“The American government,” I wrote, “has announced that it can arbitrarily define as a “terrorist” any doctor or nurse who aids a wounded human. In such cases a victim’s politics overrules his physical suffering.”

I then posed the question, “If doctors can now be classified as “terrorists” by the “land of the free” are explorers next?”

The article then went on to pose these pertinent questions.

What are the implications for explorers who wish to visit countries rocked by political instability, ie Afghanistan, Burma, Eritrea, Kashmir, Mali, Somalia, Syria, Tibet, Yemen, just to name a few?

Could a chance conversation between an explorer and a political activist result in statements being voiced which, being in opposition to official American foreign policy, carry an automatic condemnation for the traveller?

Could explorers become victims of political entrapment?

If an explorer is, by default, “caught” talking to people who are politically sympathetic to Al Qaeda, are the exploration organizations which support his journey also culpable of “supporting terrorism”?

I concluded by stating, “Members of the medical profession, as well as prominent advocates of civil liberties in the United States, are deeply concerned at the tremendous erosion of civil rights and basic liberties which political events have inspired.”

In the intervening months concerns about the on-going erosion of citizens’ basic rights, including the constitutionally protected right to privacy, have continued to dominate the headlines.

Newspapers have just revealed how the US government uses a secret intelligence programme called Prism to systematically intercept more than 1.7 billion messages a day from American citizens. Foreign governments, companies, universities and millions of overseas citizens are also believed to have had their privacy systematically invaded by the use of the Prism programme.

Dictators are not dumb. They read history books too. That’s why they know that there are a number of steps to be taken when one wants to assume total control; critical steps include declaring martial law, seizing control of the media, arresting opponents, spying on citizens and restricting travel.

A glance at Long Rider history will provide alarming examples of how tyrants crush travel, along with a citizen’s other rights.

Throughout history totalitarian regimes have realized that horses presented a potent political threat. A tyrannical system is designed to keep people close to home, where they can be kept under tight social, political and geographic control. Horses threaten to undermine this oppression. People who can ride might travel without permission. Riding might encourage the growth of resistance. Rebellion might be spread via the saddle.

Oliver Cromwell certainly understood this. After he conquered Ireland in the 17th century, he quickly passed a law forbidding Irishmen to own a horse valued at more than 5 pounds. This instantly destroyed any hope of a mounted opposition or of travel.

Stalin was no friend of horses. After seizing control of all private farmland, his ambitious goal was to create an enormous agricultural collective. The first step was to confiscate every animal larger than a chicken. Horses were no exception. They were forcibly taken from the people and placed into state-controlled farms. In 1928 he passed a law making it illegal for private individuals to own a horse.

Joseph Stalin would not have approved of the 1984 film “Red Dawn,” a Cold War tale that depicted Soviet, Nicaraguan, and Cuban paratroopers invading the United States. Resistance quickly spread, thanks to a group of armed teenagers, led by political rebel Patrick Swayze, who fled into the Rocky Mountains on horseback to escape capture and lead a mounted rebellion.

Nor were other dictators slow to follow this lesson.

Enver Hoxha made it illegal for Albanians to own and ride horses. More recently, the Iranian government passed a law forbidding Kurds to own and ride horses.

This blueprint for control has been used time and again, only now it’s not your horse they are determined to take away. It’s your plane ticket.

The United States government maintains what it terms is a “No Fly List.” This list contains the names of those people who Washington has decided are not permitted to board a commercial airliner for travel either in or out of the USA because they “present a specific known or suspected threat to aviation.”

There were only 16 names on the No Fly List on September 11, 2001. Today the FBI and the United States government’s Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) admit that the list contains at least 10,000 names. However the American Civil Liberties Union estimates that the list has grown to include more than a million names and is still continually expanding.

The latest disclosure of the Prism spying programme should send a chill down the spine of every explorer and traveller, as this insidious network is undoubtedly being used, without your knowledge or consent, to make judgments which may affect your future travels and/or place you on a No Fly List.

According to an act passed in 1926 the American Secretary of State was granted the right to issue passports and prohibit travel by US citizens to any nation “with which the United States is at war, where armed hostilities are in progress, or where there is imminent danger to the public health or the physical safety of United States travelers.”

The American government currently maintains travel restrictions to Cuba, Libya, Iraq and North Korea. A debate has long raged over the constitutionality of limiting an American citizen’s right to travel in this way. But there is no secret about this long-standing law.

If you are an American citizen you know that it is technically illegal to go to Havana for a summer holiday or drop into North Korea to satisfy your curiosity about the “hermit kingdom.”

Yet that’s not how the No Fly List operates.

Citizens are not informed that their travel plans have been restricted. They normally discover this when they attempt to check in at the airport.

Because there are so many names on the No Fly List, mistakes are bound to be made. For example, because the name “T. Kennedy” had once been used as an alias by a suspected terrorist, Senator Ted Kennedy was repeatedly delayed at airports. The famed lawmaker spent three weeks directly appealing to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge before the mistake was corrected.

Kennedy realized that his position and power as a senator provided him with extraordinary access to the US government. But he worried how ordinary citizens would resolve such a bureaucratic entanglement.

“How are they going to be able to get to be treated fairly and not have their rights abused?” Kennedy told the press.

Senator Ted Kennedy expressed grave concerns over the erosion of American citizens’ rights to travel without being intimidated or persecuted by federal authorities.

The answer is, they’re not.

In my previous article I proposed that even visiting “suspect” countries might result in a citizen being targetted by an antagonistic American government.

Such a scenario occurred when a U.S. citizen, who had been studying in Yemen, was prohibited from returning to the United States. Having been placed on the No Fly List, he attempted to re-enter the country via Mexico. When American border officials refused him entry, the Mexican authorities deported the American student back to Colombia, where the flight had originated.

Nor are foreign nationals exempt from airborne persecution.

Former pop singer Cat Stevens (who converted to Islam and changed his name to “Yusuf Islam” in 1978) was denied entry into the United States in 2004 because his name appeared, without warning, on the No Fly List.

Even being on the wrong plane can cause you trouble.

In 2009 the American government refused to allow an Air France flight, bound from Paris to Mexico, to enter U.S. airspace. Why? Because a Colombian journalist, whose name appeared on the No Fly List, was a passenger on the flight bound for Mexico.

The European Union has expressed strong concern about these practices. And critics in America claim that these actions are a violation of the Privacy Act of 1974, which forbids the government to compile secret databases on U.S. citizens.

But other governments, notably Canada, have now begun to compile their own No Fly List as well. The Canadian list is said to rely on data obtained from domestic and foreign intelligence sources, including the American No Fly List. It is believed to contain between 500 and 2,000 names.

You may be saying, “The innocent have nothing to fear.”

Instead of “innocent,” read “obedient to the system.”

But there’s an inherent problem with that attitude.

Explorers, like Long Riders, are often social dissidents. They don’t like to be controlled. They are highly individualistic. They enjoy the freedom to roam at will. They aren’t afraid of speaking their mind.

How does that sort of strong individualism fit alongside the latest revelations about the US Prism surveillance programme?

Critics have already suggested that individual web histories or phone logs have been illegally searched by government agents bent on finding suspicious material that could be used to threaten the state’s monopoly of power.

Such actions, almost certainly illegal, are being defended by the idea that they are used to search out “terrorists.”

Yet once information on individuals has been illegally obtained, it might also be leaked to potential employers, insurance companies and local police departments.

Would an authoritarian government use illegally obtained information to restrict a citizen’s right to travel?

Absolutely!

In 2008 the Washington Post discovered that Maryland State Police had classified 53 American citizens as terrorists and then secretly listed them on state and federal databases. A subsequent trial revealed that the citizens had been targeted because they opposed the Iraq war and the death penalty.

Thanks to the power of the Prism spying network, we should assume that the American government has now stored evidence about the private lives of billions of human beings, including information about where each person lives, who their family and friends are, their personal actions, their religious beliefs, their sexual orientation, their political views – and their travel plans.

If Cromwell and Stalin were smart enough to take our ancestors’ horses, how long will it be before an authoritarian government severely restricts the rights of their citizens to travel aboard, claiming that they pose a threat to the state if they are allowed to depart?

The answer is, it’s already begun, as in 2011 the Chinese government took legal steps to prohibit citizens “who may endanger national security and interests” from leaving the country.

There are extraordinary implications connected to the revelation of the Prism spy network. You might be tempted to conclude that you have nothing to hide without remembering what part of your life might be wrongly construed or deliberately misinterpreted by others.

If your life, your emails, your secrets, your political views, your connections and your convictions have been scrutinized without your permission, then it may only be a matter of time before restrictions are placed upon your freedom, your future and your travels.

Popular culture reflects painful lessons from our political past, as the film series, “Planet of the Apes,” demonstrates. If a tyrant wants to subjugate, dominate and control a civilian population, they must be kept unarmed, on foot and under constant surveillance.

Thus, as I predicted in 2012, authoritarian governments, equipped with unethical powers over our privacy and an ability to track our movements on the internet, pose the greatest threat to exploration and travel since the rise of the Soviet Union and its oppressed colonies.

Nor am I the only traveller and journalist to note with alarm how the United States has threatened the rights of citizens.

“In America the month just past has been the blackest month for free men our generation has ever known. With a sort of hideous apathy the country has acquiesced in a regime of judicial tyranny, bureaucratic suppression and industrial barbarism. In America law is merely the instrument for good or evil of the most powerful interests, and there are no Constitutional safeguards worth the powder to blow them to hell.”

That quote was written by firebrand journalist Jack Reed in 1917, to express his alarm at the passing of the draconian Espionage Act which eroded the rights and privacy of American citizens.

It is easy to misplace our priorities, to let the trivialities of daily life lull us into forgetting how vulnerable we are. We must never forget that unless we stay alert and active, governments will become predatory, they will spy on us, they will deny us our freedoms and deprive us of our liberties – including our right to travel as, where and when we want.

CuChullaine O’Reilly is the Founder of the Long Riders’ Guild, the world’s international association of equestrian explorers and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the Explorers’ Club. Author of “Khyber Knights, he is currently completing the “Encyclopaedia of Equestrian Exploration,” the most comprehensive equestrian exploration guide ever written.

* Update 19/6/2013 CuChullaine O´Reilly: “The recent revelations about the activities of the American government should have caused wide spread expressions of public concern.

Yet despite the magnitude of the threat to their basic liberties, the vast majority of citizens have gone about their daily lives, too busy it would appear to realize that one of their fundamental liberties has been effectively erased by illegal government actions.

When I completed the Prism/Big Brother article, I sent a brief note, along with the link, to 55 people, including journalists, explorers and Long Riders around the world.

Less than a third had the courtesy to even acknowledge my note.

Only three took the time to post a comment on this blog expressing their concerns about the revealations.

This morning I awoke to a surprise.

Among the group I sent the link to was Gintaras Kaltinas, one of the leading Long Riders in Lithuania. I had debated about informing him, thinking he might not be interested in American political affairs. But because the article talked about Stalin, the Soviet dictator who had terrorized that country, I thought the Lithuanians might find it of interest.

Bingo!

You know who can’t be bothered to defend their freedoms, even when someone is shouting that they are being stolen by the government?

People who live in a country that has never been politically persecuted – the Americans.

You know who takes my article seriously?

People who have suffered, and barely survived, terrible political oppression imposed by a cruel dictator – the Lithuanians.

Here is what I awoke to find from Gintaras.

“Thank you for sharing your article and your trust. These problems are important to us Lithuanians because there are still people alive who faced Stalin’s repression. Only last week our country commemorated the deportation of Lithuanians to Siberia.

My own Granddad survided only by jumping out through the window, and my Grandma was forced to hide all her life under different names. Later on Grandad became a leader of the partisans and fought against this political oppression.

That’s why we always remain very sensitive to this problem, so that it will never come back.”

As the Americans prove, and the Lithuanians learned to their eternal regret, there is truth in the old saying, “There are none so blind as those who will not see.”

“How do you propose to go to Wadi Halfa?” asked Magdy Rabie, the spectacled Liaison Officer assigned to the expedition by the Governorate of Aswan.

“We will drive through the Nubian Desert,” I said confidently.

“But that is impossible. There is no land route to Wadi Halfa.”

That stunned me, knocked me out cold. While planning the Gondwanaland Expedition, the maps I had referred to seemed to show that one could drive from Egypt into Sudan across the Nubian Desert to Wadi Halfa and then continue through the desert, following the railway line and tall marker-poles to Atbara and further to Khartoum. However, this was not the case. Though both Aswan and Wadi Halfa are located on the east bank of the Nile, between them lies the enormous expanse of Lake Nasser in Egypt, the Sudanese portion of which is called Lake Nubia. The vast lake was formed when the Aswan Dam was built. From Aswan, we would be driving on the west bank of the Nile. There is no bridge on the Nile connecting Wadi Halfa to the west bank. I had shared our proposed route with the Egyptian Embassy in Delhi, the Indian Embassy in Cairo, which in turn had informed the Egyptian Foreign Ministry – but no one had noticed the blunder.

“The only way you can go to Wadi Halfa is by the weekly steamer across Lake Nasser,” said Magdy, noticing my body turn into a glacier.

We hurried to meet the Director of the shipping company. He wasn’t certain when the steamer would dock in Aswan. “May be in two or three days,” he said, tentatively. “But the steamer can only carry passengers, not your vehicles.” The ground opened under my feet. I had that sinking feeling. I pulled myself up, trying to come to terms with the seemingly hopeless situation. Would this mean the end of the expedition? Could an airlift be arranged? Should we return to Luxor and drive east to the Red Sea coast and try entering Sudan from there – hitting Port Sudan?

“Is there a solution?” I asked the shipping agent.

“I could look for a barge that could haul your vehicles. The steamer could tow the barge.” He quoted an astronomical price for the service. “Come back to me tomorrow and I will tell you if it is possible. Meanwhile, I will keep your seats on hold.” From Aswan to Wadi Halfa was a three-day sail. If we chose the steamer-barge option, our schedule would be set back by a week, throwing all our meetings and hotel bookings irretrievably out of gear.

Taking pity on my fallen, ashen face, Magdy, trying to raise my spirit, said: “There is one possibility, but very slim. You can cross from the unused Argine border post into Sudan. After that it is only desert – not the Nubian, but the Libyan. No roads. No tracks. The entire area is under the control of the military. If they allow you, you can go.”He arranged an appointment with the major-general of the military intelligence unit under whose command the entire area fell. We walked into a morbid, joyless room, its walls plastered with huge maps. The meeting with the general began mysteriously and ended in failure. He and Magdy spoke in Arabic, cordially at first but by and by, the general’s face became red as his temper rose and he started giving the deadpan Magdy mouthfuls. After hurriedly downing a cup of green tea, the general dismissed the hapless Magdy and ushered me out with a smile and a handshake.

Ignoring the rebukes hurled at him, Magdy explained the general’s viewpoint. “He says he will be thrown out of his job if he gives you permission to cross from Argine. The authorisation can only come from the Army Headquarters in Cairo.”

I called the Indian Embassy in Cairo and requested their intervention. They informed me that, in accordance with the protocol, they could not contact the Egyptian Army directly but could only do so through the Egyptian Foreign Ministry. Moreover, they would have to take the Ambassador’s sanction – and he was out of town. Tomorrow, Friday, was a holiday followed by the weekend. The earliest they could move the foreign ministry would be on Monday – after three days.  When troubles come, they descend together. After a little persuasion by Magdy and myself, the Deputy Chief of Mission agreed to shoot off a fax to the foreign ministry and the Defence Attaché spoke to his counterpart in the Army Headquarters informing him that the request seeking permission for the expedition to cross from Argine was on its way.

“Tomorrow you will be meeting the Governor of Giza. He is a retired army officer. A major-general. Commando. You tell him about your problem. Perhaps he can help since this area comes under him,” advised Magdy.

General Sameer Yousuf had specially come to his office on a holiday to receive us. After the usual introductions, I told the pleasant governor that most of the expedition members came from martial families. Two of my uncles had fought in Palestine during the Second World War. Vikram Gill’s grandfather had fought in Egypt during the First World War. Then I told the general about the mess we were in. His response was immediate and positive. He would personally talk to Cairo and make sure that the permission came through – by tomorrow. He just wanted a copy of the letter that was faxed by the Indian Embassy to the Foreign Ministry. Meanwhile, he advised, we should visit the many interesting sites in and around Aswan, specially the unfinished obelisk. Our hopes revived, we pushed further south towards the Sudanese border, to Abu Simbel, visiting the Aswan High Dam enroute.

***

Do you know what you are doing?” asked, in broken English, the young and handsome Major Hussaim, the head of border intelligence, escorting us to the Argine checkpost. “There is nothing, nothing on the Sudanese side. No road. No track. Just sand.”

“How much sand?” I enquired.

“Too much.”

“Like here?” I asked, pointing to the sandy terrain we were driving through.

“Much more. This is nothing. You will sink. Very very difficult.”

The major was sweaty, nervous and chain-smoking as he sat besides me in the Nile. He was clearly concerned about our prospects.

“I don’t think you can do this. It is impossible,” he continued, disturbing my confidence. “I know. I have been here in the desert for more than three years.”

“But I am told that Sudanese trucks ply on the route, picking up cement from the Argine border?”

“Sure. Once or twice a week. And that too sometimes. But those are huge, powerful trucks. They can take on the sand if they get stuck. You have nothing. One of your jeeps is two-wheel-drive. You will not make it.” Though I was getting a bit uneasy, my endorphin rush had not yet completely receded. I had been looking forward to this adventure in the sands of Nubia.

“Is there somebody waiting for you on the Sudanese side? What if we do not find anybody? What will you do? Where will you go? There are no signs or markers,” continued the major, almost pleading with me to do a reality check. “Insha-allah, the weather now is good. But if a haboob, a storm, comes, you will have it. The desert will tremble. The dunes will shiver and shift. Horizon disappears.  You will get disoriented. Dust will choke your lungs. Entire caravans and even armies have perished in the desert.”

In between his honest attempts to scare me, he made calls from his cellphone and spoke frantically in Arabic.

“You have enough water?”

“We have enough, I think,” I replied, unsure of myself.

“If you are stuck in the desert without water, you will be dead within two days,” said the prophet of doom. “You lose ten litres of water a day even if you are not sweating. It has to be replaced at once. So keep drinking.”

“What happens to the body if we run out of water?”

“In less than a day your brain will become confused and speech will ramble. Strange visions flood the mind. Next day the fever comes followed by death.”

The Argine post is 150km from Abu Simbel. At Tokshey, 50km from Abu Simbel, we met up with the delegation of officials that had left from Aswan early in the morning. We got off the main road and took detours along the massive Toskha Canal that was under construction. Acclaimed as an engineering feat on par with the Aswan Dam, the dream canal, when complete by 2017, will suck water straight from Lake Nasser and send it on a 500 km journey, linking a string of oases in the Western desert, putting more than 600,000 new hectares under the plough, creating a parallel Nile Valley.

“A Saudi prince has already bought 100,000 acres at E£50 ($14) an acre to grow produce for a chain of supermarkets in the kingdom,” said Major Hussaim. “Two new cities and several industrial zones will be built. Millions of people will get jobs.”

About 35km from the border, my vehicle lost power and stalled. Sudhir, our vehicle engineer, was under the vehicle for two hours in scorching heat, lying on a mat over the melting tar, trying to fix the problem. The diesel I had bought in Luxor was bad and its sediments were choking the fuel supply system. He fiddled around with the system, replacing part after part without success. Just when he was about the give up, the driver of the mini-bus that had brought the officials from Aswan suggested to Sudhir to make a “direct” connection. Immediately, Sudhir went to work on that option. It meant keeping a jerry can of diesel next to the driver seat and supplying the fuel directly to the engine. Though Sudhir made an attempt, he did not have a pipe of the required size. I suggested that the party from Aswan move ahead to the border and request the Sudanese officials, if they were there, to wait for us. Meanwhile, we would return to Abu Simbel, 115km away, look for a pipe and return after fixing the problem. To keep the flock together, all the three expedition Scorpios would drive back. As we packed the toolkit, the mini-bus driver suggested to Sudhir to try changing the fuel filter. Sudhir jumped on the idea and replaced the filter. The engine started at once and, with a deep sense of relief, we left for the border.

Close to the border, the road degenerated into a trail. At the border the trail disappeared completely. Beyond the collapsing border fence was a sea of sand, endless, lonely, featureless. Four massive trucks were parked on both sides of the border, carrying cement from Egypt and transferring it to the trucks waiting on the Sudanese side. A Sudanese army officer stepped across to greet us. After the Egyptians had stamped us out and we readied to leave, Major Hussaim gave me a hug and said: “This is first time any foreigner has been allowed to cross the border from here and that too in their own vehicles. You have made history.”

***

On all sides the flat, boundless, sandy world stretched away into the horizon. The voluminous National Geographic Atlas of Africa, with details of all roads and tracks on the continent, was blank and empty for this desolate expanse of Sudan, an extreme wilderness not worth exploring. A solitary, weather-beaten porta-cabin made up the Sudanese Customs Office. While one person struggled with our passports, another searched our Scorpios. Making a cursory examination of our baggage, the customs officer devoted his energies to listening to each and every music CD in our vehicles.  After suffering classical Indian vocalists, Pandit Jasraj and Bhimsen Joshi, for a long while, he heard the rest of the CDs in fast-forward. It took the Sudanese three hours to go over our documents. Meanwhile, I made friends with the rough-looking loaders. Every crack and crevice in their black faces was filled with cement and sand.

Escorted by a Customs Land Cruiser, we were led to Argine Village, 9km away, to register once again with the authorities. Hardly had we gone 500 metres, when two of our vehicles, named Nile and Tigris, sank in the loose sand. The Land Cruiser towed us out and, in doing so, crashed into Tigris, damaging its rear door and lights. Slowly, we learnt the art of driving in the Libyan Desert: stay away from the deep tracks made by the heavy trucks; drive on the smooth desert surface, which is crustier.

Argine village, by the Nile, comprised of a couple of low mud-brick houses hidden behind compound walls. A thatched shack served as the Immigration Office. Wiry Nubians, attired in white turbans and long robes, or jelabia, their traditional dress, grouped themselves on their haunches and squatted here and there on sand. We topped up the tanks, buying gallons of diesel in plastic containers and transferring it manually through pipes. The tyre pressure was reduced for better traction. A slender, malnutritioned donkey, pulling an empty cart, stopped to take a look at our Scorpios. A common blue pigeon strutted behind a black-spotted bird. Seeing desolation all around, I asked the immigration officer if his Land Cruiser could escort us to Dongola. Not possible, he said. I then requested him to help us hire a trustworthy guide who could lead us through the desert at night.  Immediately, he produced one and I hired him. The guide spoke no English and we no Arabic and the communication problem would soon lead us into trouble.

To decide on the route to take, we sought the help of a man who spoke fluent English. He had earlier approached our team-mate Vikram, seeking condoms. “I have four wives and always seem to run out of these things,” he had complained, smiling. The cement trucks had preceded us to the village. They all had perforated steel planks, toles, fixed to the sides of their body. These were vital for getting out of soft sand. There were two routes to Dongola. The regular route was along the Nile with a few sparsely populated habitations. The entire stretch was sandy and, in the opinion of a truck driver, perhaps a bit difficult for our vehicles to negotiate. However, if we got stuck, food and help could be at hand. The alternative was to take the route used by the heavy cement trucks. This was 50km inside the desert, away from the river, less sandy, a wind-scoured hardened surface carpeted with gravel and rock that were too heavy for the wind to carry.  The disadvantage was that for the first 300km the route was devoid of life and we could not expect any assistance in case of trouble. Well stocked with food and water, I preferred the interior route. As the cement trucks were leaving the same time as us, I requested one of them to stay on our rear and bail us out if we got bogged in sand. As the glare of the day mellowed into twilight, we left with our hearts in our mouths.

It turned out that the “guide” was a Customs official wanting to hitchhike to his village in the outskirts of Dongola, our destination, about 450km away, where we would get out of the desert and meet the road to Khartoum. About two kilometres from the village, Sudhir, over-enthusiastic and over-confident, driving Ganga, the 2-wheel Scorpio, broke the formation, trying to find his own route, and got badly stuck in the sand. We waited for the trucks to arrive to bail him out. A convoy of four trucks went past us without paying any heed to our frantic waving of hands. We suddenly felt abandoned and bereft. A long while later the last truck, the one we had made arrangements with, came by and stopped a long distance away. A man, barefoot and in a soiled white robe, plodded towards us. Seeing the miserable state of the vehicle he nodded his head and signalled to the truck seeking further support. A boy brought a shovel and all of us went on our hands and knees getting the sand out from under the vehicle. Clearing the sand, we would heave and ho the vehicle but it kept sinking, the turning wheels just digging themselves in. It was a laborious work. Slowly, inch by little inch, we got the vehicle out. It took over an hour. Darkness had slowly set in. Two hundred metres later, climbing over a sand mount, with me in the lead and the guide beside me, we rolled down into a sandy track, visible only on the descent. Before I could register what the guide was shouting in Arabic (he was asking me to stay on the right), it was too late. I drove straight into the track and sank into the soft sand. Tigris, the Scorpio following me, also got stuck.

Some of the expedition members were by now clearly unnerved and terror-stricken. One suggested, tremulously, that we hire trucks to tow the Scorpios through the desert. Another braveheart was of the opinion that towing might damage the vehicles and we should somehow load the vehicles on to trucks to ensure any chance of getting through the desert at all. I had more faith in the ruggedness of our Scorpios and reasoned with them that the vehicles were stuck because of our own fault and inexperience and not due to their inability to negotiate the difficult terrain.

Luckily, the truck driver, “Farishta”, or Angel, the name we gave him later, saw us and again came to our rescue. Again shovels were brought out and sand removed. The experienced Farishta, taking over the steering, applying his own tried and tested techniques, using minimum clutch and acceleration, had the vehicles out in no time. He would gun the motor, slip the clutch and the vehicle would leap forward by an inch or two. He kept repeating the process till the vehicle got onto harder sand. I hired him for the journey as the expedition leader, handing him my lead vehicle, Nile, and shifted the “guide” to Tigris. Freed from driving and trying to understand the incomprehensible instructions of the guide, I could monitor, in total darkness, the movements of the other two Scorpios and give them clear directions over the communication sets.

With Farishta on board, we breezed through the desert like the wind. He seemed to know every grain of sand in the desert. On that dark, moonless night how he found the way through the flat desert that had no defined trail, no signpost, landmarks, or vegetation to guide us, remains a mystery. We concluded that this illiterate man must have a GPS in his head. Gopi, the expedition zoologist, had a GPS and he himself was baffled: sometimes we were heading east, sometimes west and sometimes south. He did not know what to make of it.  Farishta was obviously driving in a wide arc to avoid getting bogged down in sand. With Ganga and Tigris in hot pursuit, Nile flew over rocks and gravel, swerving left and right, and into long stretches of low sand, blowing clouds of dust, rattling every nut and bolt. Thankfully, the notorious Saharan wind system was at rest. Everything was still.

At about 1 a.m. Nile and Tigris again sank together in sand and Farishta smilingly took them out. Ganga, while waiting for us, noticed it had a flat tyre.  It was changed after a lot of hard work because the jack kept sinking into the sand every time we tried to raise it. Just as we started moving, I heard some horrible screeching sounds from my left wheel. They would come and go. Sudhir, tested for the first time on the expedition and tired after labouring all day, told me to ignore the problem. At night, too, the desert has mirages. Illusive village lamps lure the ignorant deeper into empty terrain. Abu Lamba, father of lights, they are called in Arabic.

Farishta spotted a lone truck parked in the desert. He drove towards it, crunching to a stop some distance away on a firm section of the desert floor. The two of us walked to the truck to investigate. Farishta called out, but no one responded. We climbed the back of the truck to see what it contained. Big, shiny eyes stared back at us. Camels sat quietly, huddled together. A goatskin bag, half filled with water, was slung from the side of the truck. Farishta had his fill, emptying it. It was the desert way. If you see someone in the desert, alone or in a group, you stop. There may be “water need”. Similarly, if someone shows up at your tent or encampment needing water, it is your obligation to provide it.

The noise from Nile’s left front wheel kept increasing. Sudhir finally opened the wheel and found small stones stuck between the wheel plates. As we were fixing the problem, Farishta lay down on the desert floor and fell asleep instantly. I let him snooze for 45 minutes before shaking him out of his slumber. Protesting, Farishta took the wheel and drove hard and rash, abusing the vehicle. Within 15 minutes he stopped, indicating that he was extremely drowsy and could not press on. As his vast frame hit the sand, he fell into deep sleep. Most of us also had heavy eyelids and took the opportunity to take a nap. The air had cooled.  At four in the morning, the sky filled up with stars and we had them all to ourselves. It seemed that time had stopped and we were the last people remaining on earth. There was pin-drop silence in the desert. There was not a sigh in the wind. Not a grain of sand moved. Nature was at repose. I slumbered soundly in the front seat of Nile. At about 5.30 a.m., I was woken up by the groan of four huge trucks, driving side-by-side, rumbling towards us, kicking up clouds of sand. The excessively tall and lanky Nubians stopped to exchange pleasantries with Farishta and made instant friends with us, giving warm Islamic embraces. I climbed up one of their Hino 700 trucks to see what they were transporting. Again: camels for the Egyptian meat market. At the Argine border they would transfer the load to the Egyptian trucks bringing in the cement. In Egypt, camel meat is cheaper than mutton and the same price as beef.

After Farishta and the guide had offered namaz, whispering words of prayers towards Mecca, we hit the sand again, catching the sunrise over the vagrant hills in the Libyan Desert. In a hurry to scorch the land, the sun shot up in minutes. In full light, the treeless, shadeless desert looked more forbidding, hostile and frightening than it had seemed in the dark. The parched world of sand, boulders and rocky outcroppings was littered with sand-blasted skeletons of camels who could not survive the long march to the Egyptian border. On all sides it was one prodigious graveyard. These days the camels are taken to the market in the comfort of trucks.

Around 8 in the morning, after driving 330 km across the desert, we came across the first habitation – a small village by the Nile. We halted by the crumbled ruins of an ancient Egyptian temple that may have been majestic once but is anaemic now. Monstrous columns and immense slabs of stones lay around, unprotected. Some fragments of magnificently carved pillars are still standing. I did not know it then but know now, as I write, comparing photographs I had taken of the ruins with those in a coffee table book on Sudan, that this was the village of Soleb and these ruins were of the temple of Amenhotep III (1370 BC), celebrating the Egyptian conquest of the region. As I wandered through the melancholic ruins a playful baby goat scampered towards me and showered me with its affection. The kid felt like a soulmate from a past life. Donkeys grazed in the harvested millet fields. Piles of dusty straw were heaped in front of brown mud houses. A lush grove of affluent palm trees indicated a narrow fertile strip on the nearby bank of the Nile. Three ragged kids ran to meet us and took away our empty plastic bottles and leftover food. Like all Sudanese villages we would pass later that day, Soleb seemed like a ghost village, its population keeping itself indoors during the day. A bee-eater sitting on a neem tree watched us top up our empty tanks with reserve fuel stocked in jerry cans.

On the outskirts of the village was a ramshackle teashop that Farishta could not resist.  Its walls were made of mud-brick and dried palm fronds. In the tidy kitchen, millet bread was being readied for baking in the gas-fired oven built deep inside a wall. While the tea brewed, we sat hunched together with a couple of Nubian men robed in their jelabia. Some wore a skullcap, another a red Fez, while others veiled their pitch-black faces with turbans, exposing only their reddened eyes. Born and raised on a diet of sand, they seemed a hardy lot – tall, muscular, and with a regal stateliness of bearing. Glad to have come out of the dark night unthreatened, I ordered tea for all of them. We downed copious quantities of karkade, a cranberry-coloured brew made from hibiscus flowers and garnished liberally with sand. Gritting my teeth, I bid them a fond farewell.

Leaving the hot and dusty village we again entered the bleak, smileless desert, counting kilometres and hours to get out of it. The fuel pump of my Scorpio, Nile, started giving trouble again. The sediments from the bad fuel choked it over and over and every time the vehicle stalled convulsively we would open the baked bonnet, pump the plunger a hundred times or so till the engine ignited. The crippled vehicle would limp till it ceased again – which kept happening every 8-10 km – prolonging and frustrating our date with the Libyan Desert. Sun-flames shot down like shafts of fire and the heat radiating back from the earth grilled us every time we stepped out. Tigris’s air-conditioner had been kaput since Luxor and its stifled occupants bore the brunt of the blistering weather.

At the next village, accessed through a most treacherous route across steep, unstable cliffs and boulder-strewn hills, Farishta stopped for lunch. Swarms of buzzing flies were holding a conference on the bloody cow meat hanging from the ceiling. Inside the filthy kitchen lay smelly innards of the beast. All of us passed the meal opting, instead, for the local carbonated drink cooled in a bucket of Nile water. As the lunch took a long time coming, Sudhir laid out his blue tarpaulin on the dirt floor and, along with some of the other drowsy teammates, got an hour of refreshing sleep.

Closer to Dongola, palm-fringed villages became more frequent and their size bigger. Tamarind and neem trees provided the shade. Partridges and sandgrouse shuffled in and out of bushes. At the entrance of every village huge earthen pitchers filled with water were placed in shade for passersby. Some of the villages had an unpretentious qubba, a conical mud structure that holds the remains of an illustrious Islamic holy man, who, I presume, was also virtuous. The mud walls of several houses were painted with simple geometric designs. Women wrapped in brightly coloured tobe that resembles the Indian sari, walked erect carrying headloads, every step exposing the decorative henna on their ankles. Chaotic Indian-made Bajaj three-wheeler scooter taxis plied through cultivated fields, creating a ruckus. By the time we hit the tarmac road on the outskirts of Dongola, it was five in the evening. The grateful vision of the road drew mighty cheers from the bleary-eyed and weary adventurers. Since leaving Abu Simbel, the expedition had driven hard and diligently for 33 exciting hours.

Akhil Bakshi is a born tramp in love with wild places, Akhil Bakshi has been vagabonding around the world since his early years, finding telling beauty everywhere.  He has led four major international motoring expeditions that have furthered the cause of peace and development. Vice President of the Indian Mountaineering Foundation, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, Fellow of the Explorer’s Club, he is on the board of several adventure and sports organisations in India. He has founded two non-government organisations that work with rural youth and with small farmers and landless labour. 

Akhil Bakshi has produced seventy television documentaries. His books include: The Road to Freedom; Silk Road on Wheels; Between Heaven and Hell; Back to Gondwanaland; I’ll Follow the Sun and Askar Akaev – A Political Journey. 

Dead Road 2013

In the search for the forgotten ghost-railway

By 

Tomasz Grzywaczewski

(Pictures from the archive of Stepan Cernousek expedition)

In 1949 in the deep taiga of northern Siberia dozens thousands of Gulag prisoners started building one of the most monumental and on the same time ridiculous projects of Stalinists time. Transpolar Mainline – nearly one thousand miles long railway was designed  to connect cities Salekhard in Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug  and Igarka in Krasnoyarsk Krai. In this one of the most remote and desolated region of Earth along the North Arctic Circle, between rivers Ob and Yenisey, inmates using the most primitive tools was constructing rails, bridges, railway embankments. The project was never finished. It was cancelled just after Stalin death. The idea of building railway on the permafrost in the unhabited pivotal forest was too crazy even for communists. No one knows how many people died there, but estimations says about thousands of souls, which remained in taiga for forever

   Nowadays taiga still hidden the witnesses of that cruel time. Remains of rails, destroyed bridges and even rusty locomotives. But what is the most important: lagiers. Thanks to a large amount of preserved artifacts and entire abandoned labor camps -  barracks, fences, watchtowers etc. – it represents a unique and authentic Gulag “open air” museum, unprecedented anywhere else in Russia.

In 2013 we are going to explore the least documented and most remote part of the Dead Road along the Turukhan river, which has been out of interests of any researchers. This part of the railroad is about 110 kilometers long, where, according to our estimates and archival secret maps should be 11 abandoned labor camps, whose condition is not known since prisoners left them in 1953. Also, the condition of the railroad in this area is a big puzzle. This part along the Turukhan river is far from any towns and villages, and it is relatively expensive and time consuming to visit this place. We would like to explore this section and to map and describe in detail all of 11 abandoned Gulag camps, which are supposed to be there. In addition, we would like to get to know indigenous people of the Selkup nation, who are only inhabitants of this sparsely populated area and make oral history interviews with them. Detailed mapping and documentation of abandoned Gulag camps, which have been untouched since 1953 – is the main goal of a proposed Czech-Polish expedition “Dead Road 2013″. It will take place in September 2013 and its content can be defined as a completely new and unique research tool which we can call “Stalinist archeology.”

We are going to be probably the first people who will visit this place since it’s abandoning by prisoners and gurads. During the expedition we are planning to make footage which will be used to edit a documentary movie about the Transpolar Mainline.

The proposed expedition builds on two previous Czech expeditions  (August 2009 and March 2011). During those expeditions the explorers managed to describe remains of the railway and some abandoned Gulag labor camps in eastern and western parts of the railroad in a detail. Czech public found great interested in the results of our expeditions. A documentary movie “Into Oblivion” was made TV number of articles in Czech, Slovak, Russian and German media were published – more can be found on special web site www.mrtvatrat.cz (soon there will be an English version of the website)

Participants

Stepan Cernousek – project coordinator, Czech Republic – reporter and explorer specializing in ex-USSR Republics. Former OSCE observer in Russia and Ukraine. Organizer of 2 expeditions in the Dead Road region.

Currently head of the Department of Publications of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes in Prague. His articles have been published in leading Czech magazines (e.g., Respect and Lide a zeme), in Germany (Der Freitag, WDR), and Switzerland (Tages Anzeiger).

Tomasz Grzywaczewski – expedition coordinator, Poland – traveler and reporter. In 2010 organized a Long Walk Plus Expedition (www.longwalk.pl) – an expedition following the footsteps of prisoners that escaped from a Soviet concentration camp to Kolkata. Author of the best travel book of year 2012 in Poland ”Przez Dziki Wschód” and co-author of the documentary film from the expedition “The Long Walk 70 years later.”
He works as a journalist with main magazines in Poland: e.g., National Geographic Traveler, Podróże, Wprost

Maciej Cypryk – project logistics and budgeting, Poland – former consultant with McKinsey & Company. Currently running a marketing company. Passionate globetrotter.

You were quite an extraordinary person since you were small. The accident on the ferry proves it, when you said “I just had to see what it was like on the other side”, or when you hitch-hiked to India at the age of, OMG, 17! I felt myself like a hero when I went to Brazil alone at the age of 16 by an exchange program, but that not even close. What is inside you? What makes you to go somewhere without any fair? No “IFs”?

Just curiosity. Always many if:s, but I still go. I have many fears, but I am really genuinely interested what is there on the other side of the fence. By which I mean, venturing into the “unknown”. People today says there´s nothing to explore, no unknowns. This is wrong.  Life is forever changeable, by which I wanna say, that even though there´s few unexplored places, like the oceans, if we take Yakutia as an example and Yakutsk. It is almost a completely different city in every sense compared to the first time I went there 2005. Places like people change.

How everything started? Was there a point on your life when you have realized that “this is it, I am going to explore the world!”?

Through reading as a 10 year old. I was home from school, having some illness that children have, when I discovered that we actually had 3 books in the family. My dad was a brick layer and my mum, a home mum, we were not an intellectual family. I read those 3 books, james Fenimore Cooper and Jack London and it changed my world. 

How do you see the life? Because I am trying to understand it (perhaps, that useless), to follow my heart or prestige – to be “cool” in the eyes of society?

I see life as a short privileged that each human being have and we have to use every second on it living to its fullest. One has nothing to lose but following this principle. It will annoy family, friends and other people on and off, but such is life, whatever choice you take. Even if you just survive by doing nothing.

You remind me a Forest Gump! J You just cycled to understand the life? I was absolutely amazed when I read this: “But, I also realized that I didn’t really understand anything and that I needed to continue cycling. Which I did. Another 5 years”. When I don`t understand something I try to analyze. What exactly you tried to understand?

The meaning of life. I still don´t understand it. Very few do. But I am trying to add more pieces of the puzzle every day. And I like what I discover.

Do you feel the difference between yourself and people who have steady, stabile life at the same place for their entire life? Or when someone says things about countries or cultures they have no idea about, except the TV?

Of course.  I only socialize with people who are opened minded, inspiring and love life. Except the family of course, they´re there, and you can do nothing about them. This is a very clear choice. I don´t do work which only drains me, like for example motivational speaking, many times I feel drained of all the energy I have, having given my all, and have received little in return except money. It is not worth it. I only lecture today when I know I will get vitalized myself in return.

I also know there´s a lot of jealous people out there, many of disagree with me as a person, for various reasons, but I avoid them.

What lesson of life could you share with me?

Just appreciate every little moment you have on this precious earth and don´t listen to people with a negative attitude. Not even your family. Pretend to be listening, but let it go in through one ear and out through the other and get on with your visions and life.

You mentioned how important it is not to judge other people. For example, a guy from Siberia, who killed so many people, but still is a good man? Someone would think “it is not possible, he is dangerous” and this opinion also would be right. How wise and beyond one can be to see and accept all people the way they are and really don`t judge.

The major lesson of my travels is that all humans are good. Circumstances sometimes make people do the wrong choices, but we shouldn´t judge. Who is perfect? If you let such issues strike fear in you, it will cripple you and you will become one of the negative. Which is a disaster!

 You also said that in Siberia everything is “normal ‘no”J, what were those lessons of life for you?

Basically, life is the way it is, don´t complain, get on with it. It could be worse.

You wrote on your blog this phrase: “When I am starting to get too comfortable, I immediately think: Mikael, remember, and never forget, that life is too short. Get out there and live! Nobody is going to thank me for not doing it!” What does it mean? What is “too comfortable” for you?

Getting to comfortable is when you have made your way into what most people strive for, a settled life. A flat, a car, a steady income, an insurance, security on paper, social acceptance, maybe money…I don´t want this life and I am lucky to have a family and wife which agrees. Less things, less luxury, a simpler life and always challenges so one doesn´t forget to be on your toes. And forget to live. We, e.g my family, we have kind of reached this type of settled life now and we have decided to move on into the zone of unknown again. Just for the challenge.

“To live the full capacity!” everybody dream about it, but why not all can reach it?

Too many fears what others would think.  Too needy of all modern comforts of life. The need of a social position. Selfish ambitions ahead of important matters. Too judgmental.

Who is a true explorer?

The one who understands that exploration involves in the everyday issues of life!

I know that you travelled to Yakutia and you said something like “it is the coldest place on the earth, but the warmest at the same time with its people”. I am happy that you have seen Yakutia! What this expedition gave to you?

Well, I first spent a year in the Kolyma and fell in loved with it. It was all a drea,. The best people, the best food, great history in every way, never boring, but I have realized after this latest visit to Yakutia, that since I always moved from one place to another, always only met people at their best, it wasn´t fair to judge it as good as that. No, after 3 months in Yakutia and the Chabarovsk region half of it living the harsh life of Eveny reindeer herders, and with three independent minded, ambitious Yakut men, I have a better image.  A more just one. But I still love this region and its people.

But there´s quite a big difference between the indigenous people and the Sakha and white Russians. The Sakha is very much Russianized and Westernized and have all the good and bad traits we have. The indigenous Siberians are purer of heart.

How it is to be an explorer for 25 years?

Challenging but a privilege.

Sometimes after living in a big city, I feel like I am becoming skeptic, egocentric and indifferent   to other people cares. Thankfully, I immediately see it and stop it. Have you ever had this sort of thoughts?

All the time.

You should be in the commercial of professional camera!

I don´t want to!

“1989-1992 He went by bicycle from Norway to South Africa a distance of 33,000 kilometers, passing through the Sahara Desert. It took 3 months to push the bike through the dessert, with the help of only a manual compass” – How did you do that???? What gave you so much courage to do all that? No fear at all?

Always  fears, but I conquer them, take the challenge and do it.

What you were thinking about, when it was close to -60 degrees Celsius?

It is scary but beautiful! What a privilege!

Tuyaara Linnala writes this about herself: I believe that all of us have some story to say. An incredible story! Luckily, I was able to meet some of them, who have to tell something interesting. Whether it is happy story or sad, I think, each of us can take something from it. I like to meet absolutely different people and I find each of them unique and amazing. Perhaps, what normal for one is an absurd for another, but that’s what is exciting. We are different! We have different point of views and it is useless to fight about it. I believe that we should accept people the way they are and see good sides in them, rather, than the negative. So, one day the idea crossed my mind: “why not to write about these people? About my friends, who inspire me in some way?”

They were all explorers that operated in truly extreme environments as many explorers do.  And they all perished when they were at the peak of their abilities, doing something they had trained their entire lives to do and had done a dozen, a hundred or even a thousand times.

The big question is WHY?

Without a doubt, explorers often go to extreme places and operate in perilous environments.  Look at Mikael’s Kolyma River (North-Eastern Siberia) expedition as a perfect example. Exploration is about seeing something, doing something and learning something that no one has every seen, done or known before. By it’s very definition, exploration 500 years ago and today has always been about exploring the edge; not just about pushing boundaries but going well past them.

As I write this, I’m in Lakeside Ohio, a resort community on the shores of Lake Erie that is filled with charming, great lakes style cottages that date to the 1800‘s.  It is Norman Rockwell in every way and has enough charm to give it away.  Literally and figuratively, Lakeside couldn’t be more removed from the environments where explorers do their exploring. I’m about as far inside the boundaries here as you can get – both mentally and physically.

Compare this to an image I took from Camp 2 during my climb on Cho Oyu, the 6th highest peak in the world and the accompanying post:

“If you’ve ever wondered what the view looks like standing on the earth at 23,400′, this is it. You are far above the clouds and most other mountains, even in the Himalayas. Nothing but snow and ice. The sky fades from blue to black and you feel like your boots are only tenuously attached to the planet and you could float off into space any time if you aren’t careful.”

 So one question that is often asked is how explorers reconcile every day life with what they do on expeditions. How do we prepare to be in a place that is so different from our home environment that we might as well be going to another planet? And relative to the central question of this article, is it under-preparation that is the ultimate cause of fatalities on expeditions? Is that what killed Magellan, Exley and Fischer?

I’ve had the good fortune to literally meet hundreds of top explorers over the past decade and there are many things that set us apart. Explorers are most often defined by what we have done. Yet what I have found to be universally true is that explorers don’t just do things differently, we think differently and consequently approach the world differently. That is the core of the explorer.

 And while we may occasionally bite off a little more than we can chew, almost every explorer I know is absolutely methodical in preparation, logistics and training.  We are honest about the inherent dangers, carefully gauge the amount of intrinsic risk and work diligently to reduce that risk while understanding that we can never fully eliminate it. Explorers rarely venture into an expedition half cocked or underprepared. That’s clearly not what caused the deaths of Magellan, Exley or Fischer.

To find the answer, we need to delve deeper into the human mind and see how a basic human learning process can actually work against us in extreme environments. This is described in detail in Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies and Why by Lawrence Gonzales.

“The brain is an organ of adaptation,” writes Gonzales. And while this incredible adaptability is one of our greatest strengths as human beings, we can some times play Jedi mind tricks on ourselves. 

Scott Fischer had come to calling the South Col route up Mt. Everest a milk run.  Any one who has ever climbed an 8000 meter peak knows that the 14 peaks which are 8000 meters or higher can be deadly on their best days. On their worst days, they can be prodigiously lethal. What caused the significant underestimation of the conditions on Everest in ’96 that led to the deaths of numerous climbers including Fischer whom had scaled the mountain numerous times? (*Many people today would argue that the rising fatality rate on Mt Everest today is due to a large number of underprepared and under experienced climbers and they would be right. But those climbers aren’t explorers, they’re tourists.) Magellan advanced with hostile intent on 1500 well armed, well organized and equally hostile villagers with only 48 of his own men. What was he thinking? Clearly, he was grossly underestimating the situation. Sheck Exley had logged over 1000 cave dives in his life including several depth records. Why did he die in a cave he had dived before doing something he had spent his entire life doing?

Much of this all comes back to how we learn. 

Since the time we are infants, we are constantly interacting with the world around us, testing, prodding and finding out what works and what does not. It seems we are all born explorers. When we find something that works, whether as children or adults, we are rewarded in at least two different ways: socially and chemically. An example is when we put our hand on a hot burner.  We receive feedback in the form of pain and a cocktail of chemicals to the brain that tells us that what we did was a really bad idea.  Our mother also probably scolded us. The chemical and social feedback we receive when do something that is “successful” or “unsuccessful” creates powerful feedback for the brain and is ensconced in short term and long term memory. This is very fundamental to the process of how we learn.

Most times, we are consciously unaware that a learning process is taking place – especially the chemical reinforcement which can provide a near addictive response to success the way a runner’s high is produced by elevated endorphin levels. [endorphins are the feel good chemical released into the blood by the pituitary gland and into the spinal cord and brain from hypothalamic neurons]

As mentioned earlier, to be successful, explorers often go to extremes in terms of preparation and training.  During an expedition, explorers are usually singularly focused and usually fastidious about following best practices, checklists, rules, safety guidelines and other rituals. When I climb, I have a broken record that constantly plays in my head. It is my mantra and it goes like this: Focus, Safety, Wonder, Joy. All of this is a key part of success. The problem starts when the record stops playing. It starts when we start getting careless.

You would ask how this could ever happen. How could explorers operating in an innately hostile environment ever think it was safe? When would Everest ever become a milk run?

The answer has to do with our learning process or rather our brain’s misinterpretation of it. Explorers go to great lengths to be safe. Following those procedures often produces successful results. After we have done something successfully for long enough, our brain no longer tells us “this is successful and safe because of everything we do,” it tells us “this activity isn’t really that dangerous because we’ve never had any problems.” And that is exactly when we start to have problems because all of a sudden, we stop doing the things we’ve always done to produce safe results.

That’s when we think Mt. Everest is benign. That cave diving to 800 feet is routine and that 49 European solders can defeat 1500 natives armed with spears. After all, they really couldn’t be all that hostile … could they?

There’s an old saying among bush pilots in Alaska that there are old bush pilots and bold bush pilots but no old, bold bush pilots. Explorers that are safe and successful over a long career have found a way to ensconce ritual and make it an unbreakable routine. They do what made them successful over and over again and never forget the reason they do. They never fall prey to believing that since they have accomplished an activity one hundred times or for 1000 kilometers that it is less dangerous than the first time or first kilometer.

That is how the best explorers in the world stay alive. 

Sharkman and his wife Mantagirl are on a crusade to help others live more exciting and fulfilling lives through adventure. You can find them and follow their adventures at TheAdventureCouple.com.  They are both members of the Explorers Club.

Batty, in his last words, accepts that despite his physical superiority, that after his failure of finding a way to live longer, time is something that he simply can’t avoid and defeat. It is the reason why he saves Deckard. Looking down at him and seeing him struggle, holding on for his dear life, he realizes at that moment that both of them are equal – two creatures trying to survive, trying to hold on and extant beyond that finite existence that nature has given them.

I am standing in the middle of a black lava field that stretches for miles in all directions. I am told that prior to the eruption, this now barren landscape was lush with trees and filled with life. The beach at the ocean was so beautiful that it was the official island postcard, promoting this divine location – palm trees over a black sand beach. But time has scorched this once beauty – covered in molten black rock, twisted and burned by fire, trapped under a blanket of desolation. It is easy to loose hope in this No Man’s Land, a place where even the strongest of gods would feel abandoned – Hades never forgave his brothers. But all this is part of nature’s plan.

Past sunset, the sky and the horizon become one. The darkness takes over and if it wasn’t for this cloudless night with its millions of stars and gravity keeping me grounded, I wouldn’t know which way was up or which way was down. Despite the eeriness of the moment, something incredible is happening.

According to the Hawaiian mythology, Pele is the goddess of fire, lightning, wind and volcanoes. It is believed that she lives in the Halema’uma’u crater, at the summit caldera  of Kiluea, one of the Earth’s most active volcanoes. The residents of the Big Island take their belief in her quite seriously. And I understand now.

While daylight reveals a tortured landscape, at night time it is the blood of the planet that suddenly comes to be seen.  And there is nothing tortured about it. Life is what is flowing under my feet. I feel it, I feel Pele, I feel the earth, I feel its force, its intensity – it is then that I realize, this place is not about death and destruction, it is about life and creation.

This planet is a creation of time. We are in fact nothing but the result of an ongoing experiment that has been going on for millions of years. Time is nature, it is the force that drives everything. As I stand by this boulder the size of a bus, slowly cracking its way forward, I come to understand the pace and rhythm of life.

“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

Man’s relationship with time couldn’t be more different. Nature has given us time to evolve and develop an intelligence that is unmatched on this planet. But like any good fable, with such incredible potential came an even greater burden – self awareness. As much as we think of ourselves as omnipotent, god-like and capable of outstanding feats, we are nonetheless simple mortals that cripple over time. Independently of our legacy, even the greatest of kings will be at one point forgotten and become nothing. Our existence might be relevant to us, but in the scheme of the universe, we are nothing, not even a grain of sand.

Facing our mortality and insignificance, we see time as a disease, as a theft, as an injustice, as a destructive force and as the most valued currency we possess. Aristotle said that

“Time crumbles things; everything grows old under the power of Time and is forgotten through the lapse of Time.”

And Napoleon reminded us that

“There is one kind of robber whom the law does not strike at, and who steals what is most precious to men:  time. “

Cecelia Ahern, in her book The Gift, wrote that

“Time is more precious than gold, more precious than diamonds, more precious than oil or any valuable treasures. It is time that we do not have enough of; it is time that causes the war within our hearts, and so we must spend it wisely.”

But isn’t it through time that the most beautiful things are created? It takes nine months for a mother to create life. It takes years to find that peaceful place in your heart. It takes a lifetime to realize that your most precious possessions were the simplest things you tried so hard to avoid. Time is the complexity that I taste in my wine, it is the beauty of an oxidized piece of copper. It is the essence of everything I cherish and it is my mentor as it brings me back to reality and makes me understand the universe.

I once read a story about an Elder telling a young woman of her frantic pace and need to get things done on time – “You have watches, but no time.” In this culture of speed where even the simple gesture of saying thank you is seen as a waste of time (NY Times), where anything above 140 characters is not worth reading, how will we ever understand and appreciate the beauty of life? How will we achieve wisdom if we can’t even appreciate the time it takes to become wise. Have we become spoiled and arrogant, basking in a culture of convenience and overnight deliveries? Maybe it is time to stop and look at the world around us and realize what we have been missing.

Like a petal in the wind
Flows softly by
As old lives are taken
New ones begin
A continual chain
Which lasts throughout eternity
Every life but a minute in time
But each of equal importance

Cindy Cheney

Little drops of water, little grains of sand,
Make the mighty ocean, and the pleasant land.
So the little minutes, humble though they be,
Make the mighty ages of eternity.

Julia Carney

Daniel Fox is a member of the Explorers Club in New York, of the Royal Geographical Society in London and is currently planning a 6-year around-the-world sailing expedition.  Read more here at http://www.wildimageproject.com/The_E.P.I.C._Expedition.html

North Korea; A Perspective

By

Andrea Lee

 I spent four years at law school holding down a job during the day and going to classes at night. After graduation, I worked as a corporate attorney at two of New York’s biggest law firms. I had worked hard and achieved what I set my mind to do. I thought I was set. But my dad would call me every other day to ask me to help out with the North Korea tour business he had started. I had a full time job and he wanted me to book tickets, write itineraries, deal with clients and a whole host of other tasks. And to North Korea on top of that! Are you kidding? Turns out my dad had real vision.

As my law career progressed, I came to the slow (but common) realization that life behind a desk was not for me. As luck would have it, the DPRK tour business had grown to a critical point and was large enough to warrant my full-time attention. Now, after several years and over 50 trips to North Korea, I am CEO of Uri Tours, and the experience has been completely amazing. I’ve helped nearly 1,000 Americans see the DPRK for themselves, including Dennis Rodman and Eric Schmidt. Every day presents new challenges and triumphs, and I’ve gained unique insight into both myself and one of the most closed and least understood countries on Earth.

As an American, I sometimes catch flack for taking people to the DPRK. Tensions between our countries are high, and people have legitimate questions about whether it’s safe or moral to travel to the DPRK. I too carried with me all of the typical western notions when I first set foot in Pyongyang in 2003. But 10 years of travel and business in the DPRK have convinced me that cultural contact is immensely important for fostering reconciliation and understanding between the DPRK and the international community.

Many people travel to the DPRK for the novelty. It’s sensational, it’s scary, it’s hip. Sure, you’ll definitely get cool points for shooting a pheasant at the Pyongyang gun range (and having your hotel prepare it for you the next day), but no matter what your reasons for going, most people come back valuing their DPRK experience because of the sheer awesomeness of the North Korean people. Years of hardship have forged North Koreans into a warm and rugged people with uncommon kindness and concern for their fellow man. These are the people whose stories are lost behind the politics and government posturing that we read about in the news, and they are the reason that many, including myself, return to the DPRK again and again. When Mikael asked me to write a piece for his blog, he said, “Write from the heart.” So I’ll just share a couple of memories that have stayed with me over time. I hope they help give you a better picture of the DPRK than you may have had before.

I once had a young female North Korean tour guide ask me if girls in the States get plastic surgery done. When I responded, “not so much in the States, but more so in South Korea,” she said that it’s not common in her country but she really hates the arch in her nose. I was shocked. She was super-stylish with strappy dress boots, a short skirt and a sleek, fur-trimmed jacket. As far as the men on the tour were concerned, she was all glitter and cotton candy and could do no wrong. We were worlds apart, but her question showed me that all of us women might look into the mirror from time to time and see potential for a nip here or a tuck there. When you conduct research on traveling to the DPRK, you’ll often hear North Korean tour guides referred to as “minders” or “spies” or even “actors.” While these labels may reflect the restricted nature of DPRK travel, they certainly do not paint a complete picture. I’ve gotten to know our guides over the years and they’re everyday people with everyday worries. Little moments like this one in which we share a laugh or reveal our little insecurities are moments that we carry with us, and I encourage all of my clients to seek out these moments when they’re traveling in the DPRK.

Won’t They Kill You?

 Most foreigners who have visited the DPRK have stayed at the Yanggakdo Hotel. It has about 47 stories with a rotating bar and restaurant at the top. One night, I was at the bar a little after closing time with a couple of friends. One of the waitresses had her kids with her and they were having a good time running around the empty bar. At some point I said hi to them in Korean. Being kids, they didn’t have any problems asking pointed questions: “You speak Korean?” “Yes.” “You’re Korean?” “Yes.” “But you are from America?” “Yes.” “But won’t they kill you?”

I translated for my friends and we all had a good laugh. I told the kids that there are plenty of Americans who are also Korean and that nobody was killing us. I know some people might read this and shake their heads saying, “This is the propaganda that they get in North Korea?” But the irony for me is that I get at least two calls every week from Americans asking the opposite question: “Isn’t it too dangerous to travel to the DPRK?”

Needless to say there is ample propaganda on both sides. We’ve never had a safety issue on any of our trips. In fact, I’ve had people tell me that they felt safer in the DPRK than they did in France! The only way to have a truly informed opinion is to go there yourself. Fear keeps us from doing many things, but we’re lucky enough to live in a country that encourages us to travel. We shouldn’t take that freedom for granted by sitting at home and taking what we hear at face value.

Respecting Our Elders

 As a Korean American, I share a cultural heritage with North Koreans (though my family is from the South). We all eat kimchi and drink soju and we all speak the same language. I’m proud that Uri Tours is the only DPRK tour operator that’s run by a person of Korean descent (also the only one run by a woman). Having this cultural connection helps me give my clients a more informed experience.

On one occasion, one of our older tourists wanted to sit in the back of the bus to get a better view for taking pictures. Our Korean guide insisted she sit in the front, and I could tell our tourist was suspicious that our guides were trying to thwart her desires to take good pictures. When I asked our guide in Korean why he insisted on the woman sitting in the front, he said that it was because the front of the bus would afford a less bumpy ride. When I explained this to our tourist, she immediately understood and said that it was nice to be in a country where elders get so much respect. This, of course, was another very Korean value that I understood well. In the end, we resolved that she would sit in the back as she originally requested. Without proper cultural mediation, situations like these can often lead to misunderstandings that make the trip less enjoyable.

Funny Looks 

At this point, I’m used to getting plenty of funny looks when I tell people what I do. But then again I got funny looks when I told people I was leaving my cushy job at the law firm. I get funny looks from people when I’m cruising down the PIP in North Jersey on my 2009 Ducati Monster (a nice girl on a bad bike . I got funny looks from my friends when I told them about Zen Buddhism which I had studied for a summer in Seoul. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like it, but I realize that I do buck some trends. Honestly, I think we all should buck the trend and open our minds to new and exciting experiences. Of course, since the world’s adventurers follow this blog, I might be preaching to the choir. Either way, I hope to see you soon in the DPRK!

Andrea Lee is CEO of Uri Tours an American provider of tours and travel services to the DPRK. 

What Do You Seek?

by

CuChullaine O’Reilly FRGS

Julian Monroe Fisher should be thanked for taking the time to raise several vital points in his timely article regarding the negative influences of competition on exploration.

The irony is that Julian’s cautionary tale wouldn’t surprise our predecessors, as some of the most famous names in exploration issued similar warnings.

Apsley Cherry-Garrard was the English explorer who accompanied Captain Scott to Antarctica during the 1910 Terra Nova Expedition. Along with two companions, the young biologist made a astonishing winter-time trip. When temperatures dropped to −77.5 °F (−60.8 °C) most of Cherry-Garrard’s teeth shattered due to chattering in the frigid temperatures. Many have read the remarkable book he wrote about that trip entitled, “The Worst Journey in the World.”

What is often overlooked is how Cherry-Garrard later denounced the “tin-pot adventurers who crowd the front pages of our gruesomely unheroic age.”

Further north in China, two famous travel writers, Peter Fleming and Ella Maillart, made an agreement before they set off in 1936 to ride horses from Peking to Srinigar.

 “We were united by an abhorrence of the false values placed – whether by its exponents or the age at large – on what can most conveniently be referred to by its trade name of Adventure. From an aesthetic rather than an ethical point of view, we were repelled by the modern tendency to exaggerate, romanticise, and at last cheapen out of recognition the ends of the earth and the deeds done in their vicinity. It was almost the only thing we ever agreed upon,” Fleming wrote.

Time marched on, all the while genuine explorers continued to express serious doubts about the headline hunters.

Wilfrid Noyce was a member of the 1953 British expedition that made the first ascent of Mount Everest. After Noyce had hung up his crampons, he wrote a riveting book in 1958, “The Springs of Adventure,” wherein he made a detailed study of exploration. Noyce documented the existence, methods and motivations of those travellers who were addicted to adulation.

He condemned those individuals who travel in order to make a notorious reputation, denouncing them as “stunters.” Noyce then provided an excellent example.

“In those happy days it was not so difficult to find something novel and exciting. In the 1890s it was sufficient to ride a bicycle around the world. John Foster Fraser and three companions did and wrote a book. “We took this trip round the world on bicycles because we were more or less conceited, liked to be talked about and see our names in the newspapers.’”

Noyce concluded that exploration had been contaminated by the press.

 “Therein lies the greatest danger to the adventurer. How can a man be expected to bear the burden of publicity, to which every adventure is by its very nature unsuited?”

Even the famous 1953 British expedition to the top of Mount Everest which Noyce joined had been tainted by commercial influences.

He wrote, “The wave of publicity was unfortunate. The whole spirit of the expedition was falsified. It had to be made sensational. We were presented as the stars of a dramatic situation….Now I was becoming uncertain who or what I was…. Publicity, with all that it involves, is bound to get the motives of adventurers wrong… Unfortunately supremacy appealed to the popular imagination of a record breaking age, and gradually the expeditions began to receive a press publicity out of all proportion to the value of the undertaking…. an extraordinary distortion of values, a short cut to fame.”

The quiet English school-master prided himself on maintaining the purity of what he termed, “an altogether private affair between a man and his mountain.”

He had gone to Everest, not to find fame, but because “by testing oneself beyond endurance man learns to know himself.” Noyce wisely concluded, “What do I conquer? I conquer myself?”

How unfortunate that instead of becoming smarter with every generation, there are still those among us whose only priority is the aggrandizement of their own ego or the enlargement of their bank account.

Nick Smith is the former editor of the Royal Geographical Society’s monthly magazine. He expressed his views on exploring when he wrote, “Behind the scenes there is still the same mad scramble for sponsorship and patronage, the begging letters, the broken agreements, lonely wives and expectant public. Perhaps even more reassuringly, in the wings the cast of explorers still compromises the same unsung geniuses and braying bigheads, dignified elder statesmen and chancy upstarts, men of iron and posturing fraudsters, as it did in the Heroic Age.”

It didn’t take long for Nick’s cynical observation to be validated. In 2006 The London Times Literary Review ridiculed the book written by a highly-paid British television celebrity turned “explorer.”

 “He is not an explorer. He is a stuntman in remote places, a latter-day Munchausen with satellite phone and a video camera,” reviewer Tom Stacy wrote.

Here again, one need only look at history to see the cycle of deception.

In the early 1930s the greatest Long Rider, Aimé Tschiffely, warned the public not to be taken in by “vain men who have written so called confessions to be sold to gullible readers.”

Yet life still follows the pattern of the past. Even though technology evolves, human nature does not. New forms of social media now encourage the constant distribution of personal trivia. People are increasingly defining personal worth solely by public visibility. A fear is growing among travellers that not to be seen is not to exist. Few realize that fame will fade but a stain on their reputation will always remain.

As I have previously written on this blog, there is a strong ethical element inherent in exploration. Julian has detected this in his fine observations about the dangers of competition.

What needs also to be stressed is that every individual traveller, like every generation, comes face to face with the realization that the last enemy is not the geography, it is yourself, that the final trap is not reaching your goal, it is selling your soul.

Sir Ernest Shackleton realized that fame counts for little if you’ve become a slave to competition, nationalism and commercialism. His life was a testament to never putting personal interest before courage, self-denial and friendship.

“I think nothing of the world and the public,” Sir Ernest wrote. “They cheer you one minute and howl you down the next. It is what one is and what one makes of one’s life that matters.”

To arrive at a distant spot on the map is what interests and attracts many people. Unequal to the heroic role in which fate has cast them, they see little and learn less along the way. Their mistake is to confuse geographic arrival with personal success.

A handful of travellers realise that the true purpose of the journey is to arrive at a higher level of self-awareness. What the superior man seeks to explore is the blank spot on the map of his own soul.

So, what shall it be that you seek?

Illumination or personal glory?

CuChullaine O’Reilly is the Founder of the Long Riders’ Guild, the world’s international association of equestrian explorers and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the Explorers’ Club. Author of “Khyber Knights, he is currently completing the “Encyclopaedia of Equestrian Exploration,” the most comprehensive equestrian exploration guide ever written.

Exploring Beyond A Culture of Contest

By 

Julian Monroe Fisher

My journey to this point in my life required me to take the long way round with a detour that led me to living out of an old Toyota Corolla in the downtown campground in the city of Fairbanks Alaska. The current and most challenging trip so far has taken me seventeen years, five months and sixteen days…

I’m an Anthropologist. So, I am interested in the origin, nature, and
destiny of human beings. I’m trying to learn as much as I can about you
and me. Where do we come from? Why are we the way we are? And, where are
we going?

I am also an explorer. I undertake journeys for a specific purpose in
search of geographical or scientific information.

Humans as explorers have been conducting their expeditionary journeys
since the beginning of humankind. And for the most part they have been
competing not just against the elements but also against one another.
Indeed for the millenniums we humans have been consumed with a culture of
contest in order to survive.

The first human explorers were probably driven by pure human needs, like
locating a new water source during a drought. And it was probably
important to get there and to secure water rights for their group before
anyone else could.

Later, as the art of mapping and recording our thoughts came into play, it
was the urge to KNOW, to find out what’s beyond the already known
boundaries. That desire for knowledge probably inspired men such as Marco
Polo to go East. And Christopher Columbus, to try to get to India by
sailing West. There were still unknown territories to be discovered.
Governments paid explorers to open up new routes to greater resources to
fill their treasure troves.

As world mapping continued and the gaps of wide open spaces were closed
one by one, explorers started to compete more and more for the last
frontiers: The North Pole, The South Pole, the Top of Mount Everest, the
Source of the Nile. Those that announced their expeditions too soon risk
falling prey to their fellow competitor explorers that snuck past them in
the dark of the night. Like British polar explorer Scott who arrived to
the South Pole only to discover that Norwegian Amundsen had beaten him to
the prize.

Explorers in the 19th and early 20th centuries went exploring not just to
reach the last frontiers, they also went to secure infamy, bragging rights
that brought with it financial security by way of books and lecture tours.
One by one the potential prizes were captured.

And so what followed those first achievements came the era to which I
refer to as “The First – Done A Certain Way”. Like the first ascent of
Mount Everest without supplementary Oxygen, the first ascent of Mount
Everest from sea level to summit without supplementary oxygen, the fastest
ascent of Mount Everest, the youngest person to climb Mount Everest, the
oldest, the first couple, the first married couple, the first two brothers
together, the first three brothers on the same day and the list goes on
and on.

During every Everest climbing season people try to distinguish themselves
from others. It’s that culture of contest that humans get caught up in
their attempts to stand out from one another. In fact every year an
average of 150 people reach the ‘top of the world’, and 1 in 10 die
trying.

Some people take it to the next level by setting out to challenge
themselves beyond logic. Like my friend Slovenian Martin Strel who swam
the length of the Amazon River. Or my other friend British Ed Stafford who
spent two years walking along the Amazon river from the source to the sea.

Such treks are noble undertakings and I salute them for their endurance
and dedication. But in my opinion, these are not expeditions, they are a
test of the limitations of the human body, the mental and physical state
of the being. These performers refer to themselves rightfully so not as
explorers, but as “Athletes”.

Others that attempt to distinguish themselves are proving their
creativity. What I refer to as the “Creative attention seekers” out there
for themselves or a charity like the guy who a year back climbed Mount
Kilimanjaro with a stuffed Tiger on his back. Possibly their intentions
are well founded, but why use a charity cause to go out for a long
walkabout in the bush?

There is a Monty Python YouTube video that sums up these “Creative
attention seekers”, it’s a fictional account about the first male
hairdressers expedition ascending Mount Everest. Instead of establishing
camps they establish hair salons along the trail.

Of course, any discussion of exploration must mention those ‘adventurers’
that refer to their exploits as expeditions but in reality are simply
ploys engaging in risky commercial enterprises for profit. They do not
explore, they’re the folks you see on Discovery Channel surviving in the
wilds alone on a diet of raw scorpions and their bodily fluids. ‘Alone’
supposedly oblivious to the film crew that is capturing it all.

For me my journey of exploration began seventeen years, five months and
sixteen days… I was sitting on the deck of a 6th floor apartment
building on Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I had just handed over the
morning hospital shift to my mother as we were tending to my father on his
death bed. He was loosing his hard fought battle to lung cancer. Watching
his life slip away I found myself contemplating my own life. And the
unavoidable end that would come my way sooner or later.

A few days prior I happened to watch a National Geographical documentary
about Colonel Norman Vaughan. Norman was the last remaining member of
Admiral Byrd’s first American expedition to the Antarctic in 1929-1930
where he made the first solo flight from Little America on the Ross Ice
Shelf to the South Pole. As Byrd flew over the pole for all the glory that
would be afforded to him, Norman and 6 others in a geological party were
sitting down on the ice shelf half-way to the South Pole with a sled dog
team and supplies just in case Byrd failed and had to be rescued.

For his dedication to Byrd, the admiral named a mountain in Antarctica
after Norman and so, at age 88, Norman set a goal to climb to the top of
Mount Vaughan. It would be an endeavour that came with many calamities and
almost cost Norman his life. But he made it 3 days before his 89th
birthday and when he stood atop of the mountain that bore his name, Norman
reflected and then proclaimed: “To young & old, dream big and dare to
fail”. That was the first time I heard that slogan.

As I was looking out onto the sunrise over the Atlantic ocean thinking of
my dying father, I made a promise to myself, “when I arrive near the end
of life’s journey like my father, I want to have so many, exciting
memories, that will allow me to lay there and let it all run by like one
long adventure movie”.

After my father passed away, I turned my decision into reality. I sold
everything and paid off my debts, gave up my job in the hotel industry,
dusted off my Anthropology degree, cashed in my frequent flyer points and
headed as far south as the points would take me, that being Mexico. I then
travelled overland by public transport to the Panama Canal and back.

Again starting from the US, I next ventured all the way to Tierra del
Fuego, the tip of South America and all the way back, crossing every land
border for every country in South America. Early on I met a girl from
Austria, she was like minded in her love of adventure and so she trekked
along. I was also able to convince a US radio network to allow me to call
in every week with a story from the road. They allowed me to plug some
sponsors during my call and so I was able to secure some gear and even
cash to pay for it all.

The years passed and the adventures filled two books. “Dream Big” has
become my motto. Less practicing personal Anthropology, there was no real
purpose within my journeys, except to go and see for myself, and ‘to dare
to fail’..

Although the radio shows became quite popular, all my friends and family
continued to question:
“Why?”, “Why Mexico?”, “Why South America?”
“When are you coming home?”
“When are you getting a real job again?”

On the 4th of July 1998 I set out again, this time for a journey around
the world. I started with a drive in an old Toyota Corolla chasing the sun
west across the USA before heading north for Alaska. A few weeks into this
trip it all fell apart. At first, my primary sponsor decided to pull the
financial plug. Then my mother turned ill and to top it off the US
immigration gave my Austrian companion 14 days to leave the country or she
would be deported. I started to ask myself “Why?”.

I started to wonder, “Was it time to forget the dreaming and get myself a
job?”

At that point I didn’t know what else to do. So, I continued on to Alaska.

By the time we arrived to Fairbanks the Austrian and I were broke so we
moved into the downtown campground where for close to a month we lived out
of our tent on a diet of boiled potatoes. One gray and rainy day we
accepted tickets from a stranger to attend the Alaska State Fair. I was
emotionally down and out. But at the fair I came across an empty stall.
There were only a few posters on display and a table with some books. I
stopped to look at what this was all about when the curtain at the back of
the booth opened up and out walked, Colonel Norman Vaughan.

Wow, I could not believe my good fortune!

Over the next two days I spent many hours talking with my personal hero. I
learned about how Norman had arrived at age 68 to Alaska with only 100
dollars in his pocket. I learned how he went on to build a new life, how
he competed in the Iditarod Sled Dog Race 13 times, and how he found the
true love and happiness that he had been searching for his entire life. I
told Norman about myself, my plan and how little I thought of what I was
doing. He scolded me for being so shallow.

Norman reminded me of my original intention that I was building my life’s
memories. He told me that I was one lucky man to have found a woman that
loves me. And he told me to never forget that every dreamer must always
“Dare to Fail”.

Although I never saw Norman again after The Alaska State Fair, to say that
Colonel Vaughan inspired me would be a gross understatement.

Indeed we remained friends until the last time we spoke. The occasion was
Norman’s birthday when he turned one hundred. At the time he was planning
a return trip to his Mount Vaughan. He called me to see if I was still
exploring the world at large and to encourage me to continue forward.

Colonel Vaughan never got back to his mountain, for he passed away four
days later after his 100th birthday. Exploration for Norman was never
about a culture of contest, it was never about being first, it was all
about having the opportunity and using that chance to the fullest.  It was
about living, fully.

It was the words of the Colonel that got me motivated to find funding and
to get myself and my Austrian companion out of that campground in
Fairbanks…It was Norman Vaughan who told me I could, that I would! It was
his encouragement that motivated me to travel now to more that 100
countries around the globe and ultimately to this stage in front of you
today.

But somewhere over the years, chasing my memories I got off message. To a
degree the nature of exploration requires that explorers must compete, for
sponsors, for media attention, for funding, for book deals and lecture
spots. I too eventually found myself looking for a first that would
distinguish me from the rest of the pack. So I decided that I would walk
coast to coast across the African continent along a route that had never
before been attempted.

One day along my walk across Africa I found myself hundreds of miles from
the coast of Mozambique passing locals when it dawned on me that the
people I was passing had been walking the same route for generations, not
to compete to be the first at something, but for their survival. I
realized that I was not distinguishing myself from other explorers, I was
becoming just like the rest of them.

It was then and there that I understood with perfect clarity that the
best/only reason for me to explore was/is not for fame and fortune but for
all those too precious memories. For the exact same reason I started
exploring our world at large in the first place over 17 years ago.

For me, well the memories now begin with one of my greatest joys, like
sitting with my eight year old daughter just the other evening, looking
into the sunset when she asked me: “Papa, tell me about Africa”.

Whether you explore Africa or Asia or the back streets of your hometown,
‘with eyes wide open’ you will learn something new to inspire yourself and
possibly others. Go live the dream and dare to fail, because winning is in
the eyes of the beholder!

As you move forward in your life beyond a culture of contest I wish you
success as you build your memories one memory at a time.

“Dream Big!! And Dare to Fail !!!”

And in the end, as the African proverb dictates: ‘If you want to go fast,
go alone. But if you want to go far, go together’.

Julian Monroe Fisher is an explorer, an Anthropologist, a published
author, an Ethnographic filmmaker, a Fellow with The Royal Geographical
Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) in London, an
International Fellow with the British Chapter of The Explorers Club in New
York City and a member in good standing with the American Anthropological
Association. Between 2007 and 2011 he conducted five consecutive Explorers
Club flag sanctioned research expeditions to the African continent. He is
the expedition leader of The RailRiders 2012-16 Great African Expedition,
a five year – nine expedition research project retracing the overland
routes of  numerous Victorian age explorers.  Julian’s personal website is
www.JulianMonroeFisher.com

]]> http://www.mikaelstrandberg.com/2013/05/19/opinion-exploring-beyond-a-culture-of-contest/feed/ 1 http://www.mikaelstrandberg.com/2013/05/16/everest-the-latest-dispute/ http://www.mikaelstrandberg.com/2013/05/16/everest-the-latest-dispute/#comments Thu, 16 May 2013 13:59:23 +0000 mikael http://www.mikaelstrandberg.com/?p=174326962 After the latest Everest dispute, I have been contacted by a few readers who´d like me to have an opinion. And I have to admit that I have once again been drawn into the developments on the highest peak on earth. Most likely because I have nurtured a dream on and off throughout my life to climb it. Why it hasn´t happened really boils down to one reason. The reality is, it would be for no other reason tha for my own selfishness. Which is against everything I believe in today.  However, I have been involved in this last unfortunate episode and there´s many angles to it. So I asked Barry Moss, not only a very good friend of mine, but also well read, knows the world of exploration and adventure well, on his take on the latest Everest dispute. At the end of his article I have assembled important links which will help you readers to get a perspective from both sides. One thing is clear, Everest involves people in every way! And remember to comment and read the comments!

Everest, The Latest Dispute

By

Barry Moss

Few disputes are spontaneous.  Like tectonic plate movements, there is generally a build-up of tension that can easily lead to angry, violent and destructive force.  The incident between Sherpas and climbers on Mount Everest reported worldwide is indicative of a situation where lack of respect and pure selfishness can create tension and ill feeling.  The article in the Guardian of 3 May articulates the issue very well - http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/03/sherpas-climbers-everest-fight

I was at a presentation given by a young climber a few days ago that really made me question not just his motives but also those of his contemporaries. I asked him about the ‘Everest’ incident but he quickly and conveniently side-stepped the issue. He really believed all the self-promoting, motivational ‘message’ he had so carefully crafted but what was he really saying?  If there was anything of substance, I certainly didn’t get it.

Climbing to me epitomises the dichotomy between teamwork and individualism.  Most climbing expeditions start out as team efforts but by the time a mountaineer summits (or not), it’s every man or woman for themselves.  The desire to summit often defies reason as it achieves nothing really useful to society.  I know and respect many climbers, those who have been there first or make no big fuss about their achievements and obtained their goal by their own efforts.  By and large these are people experienced in life and not young investment banker types looking to impress themselves and their contemporaries, which all too often is their primary motivator.

Mountains are sacred places.  Many ‘climbers’ defile those places in the most spectacular ways.  They defecate on them and all too often do the same thing metaphorically to the local people they employ to give them their ‘glory’ moment.

Barry Moss (MI’94) former Chairman of the British Chapter and has also served two terms as a Board Director of the Explorers Club in New York. He is a veteran of Operation Drake, Operation Raleigh and the reed boat Kota Mama expeditions in South America. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a Trustee and Director of the Scientific Exploration Society and a Director of Youth Exploring Science.

 Valuable links to read to get perspective:

• Alan Arnette´s article Everest; Fighting On The Mountain
• ExWeb:s interview with Simone Moro at http://www.explorersweb.com/everest_k2/news.php?id=21451
• Guardian comment http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/03/sherpas-climbers-everest-fight