What are your top tips for survival on an expedition?
Top tips for survival; I'd say, the first thing to do is when you're surviving, something's gone wrong. You're disoriented, you're probably alone, so the first thing is to gather your wits about you. You've got to work out what is in your control to do anything about and what is not, and you've got to forget about the things that you can't do anything about; it's too late to worry about - I don't know, what supplies have been washed away, if you haven't got them, you haven't got them, you've got to work with what you have got in front of you or that is potentially within reach. Second thing you've got to do, having calmed yourself down, made yourself think, if possible make a cup of tea or something to slow yourself down and gather these thoughts together, you've got to think: okay, where am I? You've got to position yourself relative to the rest of the world. Then you can work out where is help - where have I got to get to. The next thing is to work out if anyone is going to come to you; perhaps it's better to wait there and wait for the search party, wait for someone else to worry about you. If that's not going to come you've got to work your way out. I think the single biggest problem I've faced facing a survival situation; I suppose I'm unusual in the world in that I've faced terrible situations alone in most major habitats, what has worried me is not being able to take on the terrible thought of walking a hundred miles through a jungle, or walking all the way out through a desert - I mean it's too much to bear. Very few humans can really just believe in themselves and think, right, I'll just start walking. So it's about belief, and what you've got to do is just believe you can keep on going. So you set yourself a much smaller objective, you don't think, right if I just walk to, you know, to the other end of the planet, you just think of the next hundred meters, and what I've done sometimes is pick up a stick - this was in the Amazon - and notched every hundred paces I've taken on my stick. And I have a survival kit generally, that's another important thing to have, just the basic rudiments for survival. I'll take a compass from my survival kit and I'll walk direct in what I think is the best way out and every hundred meters notch up something on my stick - a little mark. And that's just -- a couple of things. First thing is it's so that you can measure your progress and therefore get a sense of how far you are progressing, and second thing it does it build your confidence - you start looking back at what you have achieved so at last you have something on your side, you know you have made a go of it, for a day, two days, three days you are starting to notch up this achievement, you're starting to feel better about yourself. And once you've got that belief then you're more confident, you start to look around for more opportunities, and above all start to believe that you can survive.
