Grand Adventures. Alastair Humphreys

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СКАЧАТЬ of expedition partner can be a cause of friction. This is usually for one of two reasons.

      1. Your beloved thinks your expedition buddy is a Grade A lunatic who will get you into all sorts of scrapes.

      2. Your partner is jealous of your expedition partner, either because you spend waaaaay too much time chatting to each other about your impending adventure and which multi-fuel stove you should buy, or because your expedition partner is worryingly attractive.

      Do your best to point out that on an expedition people are smelly, don’t change their pants for weeks, and are too tired to want to do anything except sleep when you squeeze into that too-snug tent in an evening after watching the beautiful sunset slip behind the mountains, just the two of you out there, away from the world, nobody within a thousand miles of you… Be aware that whatever you say will be construed as protesting too much. Of course, you can always suggest to your partner that they can solve this particular problem by coming along with you instead!

      Finally, failing that, you’re going to have to split up. You won’t have to endure Pizza Express Couples’ Evenings on Valentine’s Day ever again. You can do all the adventures that you dream of.

      But don’t blame me when you’re out in the wild, freezing cold, deeply uncomfortable, starving, scared, stinking, lonely and you find yourself questioning your dramatic decision…

      WISE WORDS FROM FELLOW ADVENTURERS

      SCOTT PARAZYNSKI

      ASTRONAUT AND MOUNTAINEER

      There are huge personal rewards in exploration, but they aren’t always enjoyed by your family, and certainly they worry for you deeply when you go away to do these kinds of things. So there is a certain selfishness, I suppose, in exploration. But if it’s done for the right reasons, if there’s some social benefit, some educational benefit... I’ve always tried to have some kind of educational outreach with the things that I’ve done. There can be some broader good as well. There’s nothing wrong with having personal satisfaction with your exploration, either. And when we do go and explore, we come back better people as well. We come back reinvigorated, I think. I came back a better parent, more appreciative of the planet, a better steward of planet Earth.

      SATU VÄNSKÄ-WESTGARTH

      WHITEWATER KAYAKER TURNED LONG-DISTANCE CYCLIST

      [When I was pregnant] the yearning for something, a proper adventure of sorts and the need to hold on to some pieces of the old ‘I used to have a life before the kids too’ kept burning. ‘Are you really going to be away from your kids that long?’ It was an inevitable question but one which I wasn’t prepared for when it first came my way. Not so many people wondered how my main worry, the biking, would go. They wondered how I would survive without the kids. Or the kids without me.

      Well, we all survived. I felt more alive than I had for a while, away from the sleep-deprived life of a parent of young kids. I enjoyed being me. Not the mum of so-and-so. Just me. And most mornings I would join my family at the breakfast table at home, virtually, via Skype. ‘Mum goes biking today?’ my little girl would ask. Yes, Mum goes biking. And apparently she was going biking too. To be a good parent or a mum, I don’t have to be with the family 24-7 every day of the year.

      The kids need security, love and an example of how life could be lived. The best example I can give them is the one of the true me, the one who dreams of adventures, and goes after her dreams. The one who comes back excited with stories to tell and then takes the whole family on microadventures.

      JAMES CASTRISSION

      KAYAKED THE TASMAN AND TREKKED TO THE SOUTH POLE AND BACK

      I looked at the managers at work who were five years ahead of me, then the partners who were 10 or 15 years older than me, and I looked at the lives they were living and I thought about what was really important to me. I just couldn’t see myself living like that. Conformity has always freaked me out a little bit, so kayaking the Tasman was a way of identifying who I was and what I was capable of doing – and just seeing a bit of the world.

      Even at the time, it was the hardest decision I’d ever had to make in my life. If I had to decide now, with a young family, I don’t know if I would have had that will.

      I come from a Greek family and my mum and dad had invested so much in my education and had it all planned out for me, really. You go to school, you go to uni, get a good job... To turn my back on that was almost like a bit of a slap in the face for them. Not living up to their expectations, no one understood why I was doing it. That’s what made it so difficult.

      SEAN, INGRID AND KATE TOMLINSON

      FAMILY CYCLING EXPEDITION FROM ARCTIC CANADA TO PATAGONIA

      Sean, our daughter Kate and I cycled from Arctic Canada to the southern tip of Chile on a single bike and a tandem pulling two trailers. We were always inspired by the idea of making a very long journey. We wanted arriving somewhere new and unknown to us every evening to become part of our daily lifestyle. We feared that if we left it a few more years Kate would not want to miss out on school and her social life. This has turned out to be one thing that we were dead right about. We are lucky to get her to ourselves for one day every other weekend now and I’m glad we made the most of her pre-teen years!’

      © Alastair Humphreys

      Kate offered this perspective on their adventure: ‘My parents took me away because they are crazy. They have been taking me off on adventures for as long as I can remember, although this was the longest.

      ‘Some of the toughest parts were also the best. The places where we had the hardest times are the moments we look back on with the fondest memories’

      If I hadn’t wanted to do it, though, it wouldn’t have happened. I always get a say in the plans. I love looking back on the trip and I often think about it. It was just a way of life for two years. Some of the toughest parts of the trip were also the best parts. Like the places where we had the hardest times or felt scared are the moments we look back on with the fondest memories. I think the trip had a positive effect on my work. My Mum did schoolwork with me for about an hour every day and I had her all to myself. My Dad practised times tables with me on the bike and then asked me questions like how long it would take to get to somewhere depending on how fast we were going. As for subjects like geography and history, well, we didn’t need books because the real thing was right there in front of me. My advice to other parents if you want to travel with kids is try to do it when they are fairly young. I am 13 now and the idea of going away and leaving my friends for two years sounds much harder than back then. I think [the idea that children are not tough enough for a big adventure] is rubbish: I can tell you I was a lot tougher than my Mum and Dad!

      CHRIS HERWIG

      TRAVELLER AND PHOTOGRAPHER

      With the arrival of our second child came the opportunity to take leave. A time for caring for our new bundle of joy, feeding him, changing his diapers and rocking him to sleep. But nowhere was it written that this could not also be a time for a bit of adventure. So we sublet our New York apartment and the four of us hit the vagabond road for a sixmonth, eleven-country round-the-world trip.

      Over the six months our eleven pieces of luggage slimmed down to a large backpack and a carry-on as we slowly explored the wonders of Vietnam, Cambodia, Burma and New Zealand by train, boat, car, tuk-tuk, foot, bike, elephant and horse. We learned a great deal trying to overcome СКАЧАТЬ