, I was pretty much on my last legs and really pushing myself to the limit and it was intense focus, at least for me, that seemed to mask any sentimentality or appreciation for the beauty of where I was.

By the time you get to the third step it feels pretty close to the summit and I climbed this with relative ease only to discover that above this, on a very exposed knife edge section where there’s an enormous serac over hanging the 13,000ft, almost vertical, drop of the Kanshung face; there was no pre-fixed rope and the section needed to be traversed free (and very carefully). It wasn’t until on the descent that it became apparent there was actually a rope, but it was pulled off the ridge down the north face by the body attached to it of an Irish climber we had met alive and well just a few days before down in Base Camp.

So after another hour or so, and a very exposed final traverse of the highest part the North Face at c8800m I finally made it to the summit ridge and set foot on the summit of Mount Everest on the 26th May 2011, 16 years after I committed myself to it.

Exhausted, with a frozen hand, massively hypoxic due to problems with my oxygen mask (and not forgetting the altitude!), sat covered in my own piss and shit having had to literally climb over the dead bodies of people we knew to get there, I didn’t exactly feel particularly triumphant as you might have expected one would do, being able to look down on the rest of the world; and having never had any doubt I would get there I didn’t feel the need to savour the moment or celebrate too much so I only spent a few minutes there before I set off down to ensure that I got down alive and we could call the climb ‘a success’. (Watch video from the summit here)

The descent, as expected, was infinitely harder than the ascent and I was ‘in the hurt locker’ like I’d only been once or twice before, once at the end of a 100 mile nonstop ultra marathon over the Pennines and when we crossed Greenland in 2010 in 15 days, but I do think it was these types of experiences that got me down, because I ‘knew’ I could keep going!

I was completely alone when I descended the hardest part of second step safely and just as I was feeling that I could make it down in one piece my crampon slipped on some loose snow and I took a fall off the edge of the step over the north face and landed flat on my back on a very small ledge about 5-6 feet below where I should have been and about 1 foot higher than where the rope would have broken my fall completely – the drop beyond the ledge was only about 8000ft. I wasn’t hurt but laying there on my back I looked up over my shoulder to see what I think was the body of another climber who I believe had done a similar thing on descent but broken a leg and consequently had not been able to move any further.

It was time to stop messing around at this point and I pushed hard to get down and made it back to high camp a few hours later where I stayed for just a few hours more before setting off again to get below 8000m to camp 2 at 7800m. Camp 2 was a welcome sight but after being on the go for around 20 hours, reaching the summit, getting back down, being covered in my own piss and shit, hypoxic, with a frostbitten hand, I was incredulous to find two European climbers inside my tent on their way up the mountain with no kit of their own! One was even inside my sleeping bag refusing to get out because, I quote, “my hands are cold”!

Thankfully the other guy wasn’t an arse hole, and after 20 minutes of what I’ll describe as ‘polite discussion’ (officially no swearing or threatening each other involved at all), we agreed I was right! (To quote Brian Clough), and he removed himself from my tent and I slipped into my nice ‘pre-warmed’ sleeping bag and went soundly to sleep.

Ben´s CV:

• Climbed Kilimanjaro in 2 days no acclimatisation
• Finished top 10 Brits in the Marathon des Sables
• Ultra marathon runner, max distance 100 miles non-stop and PB for 50 miles of 7hrs 57mins
• Summited and traversed Denali (Mount McKinley) – 1 of the only times in last ten years
• Rowed across the Atlantic – Set the fastest ever crossing from Canaries to Antigua
• Set fastest British crossing of Greenland
• Climbed Everest

He also works as an expedition leader and manager and professional adventurer for Adventure Hub (www.adventurehub.com) and am currently recruiting crews and team members for an Indian Ocean rowing record, the Adventure Hub expedition series and planning for our Antarctic Traverse expedition next year.

Please visit my sponsors Termo who are making it possible for me to write 2 blog reports per week. Just click the logo to find the best underwear on earth.

My Testament of Life, so far…

by

Mikael Strandberg

I just love life!

I wake up every morning thinking: “Yes!!! I have another privileged day ahead of me! Another day to try to change the world!  And I am still alive and kicking!”

The Explorers Club in London believes I am the best contemporary explorer in the world at the present. This is of course utterly wrong. Nevertheless I do feel honoured! But why does Barry Moss, the great chairman of the Club, believe this? Well, not only is he one of my very best friends, but he knows my life story. He knows that the real explorer is the one, who explores every moment and every day of his, or hers, life. Not only on an Expedition. An individual, who understands that joy and tragedy, are part of being a human and fully alive. You have to dare, even in every day life, to be able to live life to its fullest. If there’s one major lesson of life I have learned exploring, this is the one:

“Life is very short. This is the only opportunity you will get. Just take it!”

The Explorers Club in London believes I am the best contemporary explorer in the world at the present. This is of course utterly wrong. Nevertheless I do feel honoured! But why does Barry Moss, the great chairman of the Club, believe this? Well, not only is he one of my very best friends, but he knows my life story. He knows that the real explorer is the one, who explores every moment and every day of his, or hers, life. Not only on an Expedition. An individual, who understands that joy and tragedy, are part of being a human and fully alive. You have to dare, even in every day life, to be able to live life to its fullest. If there’s one major lesson of life I have learned exploring, this is the one:

“Life is very short. This is the only opportunity you will get. Just take it!”

I am really trying to do just that. Therefore, on paper, my life has been a series of near tragedies. I was born two months early, in a taxi, 48 years ago and nobody believed I would survive. I did, kicking and screaming more than most kids at the hospital. Seven years later I was rescued on a ferry from Sweden to England by a couple of sailors, who pulled me up from my place, where I was hanging on with only my hands gripping a rope on the outside of this gigantic ferry, ten metres up from the deadly sea. When they asked why I, as they saw it, tried to kill myself, whilst my mother was crying loud of anguish, I answered:

“I just had to see what it was like on the other side.”

When I was ten I discovered books. We had only three books at home, a picturesque house located in a tiny village surrounded by a lush Swedish countryside. My dad, a bricklayer, had stolen them from the local library, most likely so that we would look more intellectual and cultured than our working class neighbours. It was the Bible, White Fang by Jack London and the Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper. They opened the gates to the outside world and took me away, forever, from the safe harbour and a potential future rat race to be like everybody else. Since then I have tried to stay free from normality.

At the age of seventeen I hitch-hiked to India, inspired by Herman Hesse´s book “Siddharta”. It is kind of a story about Buddha himself and all the phases of existence he passes through to understand the meaning of life. Therefore, I wanted to become a Buddhist monk. But after ten days in a monastery I realized that being ad infinitum silent and scratching one’s bum in boredom, wasn’t my path to understanding.

Instead I cycled from Chile to Alaska. It made me understand that in order to live a full life, you have to venture outside the confinements of the safe harbour of the known. But, I also realized that I didn’t really understand anything and that I needed to continue cycling. Which I did. Another 5 years. From North-Cape in Norway to Cape of Agulhaes, South-Africa. And from New Zealand to Egypt through Asia. All together 90 000 km. During this time I had hundreds of punctures, too many diseases, some deadly one’s like malaria, I almost collided with a lion in Tanzania and a black bear in Alaska, but it was only an angered baboon in Congo which managed to injure me, I got robbed twice, attacked by Taliban’s in Baluchistan and I was one of the first in history to cross the Sahara by a bicycle and that piece of Jungle between Colombia and Panama called El Darién.

What was the most important lesson I learned cycling?

Two really. The most important, most human beings are extra ordinary and generous. Secondly, cycling is too fast to fully understand. So, I stopped cycling, went to Patagonia to follow my dream to live as a cowboy, bought 12 horses and during one year explored the unknown parts of this, one of the most spectacular places on earth.

Most of the time crossing the vast empty steppes of Patagonia I thought about human kind and become conscious at the end that I probably had to live with a people which was relatively untouched by modern civilisation. Because I understood a long time ago that we humans were a mere 150 000 years old as a species, and the last 5 000 years, we had lived in some kind of an organized society, but that we, in heart, still were simple beings. A species were the fire and freedom was essential parts of happiness.

With this in mind, I went to live with the il-purko clan of the Maasai and during a year I crossed the vast savannah to explore all sixteen groups which make up the Maasai tribe. It was a year dominated by drought, drinking nailanga (cows blood mixed with milk), lots of diarrhoea, living very close to the great wildlife of the African savannah and just getting very confused by a very restricted tribal life. Far from the freedom I was looking for. Suddenly I realised that I had to seek my roots, to understand. Four years later I went to Siberia.

Siberia changed my life completely. And it ruined it. It was the best time in my life. It had everything I have ever dreamt about. The enormous taiga and the extreme cold gave me and my partner Johan Ivarsson unlimited freedom. We hunted and fished to survive. We met the best people on earth, the native Siberians. It felt like I had finally understood. Also, I felt like it doesn’t matter one bit if I die now. I have seen all. Returning home was a disaster. It completely ruined my life for the next three years. A tragic divorce with the worst of consequences. I faced bitterness, hatred, shame and personal ruin. When I didn´t care anymore, I ended up in Yemen, with an idea to cross the two biggest desert on earth by camel. One of the reasons, as always, was to build bridges of understanding between cultures and peoples. Another one was personal; it would be my final pilgrimage. The goal was to find some rest for my battered soul. Instead I found one of the major reasons for better understanding the meaning of life. I met love in the shape of a young American woman, who a year later, well, 26 days ago, gave me a gift in the shape of a miracle. A beautiful and extremely calming baby daughter. Suddenly my soul calmed down dramatically. I found what I was looking for, even before leaving on a camel from Oman to Mauretania. The pilgrimage is now on hold. Because I know, that no matter how much control over life you think you have, it can end in a second and you find yourself back to wandering the streets of understanding.

So, what lessons of life can I share so far?

I think most important is, life is short. And we are here, only this time, why waste it not living to its full? Since I am privileged to try to motivate people to change their attitude to life and find some kind of contentness, because if people were content, they wouldn´t hire me as much as they do, I can say that the main question from the audience is:

How do we do it? How do we get a more exiting life?

There’s no real answer. Everyone has to reach their own stage at the crossroad of life, when they have to take a decision. What I know is that it can’t be a half hearted choice. Don’t worry what people think. Everyone will eventually end up in that cross road. Such are we thinking humans. We question. We want peace of mind. There’s no age to take the step. Everyone has its own time to take a decision. When I am starting to get to comfortable, I immediately think:

“Mikael, remember, and never forget, that life is to short. Get out there and live! Nobody is going to thank me for not doing it!”

No matter all the problems, near tragedies, real catastrophes and angst I have gone through in life, I don´t regret a second for choosing this life style. Most of it, however, has been a fantastic life, but one needs sorrow and tragedy to enjoy all aspects of life. So don’t give up if tragedy strikes! Just see it as an experience which makes you stronger, healthier, more humble and wiser. Just live!

One other reason is that this choice of life gives me a lot of self confidence when it comes to the future. No matter how bad things become, I only need a tent, an axe, a mattress, a few pots, and a fishing rod to survive and enjoy life. And I would than walk in to the forest somewhere on this earth, maybe the Siberian taiga, do a small, but warming fire after a few days of walking, not too big a fire to scare away the potential game, put on a pot of coffee, set a trap, feel the fresh air, shiver in the beginning winter cold, sense the total freedom and take out one of those cohibas I have saved for the occasion. Than I would smoke it, slowly, and look back at a very interesting life. And think:

“Yes, I have lived to its fullest capacity!”

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The Yak of Tartary

by

Tshering Tashi

The first yaks to be seen in Europe were from Bhutan. In 1783, a British captain, Samuel Turner, who came on a trade mission to Bhutan was so fascinated with the animal that he arranged for two of them to be sent to his patron, Warren Hastings, in England.

“I had the satisfaction to send two of this species [yaks] to Mr. Hastings after he left India, and to hear that one reached England alive,” wrote the East India company officer, Samuel Turner, in his book, Bhutan and Tibet. The yak was kept in the Whipsnade Zoo, where its keeper christened it ‘Yak of Tartary.’

The books say that only the bull survived the long journey. When it landed in England it was in a torpid languid state. But it quickly recovered its health and became energetic, fathering many calves from the cows in the zoo. However, only one calf survived which bore a calf by connection with an Indian bull. Both of Turner’s books, Bhutan and Tibet and An Account of an Embassy to the Court of Teshoo Lama in Tibet have the painting of the Bhutanese yak.

Yak is endemic to the Himalayas, and few people in the West had seen the big hairy creature. So, when it arrived in England, the animal created a lot of curiosity and many people flocked to see it. Some of the visitors started to learn about yaks and called it the “Camel of the Snow”.

This is a copy of the illustration of the Yak of Tartary from the original Italian edition with original coloring (1817). It is smaller and not as detailed as the English edition. (Photo and Caption Courtesy: Nicholas Rhodes)

The patron of the yak, Hastings commissioned the English painter George Stubbs to make an engraving of the yak. The painting was first published on March 25th, 1800 by G&W. Nicol Pall Mall. In these two paintings, the yak is seen standing on the bank of a river in front of a monastery with dramatic mountains. The painting has been reproduced in some books and one Italian artist has re-produced it in color. It is quite obvious that Stubbs had never been to Bhutan and used his imagination to draw the landscape.

On the bottom right of the painting, Stubbs drew some vegetables which the yak is eating. A Western historian has identified this vegetable as a species of Bhutanese turnip. Until today, this winter vegetable is grown in abundance and is a good winter fodder for cattle.

The painting shows the yak’s shaggy head bent downwards. The Kirghiz tribe of Afghanistan tells stories of how the yak is looking for his lost brother.

A similar story is told in Bhutan but about how its lost brother is always looking up to see when the yak is coming. Bhutanese folklore has it that it in the past the buffalo was one with a shaggy coat. It lived in the foothills with its friend the yak. At that time, salt was imported mainly from Tibet essential nourishment for these two animals. Without any salt lakes in the country, one day the yak decided that it would venture into Tibet to get their supply of salt. The buffalo agreed to lend its hair to protect his friend from the severe cold. The yak went north and never returned. That is why the buffalo is always looking upwards to see if the yak is returning with the salt and his coat.

Why the Yak of Tartary?

Courtesy of Jojo´s Adventure Bhutan

From the Middle Ages until the twentieth century, the Europeans referred to people from the north and central Asia (inhabited by the Turks and Mongolians) as “Tartars.” Sometimes Tibet and Bhutan were referred to as Tartars and hence the name.

A Shaggy Yak Story

Additional details of the Bhutanese Yak in London are found in Peter Somerville Large’s book, A Shaggy Yak Story, Forty years of Unfinished Journeys. In the book, Large talks about how, the ‘Camel of the Snow’, suffered the long arduous journey to London. “Though naturally not intractable in temper, yet soured by the impatient and injudicious treatment of his attendants during a long voyage, it soon became dangerous to suffer this bull to range at liberty abroad.”

According to the author who was arrested and sent back to India in 1955 for illegally entering Bhutan, the Bhutanese yak was hostile towards horses. At one time after a knob came off from its horn, it gored one of Hastings’s valuable coach-horse, lacerating the entrails and killing it. After that the ‘Yak of Tartary’ was kept in an enclosure, separate from the horses, to prevent such accidents. The pasture was big and was of the same size of the horse pastures. Large helped reintroduce yaks in Turkey and apparently these yaks were from the Whispsnade zoo and could have been a descendant of the Yak of Tartary.

Yaks were first domesticated in Tibet in the first millennium B.C. In 1783 the first yaks arrived in England. By 1988, there were many of them in Europe but Bhutan still has one of the highest numbers of yaks in the world. According to the 2007 livestock census, it has 51,500 yaks.

Tshering Tashi is MD of jojos adventure Bhutan (www.jojos.com.bt). He enjoys writing and has done considerable amount of research in human science; anthropology and history of the small kingdom of Bhutan. He is the co-author of Bold Bhutan Beckons (www.copyright.net.au) symbols of Bhutan and written Mysteries of the Raven Crown. Tshering lives in Thimphu.

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The need for Universal Expedition Standards

by

Alex Hibbert

I came up for the idea for Universal Expedition Standards whilst waiting patiently, or at times not so patiently, on the edge of the Greenland icecap this spring for the weather to clear in order to start a speed crossing. It was not to be and had to be postponed to August. However, the basis for UES had been in my mind in its constituent parts for months, if not years. In all areas of outdoor sports and activities, there are both national and international governing bodies. There are also a plethora of qualifications for the budding or professional climber, kayaker, diver and the list goes on. These tend to be controlled by groups or clubs without a vested interest or financial agenda and have grown to garner such respect that their name speaks volumes. For example, you know beyond reasonable doubt that an IFMGA mountain guide will be of the highest quality, should you wish to be guided or instructed.

What struck me, however, was the number of increasingly popular adventurous activities there are now available for those with the time and money to spare. This explosion in popularity may be for better or for worse, but that is a debate for another time. Most of these do not have a governing body, due to their obscurity, and have grown through word of mouth and shared experience, with the internet playing a major role. One example, apart from things like Stand-Up Paddle Boarding and numerous others, is my chosen specialism – polar travel.

As the desire for anyone and everyone to experience the polar regions developed, there became a need for guides from the late 1990s onwards and inevitably, a more than fair share of cowboys became involved in the industry, in order to make a quick buck. To secure insurance and indemnity to guide on icecaps or the Arctic Ocean, guides are still obliged to gain mountaineering qualifications, since it seems like the ‘best match’, despite the fact that many of the skills are irrelevant. It seems absurd that some underwriters require a guide to hold an IFMGA award, the pinnacle of mountain guiding qualifications and one that takes years of dedication, for another activity which bears only a slight resemblance to climbing.

Aside from guiding, which in the polar expedition world is a small slice, there are the independent expeditions. These groups venture onto the ice every year, expecting rescue cover from local authorities or private companies who operate aircraft, despite many having little more than hiking experience in the British hills. There was, until recently, no control over access but some authorities, such as Greenland Home Rule, have begun to crack down on novice expeditions due to the high chance of needing to rescue. Just this season I spoke to the Tasiilaq helicopter pilot, who services Greenland icecap crossing teams, and listened in horror to his stories of plucking bodies off the icecap just days before, following relatively mild icecap conditions. Greenland has borne the brunt of the post-credit crunch rush to undertake polar expeditions, cheaper than to either Poles, but by those without the understanding that Greenland is not ‘Antarctica-lite’. In spring, the temperatures are just as low, winds as fast and crevasses as treacherous. Anyone who sees Greenland as the easy option is either stupid or ignorant.

I use examples from my own area of experience but the principle applies to every remote or challenging endeavor - be it ocean rowing, open-water swimming, caving – the list goes on. It is very hard to apply conditions, control and rules to a group of people who thrive, myself included, on the lack of them.

This situation therefore spawned my vision for the Universal Expedition Standards - UES. I am aware of the plans for International Polar Guiding Association qualifications and other initiatives, but I believe that they have inherent problems. Not least, the fact that anyone who proposes a governing body will have an interest in how it is implemented. The rise in those wanting to ski in the Antarctic and Arctic is increasing and naturally more and more people will therefore offer services as guides. It makes sense that a small group will attempt to include their colleagues and friends, whilst freezing out those considered undesirable and thereby limiting competition for lucrative jobs. Not a healthy state of affairs in my mind for a market that should be dominated by quality and openness.

The UES is not a competitor or alike the proposed IPGA, the climbing IFMGA, MIC or any other example. It is not a guiding qualification. What the UES aims to achieve and become is:

• Non-proprietary - an open standard governed by the community
• Free – no money changes hands and so cowboys or business-interests are excluded
• Voluntary – not being UES approved does not stop you from getting flights, insurance or backing. Having UES approval can show a positive effort has been made, rather than disable those who don’t feel it fits them

The current criteria are:

• Expeditions of any style or discipline can apply, free of charge, to become approved as a UES project. In order to qualify, these criteria must be met:
• Press releases must not contain exaggerated or inaccurate information, nor omit information in order to enhance the impact of the statement.
• Expeditions must carry at least one form of emergency communication system, including VHF radio, EPIRB, EPLB or satellite telephone. The chosen system must have sufficient power sources for the duration of the expedition. In addition, communication must be carried aside from a beacon (e.g. EPIRB/EPLB). This is to allow assistance/advice to be sought for minor and non life-threatening injuries without necessitating use of a beacon (which involves significant expense and commitment from national authorities).
• At least one member of the expedition must hold a recent and valid nationally recognised wilderness first-aid qualification.
• The expedition must have a nominated representative in their home country responsible for coordinating rescue in the event of emergency.
• In order to state an expedition is ‘unsupported’, the team or individual must not receive external assistance which physically aids motion, including dogs, engines or sails. Skis, bicycles etc. are not considered support. An unsupported expedition will also not involve resupplies of any kind originating from a third party.
• Guides employed by a UES expedition must have at least 100 days of relevant experience.
• Approval is based on fixed, objective standards and does not involve subjective decisions.

The 100-day experience criteria for expedition guides, in order to be UES approved, is to combat the rise of companies and individuals who offer dangerous and inadequate services. Whilst not a supporter of open-source, crowd-sourcing or other internet generated movements (I believe in open markets where skills are rewarded with pay, not a credit-line), I do want UES to be self-policing. Criteria such as the one which attempts to rein in outlandish and uncontrolled press releases with exaggerated statistics is not there to make expeditions safer. It is included to try and re-introduce common-standards and honesty into the competitive world of expedition promotion and publicity. Something good for the future of the adventure and expedition community as a whole. At present, many who stick to the truth are out-competed by the claims of others – surely not a positive situation.

So, with the aims and hopes laid out in front of us, I welcome peer-review, amendments and comments to see if we can really make something of UES and the expedition world.

Alex is a world-record holding polar expedition leader and photographer. Only 25 years old, he has spent over one hundred and fifty days unsupported in the Arctic and has crossed the second largest icecap on Earth three times. His highlight to date was leading the 2008 record-breaking Tiso Trans Greenland which, at 1374 miles, is the longest fully unsupported polar journey in history. From 2008 Alex spent a period as a Royal Marines Officer and his first book, The Long Haul, was released in March 2010. He was elected a member of the prestigious Explorers Club shortly after. In the spring of 2010 Alex guided an international team 350 miles across the Greenland icecap. In 2011 he plans to break the world speed record for a Greenland icecap crossing followed by Arctic Ocean plans for 2012.

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THE HUNT FOR HE WEN

by

Oliver Steeds

He Zhimin’s hands shake as he holds a small coloured photograph of his son. The shakes had started nine months ago, when his son vanished. On the back of the card, he has printed his son’s details. “He Wen, Age 35, 1metre 75cm. Missing…”

Unlike Ai Weiwei, China’s best-known dissident and artist who was arrested boarding a plane to Hong Kong, on April 3rd, He Wen’s disappearance has gone largely unreported by the world’s media and there are no high profile calls for his release. “Kill the monkey to scare the chickens” as the Chinese saying goes which may go someway to understanding why the authorities have arrested Ai Weiwei. But perhaps it’s He Wen’s story that holds the key to understanding China’s most repressive crackdown since Tiananmen 1989.

China’s inflationary squeeze is starting to hit ordinary people. The cost of living is up and many of the poorest are struggling to fill their rice bowls. Last year there were more than 100,000 protests across the country often sparked by individuals or communities rising up against local or provincial cases of corruption, land-development, employment or human rights violations. Most of those protesting have faced official disinterest, intransigence and violence.

Brick Factory - one of dozens that Mr He has been searching in - the building in the foreground with the blue roof is where the mud is mixed and packed and then cut into bricks

In January this year an unknown group, inspired by events in North Africa and the Middle East, launched their own Jasmine Revolution with calls on twitter and other bulletin boards for a united protest against the repressive, single-party rule of the Communist Party.

The Party fears a generalised, national protest could provide the focus and glue to the millions of increasingly marginalised and disaffected. It is these “faceless millions” who could pose the real threat to the government’s long term strategy and the cohesion of the Chinese state itself.

He Zhimin is one of them. He’s a farmer in Sanyuan Town, a few miles outside Shaanxi’s provincial capital of Xian.

Last June, a woman approached his son at the local market, offered him a job and money and then abducted him. Mr He says the woman was part of a trafficking gang and that his son was abducted and forced in to a life of slavery – like thousands of other mentally impaired young men.

He Wen's room - as it was when he was abducted. He went missing in the summer and Mr He has purposefully left the mosquito net and fan up as a constant reminder to the day He Wen went missing.

“My son is a kind-hearted child,” Mr He says. “He is as tall and strong as I am. He’s able to work but he has the mental age of a child. Our whole family searched the town for him but he never came back. I have to remain positive because one way or another I’ve got to keep looking for him. Whether I find him alive or his corpse, either way I must find my son.”

Mr He immediately reported the disappearance to the police, but he claims they refuse to take on the case. They refused to take witness statements and he wasn’t even allowed to register He Wen as a missing person.

Mr He is left to search for his son on his own, printing off thousands of ‘Missing Person’ posters and distributing them around the county. Within a few weeks, he began getting calls from eyewitnesses, many claiming they had seen him working in local brick factories.

“As my son is mentally impaired, they made him work in the kiln,” Mr He says. “It’s easy to control him. The bricks were still hot when they made my son move them. They told me he was beaten all over his body with bricks [ if he didn’t work hard enough?”]

With hundreds of brick kilns across the county, Mr He has an almost impossible task. In the last nine months he has visited 40 kilns and come across many other cases of mentally impaired people who have been abducted into slavery. As a result of his investigations, he’s been threatened and at times even violently attacked.

Mr Li holding up a missing persons card for his missing son.

A couple of months ago Mr. He got a call about a man fitting his son’s description in a village 50 miles north of Sanyuan.

It turned out not to be his son, but 32 year old Liu Xiaoping. He too was mentally impaired and had been abducted and enslaved in brick factories for 10 months. At times he worked with Mr. He’s son.

Xiaoping’s father says during the day his son had to work in a brick factory and by night he was chained to a bed. “If he wasn’t working as they wanted, the factory owners would get a hot metal rod and burn it across his face. Sometimes, they purposefully put hot bricks on the back of Xiaoping’s legs as punishment.”

Xiaoping’s injuries got so bad that he couldn’t do any more physical labour and he was thrown out onto the streets and that was when Mr. He found him. “If Mr He hadn’t found him then, he would have been dead within two days,” Mr Liu says

The hillside being devoured by the brick factory - earth being dug out here is then used to make bricks in the factory below.

When Mr He found him he had been tortured so badly the toes on his left foot had to be amputated. He spent the next 41days in a specialist burns unit at the local hospital until funds ran out. His family are now bankrupt and the State is doing nothing to support them.

Xiaoping’s parents and Mr He both talk in desperation of the state’s failure to help them. And they are not alone. The Beijing based NGO “Enable Disability Studies Institute” estimate that at least 10,000 people with mental impairments have already been abducted and 1.5million are at risk. At best the authorities are impassive, at worst they are actively trying to cover it up.

Yang Bin, from the charity says it’s incredibly difficult to prosecute the traffickers and the owners of the brick factories: “China’s legal system is weak. Modern day China is like a lawless jungle which enables the traffickers to prey on the weak and vulnerable and with impunity.”

In December last year, a local journalist broke the story that 137 mentally impaired people had been abducted from a government run welfare centre in Sichuan Province. Reports were horrific. A dozen people were found barely alive in a brick factory in Xinjiang Province, others were found dotted around the country, most often in brick factories. Survivors spoke of being tortured with electric cattle prods, some were beaten with bricks, some died, others simply disappeared when their slave masters took them away when their bodies were too beaten and exhausted to work.

Within days, the story went nationwide. People were horrified and wanted answers. As a local journalist started to dig around, the trafficking ring behind the abductions came into focus. A man had set up a front-company and claimed to be providing jobs and training for patients.

Mr Li's missing son - also mentally impaired like He Wen and abducted from the same village as He Wen in December 2010

At the time he was even lauded in the local press and given an Entrepreneurial Award by a local politician. Chinese journalists were quick to jump on the State’s failure to protect the mentally impaired – one of many cases where the country’s social safety net is creaking under the pressures of growth and change. A Communist Party Official was implicated and arrested.

Then, like so many other occasions when public anger rises and protests escalate the State police went in and silenced anyone reporting on the case. When we tried to investigate as part of an ‘Unreported World documentary for Channel 4, we too were arrested. In the eyes of Beijing, reporting on state failure cannot be tolerated.

Stories like these and the abduction of He Wen strike at the heart of China’s problems. Cracks are opening up as China feels the growing pains of massive social upheaval and economic development.

In name this is the People’s Republic where the state is supposed to protect all. But in reality, as China powers ahead the most vulnerable are being left behind and all too often exploited. This is the lack of ‘social harmony’ the Party fears most.

THE HUNT FOR HE WEN

But the hunt for He Wen is on. Where the state is failing, I believe we can help. Since making a film about Mr. He’s search for son that aired in the UK (available online – see below), there has been a wave of interest to support the search.

To that end, I have crossed over from being just an impartial journalist documenting an event, to now trying to have an impact. For some journalists, the ethics of involvement are questionable, but for me, this is a simple choice – I can make a difference, so I must. Silence and inactivity in this, smacks of complicity.

I have now launched a campaign called Finding He Wen. The money we raise will go to the ongoing search on the ground in China – going brick factory to brick factory, hiring a local lawyer to take the case on, register it with the police, ‘legally encourage’ them to conduct an investigation, whilst also engaging the local press to spread the word of He Wen’s abduction.

Oliver Steeds (www.oliversteeds.com)

MORE DETAILS:

FINDING HE WEN:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Finding-He-Wen/109111182511235?sk=wall

FINDING HE WEN: Donate:

http://www.justgiving.com/findinghewen/

WATCH THE DOCUMENTARY: CHINA’S LOST SONS: On YOUTUBE (available worldwide)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1W49Pzj-PY&feature=related

More Details about the Film:

http://oliversteeds.com/blog/ollys-world/chinas-lost-sons/

Reporter Oliver Steeds with the not so secret police in Sichuan Province. A team of 10 'undercover' plain clothes agents saw the team off at the station ensuring they left their patch.

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Or are you an experienced explorer, who need help with the logistics? Like permits?

Or a film maker who need help finding a local crew or permits to film?

If you have had those thoughts, but don´t know how to get the Expedition on its feet, I can make your dream come true.

What do I offer?

• I can set everything up for you from the first contacts with the area you want to explore to the permits and contacts needed.
• I can help you find the right people, maps and help you plan the best route for your Expedition.
• I will help you set up a executive summary for sponsors and put you in touch with the right media to get attention for your adventure.
• We can also offer as part of the Expedition package, the setup of a blog, Twitter and Facebook pages, custom web development and a digital strategy that not only includes these channels of communication but the tools and means to track and grow users talking about your expedition. Todays sponsors expect nothing less.
• If you want your adventure to become a documentary or a movie, I can put you in the direction, from the film maker to the right broad caster.
• I will assist you in picking the right equipment necessary for your Expedition.
• An important and thorough risk assessment and security back up is included.
• I can help, or even do, the needed media work for you.
• I will even go there, if needed.
• And book your tickets, hotels and camp grounds!

Why choose me?

I have spent the last 25 years exploring most parts of our globe. Either as an explorer or as a tour guide.  Both jobs require a lot of planning, the right contacts and an ability to get things done. My best ability is always finding the right people to help out in an emergency.

1. My CV

2. Tour guide

3. Photo Gallery from my trips to give you an idea of the width of my travels.

Costs

I will, of course, find the best for the right price. But, I see the logistics in 3 parts:

1. The Expedition in itself.

2. The media work.

3. The production of a documentary.

Please contact me here! AND, to get a perspective, read this first and than see the lecture below.

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