Explorer Mikael Strandberg

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!

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.

For me books have had a enormous impact on life. When I was ten years old it made me realize, since I am grown up in the country side, that there was life beyond the limits of the village. Books made me explore, it has given me so much joy, hope, wisdom and perspective on almost every aspect of life. Books means a lot to me and I´ve always had a big library of books. I always have books lying aroun everywhere. In the kitchen, next to the bed, heaps near the sofa, today, even spread around the country in cardboard boxes after the divorce 2½ years ago!

Not long ago I had a question from Geographical to pick the 5 best Travel books I´ve ever come across. Here they are:

1. Annapurna by Maurice Herzog. This is the way real climbs, real exploration should be done. Before you had set routes and ropes fixed to the mountain. This work presents the enthralling account, by the leader of the French expedition, of the first conquest of Annapurna – at that time, and at more than 8000 metres, the highest mountain ever climbed. It is a story of breathtaking courage and determination against appalling odds. In records of mountaineering, in tales of human endeavour, there is nothing so unforgettable as the account of the descent by the triumphant but frost-bitten men, after the monsoon had broken, through the flooded valleys of Nepal. As well as an introduction by Joe Simpson, this new edition includes 16 pages of photographs, which provide a remarkable visual record of this legendary expedition.

2. The worst journey in the world by Aspley Cherry-Garrard. This book gave me and Johan Ivarsson great insights into the cold during our Siberian Expedition. One of the youngest members of Scott’s team, Apsley Cherry-Garrard was later part of the rescue party that eventually found the frozen bodies of Scott and three men who had accompanied him on the final push to the Pole. This is his account of an expedition that had gone disastrously wrong. No episode in the history of human endeavour reads more harrowingly than Scott’s last expedition to Antarctica. Scott reached the South Pole in January 1911 to find Roald Amundsen had beaten him to it; then perished with his companions on the way home. ‘Yet, “tragedy”‘, Apsley Cherry-Garrard was to write a decade later, ‘was not our business.’ Cherry-Garrard was just 24, the youngest but one of the team when he joined Scott. Left behind for the final leg, in accordance with Scott’s original plan for a four-man advance, it fell to Cherry-Garrard eight months later to be a member of the search party which discovered their frozen bodies. The experience permanently damaged his mental health. For the rest of his life he was haunted by the fear that, but for what he perceived as an error of judgement on his part, they might have survived. Yet this book, his story of that and earlier expeditions, is in no way self-indulgent or sensationalist. Despite his name, aristocratic birth and classics degree from Oxford, Cherry-Garrard was no arrogant nobleman. Rather, this not especially robust but intelligent man well understood that polar exploration requires a singular fortitude pushing beyond brute strength to what Ranulph Fiennes was later to term mind over matter. Cherry-Garrard’s descriptions of the conditions suffered are rendered all the more diabolical by prose as stark as the landscape traversed. As for hyperbole, the ‘Worst Journey’ of the title in fact refers to an earlier expedition investigating nesting sites of the Emperor penguin. A work of supreme dimension, this masterpiece remains as compelling today as when it was first published 80 years ago.

3. The Heart of the Hunter by Laurens Van der Post. A beautiful book about travels among the Bushmen. In this stirring sequel to “The Lost World” of the Kalahari Laurens van der Post records everything he has learned of the life and lore of Africa’s first inhabitants. He explores the very sources of the Bushmen’s spirit and imagination – their dreams and stories, the legends that guide them and inspire them in their daily battles with that harshest of environments, the Kalahari.

4. Arctic dreams by Barry Lopez. An amazingly inspiring account from the northern part of the globe. The European picture of the Arctic is usually of snow and ice: the inhospitability of the terrain and the frigid wastes of the tundra contribute to our incapacity to imagine ordinary life there. In this magisterial book Barry Lopez draws on this hazy understanding of the far north to provide a compelling account of the land and its hold upon the psyche.It is a book which could be compared to Chatwin for its combination of travelogue and poetic vision. Yet the beauty of the prose and the thought-provoking evocations of modern culture’s shifting relationship with the environment are in a league of their own. Here are sparkling descriptions of the lives of caribou, muskoxen, polar bears and narwhals, and extraordinarily moving passages which meditate on the nature of our relationship with the world, the inter-dependence of ideas, desire and science and the possibility of dignity and compassion in the contemporary world.It is a measure of the respect which Lopez has for his subject that his book exemplifies the supreme importance which he ascribes to the ethics of respect in the face of all existential paradox:”There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of a leaning into the light”.

5 Khyber Knights by CuChullaine O´Reilly. A very good friend of mine. It is an account of perilous adventure and forbidden romance in the depths of mystic Asia. A real modern day tale!

These are all books which wants you to leave on an adventure, change your life and gives insights to the meaning of life.

Just a small note to say that life has returned and that I am breathing freedom again. The most magnificent feeling on earth. This is the first time in two years that I have been able to think freely without the deepest worry. It cannot be underestimated what a supreme feeling that is!

However, the past two years have been very strengthening for my character, I´ve learned a lot and I´ve been eating the humble pie. A visit to hell have been for the better. I come out of it as a better human being. More humble, more understanding, kinder, warmer and ready to live to its fullest limits again.

What I have learned more than anything is:

1. Never, ever underestimate the love of your family. And the importance of having one. the same applies to truly good friends.
2. One can loose nothing by being a true human with all its good and bad sides. The truth in everything, but with some time of thinking before revealing it. Think before talking. Time heals. And wherever you are, no matter what circumstances, stand for who you are. Don´t try to be anyone you can´t be.
3. Never judge and condemn. If you don´t know the true story. One can have an opinion, but try to put yourself in the other persons place. It makes a difference.
4. Positive thinking always overrules negative. If you have negative people around you, get rid of them until the´ve eaten the humble pie.
5. Take time to be there for other people. You never know when things go wrong.
6. Accept responsibility and sort out the problem. Then move on.
7. Better give then take. In every aspect of life. One can never be to kind.
8. Be true to yourself.
9. Enjoy every moment of the day, you never know, when it will end. So then, why worry at all?
10. Never, ever complain. There´s always tons of people who are worse off, no matter how bad your situation is. If you have been a good human when everything falls apart, there will be people there fore you. So being good and kind is a winner.

Mahatma Gandhi is still my hero. Time to look for another Expedition.