Explorer Mikael Strandberg

Stockholm early morning, autumn has arrived, it is windy and it has been raining all night, but days are sunny and the autumn colors are fantastic! However, I feel real heavy headed and extremely tired. I just get a few hours of sleep right now. And my mood is swinging from desperation to joy….It is always the same story….time to leave, not knowing when I will return….I am kind of packing everything together, cleaning out the apartment, phoning my friends, saying good bye, storing the extremely few things I have after a disastrous divorce and I am ready to take the big step and leave Sweden for awhile, sweating away for awhile in a desert.

Right now I get many questions from you readers about when is the Expedition taking place, and I answer:

“In shallah, when the time is ready…”

I just don´t know, this Expedition just grows, and is getting quite difficult to handle. I have pretty much worked day and night since the vision arrived. I do need 8 hours to feel human, but 5-6, it is tough, but I am living on all the joy all this gives me! But I am leaving Sweden now, getting ready to leave on The Expedition as soon as I have acquired camels, trained them, set everything up with my partners, Salim and Nasr, and have most permits needed, so if all goes well, between 3-12 months from now…..however, remember Chrsitian Bodegren, the Swede I helped with my experience, he is on his way! Go for it Christian! (See http://www.christianbodegren.com/ ) Even though his English sometimes makes things hard to understand, it is an interesting read from a guy who has put his life at stake and wants to become an explorer!

“And the funding?” people ask. Same answer:

“In shallah, when time is ready, all things will fall in place….”

I have slowly turned my mind into the Arab way of thinking, as you see, all is written in the stars already, so why worry….;-)….So right now, am trying to check out of Sweden, which isn´t all to easy. There´s the Internet company who says I need to pay another three months, the gym wants an additional month and so on…..times are hard, so nobody is really helpful, they want their money, whether they need it or not…hardest is getting the time to meet all my best friends…I will soon say goodbye to my family, which is always a nightmare, but I have done so many times now, so it is part of life….

But, once on the Expedition, all these normal day worries will be gone with the wind!

Just a small report from the flat….

”What is her name?” I asked Mussalam Bin Hassan and he forwarded the question immediately to his friend, Mussalam, who shook his head and said in Arabic: “The female camels are all named after their grandmother.”

“You can give her a name then”, Bin Hassan said in perfect English to me, but then changed his mind and said: “Let us call her Sahara! It means desert in Arabic.”

I then went up to Sahara, stroked her long neck and patted her cheeks at the same time she was hobbled by her front legs, lying on all four as a sphinx on the desert floor. The surroundings where spectacular, burning orange red sand dunes all around and total silence. Suddenly Sahara looked at me, gave out a loud gurgle and vomited a green foul smelling substance straight on my face. I realized that I would have preferred a better start to my visit in the southern most tip of the biggest sand desert in the world – Rub Al-Khali.

The major reason for my visit was to find out if I really had my heart into my next big project, Expedition Arabia by camel, maybe as much as 7000 km:s of desert travel with camel during at least 18 months. One of the last great Expeditions on earth. I have the last two years found myself in limbo, not enjoying life too much, not knowing what to do with life. Suddenly, I just realized, by pure coincidence, whilst visiting a lecture by an oil company and seeing the words Rub al-Khali written on a map, that is it! Arabia! That is my next Expedition! Well, anyway, whilst taking a look at a world map of Arabia I saw the full picture. And one of the major obstacles on such an Expedition would be a passing of this legendary desert, Rub Al-Khali, made famous by the legendary British explorer Wilfred Thesiger. Since then, well, as always, forgetting the local Bedu who live here, who crossed for necessity up until the early seventies when Oman was thrown in no time into the modern era, an unsupported passage has not been done by a westerner since 1949. So, I was in the Empty Quarter to try to find out if I still had what it takes to do a big Expedition. Meaning checking that I really had the heart into it had the right motivation and physical and mental stamina. And hopefully find one or two Arabs preferably of Bedouin origin to join me, because I want my project to be an Expedition where east and West travels together and build bridges between people and cultures. A project also to promote Arabia and Arabs. I have realized a long time ago that we in the west have a terrible picture of this part of the world and its people. And it is getting worse by the day. Something has to be done. I will do my best to balance it a bit. Because, after a few days with three great Bedu in a small tiny part of Rub Al Khali, I know that some of the best people on earth live here!

See the slideshow from my visit in Rub Al-Khali here

See the slideshow from Oman here

“I think it will be hard for any future projects to compete with your Kolyma Expedition” , wrote Shane in an email I wrote her regarding assistance to find people with knowledge of camel travel. The planning for the next major expedition has begun.
Shane knows. She has had to do with more Expeditions than probably any other human being on earth. I agree, of course. When I reached Ambarchik Bay in April 2005, I felt like I had done the Expedition of a life time. It turned out bigger than I dreamt about once upon a time as a kid. In this email to my friend Shane, I also asked her to evaluate my new Expedition, by camel through Arabia. Meaning the Arabian Peninsula. Her answer was:
“I think it will be hard for any future projects to compete with your Kolyma Expedition”.
At the same time I recieved an email from one of my best friends, Ollie Steeds, one of the globes most adventurous blokes, and amongst a lot of positive wordings, he wrote a warning:

“Your plan sounds epic but I can see huge problems being allowed to travel through saudi and yemen is still incredibly unstable and potentially dangerous – even if you are travelling as and with the bedu.”
Now, this is where you mentally start to prepare for all the obstacles waiting, because it is alway the same story, every unique Expedition is full of obstacles mainly in the shape of bureaucracy, and of course, some physical hardships. But I know, from 25 years experience, especially in the situation I am facing and going through today, I have only one chance to turn things around, especially for myself, I just need to make an Expedition on the same scale as the Kolyma Expedition. Even though the Arabian Peninsula offers a very challenging and very difficult environment, it will not be on the same scale as the Kolyma. So, what then does a real explorer do? First of all, he asks himself, what is it that I want to do, more important than anything else?
Well, what I want to do, the foundation of the Expedition, the main reason, is to build a bridge between the Moslem East and the Western World. It is probably the most important mission I have ever had. I want the Arabs to tell their own story. Just as the Russians, Even, Evenk and Chukchi during the Kolyma Expedition. I want to put a face on the Arabs for the west, so that we can kill all this animosity which occurs at the moment. I want to make a film, a book, lectures and an Expedition to show the rest, very ignorant at times, of the world, this great part with some of the most fantastic people on the globe – Arabs and Arabia.
Secondly, you bring out the maps. Today on the Internet. Now, when you look up Arabia on the net and on the same time, check a map of the worlds deserts, we do get a different picture. And a different expedition. Woow! Now, when I as a professional explorer look at this new Expedition and evaluate it, the Kolyma Expedition looks like a warm up.
By the way, looking at the same map, I realise that I have actually passed through some of them on the ole push bike. The Thar Desert, Iranian Desert, The Sahara, The Atacama Desert, The Mojave and Sonoran Desert and also, on horse back, the Patagonian Desert. The photo is from the Sahara desert, which I crossed on a push bike in the 1989-90, the Tamanrasset Route. I did the most difficult part, the stretch between Tamanrasset in Algeria to Agadez in Niger together with two excellent chaps, Charlie, on te picture, and Mick James. I´ve lost touch with Charlie a long time ago, but I communicate with Mick on and off, who lives in Scotland. Now, what o you think about all that?