Do you always do expeditions alone?
I always go alone, because I feel that I've found a way of doing it. I've found a way that works for me. It started because I didn't have any money, and I simply thought, in this very naive way, that if I go off on the Amazon, or the Orinoco, and live with locals, they'll teach me how to catch fishes, and shoot birds with their bows and arrows - incredibly naive. But it sort of worked. My principle was: the locals don't have any money, I don't have any money, and I can sort of live with them. I'll do my best to help them and they'll help me. In a sort of clumsy way that system began to work. I began to accumulate skills and so on, and it became a sort of way of doing it. At the same time I realized that, going alone, I was starting to learn genuinely new things. If you go to a place taking Western companions, taking lots of backup, then you are very likely to be bringing the world with you. And you're sort of supported by that network that's very familiar to you, and you won't open yourself up emotionally. And to me, personally, exploration is about that moment of vulnerability. It's about opening yourself up, allowing yourself to be vulnerable, so that you can experience that place, and not actually put an impact on that place. So it's not about that planting the flag bit. It's not about going where no one's ever gone before. It's about opening yourself up, allowing the place to make its mark on you. Otherwise, I think that I wouldn't be able to justify calling myself an explorer, because I simply would be a tourist. I'd just be wandering around the world and not really immersing myself in a place. But it's the fact that I've got into another world, and I am vulnerable, and probably won't get out unless I understand that world.
