მიესალმები საქართველოში (Hello Georgia!)

Dear readers,

I’m heading off to Georgia (the one next to Russia, Armenia, Turkey and Azerbaijan and NOT the state in the US!) tomorrow morning on a field trip as part of my Masters in Humanitarian Action programme. We have a tight packed schedule which includes visiting state media, United Nations Offices, the European Commission, the Dutch Embassy and visits to many international NGOs such as Oxfam, the Norwegian and Dutch Refugee Councils, Action Against Hunger and many more. I’m seriously excited and think it’s going to be a pretty amazing and eye-opening view into what could well be my future career! 

We won’t have internet access so this blog will be pretty quiet over the next 10 days! Come back then for my trip review, photos and what I hope will be an interesting insight into a country not a lot of people know much about!

Thanks for stopping by!

Janet …AKA Journalist on The Run

Guest Post 1: “How much does your life weigh?”

Thanks to Samy Amanatullah, for this great guest post!

How much does your life weigh?

“How much does your life weigh?” is the staple question of George Clooney’s motivational speech in Up in the Air. It’s a springboard for inviting his audience of slack-jawed hangers-on to try and fit all their STUFF–their possessions, their fixtures, their relationships—into a backpack. And its end result is the condemnation of long-term relationships (girlfriends, mortgages) and, for our purposes, STUFF.

Go look in the mirror, take a look that can be short but make it hard. There is either some part of you that agrees with this statement, that has contemplated dumping everything, walking away, or you just don’t dig it. Anyone who’s been backpacking has answered this question at some point, even if they don’t realize it. STUFF, if we’re being honest, is a pain in the ass. When I said goodbye to South Korea (as well as the lovely and gorgeous host of this blog) to travel around Southeast Asia, everything I thought I’d need had been (over)stuffed into a bag. 

My plan was to travel for a little, celebrate the solar new year, then look for work in Cambodia, maybe Thailand, possibly Laos—someplace where snow wouldn’t be an issue and I could get a decent sandwich (Full disclosure: this plan was amended from an earlier plan). Everything went into that travel bag—warm weather clothes, two sweatshirts, two flasks, underwear abundant, socks, clothes that could be worn for job business, a pair of sports shoes—clunky clunky sports shoes. This thing was overpacked, bursting. I got it closed, but opening it again, as the dicks at airport security made me do was the least pleasant thing in the world. Turning up nothing of concern and seeing that they’d opened a storm, security personnel pushed the bag towards me and looked towards the line that wasn’t behind me or anywhere. Deal with it. 

The next day, I bought a $7 backpack off the street to split the load. I still felt conspicuous. Jam-packed, but with what? I described my load earlier, and I’m still not sure. So it was that as I got further from my plan, I shed.

In Up in the Air, Clooney is a frequent flying loaner, gleefully forsaking conventional relationships to jet set around America, proudly living out of a backpack the whole while. Desert island questions (as in, If you were stuck on a desert island and could only take 5 books/items/etc…) are designed to gauge one’s personality via their possessions. Forsaking the comfort of STUFF, paring down your possessions, evokes a simplicity associated with Buddhism or Zen. 

At the very least, it impresses people. “I quite admirable that he travel with simple luggage,” my couchsurfing host in Taipei wrote of me (this was much later). A Swedish guy I met in Myanmar remarked at how little my friend and I were carrying. His pack had room for a midget and a half, and when it unzipped, spilling out over the usual suspects was the useless—a mug, a cup, a bottle of whiskey nearly empty but tiny enough to leave a titmouse or Mormon sober, a sleeping bag and a hammock, a drum, a book (Burmese Days) among many others that he bought not out of interest but because that’s what people read when they go to the country formerly known as Burma. It sometimes becomes a thing to judge people by what they’re unwilling to do without. We are what we think we need. 

It was before dawn on the Mekong. At one of those stops that exist only to sell foreigners crap breakfast while the border opens, the bus from Bangkok to Vientiane unloaded its cargo (older men getting away from their Thai “wives”, itinerant trekkers going north, farangs working in Thailand on visa runs, backpackers, tubers-in-waiting and a small group looking for work at the tubing bars, Travelers i.e. people for whom travel has ceased to be a vacation and is now a way of life) who then lined up for coffee and toast. 

Between wafts of cigarette smoke, steam pouring off coffee, and the hazing pre-dawn, they compared bags. An older English guy who’d traveled Laos before and with whom I’d end up spending much of my time there carried with him a square pack, adorned with patches of countries visited, consisting of about four shirts, two shorts, a pair of trousers, underwear (‘pants’ as the English say,), and shoes on his feet. Books weren’t an issue because he had an iphone with the Millennium Trilogy on audio. No jacket. No sweatshirt taking up half his bag. When people asked what he did on bus rides when the air-condition blasted, his response was, “Oh, it’s not that cold.” His country count was in the fifties.

A middle-aged Irishman showed off his bag, also with flag patches and not much bigger than my laptop. By his standards, that bag was large. His friend, he said, who’d made a mission of going to every country or territory and had pretty much succeeded had two shirts, two pants, a pair of shoes, socks, and no underwear. Later, when I told a travel companion about that last bit, he took it to heart and went commando, an unfortunate move as the waistband to his shorts bulged in the back, leaving a view to his crack. I was taller than he, so I made a point of not walking behind him.

As they talked, I thought of my bags. I was glad that they weren’t with me at the time, but I didn’t feel self-conscious anymore. Yeah, they were clunky mothers—the red mingled with dirt that would cling to my black, the strip of blue drooped over my shoulder making every narrow crossing a bit awkward. They were more than I needed. But I wondered why it was that these older people could get by with less while these teenagers and twentysomethings lug 50 or 70 pounds behind them. What’s the point? What’re we preparing for? When we think travel, we tend to think of freedom, the open road, adventure, but when I see travelers I think turtle, snail, crustacean laboring over the dunes, trying in vain to keep its home on its back. We are what we think we need? Maybe.

“It’s hard for girls. Girls are expected to dress for every occasion,” says a Belgian woman as we discussed this very topic at a bar overlooking the river. And it’s true, especially in the age of social networking, traveling is so many things—tourism, party, adventure, cultural exchange, culture shock, status update, profile picture—that we get caught up in being prepared for anything instead of what we’re facing.

No one wants to find themselves at the top of the mountain with a dead camera, or in an excrement-floored squat bursting out the behind and suddenly without toilet paper. On the other end, you don’t need a cocktail dress to go out for drinks. A hammock and a sleeping bag is probably over-doing it. It’s easy to judge, so I had to wise up. That’s why in some bungalow on the 4,000 Islands, there’s a blue travel bag filled with all the STUFF (shoes, socks, pants, dead camera, wires, water bottles warm and plastic-tasting) I didn’t need.

That’s why 2 months later wandering round Taipei, my STUFF collection was a passport, carton of Bamar (i.e. Burmese) cigarettes, a fifth of apple vodka, two MP3 players, 4 books (3 for trading, 1 used tour guide), three pairs of pants (one of which was always worn), 5 shirts doing double duty as towels, board shorts, a lucky pair of Obama socks that I’d kept because they were a gift (from the lovely and gorgeous host of this blog) and because wearing them at night stopped me from scratching the mosquito feeding farm, and sweatshirt that took up half my bag, because my Southern Californian ass doesn’t handle the cold well. Also, toilet paper, though that had also been a gift from a Bamar guesthouse. My STUFF was like my trip—random, disorganized, endearingly chaotic, and indulgent. 

But most importantly, my STUFF was disposable. I could dump it wherever. I’ve left and lost and broke things in every country to which I’ve been. If you look in Janet’s apartment, you’ll find the random remainders of my life in Korea. Some Thai guesthouse has that lime orange sweatshirt that made me stick out wherever I went. In Laos, there’s a pair of shoes that climbed mountains, hiked jungles, forests, and walked through some of the biggest cities on either side of the world. The time came for my grey cargo pants twice burnt-on-the-crotch and mysteriously stained with Full Moon party paint to make someone else look like a chic hobo. 

My relationship with STUFF has always been strained as an adult. Moving from house to house every year in university, I came to hate it. STUFF was a symbol of oppression, of being unable to just get up and go, of being tied to one place or thing. The people I lived with swore by STUFF in one way or another. But it’s different when you’re traveling, the temptation for STUFF comes in many forms, but souvenirs are the best way to hemorrhage space and money. Obviously, what we need is defined by where we’re to end up and how long we have till we get there, but souvenirs are for Mantle Place People, folk who have a mantle on which to put their souvenirs. I met one person whose philosophy towards souvenirs was the most agreeable I’d heard. He went by a get one/toss one rule. Every time he bought a t-shirt, he threw one out.

“How did you know you didn’t need a bigger bag?” a travel companion asked me. He wasn’t a Mantle Place Person either, maybe less of one than I am. When we met up in Bangkok, he looked at my knock-off Lowe Alpine bag, limit 50 pounds. How did I know? I didn’t. I assumed my life would shrink or grow with the backpack, kind of like a goldfish. How much does your life weigh? It doesn’t. It depends.

The art of drinking tea in Taiwan

In Ireland making tea is pretty simple. Boil water. Put Barry’s tea bag in cup. Pour water. Pour milk. Drink tea. Mmmm the sweet sweet, sweet taste of a cup of Barrys Tea…

On my trip to Taiwan last weekend, I discovered a whole new side to tea-drinking. In a city, and country, where tea drinking is more  of a tradition or ritual than a, dare I say “drink”, the whole process takes a lot longer.

First off, we took a Gondola up into the Maokong hills the skirt the sprawling city of Taipei, where our eyes were treated to panoramic views of the city skyline including the mesmerizing 101 story skyscraper; Taipei 101.

Panoramic View of Taipei

 

As the sun set on the city, nightfall brought with it a strong breeze which sent shivers down my spine as, at a height of 2,000 meters above ground level, out gondola began to shake as the wind whistled through the cracks which sounded like lost souls.

Happy to back on safe ground, we went in search of our first tea house, not really sure what to expect. We found a cute little tea house with a pretty amazing view down through the valley and sat down at some cute hand carved stools outside to taking full advantage of the warm spring breeze.

We were given a menu and decided on the “perfumed floral tea with reddish brown color”! Next thing we know we are confronted with a kettle, a tea pot, a strainer, a small serving pitcher, a bowl, a metal pan, 2 stirrers and 2 tiny tea cups. What to do, what to do. Well, as my Dad always says, if all else fails read the instructions! Well in this case, easier said than done Dad!

Essentials for brewing Tea

How to make Tea in Taiwan…(as far as I remember so bear with me guys!)

1.Heat water but don’t quite let it boil…when you see the big bubbles take it off the heat!

2.Pour hot water into tea-pot then into the tea pitcher. Pour tea into each cup then empty straight away. (This is just to warm the pots)

3. Fill tea-pot 1/3 full with tea leaves. Pour hot water in and leave for  a few seconds then pour into pitcher and pour into cups but DO NOT DRINK! This is just to “awaken” the tea and unfurl the leaves!

4. (….can we drink some tea yet?? Nearly, nearly.) Re-fill pot with water and let steep for 30 seconds. Pour through strainer into pitcher then pour into doll sized cups. Sniff and enjoy the floral aroma and….enjoy the taste!

Then after only 2 sips you will discover your miniature cup is empty! Repeat step 4 a few more time over what will probably be an hour long period and you will be an expert at the fine art of tea- drinking in no time at all!

It may sound complicated but its the process that makes the whole experience well worth the trouble and perhaps the equally high price but sitting up in the Maokong hills looking down over beautiful Taipei drinking some of the most delicious and sensual tea that has ever touched my lips and I knew it was totally worth it!

Safety issues at Doctor Fish

While I myself had not had the opportunity yet to experience Doctor Fish (despite there being at least 2 in Seoul), both my parents and many of my close friends have tried it. People mainly go for the giggles (it tickles…a lot!) and the experience but it is also supposed to be a great alternative to conventional pedicures!

Doctor Fish, originating in Turkey and the Middle East and now very popular around Asia, involves dipping your twinkly toes into a tank full of flesh eating fish. Sounds attractive, right? Well basically you put your feet into a tank and these little, toothless “Garra Rufa” fish nibble away at your dead skin giving you a perfect pedicure in minutes.

But hold on, don’t run off to your nearest spa just yet. The BBC released this article yesterday questioning the safety of these “Doctor fish”. The main issue is the while the little nibblers munch on hundreds of feet they may also be spreading infection and disease from foot to foot. Although no official complaints have been filed in the UK yet, many states in the US have already banner their use.

Maybe think twice before giving your feet, and the fish, a little treat.

International Adventurers: Exploration by Horse

Marianne Du Toit

In May 2002 South African born Marianne Du Toit left Ireland, where she had been living for 11 years, for South America embarking on a two year journey which her family labelled as “madness”. With two horses, named Mise and Tusa, for company, she set off to discover America, riding from Argentina to New York.

Du Toit based her trip on the journey of Aimé Tschiffely-hailed as the most famous long distance rider of the twentieth century- who rode the 10,000 miles from Buenos Aires to New York in 1925. She skimmed through his book about the journey as research but says she was “terrified to know too much”; afraid that if she knew how difficult the trip would be she may have decided she wasn’t up to it.

With limited equestrian experience and even a slight fear of horses, her love of animals, eternal optimism and lust for adventure helped her persevere.

“I remember since I was about 17 I would always read these articles about independent, daring women who had done these amazing journeys. There was always something deep down driving me to these adventurous things. I just loved the adrenaline and the excitement,” she says.

Du Toit spoke no Spanish, could barely ride a horse, knew nothing about horse care or saddling up, and didn’t know a soul in the Americas.

She had to ride across the high Bolivian Altiplano for over 40 days surviving the thinnest high altitude air and living on very little food. The only thing keeping her going was the thought of making it to the Bolivian capital, La Paz.

“When things got really bad I knew that they always had to get better and couldn’t stay bad forever. That optimism drove me a lot during the journey through all the challenges and difficulties, especially the weeks spent in the remote Bolivian Altiplano”, she recalls.

Her high spirits were crushed on arrival, however, when she realised nobody was waiting to meet her and no one was going to recognize her achievement.

Du Toit spent many nights in the most primitive places, having to knock on doors in search of a place to sleep every night for 21 months. She often shared the night with cockroaches, sleeping in outhouses, phone boxes, dental clinics, and even under a dusty stairs.

In one motel in Central America, her sleep was interrupted when the crazy owner chased her with her own machete. Earlier, she had a lucky escape earlier when she was held up by highway bandits in Argentina.

“Sometimes it turned out to be nightmare stuff; there were so many potential worries about the journey that, if you started to break it down and think about all the potential threats where you could injure yourself or even die, I never would have done it,” she says.

Travelling alone on horseback was not easy for Du Toit. She had to ride for hours in blazing heat and torrential rain, fighting away mosquitoes and horseflies and constantly battling with the horses’ saddlebags.

“I wasn’t horse fit so I didn’t know the toll it takes on your body to ride for eight or nine hours a day. There was no part of my body that wasn’t aching. Our endurance is a lot more than what we often think. Even though every step is still sore, you are still aching and every movement you make is excruciating you just get beyond it,” she laughs.

Throughout the trip the horses were her main concern. She says she didn’t mind feeling tired, cold or hungry as long as the horses had a place to sleep and some food to eat.

At one stage in the expedition, Marianne and her horses spent five days aboard a cargo boat on the Amazon. Despite sleeping in a tent on the boat and having to expose herself overboard to the creatures of the Amazon to go to the toilet, her main worry was that her horses might fall overboard.

Du Toit’s lowest point came six months into her journey when one of her beloved horses tested positive for anaemia and had to be put down. As she talks passionately about the tragedy, hurt appears in her eyes.

“Whatever happened on the journey from the hardships and difficulties, the hunger, the cold, dealing with rude people and managing the horses or being held up, nothing compared to how I felt when Tusa died. It was the only time that made me think if I really wanted to continue the journey.”

So how did she settle back into life in Ireland?

Marianne is now happily married and busy promoting her book about the journey, ‘Crying with Cockroaches’. She feels that having written one book does not make her an author, and is moving on to other things.

She helps a crippled Romanian gypsy, who she discovered begging on the wet streets of Dublin, over two years ago. He has progressed from not having a word of English to learning to read and write and has been given an operation on his leg to help him walk.

“It was a bit like the journey. When I started I didn’t know how big it was going to be and how much responsibility and commitment it is. It has been a very rewarding experience not without its challenges. He came across my path and I knew it was just something I had to do,” she says.

She also volunteers with the DSPCA and other animal welfare organizations and has spent a lot of time writing to restaurants campaigning against the production of Foie Gras.

Du Toit, the eternal optimist, believes that during these hard economic times, things can only get better and hopes people will continue to live their dreams. Even during the loneliest, darkest nights of her trip, she says she was “surviving and living in the moment,” and urges everyone else to do the same.

Jasper Winn

Jasper Winn and Marianne Du Toit appear to be worlds apart. While Du Toit was still in school, Jasper was cycling across the Sahara, canoeing the length of the Danube and roller skating across The Netherlands. However, both Winn and Du Toit share one similar passion; horses.

After spending many years on the adventure travel bandwagon, Jasper rediscovered his love of horses while on a trip to Morocco in 1989.

“I was walking from the Atlantic coast over the Ait Bamranne Mountains to the Sahara when I was stopped by a fierce Berber woman on a mule who told me how stupid I was walking when I could be riding. I thought about it for a few days, and realised that she was right. This pretty much set up my course for life after that,” Jasper tells me.

He bought a Barb stallion on the coast (for two hundred Irish punts) and rode through the Atlas Mountains from Marrakesh to Fez. It was here that he realised he had both the skill and the ability to travel long distance by horse.

Jasper went on to apply for and win a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship, funding a year and a half long trip to live with the Berber tribes of Morocco. He bought himself a mule, which he called Mrs Bottom, and set off to make contact with the Ait Atta tribe.

“Eventually I met and was accepted into one family and over the year and a half I spent eight months living and travelling and working with them; we lived in goat hair tents in the summer up in the mountains and in rather a nice cave down in the pre-Sahara for the winter.”

Over the years Jasper has worked in every sort of horse environment there is. From cattle droving in Queensland to working with Turkmen tribesmen in Iran, he has ridden long distance in 26 countries in five continents.

Winn tells me that apart from Mrs Bottom, he has bought his horses in the strangest of places.

“I bought a horse in Kyrgyzstan a few years ago and rode from the Chinese border westwards along the Tien Shan Mountains for a few weeks; selling the horse for a profit at the end,” he tells me, adding that he also once bought “a horse from a mounted policeman in Central Mexico!”

Over the last eight years, he has been to South America regularly to ride on horse round ups, cattle drives and generally work with local gauchos and other cowboys, which he confides is one of his favourite things to do.

“The guys I was riding with were so much fun; the harder the conditions, the worse the weather, the longer the hours in the saddle the more it seemed they enjoyed it; and they all still had plenty of energy for music, dancing and drinking when we hit town,” he laughs.

Similar to Du Toit’s trip across the America’s, Winn says his horses are always the first priority.

“Travelling with a horse one just has to think ‘horse’ 24 hours a day. One has to find fodder for the horse and it’s good to find a meal oneself – though more than once I’ve had to crush up my animal’s oats to make myself porridge – as well as water and a safe place to sleep.”

“I remember camping out in Mexico up in the hills listening to the sound of coyotes coming round. In Kyrgyzstan I tried to get to nomad camps in the evening so I could sleep in their yurts, but a few times I got caught out and had to sleep in the mountains.”

So what is next for the man who has done everything?  Jasper is wants to follow in the footsteps of Marianne Du Toit, and is planning to do a long distance endurance ride across Argentina.

“I’m interested to put all I’ve learnt from different peoples around the world about long rides together and see if I can do a fairly speedy long trip. The ride will be a mix of adventure challenge and a chance to research traditional horsemanship and its techniques.” From my personal experience with Jasper, I have no doubt this will be another crazy adventure.

 

International Adventurers- Exploration by Water

This is the first installment of my Journalism Thesis which I wrote about 10 international adventurers, it is all previoulsy unpublished work so I would love to hear what you think of it!

“Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.”

Tim Severin

Tim Severin has been hailed as the ‘greatest living explorer of the twentieth century’. He has sailed a leather boat across the Atlantic, captained an Arab sailing ship from Muscat to China, sailed the Pacific on a bamboo raft, and embarked on the Marco Polo expedition riding a motorbike from Venice to China.

Sitting with Severin in his peaceful West Cork home, it is hard to picture the man in front of me sailing the Pacific in search of Moby Dick or Robinson Crusoe. Far from a big, husky, man with a beard, a slender, 68 year old sits before me, with a Cravat wrapped around his neck and a thick fleece to protect him from the chill of Irish springtime.

“Right, sit down there and let’s get this done. It’s like going to the dentist!” he exclaims with a putting-you-at-your-ease smile.

Born in Assam, India, Severin was sent to boarding school in England at the tender age of six and was awarded a place studying Geography at Oxford when he was just sixteen.

During the second summer holidays at Oxford, the Geography students were made do a special thesis. Rather than doing a ‘boring project’ like most people, Severin tells me he persuaded his lecturers to allow him to retrace the route of Marco Polo on a motorbike, accompanied by two colleagues, one of whom was Stanley Johnson (father of Lord Mayor of London, Boris Johnson).

Severin retells the route the trio took, travelling from Oxford to Venice then all the way across Turkey where their bikes began to fall apart. The trio rode across Iran (then called Persia) and Afghanistan with ease but were unable to enter western China due to the political situation in the country at the time.

“At that stage we were down to one motorbike; All three of us riding on the one bike! It was very uncomfortable,” he laughs.

 “I didn’t have a motorcycle license and had never ridden a bike before! Only two of us could actually afford to put money into the kitty for the trip. We put in the equivalent of €130 each which had do an entire 3 person project which lasted 4 months travelling across 2 continents.”

The Marco Polo expedition, apart from feeding Severin’s hunger for adventure, taught him a lot about the importance of thorough research and preparation. He did over two years of research before he even considered embarking on his next journey, ‘The Brendan Voyage’.

Severin says ‘The Brendan Voyage’ was his first major expedition, entailing him sailing a leather currach across the Atlantic in the wake of Brendan the Navigator, to investigate the myth that the Irish landed in the New World ever before Columbus.

The boat was built using only techniques and materials available in the sixth-century A.D comprising of forty-nine ox hides stitched together in a patchwork and stretched over a wooden frame. This leather skin was only a quarter of an inch thick yet Severin and his crew sailed it from Brandon Creek in Dingle all the way across the Atlantic to Newfoundland.

“It was a calculated risk. As with all the projects, I have spent a lot of time researching. It was my first major expedition so I looked into it very carefully. They are research projects not adventure projects,” he says.

On these Voyages you can be out at sea for weeks at a time, having to live with rats and cockroaches, delirious from lack of sleep, and with the threat of thirst and hunger. For Severin, however, it was the might of the Atlantic Ocean that scared him the most.

“The most frightening time is always at night during very bad weather with big waves rolling down on you out of the darkness. You can’t see them but you can hear them,” he whispers.

“You hear this roaring noise coming at you and it’s like an express train. Everything is moving around you and it’s like skiing out of control.

“Then everything would become silent for a few minutes then suddenly it would start all over again. This would go on for hours. It was terrifying,” he remembers.

On these hazardous journeys, Severin and his crew had no choice but to keep going.

“You are out there, just the four of you, and you rely on the expertise of whoever is at the helm at the time. They will do their best as their life and the lives of the rest of the crew are in their hands.”

Far from high budget adventures that we hear about today, Severin worked on an extremely tight budget and says that on all of his voyages everyone looks after themselves. “I would be mortified to have to call for help from other people”, he says.

The only time, in all of his dozen or so expeditions, that he had to call for help, was on the China Voyage, where he sailed the Pacific on a bamboo raft to test the theory that ancient Chinese mariners could have reached the Americas. Severin and crew knew they were in trouble when the bamboo raft began to slowly sink right in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

For most people this would be a cause for panic, but Severin remained level headed and calmly requested assistance.

“I managed to get a message to a maritime museum in the United States and asked if there was a merchant ship in the area could they pick us up”, he says.

On that particular voyage, Severin and crew experienced quite a lot of bewilderment from off shore fishermen. “The Japanese were utterly baffled why my team and I should be on a bamboo raft off the coast of Japan. They just couldn’t get their heads around it. Nobody good grasp what we were doing or why,” he laughs.

At a time when the media has gone crazy for ‘Adventure challenges’, Severin is in a category of his own.

“My projects have been to investigate things not challenge them. Nobody has ever tried to copy any of my voyages. I don’t think anyone else will ever do it ‘just for the challenge’. They would be very unwise to do so!!”

Unlike most children, Severin never wanted to be a fireman or a doctor. He simply wanted to explore. “I just wanted to travel and do interesting things. End of story,” he says.

His grandmother had the biggest influence on him, teaching him that you should just ‘get things done’ rather than thinking about doing them and instilled a desire to travel in him from a young age.

“She used to tell me that being in rather exotic and difficult situations such as in the tea gardens of wild, north western India was rather normal and in fact quite interesting.”

At the age of 68, Severin still manages to keep himself occupied and to find the child within. He is busy writing his series of children’s fiction, ‘The Adventures of Hector Lynch, Pirate’, of which the next book, ‘Sea Robber’ is set to be released this May.

There is no end in sight to “The Adventures of Tim Severin, Explorer extraordinaire”.

 

Tim Butcher

Tim Butcher

Tim Butcher and Tim Severin may share the same Christian name but they have very different motivation for exploration. While Severin investigates mythical voyages of the past, Butcher decided to retrace the steps of Henry Morton Stanley’s 1870 expedition and cross along the mighty River Congo.

Butcher is no novice to Africa, having worked as war correspondent and Africa Bureau Chief for the Daily Telegraph. He is now the Middle East Correspondent and is talking to me from his office in Jerusalem.

I ask him what motivated him to take a break from reporting to explore the depths of darkest Africa.

“People told me it couldn’t be done and I wanted to prove them wrong,” he says. “It was a combination of vanity, professional curiosity and wanting to understand Africa.”

Butcher followed Stanley’s original route across the Congo. Modern technology allowed him to cover the same distance as Stanley in less than one sixth of the time. While Stanley walked, Butcher had a motorbike.

“Stanley also messed around by the river covering less than 2 miles a day at times, trekking through deep equatorial forests which was absolutely insane,” recalls Butcher.

However, while Stanley had a crew of explorers, Butcher decided to set out into the heart of darkness totally alone. He immersed himself into a country that has been largely forgotten about, a place ruined by war and unrest for the past 50 years.

From health risks such as dengue fever, Aids and malaria to encountering groups of lawless men carrying Kalashnikovs, Butcher encountered challenges at every stage. Yet what affected him the worst was the way in which the war had ripped the spirit out of the people.

“In most African villages the children run up to you shouting and laughing, full of hope. In Congo the war has beaten the sparkle out of their eyes. One child thought nothing of bringing me to this horrific place full of dead bodies; It was awful,” he remembers.

One of the scariest moments of the expedition came when Butcher had to spend days in a canoe with four total strangers. “For all I knew they could have turned a corner and finished me off but I had no choice but to trust them. I was bloody lucky really.”

Once he was in the canoe he could no longer worry as his safety was out of his hands. All the worry and anxiety that had built up throughout the journey simply drifted away.

“I had to sit back and float down the river. It’s not like you can call up the UN to be rescued. It’s just far too remote. No helicopter has ever been out there”.

“The one thing I learned from that trip was not to listen to people who say ‘It can’t be done.’ Go out there and prove them wrong.”

 

 

If you dream it, you can do it!

When I was younger, I can rember reading an inspirational story in a book called “Chicken Soup for the Soul”.  The short story titled Another Check Mark On the List is about a 15-year-old boy named John who, on one rainy day, when it was too wet outside to play, decided to write a list of goals. John continued writing until he had 127 goals. These goals included exploring the Nile River,climbing the world’s highest mountains, read the entire works of Shakespeare and learning 3 foreign languages. He also wanted to milk a poisonous snake and ride an ostrich!

Of the 127 goals that he listed over 60 years ago, John has achieved 108. If he lives to become 75 years old he will achieve 109 (he listed “live to see the 21st Century”). How did John achieve all of these goals? He wrote them down.

After reading this story, I too decided, like many other people, to make a list of all the things I wanted to do/see/learn throughout my life. I, however, wanted to achieve these things before the age of 30. Back then 30 seemed to be quite old and an acceptable age to have completed all my goals. Well with less than 6 years left I thought I would share some of my old goals, with a few added that I have recently thought up of.

I want to have travelled to 50 countries. 5 years ago, while on a train for 3 days travelling from Tanzania to Zambia I met an American couple on a round the world trip. They were truely fascinating and gave me an insight into how I wanted my life to be. They were in their late 30′s and seemed to have achieved so much in life. From various professions, to finding love and travelling the world they taught me a lot and entertained me on our horrendous 3 day journey.

As the Zambian immigration officers entered our tiny cabin and shook us awake in the early hours of the morning to stamp our passports, the couple told me they were super excited as this would be their 50th country to visit. I knew then that I hoped, one day, to do the same. (Currently I have been to 36…14 to go!!)

I want to be able to speak at least 4 foreign languages. This is a difficult one. It’s not like flying to some country and ticking it off the list. It takes time, motivation and determination to learn another language. I have attempted to pick up the local languages while on my travels but it has been much more difficulte than I initially thought. During my year in South Africa I picked up quite a few  Sotho phrases, especially useful when addressing my students. However as I have not met anyone since that speaks Sotho, I am forgetting it more and more each day. The same goes for Swahili, although I didn’t learn as much and there are more Swahili speakers about, I still seem to have forgotten the few phrases I learnt.

Thanks to spending 4 months in a  school in France when I was 16 and a summer working in a hostel in Paris, my french is pretty good. Then again, not as good us it used to be. My challenge for this year is to learn Korean. It is probably one of the most difficult languages out there, with a totally different alphabet and sounds, but if I put my mind to it you never know how much I might learn.

I want to do every extreme sport imaginable. Back in my teens the thought of jumping out of a plane, bungee jumping, cliff jumping, and white water rafting were thrilling. Don’t get me wrong, they still are. However, back then they were far off dreams where-as in recent years many have become a reality. I did the highest bungee jump in the world, off the Bloukrans bridge, in South Africa when I was 18. In the same year I rafted down grade 5 rapids on the Zambezi crossing from Zambia to Zimbabwe and abseiled down the side of Vicroria falls.

Two years ago, My friend Alice and I had the opportunity to fly a plane over our houses, after a drunken encounter with a friendly pilot in Cork! Last March I had the opportunity to do my 1st Sky-Dive, free falling 15,000 feet over Lake Wanaka in New Zealand. I have been cliff jumping in Scotland, done a tandem gorge swing in Zambia, been ski-ing in Austria, scuba diving in Zanzibar,and open sea kayaking in New Zealand. I also fed wild hyeenas chunks of meat from my mouth in Ethiopia, not a sport, but extreme none the less. In the near future I hope to go para-gliding, do another sky-dive, go snowboarding, water skiing and whatever else pops into my mind.

I want to LIVE and WORK on every continent. So far I have lived and worked in Australasia(9 months in Australia fruit picking, minding children, working in a party hostel!) , Africa (teaching Business and Economics in South Africa and English in Kenya),  Europe (worked in a hostel in Paris and many jobs in Ireland of course!) , North America (lived in Canada and worked for an online travel magazine) and Asia (currently teaching English In Korea). Not bad for a 24 year old, but I still need to conquer South America and… Antractica. Which no doubt will prove to be the biggest challenge!!

Things I want to achieve; I hoped I would have written my first book by now. I have always wanted to be a writer and can remember my primary school teacher when I was 9 and 10 telling my parents what a vivid imagination I had. I love writing and travelling and have kept diaries of most of my adventures. I just need to motivate myself to sit down and start to turn them into something people would enjoy reading, find a way of sharing crazy adventures with the world. I guess this blog is how I’m achieving that at present. If you’re reading this…you’re awesome, thanks!

I also want to run a marathon in a time that won’t be highly embarassing and make my way up a mountain such as Everest Base Camp or Mount Kilimanjaro. I am currently awfully unfit and the thought of ‘running’ or ‘steep climbing’ makes me sick. This needs to change and fast. I climbed Croagh Patrick in July which I was very proud of. Then again so did 20,000 other people including small kids and old grannies! I need to become healthier and fitter and get out there and run a marathon and climb some mountains. This may take some time to acheive but remains on the list!

On my original list I wanted to ‘Go to University’ and become a Journalist. That done, I now want to go back to University to get a Masters in International Development. I would then like to return to Africa and ‘make a difference’. Not quite sure how, but maybe set up a childrens home, or new schools and give young people the same opportunity I had to go there for a years voluntary work before University.

Copy other peoples epic voyages…! For my Journalsim thesis I interviewed and wrote about ten insanely interesing ‘International Adventurers’ who opened my eyes to a world of challenging travel I had never previously conceived.  Marianne Du Toit, a South African woman now living in Ireland, inspired me with tales of her epic 2 year journey on horseback from Peru to New York city. She rode across 3 continents, despite never having sat on a  horse before, and somehow bargained for accomodation, food and help from the locals despite speaking not a word of Spanish. Makes me want to do a trip of similar epic proportions, pherhaps following in the footsteps of Genghis Khan and cross outer Mongolia and beyond.

Another fascinating interviewee was Lois Pryce, who one day decided to quit her job with the BBC, buy a motorbike and depart London on a 6 month journey of epic proportions travelling across Europe and down through the whole African continent. Dealing with racism, loneliness, sexism and every sort of difficulty imaginable her story is one of hope, motivation and courage and something I would love to copy someday.

Tim Severin, another international explorer, has done more things, been to more places and studied more cultures than I could even hope to do. He has sailed a leather boat across the Atlantic in the wake of St. Brendan the Navigator, captained an Arab sailing ship from Muscat to China to investigate the legends of Sindbad the Sailor, ridden the route of the first Crusader knights across Europe to Jerusalem,  sailed the Pacific on a bamboo raft to test the theory that ancient Chinese mariners could have reached to the Americas, and traced the origins of Moby Dick, the great white whale among the aboriginal sea hunters of the Pacific. He has written books about all his expeditions and  he has also recorded his journeys in documentary films which have become classics of exploration and adventure. He is now writing a series of Childrens fiction, amoungst other things. He has achieved more than I could ever hope of doing in my life time, but If I shall stick by the quote which I live by you never know where it might take me…

“If I dream it, I can do it!”

Here’s to achieving all your goals in life and most importantly, being happy!