1. Ryszard Kapuscinski. He is my all time favorite. Never boring, always a page turner, educational, always dwells on the subject regarding the meaning of life, extra ordinary stylist and story teller. I especially like his book Imperium from 1993. In that book he writes a great piece on the subject of borders. Must be read. Every sentence has a profound meaning, can be read like poetry. Yes, lately he has been questioned for being a communist collaborator and embellishing the truth. Yawn. Did they miss reading the Imperium? Unfortunately he seemed to have irritated the great Polish film director Andrej Wajda who made a fool out of him in Without Anaesthesia. Otherwise, in my book, he is the third of the great Polish troika of Wajda, him and Krzysztof Kieslowski.

2. Peter Mathiesen. His book The Snow Leopard about Nepal and the search for this elusive animal together with George Schaller reads like poetry. It also deals with Zen Buddism, which once upon a time appealed to me a lot.

3. Laurens Van Der Post. Another traveler and great poetic story teller who´s work and life have been questioned profoundly after his death. His lovely book The Heart of the Hunter is a beautiful and thrilling read.

4. Bruce Chatwin. For me his book In Patagonia is in many ways all above mentioned ingredients of a classic have-it-all, even if it has been criticized for being to quite a substantial degree fictionalized.

5. Muhammed Asad, born as Leopold Weiss, Jewish in Austria, wrote one of the most accomplished translations of the Quran, but his autobiography about his travels by camel on the Arabian peninsula and his thoughts about the meaning of life, has it all.

Note my shortcomings in this selection:

These are books that I have in my bookshelf. And, yes, I know it is void of any female writers. I had Dervla Murphy there. And Robin Davidson, which I had in a previous list 10 best books about adventure and exploration to read over Christmas. I thought Freya Stark, but realized I didn´t remember that she could offer anything profound about the meaning of life. Karen Blixén is one of mine all time favorites, but she is not a traveler as such.

I also know that most books are from the English speaking world and this is a disaster. There´s so many books out there in other languages, Swedish for example, where at least one book would have made it in on the list. But Lasse Berg isn´t published in English. Neither is Marianne Ahrne. There´s loads of Russians, French, Latinos and Asians, but they haven´t been published in English either. So this list is far from perfect. But the English speaking world dominates not only the book scene, but also the exploration world. So a non-speaking explorer or author who actually makes it in on the English speaking global scene is normally so much better that many of the native speakers or English speaking explorers.

About books, the other day a reader sent me a link to a new book which is out about dead Swedish Explorers. I was intrigued to see I was one of them!

Not getting enough sleep makes your brain so slow. I didn´t sleep last night. It wasn´t Eva´s fault, She sleeps as good as me and her mum. Very seldom wakes up in the night. Nope, I had a visitor, which made my thoughts wander. Arita Baaijens came to visit over the day. She is probably the foremost female camel explorer on earth today. She just came back from the Altai region in Siberia. She was looking for Paradise. Travelling by horse this time. A great meeting and I liked her very much! She is really like a sister to me. Like Marianne Ahrne. Also a camel traveler and sister. We are kind of all of us in the same boat. A ship that is moving away from us, slowly.  We are getting too old to a certain degree. In the eyes of the media. They want younger people with less brain power, fresher looks and more wasteful energy. Not much one can do about that. Such is life. We live in a Big Brother world right now. Todays survivor in the Expedition scene, has to know how to handle Twitter, Facebook and other social media. You need to update every three days. Both at home and on Expedition, to survive. Because, the competition today is enormous. And, life today is such as, anyone can get famous for doing nothing. However, I realized after meeting Arita, what a waste of profound knowledge! I mean, missing this great knowledge amassed during all these Expeditions. Because we, the old type of explorer who dislikes satellite phones and GPS:es and think that if you carry any of these, how can this be exploring? When bringing a satellite phone to communicate every day with folks back home, how can this be unsupported and called exploration?

And that is what we talked about during her visit. Life and the quest of being an explorer. As Arita said:

“One has to start all over again, every time it is time to leave. I am getting fed up with that!”

I agree. Money is always an issue with people like us. It is kind of like we don´t really fit in to a normal 9-5 life, which is dominated by paying your dues to society. Like taxes. Which I seem to spend all my life doing, catching up on unpaid taxes. Which means I can never really fully concentrate in finding new, visionary ideas. My age makes me know the dark sides of life, which you tend not to know -Thank God- when you are young. So one wastes energy.

Meeting Arita was meeting a soul of the same thought. She was very kind, humble, intelligent, passionate and interested. And very down to earth. I feel so much hope after meeting her. But, we did dwell on the subject:

I told Arita about my beloved dog Sigge, a wild dog I brought back from Patagonia 1997. He was like a child to me. I lost the right to see him anymore 4 years ago. Such is life of an explorer. life goes up and down. But it is meetings with Arita which makes me feel very privileged having chosen this odd lifestyle!

What happened to all these explorers after they had done their trips?

I do know a few of them. I have heard about many others. Some dead. Many got forgotten, which they didn´t like much. This wouldn´t bother me, or Arita, a thing. Quite a few ended up just making the day economically. I guess I am heading there….but, the question is, would it have helped if they, or me, would have chosen another job? A 9-5 with a steady income?

I doubt it very much. I tried it once. At a travel agency. A nightmare after awhile. For me and the employer. I think we will write a book about these people. Me and Arita. As she said:

“The older you get, the more you enjoy biographies about other people.”

So right, so right. I am reading Tony Blair’s new book right now. I like it. I didn´t know it helped drinking a lot. Hmm, maybe try that then….

About the money issue, read this! I agree….

I receive a lot of emails right now about my photos from Yemen.

Justin wrote:

Marianne Ahrne wrote:

I had no idea that you were a world-class photographer as well. Your photos are world class and they really makes me wanna go to Yemen. How long are you staying for?

Lots of praise and, of course, that makes life easier. However, do see the Yemeni photos here!

And I get a fair amount of questions if I have any more slide shows from my travels to show. And I do…..but it was in Yemen were I finally got back to my old passionate photography, which have been on holiday for three years. However, why not have a look at these series of slide shows: (Have in mind though they´re quite crappy in comparison.)

• Oman
• The Galapagos Islands, Peru and Ecuador
• Patagonia
• Rub Al-Khali
• Papua New Guinea

And why not finish off with a little slide show from The Kolyma Expedition in Siberia?

Go here!

PS. Photo from the Maasai Expedition from the year 2000. the year I actually had hair. And a big stomach. DS