Explorer Mikael Strandberg

Ripley Davenport, planning the Great Crossing of Mongolia at the same time trying to be a good father….

Guest writer number 4 is Ripley Davenport. I met Ripley on Facebook and he is a very positive fellow and I really like that he is a daddy trying to combine this with his life as an adventurer, so I asked him to write this piece. He is39 years old, served in a special forces unit of the Royal British Navy. He served in the first Gulf War, Bosnia, Northern Ireland, West Indies and on numerous Anti/drug patrols. He is a trained Intelligence photographer, survivalist, ships diver and rescue swimmer. This piece comes straight from his training!:

I can’t sleep. By torchlight my fingers bang away at the keyboard. Little, in fact, no warmth envelops my makeshift bedroom, coloured pea green, with a NEMO logo on one side and the stove is roaring away with a ton of sugar and tea bag on standby.

I am in the far-flung reaches of nowhere, miles from anything resembling anything man-made and bloody freezing in my sleeping bag, filming, training and putting my equipment through some trials. The thermometer reads minus 19 Celsius and I have to pee.

There’s not much room on my trailer, named Molly Brown”, for a double bed, Fiat Punto or bargain bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken wings but just enough for my basic expedition equipment, grub, and a pair of compact cameras with which to attempt to capture the nuanced sprouting of my growing beard, the rosie red cheeks, the scarlet blister and the purple harness bruise. I have a Olympus 840 and a Casio EX-S880, two cameras crammed to point of madness with the latest images of a cold adventurer that has drifted away, far enough from over there and no so close to nearer to here.

I have been asked to write a blog, short story or something along those lines on the trials and tribulations of being a father and explorer/adventurer.

One dying question…is it possible to be an adventurer and father? I always answer: I hope that being good at one makes me better at the other.

How difficult it is to know where to begin. Anyone who has had the time or disposition to read the endless books that adventurers, explorers, and fathers have submitted to the book stores over the last decade or so will be aware of a number of issues that need addressing.

Crucial questions: how do polar explorers go to the toilet in minus fifty degrees Celsius and how do you change a full nappy in the dark while still fast asleep? They all say, I’ll answer that vital point momentarily, and never actually get around to answering the question.

Back to the boiling question of the moment – how do I become an adventurer and/or explorer and manage to be a good father?

Back to the boiling question of the moment – how do I become an adventurer and/or explorer and manage to be a good

father?

We are all born instinctive fathers (referring to the male audience at this point), and adventurers. It’s in our genes. Soon to be or new fathers have moments when they doubt their role as a father and somewhere along the straight and narrow they lose it, fumble around with it and it drop it into the drain. Perhaps they stagger into a wall and it falls from their pocket into something brown, slippery and smelly. Rather than pick it up, they walk away pretending it belongs to someone else.

We are all born explorers and adventurers. We didn’t need anything except our imagination, a few cheese sandwiches (essential survival food), a Mars bar and a packet of the finest salt and vinegar crisps backed up with a tin of pop. Dressed in your wellies, green parker and blue jeans you explored the very depths of your back garden and stayed there until darkness or until your old man shouted, “dinners ready!”

Now, in what possible world does an adventurer or explorer require qualifications? In what universe (whether supported by turtles, sponge cakes, badminton rackets or rubber buttons) does it say that you cannot use this title unless you walked bared footed, and in nothing but your union jack skiddies, to the South Pole?

Now the title father, daddy, papa, far, da, and so forth is available for a life time of use as long as you have expended all your savings on some female of the species – wining and dining, sharing intimate secrets and fooling around at stupid hours, like most men, for a few minutes, and shared the copious amounts of essence you have stored and then 9 months later something weird happens.

No matter how you think you will be or how you will act, nothing can describe that feeling that envelops you when your child arrives safely into the world. You’re a father. It’s a proud moment that every man will remember until the day he leaves this swirling ball we call Earth. Don’t let any man fool you. Inside, every man sheds a tear of joy when his “mini-me”, looks at you for the first time and gives wink. “Hey Dad, how’s it going?”

Explorers and adventurers share the same emotions. We weep behind the mask, goggles and balaclava when we strike that pose at the height or climax of our journey. Struggled through torment, despair, isolation, pain, and hunger and continue to push the envelope until we straddle that personal summit, reach deep inside our battered soul and weep. No one knows. No one cares. It’s your moment and you deserve the release.

There is so much in common.

As for the books themselves. I suppose I ought to come clean. I’ve only read one child book. What a load of bollox. Bad spelling I know.

No, I’ve read loads of adventure books and they’re actually damned good. But why haven’t I read more baby books? What claim do I have to call myself a rounded father if I have not bothered to glance at so much as one of the works of this astoundingly popular subject?

The two mix well. It’s that simple. The only draw back is the separation from the innocent kisses and hugs from your children. The looks they give, the lies they tell, the problems they cause and the love, the unconditional love they share with you.

It gives more reason to return home safely. To carefully evaluate every risk and check it a thousand times. There’s no room for carelessness. No room for shabby kit, training or cutting corners. You need to complete the expedition or task at hand and get home safely to your family.

Your children will want to hear the stories, the experiences, and the choices you made from this day onward. They will utter the words in later years and share your story to their children and so on down the line. When their little face smiles, your inner shutter automatically fires, a billion shots. A natural Smile Detection. You return home to your family, the mind stores their face, recognises it the next time you stand-alone in a vast wilderness, miles from nowhere and you see them. It gives hope.

That simplicity of being a father, adventurer and explorer, which is what attracts people to reach for the inner depths of their soul in the first place, clicks. Like peas and carrots.

Is it possible to be an adventurer and father? Being good at one makes you better at the other. READ more at www.mongolia2010.com

READ more at www.mongolia2010.com

"It stands to become the longest solo and unassisted walk ever completed." The Mongolia 2010 Expedition (M2010X) is a great challenge. British Adventurer Ripley Davenport will attempt the first recorded solo and unassisted traverse across the vast landmass of Mongolia, on foot from east to west, starting in April 2010. This effort to push the frontiers of human capabilities, challenge ecological values and inspire youth to reach beyond their perceived limits and engage their dreams. The Expedition will involve walking 1700 miles / 2750 km’s across the Eastern Mongolian Steppe, Gobi Desert and the Altai Mountain Range, while hauling provisions and equipment weighing in excess of 200kg in a wheeled trailer, specifically designed for the journey, in 90 days or less.

My second guest writer Nick Gallop is a young man with a mission which we all maybe should aim for. He led an uneventful life in Southern England until he discovered the world of adventurous travel and backpacking. A number of solo packbacking trips to North-Africa, the Middle East, India,Scandinavia and Southern Africa sparked Nick´s love of wild places. They also made him wonder what would happen if something went wrong while on his own in a remote location. This concern together with an interest in the natural world and the ever present quest to improve comfort while carrying less stuff sparked a deep interest in wilderness and survival skills. Since then Nick has been trained by some of UK and Europe´s best known bushcraft,wilderness skills and survival instructors. He is now passionate about passing on this skills through writing and through teaching.

What do you think about when you see this picture?

What do you think when you see this picture to the left?

I had the axe on the left of the picture (a Gränsfors Bruks Scandinavian Forest Axe, a great axe!) delivered to my office a few years ago. It was to be used in the bush for wood craft and preparing firewood – just pretty regular axe stuff. Only one guy in the office recognised it as a tool, everyone else regarded it as a weapon. This has stayed with me ever since as something very sad. Thousands of years of human craftsmanship forgotten. Not many years ago most people would have contact with cutting tools in their work or at home to chop firewood but in a very short time we’ve moved to a place where people regard them with suspicion as they’re outside their experience.

We naturally distrust things which don’t fit our idea of what is  “normal”. The cycle goes something like this: We don’t use this thing therefore we don’t understand it. We don’t really understand why anyone else would want one – it looks pretty dangerous. We’re scared by it. On the rare occasions these tools are used for violence this confirms everything we thought was not “normal” about them. They’re probably even more dangerous than we imagined. We are more scared than before. It would be better for everyone if they were banned.

Of course this same cycle leads us to hold ideas about a whole range of things, things we don’t really understand, things different from what we do. Humans have the benefit of thought and reasoning but most of these ideas haven’t had much of either! They spring from an instinctive reaction. Unfortunately much as our instinct is to ignore, change or banish these differences this will never work. The only way forward is through education, understanding and tolerance towards others ideas, beliefs and customs.

I believe anyone involved in an expedition has an incredible opportunity. An opportunity to promote education and understanding and play a part, however small, in smoothing out the differences which so often cause friction in the world. Only by bridging the gap between people with real or imagined differences can both realise that they are basically the same.

Bushcraft, wilderness skills, survival....

I think this is much easier if you strip away some of the layers of technology which insulate us from the world. A great way to do this is to take a step back from the 21st century and learn some primitive wilderness skills. For anyone not sure what I’m talking about, these are the kind of skills practiced by our ancestors, skills which allow us to work with nature rather than to tame it. To simplify your kit and to know you can forage for food and make all you need gives an incredible confidence.

As a society we have lost touch with the earth and with these skills that have been used for the greater part of human existence. I truly believe this connection is more important than we realise. By learning how to work with natural materials you can reforge the link to nature and just as importantly to the people in the world who still use these traditional skills in their every day life. What an amazing thing – to share understanding, share skills and break stereotypes.

Being able to navigate and travel confidently are important but learning to improvise and repair kit using natural materials, to make fire without matches or a lighter, to find food, water and shelter will take your confidence to a whole new level. This confidence allows you to become less reliant on modern clothing, kit and gadgetry and peel away another layer of difference between you and the majority of people in the world who can’t afford this clothing, kit and gadgetry!

Whatever you do, whether in expeditions or in everyday life, make connections with people and with the earth. Understand differences and educate others. On a personal level you’ll never regret it and you never know, it might just make the world a better place.

Visit Nicks homepage and blog at http://skillsforwildlives.typepad.com/

I almost love the research before an Expedition as much as the journey itself. And I know, it has to be thorough, professional and open-minded, because a lot of the success of any serious Expedition has to do with the amount of good research an explorer puts in. For me who love books, maps and since the Internet appeared as a research tool, unfortunately meaning the death of the libraries, this period is a big journey in itself. You almost have to become a scholar. Even though I will only remember a few percent of what I learn now and put into use on the expedition in itself, it will, still, most of it, be there in the back of my head, when the Expedition is over and it is time to do something with all the collected material. Like writing a book, doing a film or preparing for lectures. And it will put you in the right frame of mind already now, even though I am in reality holed up in a small, dusty little apartment in a dark and boring suburb to Stockholm. But already now, I will for example remember, knowledge gained from just the couple of days of research that I have done now, whilst doing research on Westerners Travelling in Rub Al-Khali or The Empty Quarter -well, the Bedu have travelled there for thousand of years of course, something the white West tends to forget, but they have no written material left behind, unfortunately- that one of the legends of the area is Bertram Thomas.

The Empty Quarter, or Rub Al-Khali, was often referred to in the first part of the 20th Century as one of the few remaining genuinely unexplored regions of the world, on the same scale as the South and North Pole. Therefore many explorers wanted to do the first crossing of this vast sandy desert, 650 000 square kilometres in size, like putting Belgium, Holland and France together, but first of all gold digging explorers to catch this price -forgetting the local Bedu who lived here- turned out to be a simple civil servant from Bristol in the UK, Bertram Thomas. He crossed the Empty Quarter together with local Bedu 1930-31 and wrote an excellent book called Arabia Fenix. Amazingly enough his book can be read on the Internet!

At this stage when I have decided on where to go, understanding the objective of the expedition, all effort has to be put into finding the right contacts and background material. Both tasks filled with joy. Communicating with experts on the area is half the fun. And so far almost everyone I have contacted have been very helpful, showing a camaraderie unknown between people in the same business as me here in grey Sweden. One of them is the Grand Old Dame of desert and Camel travel, Arita Baijeens. And as always, you come across people associated with other things and other dreams you have had. Today, by pure coincidence during my research, I came across an old acquaintance of mine, Dan Mazur, and remembered that I had told him a few years ago, that I of pure interest after reading Hillary´s account of his conquest of Everest, wanted to make an attempt on Hillary´s and Tenzing´s original route. Dan Mazur, like me using Facebook, so I contact him and said, I am still interested. He advised me to go for it, if prepared, april 2010. Why not then….life is short.

Second task is to put an enormous effort into getting a picture as big and broad as possible regarding the area. What I have to learn and try to understand in a very short time, 10 months or so, is a gigantic task. Even though I have already had quite a lot of insight into Islam, Arabs, the Middle East and desert travel from earlier travels, I know almost nothing about the Gulf, camels or, most important, their original inhabitants, the Bedu. And I need to learn Arabic, in shallah.

At the same time I have to try to support myself, find sponsors, set up the media kit, keep extremely fit, eat the right food, be relatively happy, have a social life, but still spend most of the time studying, no easy thing. Gee, there is some sacrifice indeed! It is at the same time, one of the best moments of an explorers life, but also the worst in some ways, because you love it more than other parts of your life. But it is the same thing before every Expedition. Most people who are close to you, genuinely fear and hate it! This is what a true explorer want to do more than anything else in life! travel, be it through books or in reality. I do look forward to this Expedition more than ever before!