Has nearly dying affected you in anyway?

Has nearly dying affected you in anyway?

Benedict Allen (Explorer) gives expert video advice on: Do you get nervous before an expedition?; How long does an expedition last?; How do you decide what expedition to do next? and more...

I don't think so really. I think that my expeditions have been more perilous than most people's because of not having companions who could help me out and so on, and probably because I'm less competent than... I don't know things have just gone wrong. It hasn't really stopped me because I've spent so long away. The expeditions for six months at a time, again and again and again for 25 years of doing it and there are probably only about a half dozen times. One occasion did make me think again. It's most odd because it wasn't a dramatic moment, not someone shooting at me, not gold miners chasing me with knives as in other occasions, not guides abandoning me that's happened. It was me jumping down from a hut. I was in Siberut, which is an island off of Sumatra. It was a jungly place, I was living with the local people the Mentawai. I jumped down from their hut onto the ground. A simple enough act, I would do everyday and the locals would do it everyday. But as I jumped in my paratrooper boots down to the ground from this platform, I realized that someone, some idiot had put a spear into the ground with the point upwards, which is not what you do. As I jumped this spear went right past my eye. I had just jumped and I hadn't seen it because it was pointed vertically upwards, so there wasn't much to see and it went right past my eye. It missed me and I wasn't event touched, but I thought, my god the randomness of that. That could have so easily killed me through my eye, not even my eye but into my head could've killed me instantly. That made me think like anything, because it wasn't some baddie, some gold miner or some drug dealer, it was just some little instant that could've killed me. That was very shocking to me because it made me sit down and think that wow this could happen. So that scared me. I used to just think I was immortal I suppose. I could just set off and I'd be okay. I just somehow believed in myself, but now I supposed because I'm getting older and because I've just had a child unbelievably, I'm suddenly feeling a little bit more hesitant and I don't think I will take the risk that I got used to taking in the past. I went to Afghanistan very recently and I didn't even like it. I just suddenly felt a terrible feeling, a premonition. I thought something was going to happen. Either I'm going to get blown up in Kabul, or I'm going to get kidnapped. I actually had two soldiers, two people looking after me and various security experts saying everything was going to be fine. But this extraordinary feeling and premonition, and I think was purely because for the first time I am responsible for someone else, a child.