Oli Broadhead

[00:00:00] Oli Broadhead: Hello, and welcome to the modern adventurer podcast. Coming up as a Verna Hertzog, the Austrian filmmaker. There’s a quote by him. I quite like, which is tourism is said traveling on foot to his virtue and what he sort of means by that, or what I’ve taken to me by that is can be like voyeuristic. And what I mean is you could, you are not actually engaged.

You’re just looking at it’s like you go to a zoo. There’s no vulnerability on your part. You’re not actually immersed in that situation. Whereas if you do some of that cycle of walk through a landscape anyone can stop. You ask what you’re doing, ask where you’re going have a conversation with you.

It’s not like you’re, you know, you’re not in any way separate and the most extreme form of that is obviously walking. So I was really interested in, in walking because at a walking pace, you will have to engage with people

[00:01:00] on today’s show. We have Ali Broadhead and Explorer with an absolutely incredible story to tell from cycling up Norway to the Arctic circle, walking across India is covered a wide range of activities missions. And on today’s podcast, we are talking about some of those we’re getting into detail about his fascinating trip in Sumatra and some of the amazing wildlife he discovered out there.

So I am delighted to introduce Molly Broadhead to the show, to some believable, some of the trips you’ve done. And I was really fascinated to sort of get down to sort of details about how you sort of started and some of your trips, especially in India. We had Iris who, you know, very well on quite a few weeks back, and she was talking about the story of Sumatra, which I’m [00:02:00] sure you have other stories as well to tell, but before we jump into that let’s find out a bit more about you and how you got into all these sort of events.

I grew up in rural Como. So. It’s always been, you know, nature on my doorstep. I’ve been extremely lucky with that and the sea as well, actually. So I’ve always really, as far back as I can remember, I’ve been certainly free diving and sea kayaking. And then other things like, you know, climbing or that came later.

And I think, you know, initially, like I think a huge number of people in the UK, I wanted to be David Attenborough when I was about, you know, sex. So I was always off foraging for bugs foraging for frogs, all that sort of stuff. But I think one of the, are the things that definitely, I would say that age you could possibly already noticed.

I was really [00:03:00] obsessed with, with sort of the, the longer the long, the longer adventure, the more immersive sort of thing. So, you know what I mean by that is I would much rather. Rough I’d much rather stay out overnight. Even when I was that old. I remember when I was like eight years old for my, I think it was my eighth birthday actually.

And like my birthday wish was that I could go camping by myself because, because I read somewhere that like the legal age of being able to camp alone was like 14. I remember my dad just being like, you know, well, go on there, you like that night out and the word, and I think it’s been the same way that with almost everything with, I haven’t been content to you know, to do a sport, like to go kayaking or to go you know, even, even to like go and free dive with seals or something, I would so much rather spend a day on an Island or camp overnight or, you know, stay out longer.

And that was something I [00:04:00] was always doing. I was always trying to do like multi-day little tracks down streams, even when I was about 11 or 12, I think that’s been really consistent. And then I think we all want to data. It’s sad. I’m just realizing it’s a bit unrealistic, but you will start aiming high don’t you?

And then I, you know, and then that just sort of evolved. I think the first thing I did was when I was, well, I mean, I traveled quite a bit. I I’d always traveled. Luckily again, my, my parents worked abroad and we traveled a bit with that. I’ve traveled quite a lot with them actually growing up. So it was never like that being an issue, it was, but as a first year university was not my first proper adventure, I guess.

Which was, I, I basically have no money as first year student you don’t. And I was just trying to think of something I could do for a factory, no [00:05:00] money and with no planning. Cause I was sort of coming up with this idea whilst my exams were coming up and I decided to I had a mate in Norway mate. He lived in Oslo.

He said, he’d lend me a bike. I decided to cycle to the Arctic circle because you just have to wait North, it’s very simple navigation. You take a compass, you don’t need a map. And, and that was about it in the evening. Yeah. I mean, as, as bad as it is for the environment. I do think about that a lot more that, you know, you can, you could get a flight to Oslo for, I don’t know, like 20 quid or something.

So even in, even in Norway and then, yeah, obviously Norway is a very expensive country. So I had this slightly bonkers diet. Cause I think I budgeted about five pounds a day for a month cycling. And what I could get for that, Norway was two bananas, half a loaf of bread and half a bar of chocolate a day.

So I lost about 10 or 12 kilograms over that, that month long period. And as many muscles as I could find, luckily I was, I [00:06:00] stopped at the coast. There’s this gorgeous coast road that goes all the way up from Bergen in the South, which is older. Fjords and mountains are, and then it goes all out the uptick and you can sort of follow it follow it along through all these sort of coastal pine forests.

And it says it’s a small road. It says nice, nice that like single single lane road. And so yeah, as much as many shellfish as I could forage, and I had like this one tube of tomato paste I’d got from LeDuc before I left. So I was sort of squirting that on to, you know, very sparingly. I think I made it last about three weeks.

And yeah, I mean, I managed it, so that was a, it was a huge confidence boost. Not without, not without some wobbles along the way, because it, it w it was June. I think I actually cycled through the summer solstice. But being Norway, it rained all but two days. And I mean, freezing rain and, you know, minus five degrees at night, so it was properly grim.

And I had a few in, what was, it was certainly the longest it’d been, there’s the thing you don’t think about? Obviously I was so low for that and I sort of suddenly realized I’ve like a [00:07:00] week of sort of basically not speaking to anyone. That this was definitely by far the longest I’d ever gone without sort of communicating with a human, you know, cause I was, I was, you know, occasionally past it’s quite rural.

So you maybe passing lots of people live in cities, in Norway. So actually when you get to the countryside, there’s sort of people, summer houses, potentially, you know, little fishing lodges and stuff, but they’re quite often deserted. So I did start to go a bit mad. I remember at one point sort of really quite seriously believing I was being chased by trolls sort of like I could sort of feel shadows moving outside of my tent.

And I was being really quite panicky when I was, when I was having my back to anything like collecting water when you’ve got to late to do that proper, I guess it’s proper animal instinct. Isn’t it. As you know, you’re, you’re, head’s bent, you’re looking at the stream. It’s the perfect time when something gets you from behind if you’re at, at all, because they’ll or something.

So yeah, I mean I had had a few little well, it was, but I mean, I made it and it was actually amazing. [00:08:00] It was possibly the. Possibly still one of the best days of my life was for all the right reasons. It was arriving in the Arctic because we had like absolute howling, wind and rain and naughtiness coming on shore right on the coast.

I think co the road was three meters from the sea. So you have waves splashing up, absolutely drenched freezing. And then as soon as I got actually the optic about 10, that evening sky just opened completely clear, beautiful sunset. And obviously the midnight sun and I had the midnight sun and the Arctic flight, the three days I was there kind of a few mountains.

It was absolutely. And I was camped just on the edge of the Fjord that just dropped completely crystal clear water. So going down like. 15 or so meters, you can see straight down and then this ledge, and then this drop into the absolute abyss. And you have these Cod fish coming up, coming up from the depths and sort of going on this ledge and this ledger, which just [00:09:00] littered with starfish and sea urchins, but huge.

They’ve got staffers, the size of car tires. There is amazing colors like purple and orange and sort of plunging into that and then getting out and seriously regretting it. So. Bloody cold, but it was, no, that was a, it was definitely a, this that sort of enforced. It was probably the right decision and I did huge enjoy it which is obviously sort of why I started paying more ambitious things after that.

But that was definitely the thing that got me started. Well, you much of a cyclist before you did that. Oh, goodness. Yeah. I, you have said I should have led with that. So I pretty much, I mean, I live in Haley Laney, Cornwall and cycling is a bit sketchy around here at the best of times we’ve got the head is outside.

My house are about this high of the double-decker bus. So it’s very much a blind prayer if you’re, if you’re taking a corner on a bike. So I pretty much never cycled. You know, all my mates can attest to that, that I’m actually a laughingstock on a bike and yeah, [00:10:00] and I have no real fitness for cycling the cycling, certainly when I, when I set off.

So I don’t, I just sort of made it work the first day. I was like, okay, I’ll get a hundred K done. On a day to day of 110 K and then the next day I couldn’t walk pretty much. I was just hobbling along and the doctor did about 10 K. It was, it was really not. I just remember thinking you know, bloody hell if I was going to get a loan to cycle across the country, I should have, I should have chosen the Netherlands.

You know, I should’ve chosen a black country first few weeks of just mountains anyway. Yeah. I mean, I survived it, so obviously learnt a bit, forgot it all immediately after Silicon Valley, I think it was day three, where, when I was doing across America and day three was the killer and you just sort of walk into supermarkets and your legs would feel like jelly.

Like you are about to keel over, even though you like, your mind was very normal and your body was your legs were just like, would just give away. And then it, it sort of took about what a week or [00:11:00] two before it sort of caught up with it because you’re doing it every day. I imagine. Yeah. Yeah, no, I think, yeah, a couple of weeks we’ll get you into anything.

I think it’s amazing. It’s amazing what your body can adapt to fairly quickly, as long as you don’t get too injured. Yeah, no, I finished fairly injury for free. I mean, I’m intrigued to imagine what these trolls that were chasing you alive. No, I don’t mind quite they’re like bears covered in Moss. I think.

Definitely. I mean, there was, there was seriously, it was at one point where I was setting up my tent and a tree. Collapsed behind me or a big branch came off a tree and I pretty much jumped out of my skin. I was so certain it was this, I don’t know if you’ve seen the film troll Hunter, but it’s a brilliant, brilliant Norwegian film.

And I think I’d, I’d watched that a bit too recently, but it is it’s the whole theme is that trolls are real and the Norwegian government’s been covering them up and they occasionally come out and eat [00:12:00] people.

Blair witch project style is very funny. Very funny. Like watching hostel before you go backpacking. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. There’s certain things you just shouldn’t do. Yeah. Yeah. Why mess with your mind? Why mess with it? Yeah. Makes for a more exciting trip. So after that you are absolutely hooked and I suppose you went back to uni and you were pretty much planning the next one.

Yes, I was. I, I was, I think the, what I found was. I mean, I, that sounds great. I really, really like people are more interested in PR their sun city, like more interested in people than nature, but there’s, there’s that crossover you know, like Norway, you are staring at a mountain in the distance for a whole day and it’s the same mountain.

It’s a big one. I mean, is it’s a big landscape. It’s big, wide opens being a big knot on a human scale at all. And you’re [00:13:00] obviously spending a lot of time just thinking on a bike, 14 kilometers uphill. There’s a lot of type of thing. And so I was really interested to go somewhere where there are more people and I was really interested.

I really I, as a Verna Hertz or the Austrian filmmaker, it was a quote by him. I quite like, which is tourism is and traveling on foot is virtue. And what he sort of means by that. Or what I’ve taken to me by that is quite often, tourism can be like voyeuristic. And what I mean is you can, you are not actually engaged.

You’re just looking at it’s like you go to a zoo there’s no vulnerability on your part. You’re not actually immersed in that situation. Whereas if you do something that cycle of walk through a landscape anyone can stop. You ask what you’re doing, ask where you’re going, have a conversation with you.

It’s not like you’re, you know, you’re not in any way separate. And the most extreme form of that is obviously walking. So I was really interested in, in walking [00:14:00] because at a walking pace, you will have to engage with people and you are forced to slow down. You, you won’t miss stuff in the same way. It’s, you know, if you.

You know, you could go out and look at a head DRO and you could cycle down that lane and see nothing. Or you could walk and be observant and see a thousand things. So I was really interested to do a long walk and India was a country I’ve been to with my parents before, and I know I absolutely loved it.

It was absolute madness. It’s a bonkers and quite wonderful country. And so I was looking for something that I could do and I had the time constraint All my time constraints at the time were, what could I do in the summer holiday from uni? So three months. So how far could I walk in three months?

And I thought I could probably walk the length of the co-vary and the Kaveri is one of the seven Holy rivers in India. It’s the Southern most of the great sacred rivers of India. And what’s cool about it is it cuts basically the [00:15:00] whole it’s a bit weird. It cuts the whole way across the country. It starts on the, on the West coast, about 20 kilometers, very close to the West coast, maybe 40.

And instead of just logically flowing to the West coast, it goes, Oh no, I’m going the other way. And it goes all the way, hundreds and hundreds kilometers all the way across the East coast. So if you start on the East coast, you can follow all the open source and you basically do the whole country following a river.

And I think you can see a theme here, which is, I really don’t like navigating or at the time. I certainly didn’t. So it was very simple. Again, take a compass start and go, go West, and then look, you’ll get where you need to go eventually. So it was, yeah, it was the same sort of thing in terms of the simple navigation and the, and the time has just worked.

So that was, that was, became my next project. And I assume what was it? So you sort of planning that project. What was the route from India? Okay. So in terms of the States, so it’s the most Southern States, so you’ve got on the East coast, you’re going to try [00:16:00] and get this right. In the East case, you’ve got Tamilnadu middle, you’ve got Kinetica and in Carola the slightly bonkers thing is about.

Indian States, you know, you can’t think UK County is think much more American States. I mean, I think Tamilnadu alone has a population higher than the whole of the UK is like 75 million people. So they’re fast and they have, they have their own languages as well. So each of those Tom loudly, they speak Tamar can ask how they speak Canada I’m going to be ready down and I’ve completely forgotten what they’re speaking keratosis.

You’re, you’re going through three, almost like three countries in terms of, in terms of the language, but also in terms of the culture that has history historically, they would have been independent. So it’s, it’s an amazing journey in terms of the diversity of it. And also in terms of the geography. So Tamil Nadu, when we were, there was at the end of a horrendous drought or four year drought.

And, and actually that drought ended just after we finished, but not in a good way to have some of like the worst flooding in a hundred years. And it was bonkers actually, were [00:17:00] we stayed with some students after we had finished this walk. And that whole like house was flooded out rats and snakes and the kitchen, all this kind of stuff really bad just after we left.

But when we started, it was boiling hot. I mean, like over 40 degrees in the day, everything was about beer desert, you know, walking through crop fields that were just dust, proper grim dust bowl for weeks, weeks and weeks not a single cloud in the sky. And I got, I got actually, that was very stupid.

I mean, things to be aware of when you go to a country that you just never think of in the UK, Oh, heat stroke. And I got sick once and then heat stroke, proper heat stroke, where I was really. Bad. I probably, so I was actually, I was with a guy and there’s a, there’s an interesting story that shows how I, well, not interesting story, but there’s a story of how I ended up going with someone.

I was going to do it so low. And then about a [00:18:00] month before I was going to actually set off, I freaked out and I thought, you know, this is a bloody long way to go. So though this isn’t quite Norway maybe I should go with someone and I sort of advertised on Facebook seems then I want to go walk across India.

It’ll cost about this much. Again, it was insanely cheap. I think the whole thing costs under 700 quid or something. And we, and I got a lot, I got loads of responses, but it was mainly from people way older and more experienced than myself. And at the time I didn’t really want to hand over, you know, who’s in charge.

Cause it was my, it was my thing that I wanted to do. And I didn’t want to go with someone. Who’d be saying we’re going here and going there. And there was a guy in the year below at uni I’d never met also studying biology. He said, yeah. Okay. And we met once, I think before we actually met at the airport.

So it was a bit bonkers and he was putting a lot more trust in me than I was bringing him because I’d been to India before and he’d never left. Then you might not have left the UK and he’d certainly never traveled alone. And at this point I had, even [00:19:00] aside from the fact I’d only done one sort of expedition thing before I, I traveled quite a lot within Europe, by myself and, and actually kind of all over the world a little bit.

So I w I was much more experienced in that sense than him. So very brave on his part, sort of throw his lot in a bit bonkers. Anyway, he ended up pretty much saving my life and week two or three, cause we ran out of water. In the middle of the day, I basically fainted and was waking up being sick completely.

But actually feeling very drunk, you know, completely had lost the ability to help myself as I was at that sort of stage of heat sickness and he walked several kilometers on, got to the next village and then managed to get water, come back to me, basically pour a load of water on me. And it dragged me into the shade, keep that going until it got dark.

And then we walked together to the next village. And I basically was just gone for like two days completely collapsed. So that was, that was lucky. I had, luckily I had some [00:20:00] with me and I have, I have learned and it’s it’s it’s something I always tell people when they, when they’re going to, if people are asking for advice about, about.

Anything that’s in a hot country. It’s just so easy to happen. It sneaks up on you. It really does. The same with hypothermia. It’s those things that you’d do in a temporary environment like the UK, you’re just not prepared for other things. You don’t even think about those. You know, there’s the really dangerous things is you’re factoring all, you know, they’ll just going to be snake bites or something potentially.

So we’ll take backs or what happens. In fact, we’ll take a radio, but what happens if it’s the stuff you don’t think about that you that’s really dangerous? And that was something I’ve never considered even an issue before I set out, which is very stupid of me anyway. Yeah. Not rambling on that. No, that’s quite, that’s quite the sort of story.

I, I think when you pick a partner, we had him Finch on last week and he was saying. That you’ve got to have the right goals. When you go on a sort of expedition like that, you both have to [00:21:00] have goals either whether it’s, and you’ve got to know what each other wants to achieve out of it, otherwise you could be staring down very different paths.

Would you agree with that? Yeah, I would. I would. Absolutely. And I think it works. I can’t remember I was reading this, but, but the, if you, if you absolutely nail your roles and then you’ve got to, I also think be very careful of not stepping across that boundary. There’s almost like an artificial politeness that comes into play on expeditions more so than in real life wherein, wherein you know, if someone’s the photographer and someone’s ex the writer perhaps.

And the right says, Oh, there’s a cool thing over there. I’ll, I’ll take, you know, I’ll just grab his camera. He’s not using Alto. And this is not something that’s ever happened to me, but it’s something you start to notice the edges of. And when you start stepping into other people’s prescribed areas, it just creates [00:22:00] stress.

So you’ve got to be really careful there. Not only do you have. This is what you do. This is what I do, you know, you navigate and I don’t question your navigation because I’m not the navigator. Or, you know, and if there’s a mistake it’s on you. So there’s a flip side to that, you know? And of course, same with any, with any role.

But you do really have to lay down responsibility because that’s what that’s, one of the really interesting is about, it’s just the do teach responsibility, you know, especially so that, especially everything is on you, but you’ve got to maintain those responsibilities, that level of responsibility into other institutions.

You don’t, you don’t give someone like a, a role for the sake of giving them a role that you’re not really going to trust them with. You’ve got to say, no, this is what you’re doing. If you’re the team leader or you’re dividing up before, because you don’t necessarily need to have a team leader, but you’re really stretched on this is your role.

This is my role. If they ask, if they say, Oh, I’m busy photographing this quickly. Take a video of that. That’s fine. But it’s when it’s don’t you gotta be really careful and proportioning that I don’t know if I quite [00:23:00] raise that. Right. But stuff that’s worked really well is, is my partner ERs, you know, she’s, she’s a much more serious scientist than I am.

And so she would always be, you know, absolutely science lead and I would always be photography and pretty much everything else. So, you know, in terms of camping, all that kind of set up food, that sort of stuff, the logistical, and that say also the, probably the media side, writing and photography. So of course I’m very happy for her to help on any of that.

And she’s very happy to help, but like, you’ve got those very clear delineations and it makes it much easier. But I think the other thing is it has a picking because I’ve been asked before, like, do I prefer like solo versus team stuff? I said, the problem with solo is. You can really push yourself at home or in familiar terrain.

Let’s say, if you’re experienced, not near, you can really push yourself, cider or experience talk or whatever. But when you’re in a new [00:24:00] environment, it doesn’t matter how good you are. You know, stuff goes wrong. If you don’t know the terrain. And so it’s, you know, the biggest safety. Aspect you can have as a partner, you know, way better than radio or tracking beacon or the best med kit in the world is having a partner.

So allows you to push yourself. So I’m really in favor of at least having one other person, preferably to, you know, on a team I’m I’m much, but teams. And I always think if you find the right person. You get someone who pushes you into the areas you’re uncomfortable, but they’re comfortable and you push them in the same way.

So perhaps, you know, okay. The most silly version of that would be, someone’s a bit scared of Heights and someone’s a bit scared of the dark, you know, so someone’s saying, okay, we’re going to walk through the night and someone saying, Oh, I’m going to go, you know, we’re going to climb this bell or whatever.

And that was it. You know, that’s completely flipping made up example, but I think you get what I mean and that, you know, if someone say, no, we’re going to, you know, we’ve got to really push to get this, this particular biological objective, this particular absolutely making sure you nail the let’s say the data collection and someone is absolutely making sure you nail the [00:25:00] safety and the, you know, the logistical side of it.

And, you know, you’re both absolutely on it and pushing it further than it would have been gone. It would have gone if you had been individual. So it’s really, really important that sort of complimentary nurse, you don’t necessarily want to pick someone who’s exactly the same as you. Yeah, no, I, I agree.

I’ve, I’ve done a few trips with other people and as I said, we’ve sort of covered. It’s so important to have those roles and on the trips, luckily, you know, they’re amazing at logistics. Usually when I go on my own, I’m just free. Well, it’s just, you know, no map just cycle and see where it takes you or walk or run and, you know, just look on Google and go okay.

Down there. But when it’s, you know, when ambles visas and logistical and how with this, you know, that’s them and they were pro and it sort of seemed to work really, really well. And of course you have that sometimes you have those little frictions here and there, but because you have your [00:26:00] certain roles, as you said it, you can sort of manage it.

So do you think when you did your trip in Sumatra with eras. So you sort of talking about sort of logistical nightmares, you had quite a tricky time in Sumatra, is that right? Yeah. Sumatra is so much as interesting and it’s got by the way, heads up, you know, Indonesia, as of 2019 has made it a hell of a lot harder to do anything that they bought in very strict rules around visas.

And if you breach them, you know, if they think your nudging across from being a, let’s say a tourist to being a journalist, then you can end up with genuinely as in president and then not messing around with it. Like the Indonesian government’s pretty hardcore. It’s getting well, it’s so much regressing now, but hardcore is a bit of an understatement and they.

Yeah, you can really follow the Taliban and BBC journalists and [00:27:00] Matt geo people that have fallen. You know, you don’t have the pay for this specific area you’re going to present. I think there are, there are still BBC linked to journalists in prison and in Indonesia. So it’s, it’s really something to be careful of and it’s become a lot more potentially dangerous since we were there.

When we were there, it wasn’t even a particularly danger, but yeah, so we, we were looking at trying to we’ll do a biodiversity survey and smart show, and we’ve gotten in contact, your friend of a friend of a friend, someone who’d done, someone had gotten that geo grants go and cover. Some of the restoration work off 2004 tsunami.

So they knew a lot of people at the university out in , which is effectively think about in terms of both independence, past history or that how sort of the Scotland of Sumatra and SmartShip on the Indonesian islands. And actually just for a bit of quick context, Sumatra and all of the Indonesian islands are, were not historically United.

They the [00:28:00] Dutch owned them. When the Dutch left in the sixties, I think it was maybe 1960, actually Java effectively seized control. And that doesn’t sit well with a lot of the outlying islands, particularly the ones like Sumatra, which were historically very rich independent and you know, potentially different religions and all this kind of stuff.

So it it’s almost, almost can be seen as a, an empire. I to buy Java up to up to a point. And it’s that’s a bit, a bit of a wrong statement. It depends kind of which Island you’re on, but Sumatra has got a bit of a independent streak. And RJ in particular had been fighting a sort of ongoing civil war about 30 years, which had ended basically with, and because of the tsunami the thousand percent army hit closest point of land was RJ.

And it absolutely devastated the coaster. And so hundreds hubs, I think a hundred thousand people almost died in RJ [00:29:00] alone. So they had to accept really factors, which meant they had to affect down the civil war. So good thing or bad thing, depending on who you ask. So it was, it was interesting time to go.

That sort of terrorism had been fairly ongoing up until sort of late 2010 sort of time. So we were going 2016, so sort of been quiet for about five or six years. But so we eventually found someone we’ve got good contacts. We’ve got contacts with university professors out in RJ. And there was some fascinating stuff.

So amazing rainforest. And it’s also some of the fastest deforested in the world. You can look at a map of smarter. So for the last 20 years, I literally made from 2000 to 2020 and it’s like, someone’s gotten a razor and just rubbed out the rainforest, gave out the country a country, the size of the UK, you know, just go from 90% forest, about 10% forest.

So it’s really quite upsetting, especially as they have some of the most amazing megafauna. It’s one of the only country. I think it is the only country in the world where you’ve got, you’ve got a great day. You’ve got the Wrangler time. You’ve got [00:30:00] elephants, you’ve got rhinoceroses. You’ve got tigers, you know, they’ve got Gibbons as well.

So you’ve got all these amazing species living in the same ecosystem. And so we eventually got a hold of the, this guy and he was suggesting we go to this, this Valley, the 40 kilometers long in the middle of very inaccessible forest cordoned off on each side by like, I think 4,000 meter mountains.

So 3000 meter mountain, so very inaccessible to get in. And then the sporty comes along Valley. And I was actually saying earlier that we were w. That we were very naive initially and the timing of how long this would take. Cause I was, you know, last thing I’d done was walking into when you could quite easily do 40 kilometers in a day.

So I was thinking, you know, what’s this two days walk and so, Oh, you need more like a month and actually turned out that when we did go to actually a separate place at Peyton Marsha, our record was basically walking Dawn until well into the night. So I dunno what 14, 15 hours on our feet and covering up 2.5 kilometers as the Crow flies because you know, it’s mountain [00:31:00] forests.

So it’s like, it’s like this steep, but, but you’re practically climbing. You’re climbing through something that’s. Pretty, you know, let’s say Bramble hedge is probably the closest thing you get in the UK. It’s a stuff called rattan is what you make or that sort of quite furniture out of, but in the wild it’s covered in spikes about this long, it just weaves through itself and it loves mud.

So if there’s rat on rattan thicket, that tends to be a lot of, a lot of mud as well. So, and spikes and steep slopes a good fun. And anyway, so we, we were like, okay, well, we’ll try and do this. And we tried to get permits. We emailed absolutely everyone, you know, every forest department and wildlife, you know, station that was to, to, to try and get into this place.

And eventually we had to fly out without permits and we ended up we were in contact with a few people. So we were sort of, we were going to meet people weren’t going in completely blind and. After about five, six days we met the, we met when we landed, we met [00:32:00] a couple of guys got in touch with who are very cool.

They’re a couple of smarter mountaineers called sight and Roy, and to get there trying to make a hundred first sentence mantra, which I think gives you an idea of the number of first descents there has to be made in smarter and that serious mountains, the 3000 plus meter mountains. And I think they’re made over at 14 or 15 first ascents between them and already, and they were really keen to help us.

And so we, and they were Indonesian. They were actually news actually. And they were really helpful in trying to get the permits and we, you know, going to the police and all this kind of stuff. And eventually we just got completely shut down. It was just red tape after red tape, you know, we’d been told you had to take police officer with you and you had to take X number of government officials with you and all this.

And it was, you know, with all of the weather in the world, you don’t want to take people who don’t want to be there. And don’t like you into a dangerous environment on a potentially dangerous expedition. So we ended up saying absolutely not. And we sort of found out later that potentially that forest had been logs that Bobby had been logged, [00:33:00] which is a shame because the reason we were really interested in going there, when I say a shame, I mean, a tragedy because the reason we’ve been in certain going there, the business guy had suggested he was an Orangutang expert.

And in 2017, the same professor was actually international in finding, identifying a new popular species of rank tanks. So Smartsheet previously was thought to be home to the Smartsheet Orangutang, which critically endangered species. And it turned out with a population of about a hundred of those once Motrin, orangutans, and tall, they were a different species.

They’ve been isolated. I think after the last ice age were, were complete different species and they were the newest, they are the newest eight species and also the most endangered species today. Great, great tape. And they were potentially in that Valley and their bodies potentially have been.

Completely logged. So we had to fairly quickly, you know, within days come up with a new objective. And luckily, because we linked up with these two mountaineers, Roy and Sayeed, they had an objective in mind, which was this unclimbed mountain Mark, correct, 3050 meters up [00:34:00] in the middle of Akshay. But what’s so interesting about that is it’s actually in the middle of some vast area of intact forest, you know, unimaginable when you grow up in the UK hundreds of square kilometers and.

That’s completely intact and it’s intact because it’s in mountains. So the forest starts at about 1,600 meters, but if are proper, proper and type forest is about 2000 meters plus, but luckily it’s sort of not a plateau, but it’s mountain from 2000 meters to 3000 meters. So just undulating cross, but covenant coming for us.

And it’s the reason it’s being protected. It’s just impossible to get logging machinery, and it would be useless to growing Palm oil, all that sort of stuff. So it’s hard to get that with, with the aim that we couldn’t find any research in this area previously. And that’s another amazing thing about Sinatra.

It’s very underfunded for conservation. So there are large and it’s biased. So you’ve got vast, you got not much money, vast areas, and that the funding that will tends to go to to small points, you know, to pockets known, to be [00:35:00] Barnabas, to, to let’s say to reserves that already exist. So there’s a lot of area that.

It’s almost certainly bursting with life, but that’s just not the money spent to go and conduct research in those places. So we were very lucky to be the first people going to collect by the best survey of any sort within this forest. And, you know, Mount Kurt being inclined also meant that it was not researched either.

And that was that. And we eventually got permits to go there and it was much easier to get permits though, because it’s not protected, which at the same point was quite worrying. They’re really unsure what we’re going to find. And actually on the first day hiking out with first people, we met were hunters.

Who’d been, who’d been shooting in the forest and of course, some beautiful birds who I’m not criticizing at all, because I think that’s very important to draw lines between people who were hunters and people who are poachers. And they were definitely hunters, you know, just coming from the village, just, you know, a relationship with the forest rather than extractive or destruction forest.

And and like I said, that was brutal hiking just to get to Mount Kirk was like two weeks of some of the worst. [00:36:00] Well, not the worst, the most brutal hiking you’ve ever done. And I think the. The thing you don’t think about when you think of a beautiful forest is you don’t see the forest, you see the trees, you see, you see several meters in front of you of Moss and rotting, tree, trunk, and all this kind of stuff that you don’t do.

You don’t quite picture it. And it was pretty much after, you know, after the first week, I think we got into a Ridge where we could see across the forest. I took some photos there, which I suppose is always use for any speech, but you’ve got rolling forest going into the distance, but it wasn’t like that at all.

I mean, most of the time he’s almost crawling on hands and knees. And then of course, when we got to Kirk and tried to climb correctly, had I hadn’t had some beautiful views as well. But the maps, we have awful like properly, you know, they were taken from a plane mapping so completely wrong the scale for walking on foot.

And we got to the base of curric about 2,500 meters expecting original line that would be followed bubble. And actually what we had is a series of plaques about 19 [00:37:00] music clefts. Another ledge cliff. And when I say cliff, I mean like Charles and Moss and roots coming out, you know, pulling off your hands, no way you could attempt it without some fairly serious planning and serious cat.

And there’s no, not like there’s any rescue option there. So it was something backed off with, but we actually climbed a mountain Lamu, which is in the same Massif. It’s just next door. Almost same height. And we were the S well, the second team up, we, we, when we got to the top, we were, we found this little concrete pillar about this big, you know, one bag of concrete.

And a Dutch team had been there in 19 off the top of my head. I might be wrong, 1936. It was 1930s. And they’d all written the names under there and smashed a beer bottle. And you just, you know, completely bonkers. Cause we didn’t even know that this is up there and how these guys had done it. They, they, we think they must have been part of some sort of survey survey team.

You know, [00:38:00] The last people standing on that, man, it was always more interesting than I think actually it was more interesting than being on non climb on, I’m not a big unclimbed mountain guy, so to suddenly go up there and just think, you know, the last people standing here, it was almost a hundred years ago and they were in an era completely, you know in colonial Indonesia, Dutch forced, you know, I don’t think they particularly enjoyed hiking all the way out here.

The Dutch invasion was, was fought back against Bruce. Usually, you know, the action needs gay pretty good. I think that the famous story is the first day the the I think the commander of the entire invasion force was shot by an attorney sniper. So it was not you know, it was a proper war zone.

It was not just a walk-in and stick a flag kind of image of climbers. And because the, the, the, the actual needs of being backed by the British. So it’d be, they had guns. And so, yeah, I mean, it was a proper, you know, free fall back in time, moment. It’s amazing. And when you looked out, we could see, you know, to the horizon unbroken [00:39:00] forest, which I hope is something I will see again, it’s the only time in my life I’ve ever seen it.

Yeah, just like looking at a sea, a forest and as human givens, about a thousand meters below calling up up the side of this forested mountain, it was like, yeah, absolutely. Or inspiring. And from there we walked to the coast and, and the whole way we were doing a biodiversity survey, which actually was.

Got some amazing results. It was incredibly bio-diverse area. We found critically endangered smarter, and orangutan is a very dangerous species of Gibbon called a CMA. It’s one. That is the biggest Gibbon. It’s a huge black, beautiful animal. And as well as some small cat species as well, and a load of birds about 80 something, birds species.

And for context, we were actually in that area focused surveyor for about three days. So, you know, 80, 80 plus bird species in three days, isn’t bad going. So absolutely absolutely mind blowing. Well, wouldn’t absolutely adventure really just had everything, everything to it. [00:40:00] Yeah, I think that’s, that’s the thing I’ve been, always trying to do and still trying to do, which is, you know, you gain experience slowly.

I couldn’t have jumped in with that. So it was, you know, each, each expedition leads to the next one and the skills come across. You can’t say from day one, I’m going to do an ex, an ambitious physical expedition. With a scientific objective because the scientific objective adds so much to the, you know, stopping every hour, taking off your pack, conducting a survey.

I know it sounds good to take a few pack, but to take back, get everything out, not rest, suddenly engage the mind suddenly be like, okay, we’ve got to be not making any mistakes now, who that write it all down, check. It’s all waterproof, packed away, properly, repack the bag, put the bag, you know, those interruptions, you can’t just get into a plot.

You can’t just get into the zone and outpace because you’ve got to be in and the whole way, you know, you’re anything opportunity. It’s not just the surveys you’re taking your fixed intervals. You’re also. Of course, keeping your eye open for anything, you know, that that [00:41:00] could feed into your biodiversity data.

So you’ve got to be on it the whole time and it completely massive to you. And even someone like like , who’s now, you know, done some very, very serious scientific objective exhibitions and really quite impressive field work. She started by cycling across Olivia and that had no science to it at all, but it definitely, you know, you can see that progress that you’ve got to know.

You can handle the physical side of it, the sleep deprivation side of it, the food and logistical side of it. Before you then add in something more complicated on top of it, like a scientific or a journalistic potentially potentially, or, or you dial back on the physical side of it and reading up on things.

But it’s, they all, they all tie in really nicely. I don’t think there’s, I don’t even object to to pure adventure because it does absolutely teach you a huge amount. Yeah, I agree. I think probably like every podcast we have on it’s always about [00:42:00] growth facing adversity, and I think it always helps in day-to-day life in a sense through tragedy or whatever experiences you have by doing these adventures, putting yourself through hardship, I think any makes you stronger in the long term.

Yeah. I mean, I think for me and yeah, I think, I think one of the things from that is it’s not just, I think people have this David, as you’re going to go ramble off on a slight tangent because I occasionally get approached by companies to sort of like promote the CA I tend not to, I, I don’t see like it.

And so I’ve used that stuff and you tend to get a thing where you know, can you look quite serious in this shot sort of thing. You know, they want you to sort of. Look out into the distance looking sort of frowning. And I think a company that gets it right, something like Patagonia, where everyone’s always got a massive grin on their faces because people who do adventure and expeditions tend not to take themselves too seriously and tend [00:43:00] to be know, it’s a very, it’s a very sort of stereotype from, I dunno, James Bond films that you’ve always got to be sort of frowning looking very serious.

But what I was going to say was, before I jumped off on that slightly weird tangent was that it’s not just dealing with stuff with a frown on your face. You’ve got to be being positive. If you’re in a team, you can’t be, this is rough. And I’m going to sit suddenly in a corner. You’ve got to be, especially for the team leader.

You know, you’ve got to be getting everyone else happy, motivated, but you’ve got to be very emotive. You got to be, keep it. You’ve got to be known, you know, are they being quiet because they’re just humming a song in their head or are they being quiet because something’s going wrong with their foot? Is that, is that, do we need to be doing some sort of early.

Yeah, quit treatment on that. Are they developing a blister? Are they in pain? Are they feeling sick? Are they angry? Do they think we’ve made a mistake? You know, you’ve got to be in touch with that and able to communicate that and able to handle that and also able to give people space. So you’ve got to be really on it, that’s it.

But particularly in terms [00:44:00] of the people you’re meeting, because you are going into a country, it’s not your country. You’re potentially having some very strange encounters where you’re basically just walking into someone’s village in the middle of nowhere, you know, imagine I know what the equivalent would be, but you know, suddenly a massive, you know, I’m six foot, four white guy walking into a walking into a.

Bandage of some, you know, smarter and people who happened to be about five foot forward, just minding their own business and the party field. It’s a bit bonkers and you’ve got to be, they’re not, you know, you might be feeding shit. I might’ve been walking all day and all night and be very hungry and ready be in a horrible mood, but you’ve just effectively invaded.

Someone’s God. You’ve got to be absolutely prepared to have a massive smile on your face and shake everyone’s hand and be really, really friendly and hugely grateful for any help they give you and not carrot or what if they don’t give you any help because it’s completely their right. Not to. And And your for caveat Sumatra was by far the friendliest country I’ve ever been to every single night that we were once we left the forest and we’re walking through rural areas.

Cause we were also compare it with doing [00:45:00] comparative survey of different landscape types, all the way to sort of monoculture with this pristine rainforest. It was one of the sort of things we’re doing. We, every single night we were invited, but so, you know, sometimes it was awkward because you’re right about three or four people’s homes and you had to sort of make a choice.

So I’m really sorry, but he asked first and so it was a bit bonkers, but they’re so absolutely incredibly friendly. And but you know, in India, you know, which is obviously a very populous country, we were meeting, you know, tens of thousands of people sometimes about hundreds of people a day. You know, that you would actually talk to hundreds of people a day and it can be exhausting because everyone’s asking the same question, you know, where are you from?

Where’d you come from? What are you doing? You know, why are you doing that? And for you, it’s the thousand times you’ve been asked that. For them. It’s the first time they’ve met someone. It might be the first time, you know, for the kids. It will probably be in the rural areas of India. It’s gonna be the first time they met someone who looks like you.

And you’ve got to remember that at every single and you know, every [00:46:00] single attraction you’ve got town, you’ve got, gotta be polite. You’ve got to be smiling. You’ve got to be positive. So it’s, it’s, it’s not just dealing with adversity. It’s dealing with adversity whilst maintaining empathy and being outwardly at least very positive.

Even if you, even if you’re gone inside, you know, so I think it is, it’s a proper lesson and that there’s a proper lesson in that. Yeah. I agree. Sort of negativity on an expedition, especially if you’re going with someone and they’re complaining and negative, it brings the whole trip down. And so if, if one can just avoid that and have a big smile, I think it’s quite funny how you were saying with clothing brands to sort of look serious, look left, look serious, look right?

Yes. Yeah. But yeah, I think it’s really important to always have a smile. And as you say, it’s the first time you’re meeting them. And so [00:47:00] it’s good to give a good impression. Well, Oliva is a part of the show where we ask the five same questions to each guest each week we weave with the first being on your expeditions.

What’s the one catch it or that you always take with you. I, yeah, I, I assume I’d probably give a backyard cause gadget. I mean, God, it’s boring. Does it always have cameras? I mean, I’m I work occasionally semi-professionally at least as a photographer, so I’ve got to have a camera on me. I’ll take a camera over a phone.

Obviously always take both. The thing that’s been slightly, I guess, slightly unexpected that has ended up on every single one of my expeditions is at some point I went into TK Maxx and got absolutely amazing deal on like a Merino wool, long asleep base layer. Of course, that thing. And it’s now so scruffy and I used it initially for running and it’s ended up because if you go to a hot country, it’s your warmer [00:48:00] packs up like this.

So you weren’t, you know, you’re wearing a light t-shirt and you put that on in the evenings and that’s you done? So India is smarter, was my wallet. And if you had a cold country, if you know, I spoke to coffee in Iceland Last lost last December gone, you know, pre COVID I’ve completely lost track of when it was you know, it’s you basically, so it’s ended up on everything cold or hot or in between it’s ended up coming.

So as things like that, I really like I really like to try and be nonspecific, think about what I can use for many different things. So I don’t like to buy a piece of cat that’s exclusive to a particular, you know, if you can buy something that you can also use under your dry suit kayaking, you can wear after a surf and you can wear as you be in a jacket climbing, and also a super useful for an expedition because you’ve thought ahead and thought, okay, for expedition is going to take a lot of abuse.

So probably, you know, I’ll go for the slightly more durable one or I’ll go for the one that drives a bit quicker or an exact, just always trying to think through. Maximal range of [00:49:00] users. I think, you know, people can get so tied down to what’s the, what’s the light I’m obsessed with. Y in terms of, you know, what’s the latest kit, minimal cap I can take, but I’m not necessarily obsessed on the, on the individual thing being the best.

So it’s, I, I much prefer something that, that does a bit of everything that applies to a lot of different stuff. And I know I’ll be able to use to let absolutely is gone. Yeah. What about your favorite adventure or travel book? I think anything, I don’t know if you’ve heard the author Norman Lewis, so Norman Lewis he died in 2003 or something.

It was late nineties and he was a wealth writer who, I guess he was born probably in the twenties. He, what it was in the second world war with everyone was, and he. Was with the Americans and it’s Lee, and then he was all over the world, you know Vietnam war by which, I mean the French war in Vietnam pre the American war and then the American war in Vietnam and yeah.

[00:50:00] And yeah, everywhere around the world, India, all these bases had. And he was a really bloody, awful time in history. I think, you know, we think, Oh God, you know, now’s bad. Now’s bad for a lot of reasons. Of course. But you know, this is the end of colonialism, a lot of brutal Wars, you know, cold Wars picking up on the horizon.

You know, that, that period of history, when he was very active was properly awful for a lot of people. And he was an incredibly human writer. He absolutely didn’t take sides. Absolutely told her how he is. He’s very good, but not one of the, not someone who goes, and this was bad. And I thought about it this way and it made me feel this just writes what happens, you know?

So. Very good way of building trust. I think it’s very good journalistic style that he just you, you absolutely see him as a witness who just tells it like it is and doesn’t interpret it. [00:51:00] And you know, it doesn’t matter that he’s with the British, he will absolutely crystallize the British or the Americans or, you know, et cetera.

I mean, there’s some really harrowing stuff in that. And he wrote a lot of books, some of useful, some are deeply potentially dark. But there’s a whole range. And I think one, you know, the first book I read was by him, was in Smartsheet. I read and part of the East, which has him in his eighties, late eighties.

He traveled around Indonesia during the apnea civil war. I just, you know, transformed the way you see the culture. I think it’s really important to read up on the history and the culture and the context of a country you go to. You know, so, you know, I, I was in Ethiopia a couple of years ago and knew almost nothing about the, any of the complex that had been going on over that over the last decades until just four out here somewhere.

Oh, bloody hell, all this makes sense. The sort of stuff that you guys come to [00:52:00] us about. And actually there is a very real and relevant meaning to it. And there’s all this stuff and it’s very important not to be completely naive to that. Are they, if you can help it, obviously, sometimes you can’t help it.

So yeah, anything, anything by Norman Lewis is brilliant. It was the conclusion to that rant. Why are adventures important to you? Yeah, I guess so right now, because.

Because they are ways of doing things by which, I mean, there is a difference for me between my early stuff, which was like adventure for the sake of adventure. And now I’m always looking for is, you know, I, my, my day job is, is about writing about ecological environmental issues. And so I, it’s always sort of, you know, can you use night vision to highlight something?

And I think you can incredibly effectively and [00:53:00] can, you can use it to investigate something. Can you, you know, can you, even if you’re not a scientist or you’re not an archeologist or you’re not ax can you draw attention to an issue or can you find, you know, if you’re a team leader, if you’re someone who can handle all the logistical and physical side of it, Can you find a archeologist or an anthropologist or a buyers all local, you know, especially local, especially in country who wants to come along and otherwise wouldn’t have had that opportunity, especially if someone’s in country.

That’s the really interesting thing, because then especially if you can get the budgets, right, you can basically bring someone along for no extra cost. If their flights aren’t an issue. You know, if that, if they’re actually Snapchat, you know, you say, what do you want to tag along? Do you want to, you know, do you want to do some biodiversity field work?

Have you got a project in mind? Can we talk to someone who would have a project in mind? And it’s really easy to facilitate that. So facilitation or a key objective. So for me is kind of objective based is what I’m saying. But then on the other hand, for me, it is also just. Fun. And it’s something it’s just a bug, isn’t it like for, for [00:54:00] anything, even if I do in the UK, if you’re going to see cocky, I’d much rather kind of down the case for a week and cut down the coast for four hours.

And I guess that does count as an adventure. So and that’s just about getting out of the day-to-day routine and getting a bit, you know, it takes awhile. I think it takes about three days for your, for me, it’s always my, what feels like my vision to really lock in and your Headspace to clear like it, it takes days not hours, I think, to really feel like you’re, you’re out you’re outdoors.

So I think that’s why it’s important to do this sort of longer term. Very nice. What about your favorite Quate Oh, give me a second. I didn’t time on these Chaucer. What did chores to say? Chelsea said, ah, I’ve got one for you. Yeah. Life is short. Life is short. So obviously the just overused and obvious quote ever.

And it’s [00:55:00] actually, it is actually not as you would imagine, something that popped up in the nineties on crappy t-shirts and Facebook, it was actually by Chaucer and it was written about seven, 800 years ago. What 12th century, 13th century. And the full quote is actually quite a bit longer. It is. If I can remember off the top of my head life is short.

Opportunity is fleeting. Judgment is difficult. I think, I think that’s the full thing. And one, I just love that, but it’s that old and it’s maintained and it’s just still applicable. And I think. The whole quote is so much more interesting. Life is short opportunity fleeting. That’s it. Life is short. Art is long.

Opportunity is fleeting and judgment is difficult. And it’s very true. Very nice. When you said cliche, I was like, he’s going to come with, it’s not the destination. It’s the journey. I was like, he’s going to build that one up. Isn’t he?

[00:56:00] Yeah. People listening, always keen to travel and go on these sort of granted ventures. What’s the one thing you would recommend for people wanting to get started? Yeah, something that I always need to remind myself of. So, especially, I mean, I could show you an Excel spreadsheet, which has got every single grant I’ve applied to this year.

And obviously it’s been a very rough year for applying to funding and even actually. Mostly partners, a PhD, you know, with a lot of experience as well. And we both take a lot of walls on funding and all this kind of stuff. And these Addie sort of travel restrictions of shut a lot of stuff down. So don’t, even if you’re going to go big and ambitious, have a backup plan, which is minimal, you can do yourself and you can fund yourself.

And by fund yourself, I mean, you can do stuff very cheaply. Norway was like I said, about 400 and I think any of us under a few hundred and a few. Yeah. There’s lots of more things that you, there’s amazing stuff you could do in Europe, especially in a place that Romania and [00:57:00] Bulgaria, you know, incredibly wild places and absolutely amazing.

Even Poland, you know, get up and down, no money. It’s very cheap to be there. And yeah. So how have a backup plan. Or have your primary plan be something that you don’t need permission to do? You don’t need a lot of you don’t need to wait through red tape. You don’t need to Wade through grant applications too.

And if you want to do all of that and really go big, fine, but be prepared that if you fail, you’re not going to have completely failed because you’ve got plan B and plan B or plan C maybe is the one that you can actually just do. You could walk out the door today and do it. So if you want to do a big bonkers cycle or a scientific objective, or you know, anything or a journalistic project, whatever it might be, have, have a project that you can do yourself.

Amazing. Finally, what are you doing now? And how can people follow your adventures in the future? COVID I was planning to be last [00:58:00] year, actually to kayaked from Mid Alaska down, Alaska, down the West coast of Alaska, and then down Canada, sea kayaking just take about four months. And I was, I was going to do that with my dad.

Cause he’s just retired. He’d retired, but just, just before COVID. So that was sort of our plan always seek out groups up, you cocky and obviously that was gone, but we’ve rescheduled that and hopefully that’ll happen in 2020, 20, 22. Cause you got to do it in the summer. So there’s no chance you can do that in the winter.

Alaska is a chilly place and I was also, I’m also, I’ve been putting a lot of effort into trying to get funding for a return to smarter. So the area I was in, in Smartsheet is now sadly in the sort of four years since I was there is now the largest remaining area of intact forest, outside of a reserve in Smartsheet.

And it still hasn’t had a proper intensive survey. Like I said, we were up to the only [00:59:00] the current Missy for like three days. And I want to go back and do a. A proper intensive by which the survey by which, I mean, you know, camera traps in the field for best part of the year, really? Because that’s how you find very recipe, species.

That’s how you find, you know, the, the stuff that’s very elusive will avoid people, you know, things like tigers which possibly, you know, they’re in that eco region. So that’s, that’s sort of my big ambition right now and it would be bonkers. They would require repeat expeditions then I overheard about you, so it’s a bit bonkers, but ambitious, really interesting.

We’ve got an awesome option team apart from myself. And then there is as a, as a advisor, but not, not in the build team. So it’d be really, really cool as Marshall students as well. So absolutely fantastic. And I’d be really keen to get that working and then sort of, you know, in terms of stuff I can do and I can find I’ve got a project actually, he was saying, and just [01:00:00] about Greece and it’s going through this and it’s I read a, that I’m really interested in go to I’ve I’m I’ve I grew up fridge I’m diving and I’ve always sort of wanted to go.

I, I freed up quite a lot in rivers as well as in in the sea, but obviously was quite narrow everyday get very long, beautiful rivers and we certainly don’t get, you know That was so bad in the UK with like pollutants and stuff like that now and our water. And there’s a lot of very bad visibility, usually in rivers.

So to go somewhere with a pristine undammed river intact reverie system and tax Delta system, and just drift down effectively with a, with a camera and over a couple of weeks and a little duffle bag with all my baby. And I’ve really instituted. There’s a couple of rivers I’ve got on my Island because they’ve there’s a few, there’s quite a lot of, you know, controversy around some damning projects and a few other projects going on.

So there’s, there’s a little bit of a journalistic angle on that, but, you [01:01:00] know, selfishly, it’s obviously something I would absolutely love to do from a experiential point of view. So you have to go out to go into a freed up down a river. But yeah, so to follow me, I mean, I’m on Instagram our ally Ali Broadhead and yeah, my website is probably probably the best place.

I’ve been being a bit laxed. I think many of us have taken a bit of a step back from social media, I think over know, I certainly have, I’ve been one of the people who sort of like deleting it intermittently then occasionally logging back on which I think has been, probably worth doing so. Yeah.

As things progress. Oh, and, and hopefully. Trying to keep it very low, ambitious. Hopefully going out to current around the other sky fairly soon, once things open up and everything becomes safe to do self supported, obviously. So not, not poking, not putting anyone else at risk. But you know, as, as locked down permits and no timeframe on that, but sort of as soon as possible because I’m getting sort of itchy feet to, [01:02:00] to get out.

I’m sure we all know here we all are. Yeah. I think, I think we all are. And yeah, with the Instagram, you always need a quick digital detox here and get out into nature. Bali. Thank you so much for coming on today. It’s been absolutely fascinating hearing your stories of which you have way more than I was ever expecting.

And yeah, I do go check out his website. You you’re a very, very talented photographer, take some beautiful pictures and I’ll be following you a little sea kayak in sky when everything opens. Yeah. All right. Brilliant. All right, Janice. Well, that is it for today. Thank you so much for listening and I hope you got something out of it.

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