Night of Adventure

Around 400 armchair adventurers recently gathered at Leicester Square's Vue cinema to hear a diverse bunch of explorers share tales of their travel epics around the globe. This Night of Adventure included a pensioner who ran around the world, extreme base-jumper, crazy kayaker and an ex-soldier who walked the length of the Amazon.

Rather than being allowed to ramble on about their exploits, each speaker was limited to just 20 slides, each of which scrolled forward automatically every 20 seconds. In most cases this format worked very well with the speakers whetting appetites and leaving the audience wanting to hear more.

The first to take up this presentation challenge was Oli Broom who cycled 25,000 from Lords Cricket ground, London, to Brisbane Cricket ground, Australia to see the ashes. He made it in one piece and went on to watch England win the series. This was followed by Bonita Norris, the youngest British woman to climb Everest and then a succession of speakers ranging from professional explorers to the those who just head off in search of excitement. Highlights included Tristan Gooley, the 'Natural Navigator' and his infectious enthusiasm for travel using only nature's sign posts, and Rosie Swale-Pope who at 57 embarked on a mammoth five year adventure to run around the world. Absolutely unbelievable and she left audience and fellow-explorers alike in awe of her determination.

The final speaker, Ed Stafford, is the first known person to walk the length of the Amazon river. His talk was a little different to the others in that he was totally honest about both physical and mental stresses of travelling alone through inhospitable territory.

The event was organised by Alastair Humphreys in aid of Hope & Homes for Children. Alastair, whose adventures include a four year cycle ride around the world, chose to talk about a recent trip to Iceland where he followed a river from its source to the sea. It was a good illustration of the fact that you don't have to commit to year long feats of endurance to experience adventure.

A list of all the speakers can be seen here.

Prester John

Prester John was a legendary Christian priest and king who is supposed to have lived in the 1100s. Many travellers and explorers of the Middle Ages, including Marco Polo, claimed that he ruled a vast kingdom in central Asia. The legend arose during the period of the Crusades (late 11th to the 13th century), but historians have long placed Prester John within the category of myth.

However, in an interesting post on Time to Eat the Dogs, Michael Robinson writes: "The point here is not to say that Prester John was real, but to say that in characterizing him as a mythic figure, historians have tended to discount his serious influence on European exploration and discovery. This is a central argument of historian Michael Brooks in his excellent thesis, Prester John: A Reexamination and Compendium of the Mythical Figure Who Helped Spark European Expansion".

Explorers who died at work

Of the many newspapers and magazines given out for free on London's Underground, ShortList is one of the better ones. It usually contains something vaguely interesting, such as the list of Ten explorers who died at work that appears in this week's issue. Of course in this context 'work' usually means being chased by someone in some inhospitable place.

Camping in style

Travelling into work this morning, I caught sight of this picture in someone's Metro, a daily freesheet. At first glance I thought it was something about a great adventurer, but it's actually illustrating a story entitled Get back to basics, colonial-style - a piece about a holiday firm that recreates the living quarters of the Victorian age of exploration. Somewhere in the deepest New Forest or the Scottish Borders you can pretend you're "in a lodge on the African savannah," says the publicity. With its bathing tent and plumbed-in sink I thought this was all modern luxury - until I read the following Guardian article from July 1922:

(click to enlarge)

Christmas day, Bredwardine

Just a bit of snow and sunshine in Herefordshire today, but explorers and adventurers have found themselves in some outlandish places on Christmas Day, without the usual home comforts. Away at Christmas, a new book of contemporary diary extracts chronicles their experiences.

For example, in 1768, the British explorer Captain James Cook set sail from Portsmouth in the barque HMS Endeavour. He had been commissioned by King George III and the Royal Society to observe the transit of Venus from the island of Tahiti. On this his first voyage of discovery in the South Seas he was accompanied by the botanist Joseph Banks, who wrote on Christmas Day:

"All good Christians that is to say all good hands get abominably drunk so that at night there was scarce a sober man in the ship, wind thank God very moderate or the Lord knows what would have become of us."

Or, in 1835 Sir John Ross (1777-1856) a Scottish rear admiral and Arctic explorer whose description of Christmas - quite rightly - focused almost exclusively on his stomach.

"Christmas Day was made a holiday in all senses. In the cabin dinner, the only fact worth remarking was a round of beef which had been in the stores for eight yearsand which,with some veal and cooked vegetables, was as good as the day on which it was cooked.

I know not whether the preservation of this meat, thus secured, be interminable or not; but what we brought home is now, in 1835, as good as when it went out from the hands of the maker, of whatever be his designation, the Gastronome for eternity in short, in 1827. If it can be kept so long without the slightest alteration, without even the diminution of flavour in such things as hare soupand purée of carrots, why may it not endure for ever, supposing that the vessels themselves be perdurable?"

Exploration books of the decade

‘Tis the season for making lists. December is a time when newspapers fill their pages with end of year reviews, lists of celebrity divorces and outrageous quotes, and all the best films, books, CDs etc. This year the Guardian/Observer Research & Information team has been extra busy compiling end of the decade lists.

With this is in mind I've put together a list of a few of the books from the past decade that have left some sort of impression.

The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Journey to Antarctica (1999)

by Caroline Alexander

OK, so this came out at the end of 1999 but it made an impact in 2000. In 1914 Sir Ernest Shackleton set out on an audacious expedition to cross the Antarctic by foot. However, his ship, The Endurance, became frozen in pack ice and so Shackleton and his crew spent months drifting across the icy continent. When supplies ran low and tensions high, a small group set sail in one of the ship's lifeboats in search of rescue. After crossing 800 miles of the South Atlantic, the world's most tempestuous stretch of ocean, they finally reached the island of South Georgia. Help was near but only after Shackleton and two colleagues crossed over the island's uncharted mountains.

It is one of the 20th Century's greatest feats of endurance and while the story has been told many times, Caroline Alexander’s expert recounting of it, along with her intimate portraits of the characters, brings the events to life. It is of course Frank Hurley’s brilliant photographs, combined with her words that make this such an inspiring book.

The Beckoning Silence (2002)

by Joe Simpson

With the death of a close friend, Joe Simpson decides to turn his back on climbing big mountains - that is after he has done one last big one, the North Face of the Eiger. The Touching the Void author brilliantly splices his own experience with the stories and legends of the 'Mordwand', along with meditations on the deaths of friends and heroes. Above all though, he is a master at conveying the fear and exhilaration of actually climbing. At the beginning of the route you sense the joy of moving well and the thought that Simpson and his climbing partner might actually succeed.

This soon disappears when - halfway up the north face - they are hit by a thunderstorm. During the deluge, Simpson hears a strange, muffled sound: only later does he discover that this was the noise of the two climbers above him falling to their deaths. The couple retreat and perhaps for the first time he feels no sense of failure. He recognises, however, that the mountains will continue to exert their siren call: "There is about the mountain the beckoning silence of great height."

The book awakened an interest in the Eiger and on finishing it I re-read Heinrich Harrer’s The White Spider. A few years later I also enjoyed John Harlin’s The Eiger Obsession, especially the sections about his father, who died while attempting the North Face Direct in 1966. For a taste of the Beckoning Silence see John Crace's digested read.

The Villain: The Life of Don Whillans (2005)

by Jim Perrin

The 'warts and all' biography of Don Whillans, one of Britain's greatest, if most controversial climbers. As Jim Perrin puts it in the introduction "This is a tale of squandered talent, and a life that was to far too great an extent soured by resentment." It was a life though that saw great achievements on rock, and, even if Whillans’s high altitude expeditions often ended in failure, friend and foe acknowledged his brilliance - as well as being a firm hand in dangerous situations.

The Villain is a great book in part because it is a history of British climbing over the past 50 years. But Perrin's meticulous research (not to mention detailed footnotes), knowledge of the subject plus sublime writing ensures that it sets new standards in biography writing.

Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home (2006)

by Nando Parrado

The story of how a team of Uruguayan rugby players survived a plane crash in the remote snowy peaks of the Andes, in October 1972, is well know. Piers Paul Read's Alive is the definitive book about the ordeal but Nando Parrado's first person account more than complements it. Even though I knew what happened and how, of course, the team survived, it was - cliche coming – very hard to put down. The tale made it into Those Who Dared in part because of the cannibalism, but more because of Parrado's amazing climb over an Andean peak to seek rescue.

We Cannot Fail (2007)

by Geoff Powter

Geoff Powter, a practicising clinical psychologist, examines the lives and motivations of 11 would be heroes using previously unpublished evidence. The list includes Robert Falcon Scott, Donald Crowhurst, and John Franklin, as well as lesser known figures.

Powter points out that throughout history, literature has painted its greatest adventure heroes ‘not as invincible heroes, but as flawed souls redeemed by the hardship of their passage’. The troubled can be ‘drawn by the promise of heroics, redemption and acclaim’. Most interesting are the chapters on Aleister Crowley, the occultist and rather good climber, and Maurice Wilson, an Englishman who, in 1934 , died trying to climb Everest on his own.

High Crimes: The Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed (2008)

by Michael Kodas

While Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air shed light on the darker side of the Everest industry, High Crimes is a fully blown expose. In Michael Kodas's view the slopes of the mountain are rife with theft and drug use while base camp is like a lawless wild-west town complete with prostitutes. High up on the mountain incompetent guides ignore dying climbers so eager are they to plant their flags on the summit.

High Crimes is by far the most depressing book I've ever read about mountaineering. I didn‘t particularly enjoy it, but acknowledge that Kodas’s account acts as a counterbalance to many of the triumphalist tomes of the genre.

A Corkscrew is Most Useful: The Travellers of Empire (2009)

by Nicholas Murray

Whether they were going for fame, adventure, religious reasons, or to sample foreign brothels, countless travellers used the British Empire as the reason for exploring the globe. Drawing on their own unique and colourful accounts, Nicholas Murray presents the world as seen through Victorian eyes.

All the big names of the era - Livingstone, Stanley, Burton etc - are included but it's the lesser known figures who make this book such a delight. It also includes a number of female explorers. A highly entertaining read that provided a number of suggestions for Those Who Dared.

I also enjoyed Robert Macfarlane’s Mountains of the Mind and The Wild Places. Finally, Ronald Turnbull’s The Book of the Bivvy, a pocket-sized guide that could possibly stand you in good stead if ever forced to survive in the open. Oh, and, as I’ve mentioned before, The Fall is a fine novel.

Decade of adventure

Despite the fact that even the world's most remote spot has been discovered, there are still plenty of challenges left for the modern day explorer - at least if the past decade is anything to go by. The Noughties: a decade of adventure, in Saturday's Daily Telegraph, lists everything from the first ascent of Ama Dablam's north-west ridge by two young British alpinists, to Jason Lewis who pedalled across the Pacific Ocean. It's a very good list although including Cheryl Cole's climb up Kilimanjaro seems a little strange.

Congo Free State

Travelling back to work after visiting the Hidden Histories exhibition, I spotted a letter in the Guardian drawing attention to the fact that "Today marks 100 years since the Archbishop of Canterbury led the great Congo demonstration that met on the steps of the Royal Albert Hall to call for justice in the Congo Free State."

The Congo Free State was a private colony set up by King Leopold II of Belgium in the Congo basin in the 1880s. For nearly 25 years the country was looted for its natural resources and became notorious for the way the locals were killed or mutilated in a brutal system of slave labour. Meanwhile, Leopold amassed a huge personal fortune.

Apart from the fact that the Royal Geographical Society is just around the corner from the Albert Hall, it is worth mentioning that the exhibition doesn't shy away from the ethics of exploration and Henry Morton Stanley's involvement with the Congo.

Following his success in 'finding' David Livingstone, in 1871, Stanley, the journalist, reinvented himself as an effective explorer discovering and charting central Africa's lakes and making a horrendous journey from east to west Africa. He was then employed by Leopold to help establish the new state and while he may not have been responsible for the horrendous crimes, Stanley's association with it was to leave his reputation severely tarnished.

As an aside, what went on in the country was fictionalised in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, centred on the evil trader Mr Kurtz, although there is debate as to whether or not this was modelled on Stanley.

One of those calling for justice in the Congo was the author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as can be seen in this Manchester Guardian report from November 1 1909.

Hidden Histories of Exploration

The Hidden Histories of Exploration exhibition at the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) highlights the role of 'local' people in many of the great expeditions of the past. As Felix Driver, one of its researchers, has said "There's something about exploration which encourages an emphasis on the lone heroic explorer. We want to change the perspective and look at who the explorers depended on."

For example, naturalists such as Alfred Russel Wallace relied on indigenous collectors to gather materials in the field, the knowledge of native inhabitants was essential when making maps, while almost every kind of expedition relied on local manpower to cart equipment across deserts, up mountains etc. Even David Livingstone, perhaps the most famous of the 'lone travellers', had support while tramping around the jungles of Central Africa.

Exhibits include images of exploration since 1800 such as paintings by Thomas Baines (1820-1875), photographs, and documentary film footage from the 1922 Everest Expedition. The latter, in particular, provides a fascinating glimpse of Tibetan life, as well as shots of the climbers pretending to enjoy their yak butter tea. To make this film though, John Noel, needed eight Sherpas to assist him.

This idea of exploration being more than just the lone European explorer was something I tried to reflect in Those Who Dared. This was easier said than done with most reports usually concentrating on British adventurers. However, I did manage to find a few pieces such as a feature on Nain Singh, the famous pundit, from 1903. Pundits were native surveyors used by the British to map areas in the Himalaya, and particular Tibet, that were out of bounds to Europeans. Often disguised as traders, they would conceal sextants in specially designed secret pockets and hide their results in Tibetan Prayer wheels, which were supposed to contains strips of paper with prayers written on them.

The exhibition runs until December 10 2009. An interview with Felix Driver can be read here.

Jane Bown portrait of Wilfred Thesiger

Last night saw the opening of Exposures: A retrospective of Jane Bown's portraits - an exhibition of 100 pictures by the Observer’s legendary photographer, at London’s Kings Place. Drawing on work from her six-decade career, there are familiar images such as that of a glowering Samuel Beckett or Bjork peeping out from behind her hands, but there are many more that have never been seen before.

Exposures, the book, includes Jane Bown’s recollections of the day the pictures were taken plus there's a Channel 4 film about the exhibition.

One striking portrait, not in the exhibition but which appears in Those Who Dared, is that of the explorer, Wilfred Thesiger. It was taken in 1990, when he was 80 years old.

In the winter of 1946, Thesiger, a British ex-soldier and colonial administrator, became the first westerner to explore in detail the Rub al Khali, or fearsome empty quarter of Arabia, the world’s largest sand desert. Travelling with only a small group of Bedouin and camels and wearing traditional Arab dress, he went there ‘to find peace in the hardship of desert travel ... the harder the way the more worthwhile the journey.’

Thesiger was the self-styled last explorer in the tradition of the past. That is, one of the great traveller-adventurer-writers who from Victorian times to the mid-20th century explored wild and lost areas of the world, often alone, enduring great hardship but delivering powerful works of literature on their return. No travel piece about desert exploration seems complete without making some reference to this towering figure.

Undoubtedly he was one of Britain's greatest explorers and very a fine writer too, but I think Rory Stewart’s comment that “rather than being the last Victorian he was closer to being the first hippy on the overland trail”, gets closer to the truth (from the introduction to the 2007 edition of Arabian Sands.)

The Explorer Gene

Is there really such a thing as the ‘explorer gene’? Michael Robinson takes a wry look at this on his Time to Eat the Dogs blog. It’s a rather complex subject so I’ll let him explain.

However, it reminds me of some of the ideas put forward in JRL Anderson’s book, The Ulysses Factor, published in 1970. Anderson, a Guardian journalist, proposed the theory that in man there is "some form of adaptation, which prompts a few individuals to exploits which, however purposeless they may seem, are of value to the survival of the race."

He explains that all humans have the Ulysses factor to some extent, but in modern times, where there are few frontiers left to explore, the instinct is often strong in flyers, climbers, offshore sailors, and especially solo voyagers. There area number of case studies including Eric Shipton, Bill Tilman, and Sir Francis Chichester. Great cover too.

Anderson joined the Manchester Guardian as military correspondent towards the end of World War Two and for the best part of a quarter of a century held a number of writing and editorial posts. But the job he liked best, and to which he probably appointed himself, was yachting editor, and over the years he was involved with a number or sailing adventures.

North-West Passage

A story in last Saturday's Independent recounted how two sailors navigated the North-West Passage, the fabled sea route along the northern Canadian coast believed to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, in a 17-foot open sailing boat. Until very recently this journey would have been impossible as the way was clogged with thick ice. However, due to global warming, the route is nearly ice-free for the first time since records began.

Early European navigators sailed north into the Arctic during the 16th and 17th centuries in search of the passage. The British parliament offered £20,000 to the first person to complete the passage, in 1744, and over the following years expeditions gradually discovered parts of the Canadian Arctic archipelago as they pursued the prize. John Franklin, a veteran of arctic exploration, set out in 1845 on a well equipped north west passage expedition but when no news was heard from the crew, more than 40 parties were launched in search of them. Eventually is was discovered that the Franklin party had died from scurvy and starvation, along with evidence that the sailors had resorted to cannibalism - a fact reported with glee by the press.

According to polar historian, Beau Riffenburgh, in Myth of the Explorer, this marked the beginning of a sensational style of journalism that promoted and exaggerated exploits. Heroic myths were created to enthrall the general public, while less eventful, but more useful, scientific expeditions of the latter part of the 19th century were ignored.

Those Who Dared

Those Who Dared is a collection of Guardian and Observer journalism covering tales of endurance and derring-do, from the past 200 years.

The Guardian and The Observer have always keenly reported the world of exploration and adventure travel,In the 19th century, they covered the British and European explorers who were trying to fill in the 'blanks on the map' - crossing deserts, racing to the poles, searching for the source of the Nile and trying to be the first to master the peaks of the Alps, and, later, the Himalaya. By the turn of the 20th century, interest turned to Everest, the 'third pole', to the deserts that needed to be conquered, and also to the new ways of exploring that opened up a whole new world of adventure - airships over the North Pole and Citroen driving across the Sahara in the 1920s, to name but two.

Those Who Dared, published by Guardian Books in October 2009, is a collection of the best of these tales of endurance and derring do, covering everything from Gordon Laing's doomed journey to Timbuctoo in 1828; Ernest Shackleton's months on the Antartcic ice; Wilfrid Thesiger's 1940s crossing of the Rub' al Khali to the race to put the first man in space.

Those Who Dared, the blog, will be musings and comments about tales of adventure in the media, plus material that didn't make it into the book.