Latest / The Overland Journal Podcast / Explorer and Filmmaker Reza Pakravan on the World’s Most Dangerous Borders

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Explorer and Filmmaker Reza Pakravan on the World’s Most Dangerous Borders · The Overland Journal Podcast

0:00
Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Overland Journal podcast. I'm your
0:03
Speaker 1: host Ashley Jordano. Today I'm interviewing British explorer and filmmaker
0:08
Speaker 1: Reza Pakravan, who has a long and impressive expedition CV
0:12
Speaker 1: that includes crossing the Sahara by bike in record time,
0:15
Speaker 1: traveling the length of the Sahel region of Africa, and
0:18
Speaker 1: attempting to set the world record for fastest bicycle journey
0:21
Speaker 1: from the Arctic Circle to Cape Town, South Africa. In
0:25
Speaker 1: this episode, res and I touch on why he left
0:28
Speaker 1: a bougie career in finance to tem film school and
0:31
Speaker 1: how Tintin was a major childhood influence. We also talk
0:35
Speaker 1: about the challenges of crossing some of the world's most
0:37
Speaker 1: dangerous borders south of the Sahara Desert, and what he
0:39
Speaker 1: recently discovered during filming of his latest multiplart series called
0:43
Speaker 1: Hidden Frontiers Arabia. Thanks for tuning in. I hope you
0:47
Speaker 1: enjoy well. Resa. Thank you so much for joining me
0:52
Speaker 1: on the Overland Journal podcast. We're going international today. I'm
0:57
Speaker 1: in Madrid, Spain, so if you hear any traffic noise,
1:00
Speaker 1: I apologize in advance. And you're actually in London, so
1:03
Speaker 1: thanks for joining me.
1:05
Speaker 2: Of course, I'm in my garden shed, so apology for
1:08
Speaker 2: that background noise, which is.
1:10
Speaker 1: Rain, typical, typical of blood at the time of your
1:16
Speaker 1: I see a bike in the background, so I'm excited
1:18
Speaker 1: to as well.
1:22
Speaker 2: It's my little adventure dungeon.
1:24
Speaker 1: If you like sweet, I love it. So you have
1:29
Speaker 1: done a lot of stuff, like you're quite the established
1:34
Speaker 1: explore and adventurist and have done quite a few trips
1:40
Speaker 1: like epic trips on bikes and film series. Maybe just
1:45
Speaker 1: give me your if you're going to walk into an elevator,
1:48
Speaker 1: give me your elevator pitch like, who are you? I
1:51
Speaker 1: know that's a that's an in depth question, but yeah,
1:54
Speaker 1: maybe just a little intro to the Overland Journal audience.
1:57
Speaker 1: It'd be great.
1:58
Speaker 2: I always say, you know, when I introduced myself, always say, well,
2:02
Speaker 2: you know, what's your job title? Said, depends what you're asking.
2:06
Speaker 2: If you ask my mom, she thinks I'm unemployed. But yeah,
2:11
Speaker 2: I'm an explorer and filmmaker. And you know how these
2:15
Speaker 2: two intertwine. It's a very simple thing. I'll make films
2:21
Speaker 2: about exploration and grand journeys, which has taken me to
2:27
Speaker 2: some of the fur flongs. Corner of the planet, whether
2:29
Speaker 2: behind the camera or in front of the camera. So I,
2:34
Speaker 2: at the beginning of my career started doing very long
2:37
Speaker 2: distance endurance journeys, and then as my career started to evolve,
2:42
Speaker 2: I became more interested in documenting an adventure and exploration
2:48
Speaker 2: with impact. So it always has been a purpose, purpose
2:55
Speaker 2: driven adventure, something that adds a knowledge, using my adventures
3:00
Speaker 2: and exploration as a tool to add a knowledge that's
3:04
Speaker 2: otherwise that the world doesn't know anything about it, whether
3:09
Speaker 2: you know, exploring an unexplored canyon in search of ancient
3:13
Speaker 2: past or you know, entering at sort of a tribal
3:17
Speaker 2: zone and shedding lights on their problems that those tribes
3:21
Speaker 2: are facing. Whatever I do has a very specific purpose.
3:27
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4:22
Speaker 1: Gotcha, So you're looking at these stories that are under
4:25
Speaker 1: the radar and uh maybe haven't been told as in
4:29
Speaker 1: depth as you would like them to see.
4:33
Speaker 2: As antoer I always say, explorers are storytellers. They create
4:37
Speaker 2: stories that changes our understanding about the world that we
4:41
Speaker 2: live in. Whether you are uh, you know, exploring the
4:44
Speaker 2: Arctic working with a you know, a bunch of scientists
4:48
Speaker 2: trying to solve the climate issues, or whether you are
4:53
Speaker 2: you know, looking at it from anthropological point of view,
4:56
Speaker 2: or you know, traveling to the places that no one
4:59
Speaker 2: has ever traveled to just bring back those stories and
5:03
Speaker 2: share with the rest of the world. That's your effectively
5:06
Speaker 2: your job title. Nice.
5:09
Speaker 1: That's great. One thing I wanted to ask you is
5:12
Speaker 1: where you get these ideas from?
5:16
Speaker 2: Right? Definitely, They're not ideas that I wake up in
5:19
Speaker 2: the middle of the night and I think, oh after
5:21
Speaker 2: go with Papua New Guinea tomorrow. It's not like that. Normally,
5:24
Speaker 2: I get obsessed with an idea over region of the world,
5:28
Speaker 2: and a mystery is something that we don't know much
5:32
Speaker 2: about it, and I start researching. A huge amount of
5:38
Speaker 2: research and development goes through every single travel and films
5:43
Speaker 2: that I'm making, So you know, a huge amount of
5:47
Speaker 2: knowledge acquisition takes place at the beginning, whether through contacts internet.
5:53
Speaker 2: I'm part of a Roldercraft Society, Explorers Club, scientific Explorsion Society.
5:58
Speaker 2: All of these people have a big network of individuals,
6:01
Speaker 2: very well traveled people with a very established international footprint.
6:05
Speaker 2: So if you like, the first four or five months
6:10
Speaker 2: of my sort of a digging is just basically knowledge
6:14
Speaker 2: acquisition as much as I can and then refine that
6:17
Speaker 2: to an idea that I would like to present from
6:20
Speaker 2: that region of the world, the mystery that I want
6:23
Speaker 2: to solve.
6:24
Speaker 1: What kinds of information do you get from the societies
6:29
Speaker 1: and the clubs. Is it documentation we're talking to other
6:33
Speaker 1: people that are part of the societies and the clubs
6:36
Speaker 1: or what does that usually look like for you?
6:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, a bit of a both. For example, if I'm
6:41
Speaker 2: an also filmmakers, so if I'm about to venture into
6:46
Speaker 2: let's say Sahelian Belt in North Africa, I would go
6:50
Speaker 2: and find people who have extensive knowledge about that place.
6:54
Speaker 2: The paper has been published on that part of the world,
6:57
Speaker 2: the film's been made about that part of the well,
7:00
Speaker 2: the journalists have traveled there, talking to lots of angios
7:04
Speaker 2: who have penetrated that region. That can provide me with
7:09
Speaker 2: the first time information. Because the majority of regions that
7:11
Speaker 2: I'm really working on, they're really really remote, so it
7:16
Speaker 2: requires very specialist knowledge. Very they are mostly very difficult
7:22
Speaker 2: to access. So you know, they're not stuff that you
7:26
Speaker 2: can find online. You know that there are requires a
7:29
Speaker 2: fair amount of digging.
7:32
Speaker 1: Nice. I love that. I love research. So yeah, you're
7:35
Speaker 1: really speaking my language here. It sounds like fun. Yeah.
7:40
Speaker 1: So in terms of like you've all you haven't always
7:43
Speaker 1: been an explorer adventurist, so I've heard. Yeah, so you
7:49
Speaker 1: came from a finance background. But before that, I'm curious,
7:55
Speaker 1: as a child, did you love or growing up did
7:57
Speaker 1: you love doing research? Did you love reading about places
8:00
Speaker 1: that were under the radar? Did this stem from childhood
8:03
Speaker 1: or was this something that came later.
8:06
Speaker 2: Sure, I was born in Iran, and when I was
8:12
Speaker 2: growing up during the sort of the beginning of my
8:15
Speaker 2: sort of childhood. I remember just war and you know, revolution,
8:19
Speaker 2: all that kind of stuff. So the country was quite
8:21
Speaker 2: close to the rest of the world, so all we
8:24
Speaker 2: had available to us. My window to the outside world
8:27
Speaker 2: was Tintin, like a series of Tintin book. I'm not
8:30
Speaker 2: sure if you remember Tintin. Yeah, yeah, you know book
8:35
Speaker 2: the illustration book written by Hershia French, sorry, the Belgian writer.
8:40
Speaker 2: So I was reading Tintin inside out. I knew every
8:46
Speaker 2: page of farious Tintin, and I was my window to
8:48
Speaker 2: the outside world. My mom and dad both worked in
8:52
Speaker 2: television for so many years, and you know, at the
8:57
Speaker 2: beginning of my career, I was traveling with my dad
9:00
Speaker 2: a lot internationally, domestically, so many different places because he
9:03
Speaker 2: was making documentaries and whenever it was possible, he could
9:06
Speaker 2: sort of take me with him. I picked up the
9:09
Speaker 2: camera when I was ten, so by age of fifteen
9:13
Speaker 2: I knew how to edit, and those days was not digital.
9:17
Speaker 2: It was all actually sixteen millimeters film, thirty five min
9:20
Speaker 2: meters film. I could actually change, you know, film cans
9:24
Speaker 2: inside the sort of black bags and all that kind
9:27
Speaker 2: of stuff which no one remembers those sort of stuff. Anyway,
9:31
Speaker 2: I got to the age of sort of sixteen seventeen,
9:35
Speaker 2: I think those days we were. I to turn around,
9:39
Speaker 2: told my dad, I've seen your life. That all your
9:44
Speaker 2: life he worked really hard with my mom. They worked
9:46
Speaker 2: really hard in television for not much money. And I said,
9:50
Speaker 2: I know better. I would go and study finance. I'll
9:55
Speaker 2: go to London, I'll study finance, and I'm gonna make
9:57
Speaker 2: bucket lots of money. I prove you wrong. My dad
9:59
Speaker 2: laughed at me and.
10:03
Speaker 1: Was he still in Were you guys still in a
10:06
Speaker 1: run at the time, or were you somewhere else where
10:07
Speaker 1: he was doing.
10:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, we were in the States actually those days. So yeah,
10:12
Speaker 2: and I said, I'm going to go and study finance.
10:16
Speaker 2: So I came to London and study finance. And just
10:19
Speaker 2: backtrack a little bit. My childhood has always been lived
10:23
Speaker 2: in the age of the mountain, So my childhood's always
10:25
Speaker 2: been outdoors of skiing, you know, mountain climbing and trekking
10:30
Speaker 2: and all that kind of stuff. You know, that's what
10:33
Speaker 2: you do when you live in the mountains. So when
10:37
Speaker 2: I came to London and sort.
10:39
Speaker 4: Of a.
10:42
Speaker 2: Recycled myself into the world of finance. It was a
10:44
Speaker 2: bit of a shock to the system, you know, and
10:47
Speaker 2: then entered this very sort of strange world of finance,
10:54
Speaker 2: which was completely different to every fabric of my being,
10:58
Speaker 2: but at the beginning was very attractive. Money was great,
11:02
Speaker 2: money was coming in all of a sudden. In two
11:04
Speaker 2: years time, I paid all my student loans. Those days
11:07
Speaker 2: were glorious days of finance, you know, money, girls, cards
11:11
Speaker 2: and all that kind of stuff. Excitement, and all of
11:16
Speaker 2: a sudden I could afford everything that I wanted. You know,
11:20
Speaker 2: A single guy in your mid twenties in in London
11:23
Speaker 2: working in finance, you know, was not to like. Fast
11:27
Speaker 2: forward a few years later. I was an overweight, sort
11:33
Speaker 2: of a chopster, sitting in a corporate office, completely depressed
11:40
Speaker 2: and resorting to shadloads of alcohol, if you like, which
11:44
Speaker 2: is the part and parcel of working in finance. That's
11:48
Speaker 2: that's the only thing actually makes life bearable. And then
11:50
Speaker 2: one day I was walking over London Bridge and I
11:53
Speaker 2: just told myself, this is not the life that I
11:55
Speaker 2: want to live. And there was through the sort of
12:02
Speaker 2: took me about three years to be able to transform
12:07
Speaker 2: my life to do something that I really wanted to do.
12:11
Speaker 2: It wasn't a plain sailing. It was very, very difficult
12:14
Speaker 2: for I. I you know, I from here, six figure
12:17
Speaker 2: salary with all those corporate perks and stuff like that.
12:21
Speaker 2: You know, love the apartment in the best place, of
12:23
Speaker 2: best part of town. All of a sudden I became homeless.
12:27
Speaker 2: I spent all my savings on going to film school
12:34
Speaker 2: and you know, learn a craft from scratch. And I
12:37
Speaker 2: spent about good part of eighteen months, you know, couch
12:41
Speaker 2: surfing in people's sofas. And then yeah, once I got
12:49
Speaker 2: depleted from every single penny I had and got myself
12:53
Speaker 2: into certain amount of debt, finally, you know, the result
12:58
Speaker 2: of all the effort that I put through started coming
13:00
Speaker 2: back to me.
13:03
Speaker 1: So where did you go to film school? San Francisco? Okay,
13:07
Speaker 1: so you went back to the US for that.
13:10
Speaker 2: Yeah.
13:10
Speaker 1: I think it's we often see these success stories where
13:13
Speaker 1: we look at other people's lives and I think it
13:16
Speaker 1: just happens overnight. But a lot of the things that
13:19
Speaker 1: have led up to this moment involve a lot of
13:23
Speaker 1: time and a lot of sacrifice and a lot of hardship.
13:25
Speaker 1: And you know, maybe people see you on the Discovery
13:29
Speaker 1: Channel and they're like, ooh, that guy. You know, maybe
13:31
Speaker 1: he got here overnight, but it's usually way more in
13:35
Speaker 1: depth story than that. That takes a lot of time.
13:37
Speaker 1: And yeah, so.
13:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a proper grind, you know, you have to
13:41
Speaker 2: dig really deep, especially in such a competitive you know,
13:46
Speaker 2: TV landscape as well as you know that you know,
13:49
Speaker 2: this sort of live style is pretty cool. I mean
13:51
Speaker 2: people don't see the the side that you know, I'm
13:53
Speaker 2: sitting behind my desk for a long time, you know,
13:56
Speaker 2: coming up with this plan and doing all these research
13:59
Speaker 2: and you know, probably twenty of the part of my
14:05
Speaker 2: job is in the field. But you know, it's not
14:08
Speaker 2: just being in the field. It's basically be able to
14:10
Speaker 2: sustain that they're disseminating those information to the why the
14:13
Speaker 2: public for.
14:15
Speaker 1: Sure, yep, and then crafting the narrative or the story
14:19
Speaker 1: around getting those points out in a specific time period
14:22
Speaker 1: to hold people's attention while they're watching the show, I imagine.
14:26
Speaker 2: But yeah, absolutely true. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of
14:30
Speaker 2: you know, group of people editing, a lot of post
14:33
Speaker 2: production writing goes into it, which is absolutely great. I mean,
14:38
Speaker 2: I'm loving it's because you live, you relive those moments.
14:42
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15:41
Speaker 1: Sure, that's a fun part. Yeah you're like, I forgot
15:43
Speaker 1: about that part. Yeah? Cool. Nice. So you finish up
15:49
Speaker 1: film school and then what happened next? Did you I'm
15:54
Speaker 1: curious if you went and started expeditioning right away, and
15:58
Speaker 1: did you film the trip, you know, one of the
16:00
Speaker 1: first trips that you did or not or how did
16:03
Speaker 1: that work out?
16:04
Speaker 2: So when I was still in finance before I actually resigned,
16:08
Speaker 2: So I imagine you're sort of institutionalized. You're quite an overweight,
16:16
Speaker 2: you know, office worker, with not much confidence about the
16:20
Speaker 2: stuff that you want to do. So you have to
16:21
Speaker 2: start from scratch. And I thought, okay, I'm going to
16:24
Speaker 2: start little. And what I thought, okay, what what the
16:28
Speaker 2: skill that I have that I can sort of actually offer,
16:32
Speaker 2: you know, to all of a sudden become you know,
16:34
Speaker 2: doing grand adventures. I'm not an Arctic explorer. You know,
16:37
Speaker 2: I don't have any genetic amazing genetic makeup or you know,
16:42
Speaker 2: I'm not the strongest and fastest and toughest. So I
16:47
Speaker 2: looked around the house. I used to do a lot
16:49
Speaker 2: of mountain biking, so oh, there's a bike I can
16:52
Speaker 2: do that. Maybe I can There is there is something
16:55
Speaker 2: in there for me. So I started doing incrementally, let's
17:00
Speaker 2: say a day ride, then changed to a sort of
17:03
Speaker 2: a weekend ride, and then you combine it to the camping.
17:06
Speaker 2: You make a weekend out of it. And I started
17:08
Speaker 2: developing my skills of wild camping and some bit of
17:11
Speaker 2: outdoor stuff. And then I started close back all the
17:14
Speaker 2: things that I had from childhood. It was all there,
17:17
Speaker 2: and little by little I picked up the camera again.
17:21
Speaker 2: I become the friend friendly with the camera again and realized, oh,
17:24
Speaker 2: this device that used to be distick, now this tiny,
17:28
Speaker 2: you know, and you can shoot digital and all that
17:30
Speaker 2: kind of stuff. So and I decided got to the
17:35
Speaker 2: stage that I had a confidence to you know, set
17:38
Speaker 2: off on a big expedition. So I decided to cross
17:40
Speaker 2: as hard desert on a bicycle. I applied to the
17:45
Speaker 2: Guiness World Record. They set up a criteria and gave
17:48
Speaker 2: me a time limit and criteria to do that. So
17:51
Speaker 2: I went and did that journey and that changed my
17:55
Speaker 2: life completely all of a sudden when I came back,
17:59
Speaker 2: and I remember the moment that I actually put my
18:02
Speaker 2: key my keyhole and opened the door, opened the door,
18:07
Speaker 2: and something just hit my forehead. What's next? And that
18:12
Speaker 2: was the time that I got the disease. I mean,
18:14
Speaker 2: I'm sure you've been there. You know, you've even traveling
18:17
Speaker 2: and you know that's the that's something really gets you.
18:20
Speaker 2: And I thought, oh god, this is so good. I
18:23
Speaker 2: want to I want to have more of it. So
18:25
Speaker 2: then I started bigger journey. So when I went to
18:28
Speaker 2: film school, and then I did a bigger journey which
18:30
Speaker 2: I crossed the length of the planet from north to south.
18:33
Speaker 2: By then I resigned my job I was training for
18:37
Speaker 2: for two years. Then I sort of uh took my
18:40
Speaker 2: bike to the northernmost point in Europe and cycled in
18:43
Speaker 2: Norway and I cycled all the way to Cape Town
18:46
Speaker 2: in record time of one hundred two and two days.
18:49
Speaker 1: Wow. So nord Cap was that nord Cap?
18:52
Speaker 2: Yeah? To Cape Town?
18:54
Speaker 1: Wow, that's intense.
18:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was really intense. You know. I got malaria
19:02
Speaker 2: along the way, you know, food poisoning, and it was
19:05
Speaker 2: a race against time to just get yourself to Cape
19:07
Speaker 2: Town on time. It was an eternal state of torture.
19:13
Speaker 2: But you know what, and I was filming the journey
19:17
Speaker 2: and mobilized a group of people who joined me here
19:21
Speaker 2: and there to film the journey. And whatever I learned
19:25
Speaker 2: in film school I put to practice. I teamed up
19:28
Speaker 2: with a bunch of people. They created this independent television
19:31
Speaker 2: series and they managed to find distribution and sold it.
19:37
Speaker 2: I mean obviously before the movie was sold, the film,
19:40
Speaker 2: the series was sold. I had to enjoy a huge
19:44
Speaker 2: amount of physical sort of financial hardship, so that they're
19:49
Speaker 2: being homeless was sort of it was part of that
19:52
Speaker 2: sort of eighteen months gap waiting and then I got
19:56
Speaker 2: a book deal. So this book was sort of a
20:00
Speaker 2: published Capture Kate by Summersdale, which is the UK publisher,
20:07
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden life changed and I started
20:11
Speaker 2: doing more and more and more and also getting employed
20:15
Speaker 2: to go and you know, film other people's journey and
20:17
Speaker 2: expeditions for like mainstream channels.
20:21
Speaker 1: Nice. So the title of that is cap k app
20:24
Speaker 1: two K Cap to Kpe. The listeners were interested. Awesome,
20:30
Speaker 1: I can't wait to read it. I've added to my
20:33
Speaker 1: good Reads list. I'm very excited.
20:36
Speaker 2: Cool.
20:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so you did Cap to Kpe, you got
20:40
Speaker 1: your book deal, get your series out, and then some
20:45
Speaker 1: more additional interest.
20:48
Speaker 2: More interest. Did another journey across the Amazon documenting the
20:55
Speaker 2: environmental crime across the Amazon perpetrated and their impact on
21:02
Speaker 2: indigenous people. So I spend a lot of time with
21:06
Speaker 2: people with at least amount of contact with outside world,
21:09
Speaker 2: how their life came to danger by sort of outside forces.
21:17
Speaker 2: But there are cattle ranchers, gold miners, you know, environmental
21:21
Speaker 2: destruction and so on. So I spent a huge amount
21:27
Speaker 2: of time in the Amazon, about three months. Are documented
21:32
Speaker 2: all of these and I had a pleasure to travel
21:35
Speaker 2: to the edge of the edge of the territory of
21:37
Speaker 2: uncontacted tribes and you know, see things very few in
21:43
Speaker 2: the world have ever seen. You know, I met people
21:46
Speaker 2: who have not had any contact with outside world, which
21:51
Speaker 2: actually blew my mind. And then that continued. I did
21:59
Speaker 2: another series is for Amazon Studios called The World's Most
22:04
Speaker 2: Dangerous Borders, and another one which is The Hidden Frontiers
22:13
Speaker 2: for Discovery Channel. So these are the ones that actually
22:15
Speaker 2: have been in front of a camera, right.
22:19
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you about the Amazon trip, just
22:22
Speaker 1: one question about what you learned from the tribes that
22:25
Speaker 1: had never been in contact with I guess the outside
22:30
Speaker 1: or people from the outside.
22:33
Speaker 2: It was a It was a very interesting experience because
22:37
Speaker 2: when you see people who don't understand the value of money,
22:40
Speaker 2: they the monetary world that we understand for them is
22:45
Speaker 2: not comprehensible. They have came to contact with outside world
22:50
Speaker 2: because they were in their jungle. All of a sudden
22:53
Speaker 2: they saw that lugger or you know, poacher that actually
22:58
Speaker 2: using access and MACHETI and that kind of stuff, the
23:02
Speaker 2: modern goods. They saw a guy rather than you know,
23:06
Speaker 2: putting his hand in the water and just like drinking
23:09
Speaker 2: water like this. All of a sudden, you have this
23:11
Speaker 2: device which is called glass. They can put it in
23:14
Speaker 2: the water in the river and take your time and
23:17
Speaker 2: drink it. For them, All of a sudden, they see
23:20
Speaker 2: these material goods and they want it, so they come
23:23
Speaker 2: to outside world. They want to contact with outside world,
23:26
Speaker 2: thinking they can have those goods. Whereas the problem is
23:30
Speaker 2: they don't have any skills to offer the outside world
23:34
Speaker 2: to acquire those you know, the exchange doesn't happen, so
23:38
Speaker 2: they enter is emotional anxiety in a lower scale. Just
23:43
Speaker 2: think about it. If you live in a tiny little
23:45
Speaker 2: village all your life and then they transfer you right
23:50
Speaker 2: in the middle of New York City, how do you
23:53
Speaker 2: feel all of a sudden you go, wow, what is it?
23:55
Speaker 2: You feel very overwhelmed. For them, that's like one hundred
23:59
Speaker 2: times more. They never seen electricity, they never seen modern goods.
24:04
Speaker 2: So on that basis, they entered thisced emotional anxiety. And
24:09
Speaker 2: there's no mechanism for these people to feel better about
24:13
Speaker 2: their lives. So yeah, no one knows how to deal
24:16
Speaker 2: with them.
24:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's very It's like the movie Elf exactly in
24:22
Speaker 1: another world, right, and then the skills that you have
24:27
Speaker 1: from your own life in that specific region are so
24:30
Speaker 1: specialized to your everyday life that, yeah, how does it
24:34
Speaker 1: transfer other than I guess educating others on what your
24:38
Speaker 1: life is like and what your practices are in your
24:41
Speaker 1: traditions and things like that. But I can't imagine coming
24:44
Speaker 1: out to New York City after being in a really
24:50
Speaker 1: really really remote place and.
24:51
Speaker 2: The I mean I always in deep in the Amazon
24:56
Speaker 2: for we're talking about the primary forest by then. When
25:00
Speaker 2: I got there, I was there for about three months,
25:02
Speaker 2: and I spent another six weeks in a primary forest
25:06
Speaker 2: studying these people, which are pretty much hunter gatherers. They
25:11
Speaker 2: moved through the jungle without leaving any trace. I came
25:16
Speaker 2: as expedition finished. I arrived in Lima in Peru, and
25:22
Speaker 2: then my wife came there and oh, let's go to
25:27
Speaker 2: Machu Pichu. Yeah, let's go to matcha pichu, to match
25:30
Speaker 2: a pichu. And it was the biggest shock to the system.
25:33
Speaker 2: I really did not enjoy matcha pichu. All of a sudden,
25:37
Speaker 2: I saw like millions of tourists just pouring down in
25:42
Speaker 2: too Matchu Pichu and with the cameras and stuff like that.
25:46
Speaker 2: It was a complete shock. You know, in any normal circumstances,
25:50
Speaker 2: I would probably enjoy it, but then I was in
25:52
Speaker 2: a completely different mindset.
25:54
Speaker 1: Yeah that's fair. Even in getting in line for your ticket,
25:58
Speaker 1: I remember just being crushed in like so many people
26:02
Speaker 1: just everywhere, and yeah, I honestly, yeah, it's it's an experience.
26:06
Speaker 2: It's a way that beauty, doesn't it.
26:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it does. I wanted to skip ahead a
26:13
Speaker 1: little bit and talk about World's Most Dangerous Borders and
26:17
Speaker 1: which regions you were in for that series as well
26:21
Speaker 1: where you were filming.
26:24
Speaker 2: So if you tell people Sahel, probably not out of
26:29
Speaker 2: ten they have no idea where it is. But it
26:31
Speaker 2: is a is a narrow belt that connects West Africa
26:36
Speaker 2: to East Africa and is sandwich between Sahara desert and
26:41
Speaker 2: African savannah. This is a transitional belt. Start from Senegal
26:47
Speaker 2: goes all the way to Somalia and there is a
26:50
Speaker 2: transitional belt between a complete arid North Sahara with quite
26:57
Speaker 2: a fertile African savannah or African jungle. And because of
27:05
Speaker 2: the it's not a it's not a completely dry land.
27:10
Speaker 2: Is basically is a is a transitional area where where
27:13
Speaker 2: the h if you like, it's the separation between nomadic
27:17
Speaker 2: life and the settlements. So in African sort of a savannah,
27:22
Speaker 2: there are lots of settlements, where as in Sahara it's
27:24
Speaker 2: all nomadic life baeryins and to our eggs and all
27:28
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff. So my journey.
27:32
Speaker 4: Uh that the title of the series was the World
27:35
Speaker 4: was Angerous Borders, and it was about why these borders
27:40
Speaker 4: are the most dangerous, why the Sahilian belt in North
27:45
Speaker 4: Africa is the most dangerous place in the world, especially.
27:49
Speaker 2: Within those border areas. So I started my journey in
27:53
Speaker 2: I mean it was I went for two rekis before
27:56
Speaker 2: actually starting the journey. I went to for some of
28:00
Speaker 2: to Chad, and what I've seen literally blew my mind,
28:03
Speaker 2: which I come to it, but I've I traveled to
28:08
Speaker 2: By then, I traveled to about eighty countries around the world,
28:12
Speaker 2: but I've never seen a place like Chad or a Niche.
28:17
Speaker 2: These are like the poorest countries in the world by
28:20
Speaker 2: far margin, and not only poor, they never they have
28:23
Speaker 2: not been developed in many shapes and form, so and
28:29
Speaker 2: especially there are regions that you when you're traveling there,
28:31
Speaker 2: you feel like you've gone back by a hundred years.
28:36
Speaker 2: So I started my journey in Senegal and Senegal is
28:40
Speaker 2: quite a sort of a stable country, and I sort
28:43
Speaker 2: of made my way to Mali. Now that's such a spectacular,
28:50
Speaker 2: incredibly cultural rich, beating heart of Africa, beating part of
28:55
Speaker 2: West Africa. It's really cultural help of Africa in terms
28:58
Speaker 2: of music, arts, whatever you can possibly imagine. But the
29:01
Speaker 2: country is in trouble, same as the rest of the
29:03
Speaker 2: Sahilian region, and there's only one reason to it. Because
29:08
Speaker 2: the Sahelian Belt is getting shrunk, is shrinking on a
29:12
Speaker 2: daily basis. The desertification. The global warming led to the
29:17
Speaker 2: master certification and pushing the desert further down. So the
29:22
Speaker 2: Sahilian Belt is shrinking. So a lot of communities in
29:26
Speaker 2: the further north finding themselves their resources, are doing the
29:29
Speaker 2: link and they have to migrate to the south, further south.
29:33
Speaker 2: And those guys in the south of the Sailian Belt,
29:37
Speaker 2: they are they have a minimum amount of resources and
29:40
Speaker 2: they have to all of usdden share it with these
29:42
Speaker 2: people coming from the north. And that's why there's a
29:46
Speaker 2: climate war. There's devastation, there is poverty and and yeah,
29:52
Speaker 2: all these sort of border wars is a part and
29:55
Speaker 2: parcel of those, gotcha.
29:58
Speaker 1: So it's interesting because I feel like we always hear
30:00
Speaker 1: about migration north, but you're saying that there there's also
30:05
Speaker 1: a migration south. Yeah, really interesting stuff. Yeah, I wanted
30:11
Speaker 1: to ask you during that time period Overlanders love to
30:17
Speaker 1: talk about border crossings, so I wanted to talk to
30:20
Speaker 1: you a little bit about the logistics involved in that project,
30:25
Speaker 1: crossing the world's most dangerous borders for the series and
30:28
Speaker 1: filming and all of that.
30:33
Speaker 2: One word to describe it, and that's it's nightmare, Okay,
30:40
Speaker 2: the biggest nightmare after say, between all those border crossings,
30:45
Speaker 2: it was just one of them was an easy one.
30:48
Speaker 2: I was Senecal to Mali. The rest was the most
30:52
Speaker 2: painful border crossings ever to the level that you know
30:57
Speaker 2: that the worst one was crossing to Sudan from Chad
31:03
Speaker 2: that led us to spend four days in jail. Oh
31:08
Speaker 2: so I think that's by far that that the gnarliest
31:12
Speaker 2: border crossing ever.
31:15
Speaker 1: Your team in jail, Like, was it your whole team
31:19
Speaker 1: that was in jail. Yeah, we were all in jail.
31:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, we were. We were held by Sudanese intelligence services
31:29
Speaker 2: and we were so basically we were in Chad, which
31:34
Speaker 2: is uh, you know, itself is a completely different story,
31:38
Speaker 2: but we wanted to get get to Sudan. We were
31:41
Speaker 2: in such remote places before we get to Sudan that
31:45
Speaker 2: we actually didn't know what was going on in the world.
31:49
Speaker 2: While we were, you know, trying to try to film
31:51
Speaker 2: this incredible, incredibly beautiful tribe in the middle of nowhere
31:56
Speaker 2: in Sudan, a revolution was happening. So by the time
32:00
Speaker 2: we got to the Sudanese border, the government has already
32:03
Speaker 2: been toppled. The army took over, and the border that
32:06
Speaker 2: we wanted to cross, it's called Chady and Sudanese border
32:10
Speaker 2: is basically the Sudanese side is there four, which is
32:16
Speaker 2: a very politically sensitive place. Not a single camera crew
32:20
Speaker 2: over the last twenty years has been able to pass
32:22
Speaker 2: through and we had a special permission. Wow, So as
32:27
Speaker 2: we got there, we didn't know what was happening. It
32:32
Speaker 2: was extremely sensitive. We crossed the border, we were taken
32:36
Speaker 2: to sort of barracks and so, what are you guys
32:40
Speaker 2: doing here or we're meeting these tribes? We had an
32:43
Speaker 2: arrangement well, there's no arrangement, there's no government, so yeah, hello,
32:48
Speaker 2: let's go to the barracks. And then we were handed
32:51
Speaker 2: over to the to the Danese intelligence and then next
32:54
Speaker 2: thing we know, we were in jail for four days
32:58
Speaker 2: before we kicked out of are for and sent to
33:03
Speaker 2: Cartoon that the capitol for further questioning and then keep
33:08
Speaker 2: out of the country.
33:09
Speaker 1: What was the jail experience, like, oh.
33:13
Speaker 2: We're which part of which part of it? You want
33:16
Speaker 2: to know? It was? It was they were really respectful.
33:18
Speaker 2: I mean, Sudanese were really nice people. The only problem
33:22
Speaker 2: was that the the sanity sanitary problem. It was that
33:29
Speaker 2: the toilets were disgusting. It was so bad and it
33:36
Speaker 2: was very close to us, so the smell was so
33:39
Speaker 2: overpowering that we could not sleep. It was like four
33:43
Speaker 2: days of torture. I mean, the worst part of it
33:45
Speaker 2: was the smell of that toilet. And I've been to
33:48
Speaker 2: a few really really bad places with like lack of
33:51
Speaker 2: hygiene and bad toilets and stuff like that, but this
33:53
Speaker 2: is what this was a whole new level.
33:59
Speaker 1: Sorry, it's like torture by toilet.
34:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, my, that's a very good way to put it.
34:06
Speaker 2: My cameraman got salmon ella and he was vomiting and
34:10
Speaker 2: it was it was really really bad experience. So last day,
34:15
Speaker 2: once we they put us in the United Nations flights
34:17
Speaker 2: and tried to get rid of us and send us
34:19
Speaker 2: to the Capitol, we were so happy and relieved.
34:23
Speaker 1: I bet that made any sort of any toilet at
34:29
Speaker 1: that point probably seemed great.
34:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah exactly. And during that time, which was
34:36
Speaker 2: I was in custody, my wife was pregnant back home,
34:40
Speaker 2: so she didn't hear from me for four days.
34:44
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, Oh my goodness, wow, oh wow, woof,
34:52
Speaker 1: And you're here to tell the tale exactly.
34:57
Speaker 2: That was the hell of a border crossing after s.
35:01
Speaker 1: So were you guys traveling in a vehicle or were
35:03
Speaker 1: you walking over the land borders? Like did you have
35:05
Speaker 1: to do a temporary import permit? Everybody's passports got checked,
35:08
Speaker 1: Like how what did that look like? How many hours
35:10
Speaker 1: did they take for you?
35:12
Speaker 2: Yeah?
35:13
Speaker 1: Different?
35:13
Speaker 2: So basically you start with one you stop in one
35:16
Speaker 2: country and you enter another country. So you you enter
35:20
Speaker 2: let's say, Buy, you stop at the border of Chad.
35:23
Speaker 2: Then from the town east side, your fixers and your
35:27
Speaker 2: guides will come and take you. They receive you from
35:30
Speaker 2: that side. Once you clear the custom you know, they
35:34
Speaker 2: come and take you with their vehicles.
35:36
Speaker 1: Okay, so yeah, that makes sense that you'd have a
35:39
Speaker 1: fixer for those situations.
35:42
Speaker 2: You know, able to get permits, you know, all that
35:44
Speaker 2: kind of stuff. Yeah, I mean is one of the
35:47
Speaker 2: downside of you know, my job is unfortunately these days
35:50
Speaker 2: I cannot just okay, let's pack the bag, look at
35:53
Speaker 2: the get the visas, and look at the map and
35:57
Speaker 2: just go. There's a huge amount of risk assessment and
36:00
Speaker 2: you know, it's lots of red tape. We get the
36:02
Speaker 2: costs and justify to the network that you know you're
36:05
Speaker 2: going to come back alive in one piece.
36:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, tell me a little bit about that, because your
36:10
Speaker 1: most recent one that I know of, unless you have
36:14
Speaker 1: some other thing that hasn't been launched yet, but the
36:16
Speaker 1: Hidden Frontiers in Arabia it was the most recent project, right,
36:21
Speaker 1: So tell me a little bit about the logistics that
36:27
Speaker 1: were involved in that and a crew and gear and
36:32
Speaker 1: getting permits and that whole thing. I guess the yeah,
36:36
Speaker 1: the call's notes or whatever you want to call them.
36:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, I mean again, took us about a year
36:44
Speaker 2: to put this together, and there are not many places
36:46
Speaker 2: in the world left that you can say, oh, this
36:49
Speaker 2: place is really on explored or you know, people know
36:52
Speaker 2: about everywhere. Unfortunately, Saudi Arabia just opened its door after
36:56
Speaker 2: one hundreds years of being closed to the rest of
36:58
Speaker 2: the world, and we were one of the pioneers uh
37:02
Speaker 2: in there. And there are so many places in Saudi
37:05
Speaker 2: Arabia that left unexplored, like lava fields or a canyon
37:13
Speaker 2: or deserts that people have not been arcads. And through
37:18
Speaker 2: through few rekis and a lot of studies, we just realized, okay,
37:22
Speaker 2: there's an unexplored canyon here. There is uh. There are
37:26
Speaker 2: a few mysteries to to really unlock. You know, for example,
37:29
Speaker 2: in Iraqi Kurdistan, there there's this endangered species that thrives
37:34
Speaker 2: within minefields, which is like Persian leopards. There's only twenty
37:38
Speaker 2: of them left in Kurdistan, you know, they live within minefields.
37:45
Speaker 2: So for us was you know, putting these stories together
37:49
Speaker 2: and you know, to really unlock those mysteries. So these
37:55
Speaker 2: are very politically sensitive countries and normally they don't you
38:00
Speaker 2: know camera crews that I mean, I do many mainstream entertainments,
38:04
Speaker 2: you know, I don't do anything of sort of politics
38:08
Speaker 2: or current affairs and that kind of stuff. So know,
38:09
Speaker 2: we we create a sort of adventure television and when
38:15
Speaker 2: we approach those countries to get permids was incredibly difficult
38:19
Speaker 2: to get uh you know, film permit because all of
38:22
Speaker 2: them thinking that, oh, we want to report on human rights,
38:25
Speaker 2: we want to you know, report on sort of women's
38:29
Speaker 2: issues and that kind of stuff, mistreatment of women, and
38:32
Speaker 2: that wasn't the purpose of the show.
38:36
Speaker 1: To hear that. Because Saudi you know, opening up and
38:40
Speaker 1: F one being there and the promotion of tourism there
38:43
Speaker 1: has been quite heavy, all the events and concerts and
38:47
Speaker 1: they're really pushing international.
38:51
Speaker 2: The moment you go with the bit of camera, things changes.
38:57
Speaker 2: If you are going as a tourist, which is very easy,
39:01
Speaker 2: it's you get a minutes, you know, when you want
39:06
Speaker 2: to go there to film, it's a huge amount of
39:09
Speaker 2: red tape you have to cross. I mean they were
39:11
Speaker 2: really nice and cooperative and and the rest of the region.
39:15
Speaker 2: You know, just just getting a drawn pyramid is a
39:18
Speaker 2: nightmare on his own right, you know, it takes months. Anyhow,
39:21
Speaker 2: we got through all of that, but these are the
39:24
Speaker 2: boring parts. But that you know, little by little we
39:27
Speaker 2: we we found so we wanted six stories. That One
39:32
Speaker 2: story was in Iraqi, Kurdistan, which was Persian leopard, which
39:36
Speaker 2: was a big mystery, how do we find these endangered,
39:40
Speaker 2: nearly extinct species. Two an unexported canyon in Saudi Arabia.
39:47
Speaker 2: No one has ever been inside that canyon. The potential
39:51
Speaker 2: of people living in a in a canyon, in a
39:55
Speaker 2: cave in Oman in a sort of impenetrable onion system.
40:01
Speaker 2: It was a converging canyon system, which no one could
40:05
Speaker 2: believe that actually human could live there. Through the satellite imagery,
40:09
Speaker 2: we found the potential existence of human there, so that
40:14
Speaker 2: was another mystery. Another one was we found Aman is
40:19
Speaker 2: one of the driest places in the world, and we
40:23
Speaker 2: found the tribe actually that live without any sort of water,
40:28
Speaker 2: so we wanted to know how do they do it
40:33
Speaker 2: and and so on and so forth. So these were
40:36
Speaker 2: like in mysteries that we built. And you know, we've
40:38
Speaker 2: found no one has ever filmed the do Gongs in
40:42
Speaker 2: Persian gulfs, and we were the first camera crew that
40:45
Speaker 2: we actually managed to capture them on camera because they
40:49
Speaker 2: are very specific breed of do gongs. So yeah, all
40:53
Speaker 2: in all, this was the summary of the different subject
40:56
Speaker 2: that we hit.
40:58
Speaker 1: What is it, Dougan sea cows.
41:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, very vegetarian, gentle vegetarian mammal. We spend about a
41:08
Speaker 2: month at sea until we're able to sort of catch
41:12
Speaker 2: them on camera. Anywhere in the world you can film
41:16
Speaker 2: doo gongs very You can go very close to them
41:19
Speaker 2: in a Persian golf. These breeds, they no one knows
41:22
Speaker 2: anything about them because they're very skittish. They as soon
41:26
Speaker 2: as that you get close to them, they escape.
41:31
Speaker 1: Hmm. Very interesting. That's cool. So you need patients essentially, take.
41:37
Speaker 2: A lot of patients, a lot of you know, using
41:40
Speaker 2: different we use shipwreck as a cover, you know, so
41:43
Speaker 2: many different tricks to finally you manage to get a
41:46
Speaker 2: glimpse of them.
41:47
Speaker 1: Fascinating. So that was That's obviously one of the episodes
41:50
Speaker 1: on that series. People and find out how you did
41:54
Speaker 1: it and yeah, exactly everything on that episode. Nice, very cool.
42:02
Speaker 1: I love that. The inquisitive mind, you know, in twenty
42:05
Speaker 1: twenty three now it is so important these things to
42:08
Speaker 1: keep thinking about and get off of Instagram. I'm telling
42:12
Speaker 1: myself that as well, you know, and go out and
42:16
Speaker 1: investigate and learn something and inquire and yeah, it's so fun.
42:21
Speaker 2: Super fun, incredible mysteries, isn't it.
42:25
Speaker 6: And it's such a privileged position to be in to
42:31
Speaker 6: be able to tell those stories, and yeah, I absolutely
42:35
Speaker 6: love it.
42:37
Speaker 1: It's fantastic. I wanted to also ask you, because you've
42:40
Speaker 1: done so many trips by bike, it looks like you
42:44
Speaker 1: know various types of bikes, from road bikes to fat
42:49
Speaker 1: bikes recently, which bikes have you done on different journeys
42:54
Speaker 1: and do you have a favorite bike?
42:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have to say fat boys definitely, not on
43:00
Speaker 2: my face, not my favorite. So I use a fat
43:04
Speaker 2: bike to cross the desert in Saudi Arabia, and it
43:10
Speaker 2: was a pen in the ass. It was so hard,
43:13
Speaker 2: it was so heavy. Obviously we have to deflate the
43:16
Speaker 2: tires to be able to get a bit of a
43:18
Speaker 2: bit more friction. It was so hard on legs and bodies.
43:22
Speaker 2: It was really taxing and you push really hard and
43:26
Speaker 2: you progress not much. But there was the only way
43:28
Speaker 2: to cross the sand dunes and deserts and that sort
43:31
Speaker 2: of thing, so there's no other way to cross it.
43:35
Speaker 2: For many years, I use mountain bikings. I never used
43:40
Speaker 2: mountain bike for travel, but just mountain bike in the mountains,
43:43
Speaker 2: which is if you look at as a sort of
43:47
Speaker 2: a sports I absolutely love it. But in terms of traveling,
43:51
Speaker 2: I never forget the times that I had with my
43:55
Speaker 2: expedition bike. For many years, I've been sponsored by a
43:59
Speaker 2: brand called Coga, which is a Dutch brand, and they
44:02
Speaker 2: make the best travel bikes ever. So I normally travel
44:07
Speaker 2: with fully laden bikes, you know, two pandies in the front,
44:12
Speaker 2: two panders in the back, with a dry bag, you know,
44:15
Speaker 2: strapped around the back of the bike. You know, I
44:17
Speaker 2: carry normally like thirty five kilos on the bike with
44:21
Speaker 2: everything that I need, so I can go really far,
44:27
Speaker 2: you know, I can, I can camp where I need to.
44:30
Speaker 2: I'm quite self sufficient. I really missed that, and I
44:34
Speaker 2: think that was my one of my best memories. It was,
44:38
Speaker 2: you know, to travel and and think, okay, I've done
44:41
Speaker 2: my you know daily quartera today and let's just stop,
44:45
Speaker 2: start a fire, get the stove going, you know, cook
44:49
Speaker 2: whatever I need to cook. And yeah, enjoyed it a
44:54
Speaker 2: bit moment of like silence and peace.
44:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, those trips him to be on a take timeline.
45:01
Speaker 1: So did you have a specific amount of kilometers that
45:03
Speaker 1: you had to do or miles that you had to
45:05
Speaker 1: do per day.
45:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I'm not talking about my sort of
45:09
Speaker 2: record breaking journeys and stuff like that. But other than that,
45:12
Speaker 2: I've done fair amount of journeys, you know, around Europe.
45:16
Speaker 2: I've done a fair amount of journeys in Nepal India
45:20
Speaker 2: that sort of places fair amount of bike touring and
45:24
Speaker 2: I when I'm looking back, those memories are the best
45:31
Speaker 2: because no time pressure, you know, and you know you're
45:36
Speaker 2: actually enjoying what you're doing without actually competing against the clock.
45:42
Speaker 2: And you once you're traveling with the speed of bikes,
45:46
Speaker 2: it's fascinating because you know, you you you you look
45:50
Speaker 2: at things in a different way. You kind of gives
45:53
Speaker 2: you the perspective of how the world's sort of being
45:56
Speaker 2: pulled together. You know, you you really feel the country
46:00
Speaker 2: and the culture. Your your requirements are quite basic, so
46:05
Speaker 2: you need place to sleep, you your life is quite simple.
46:08
Speaker 2: You need the water to drink and that immediate immediately,
46:11
Speaker 2: that's sort of its simpleness immediately, you know, makes you
46:16
Speaker 2: think about your most basic needs and what you're sharing
46:20
Speaker 2: with a people from different culture. At least that's a
46:23
Speaker 2: good starting point. You arrive in a village with your
46:25
Speaker 2: bikeers absolutely hungry, there's someone's there to feed you, and
46:29
Speaker 2: that's a really good start of a conversation. You know,
46:32
Speaker 2: ask for someone that I can can I camp in
46:34
Speaker 2: your in your in your garden and that you know,
46:37
Speaker 2: that's all of a sudden, the people don't look at
46:40
Speaker 2: the bike cares as threats, right.
46:45
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah. I was going to ask you because in
46:47
Speaker 1: this most recent series you were traveling a little bit
46:51
Speaker 1: more in land cruisers. Yeah, a little bit on the
46:55
Speaker 1: fat bike. So how did your experience of the journey
46:59
Speaker 1: change because you were in a vehicle versus on a bike.
47:02
Speaker 2: So it was every episode was sort of a standalone
47:06
Speaker 2: so you know, there were places that you know, the
47:10
Speaker 2: the only reason actually we used bike in one of
47:15
Speaker 2: the episodes was we wanted to sort of cover this
47:18
Speaker 2: vast extense of desert and as part of the sort
47:21
Speaker 2: of a Saudi Arabia's policy, there's no car allowed other
47:26
Speaker 2: than electric cars. There's no car is allowed in that
47:29
Speaker 2: sort of a particular development part of Sali, which is
47:33
Speaker 2: called Neom, although yeah, there are construction vehicles and that
47:38
Speaker 2: kind of stuff there, but you know, as a as
47:41
Speaker 2: a film crew, we were not allowed to use any
47:44
Speaker 2: sort of a petrol vehicle. On that basis, we thought, okay,
47:48
Speaker 2: what are we gonna do. We're gonna we're gonna use bike,
47:50
Speaker 2: which we can do really well, and we're going to
47:52
Speaker 2: cover this incredible place with with our bikes. So that
47:58
Speaker 2: was the standalone sort of a bike episode. But the
48:01
Speaker 2: other episodes, you know, we have to go to a
48:03
Speaker 2: particular place, going from arriving in Capitol, going to a
48:08
Speaker 2: very very remote place, getting inside the canyon, repel or
48:11
Speaker 2: apseil inside the inside the canyon, or or explore a cave.
48:15
Speaker 2: So with that we have to use land Cruiser, which
48:19
Speaker 2: the default vehicle for sort of a Middle East and
48:23
Speaker 2: that part of the world, the White Land Cruiser. That's
48:26
Speaker 2: what you see over there. I really like it. Actually.
48:29
Speaker 2: In fact, when we wanted to go to one of
48:31
Speaker 2: the caves, because we didn't have any anchor point, we
48:35
Speaker 2: use the car as our anchor point. So yeah, we
48:40
Speaker 2: we wrapped the ropes around the car and used that
48:43
Speaker 2: use the car as an anchor when we were descending
48:45
Speaker 2: into a into a sinkhole. Nice.
48:50
Speaker 1: That's great. Yeah, I've heard just the difference between traveling
48:56
Speaker 1: like on a motorcycle and enclosed purble drive vehicle versus
49:01
Speaker 1: a bicycle. It's all obviously a very different experience, and
49:05
Speaker 1: you're exposed to the elements a lot more and talking
49:08
Speaker 1: to a lot more people and your faces out of
49:11
Speaker 1: the windows, and yeah.
49:14
Speaker 2: You're after right, I think, you know, just to echoing
49:17
Speaker 2: what you mentioned, when you arrive in a in a
49:19
Speaker 2: village or a town, if you go with a like
49:23
Speaker 2: you know, on a swanky land cruiser, and you know,
49:25
Speaker 2: people look at you, Oh, this rich guy has come here.
49:28
Speaker 2: He's got an agenda, he wants to film, you know,
49:31
Speaker 2: he wants to I don't know, he's got so much
49:33
Speaker 2: money to spend or whatever. You're received in a different way.
49:38
Speaker 2: Whereas when you travel with a bike, especially in developing countries,
49:43
Speaker 2: when you arrive in a village, people look at you
49:45
Speaker 2: and think, oh, this poor guy can't afford the car.
49:48
Speaker 2: You know, he's coming with a bicycle, so we might
49:51
Speaker 2: as well feed this guy and look after the poor bastard.
49:56
Speaker 2: So that's how they sort of receive you. And all
49:59
Speaker 2: of a sudden, the catch you at a They don't
50:01
Speaker 2: look at you as a threat. They look at you
50:03
Speaker 2: as in a different way, which are quite like the curious. Yeah,
50:09
Speaker 2: I love that.
50:10
Speaker 1: I think we also as travelers or expedition leaders or participants,
50:17
Speaker 1: or sometimes like oh I wonder you know about my
50:20
Speaker 1: own safety in certain places, but we don't necessarily think about,
50:25
Speaker 1: oh well, what if they are worried about us as
50:28
Speaker 1: a safety concerned as well? Like it totally goes both ways.
50:32
Speaker 2: That's that's a really really valid point. You're absolutely right.
50:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so good things to think about. Awesome. I
50:44
Speaker 1: wanted to bridge the gap between your trips and your
50:48
Speaker 1: daily life because I think you have a lot to
50:51
Speaker 1: share and a lot of advice to give or tips
50:54
Speaker 1: and tricks on various aspects of life that people can
50:59
Speaker 1: bring into the every day to make planning or life
51:04
Speaker 1: or challenges it a little bit easier to overcome. So, yeah,
51:09
Speaker 1: how do you use the lessons of travel in your
51:11
Speaker 1: everyday life? So it could be overcoming self doubt, it
51:15
Speaker 1: could be overcoming conflict, making confident decisions, things like that.
51:23
Speaker 2: I mean, if i'm I can, I can, you know,
51:25
Speaker 2: I can list all of that for you, But that's
51:27
Speaker 2: not a sincere answer. I'm I'm actually I'm actually a
51:32
Speaker 2: one that really struggles with normal life. And that's a
51:36
Speaker 2: very honest, heartfelt answer, because you know, I'm I spend
51:40
Speaker 2: the last fourteen years of my life traveling NonStop. I
51:46
Speaker 2: was away from the UK on filming trips about four
51:50
Speaker 2: to five months a year. I was constantly on the
51:53
Speaker 2: road of coming from you know, Papua New Guinea, packed
51:57
Speaker 2: my bag. Three days later I was in the Arctic,
52:00
Speaker 2: or going to the the Amazon Andes or you know,
52:03
Speaker 2: so far and so on and so forth. But you know,
52:08
Speaker 2: I really struggled with mundane and obviously I I established that,
52:14
Speaker 2: you know, my I cannot be on the road as
52:17
Speaker 2: much as I want to, especially you know, I'm running
52:21
Speaker 2: a small company. I have a little one now, and
52:26
Speaker 2: that mundane grind. It's I mean, as much as I
52:30
Speaker 2: enjoy my little one, I love my family, but it's hard.
52:34
Speaker 2: It's a real struggle. So, you know, as to make
52:39
Speaker 2: that a little bit easier, I do a loss of
52:41
Speaker 2: rock climbing, you know, try to try to you know,
52:46
Speaker 2: release some adrenaline in in sort of. That's that side.
52:49
Speaker 2: And you know, I'm lucky that I get to travel
52:51
Speaker 2: quite a lot, but not as much as I want to,
52:54
Speaker 2: right right, They all have that hunger and passion for
52:58
Speaker 2: you know, seeing those places, and you know, I I'm
53:03
Speaker 2: not sure if you know, Sir Richard Burton, He's he
53:07
Speaker 2: was my inspirational hero. I mean, I know I read
53:11
Speaker 2: all these books and I absolutely, you know, adore this man,
53:15
Speaker 2: and you know his famous quote set up, you know,
53:18
Speaker 2: of the gladdest moment in human life is a departure
53:21
Speaker 2: up in a distant journey into the unknown, unknown lands.
53:25
Speaker 2: And you know, this court stayed with me always, and
53:28
Speaker 2: you know the moment that you know, I sit on
53:31
Speaker 2: that plane that that's sort of the happiest, you know,
53:35
Speaker 2: moment of my life. You know, that's a I can't
53:39
Speaker 2: say it's the happiest moment of but one of the
53:41
Speaker 2: happiest moments of my life. You know, I'm just I
53:43
Speaker 2: love that. Butterflies in my belly, you know, traveling. Yeah,
53:47
Speaker 2: to answer your question, yeah, old resilience and you know,
53:50
Speaker 2: all that kind of stuff is in there. But at
53:53
Speaker 2: the same time, there is a struggle that I want
53:56
Speaker 2: to be honest and you know, share.
53:57
Speaker 1: With the audience absolutely, and I.
54:00
Speaker 2: As a travelers we're all struggling with normal lives. I'm
54:03
Speaker 2: pretty sure whoever listened to you at your podcast, when
54:07
Speaker 2: they come back to normal life, they are struggling with
54:10
Speaker 2: the mundane and normality of life.
54:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's definitely a in the own situation, I think.
54:18
Speaker 1: And do you ever feel like you get oversaturated? You know,
54:23
Speaker 1: have you ever been like I probably need just just
54:26
Speaker 1: a steck to go home and just really like think
54:28
Speaker 1: and reflect on what I've seen and what I've learned
54:31
Speaker 1: and what I've absorbed. I'm a little overwhelmed and I
54:35
Speaker 1: just want to like let it sink in a little bit.
54:38
Speaker 1: Or do you find that with the time periods that
54:41
Speaker 1: you're gone that doesn't really happen?
54:44
Speaker 2: No, it does. I mean when I was, you know,
54:47
Speaker 2: I could do sort of a long journey. It's like
54:49
Speaker 2: being on the road for like four months, three months.
54:54
Speaker 2: You know, towards the end of it, you're really tired
54:56
Speaker 2: of traveling and you want to you really appreciate being
54:59
Speaker 2: stationary in one place. But this doesn't happen these days
55:03
Speaker 2: because most of my trip is because of work. And
55:06
Speaker 2: you know, work is a very sort of a blair
55:08
Speaker 2: line between work and work and travel. So I travel
55:13
Speaker 2: for to sort of all these incredible places for work,
55:18
Speaker 2: and the work is very scheduled, so when you go there,
55:22
Speaker 2: you have to meet this and that and that, and
55:24
Speaker 2: you have to you know, film this and that. You know,
55:28
Speaker 2: it's quite a sort of a regimented, full on schedule.
55:34
Speaker 2: So three weeks later, four weeks later you have to
55:37
Speaker 2: come back home. So that doesn't happen as much these days.
55:41
Speaker 1: Gotcha? What is your role? So you're in front of
55:44
Speaker 1: the camera obviously you're hosting and you're researching. Are you
55:48
Speaker 1: doing are you directing as well?
55:49
Speaker 2: Like?
55:49
Speaker 1: What are your other roles?
55:52
Speaker 2: So I'm a producer. I'm a producer, but sixty percent
55:57
Speaker 2: of a time I produce and direct and I can
56:02
Speaker 2: shoot as well. But you know, I by default I
56:07
Speaker 2: produce like ninety you know, sixty percent of time and
56:10
Speaker 2: forty percent of the time. You know, if the networks
56:13
Speaker 2: really want me to be in front of a camera,
56:14
Speaker 2: I wouldn't say no. Right, that is cool?
56:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, you like it?
56:19
Speaker 2: I like it, you know, call it my life. My
56:24
Speaker 2: wife say, you know, all the presenters are attention seekers.
56:29
Speaker 2: You know, call me as I can live with that,
56:32
Speaker 2: no problem.
56:34
Speaker 1: That's so funny. How many people are on your team
56:37
Speaker 1: or does it depend?
56:39
Speaker 2: You know, we including locals. I mean that in the
56:44
Speaker 2: last series that you produce, we clocked to we reached
56:50
Speaker 2: the limit of twenty two at certain parts we were
56:54
Speaker 2: six or seven, okay, and you know in big expeditions
56:59
Speaker 2: and travel film crews that we were like three or four, right, okay,
57:05
Speaker 2: three has been a minimum.
57:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Nice. Nice.
57:12
Speaker 2: My my favorite number is three. Traveling with Crow of three,
57:16
Speaker 2: which it doesn't happen, is a really good balance. I
57:19
Speaker 2: think two you get bored of each other very quickly,
57:23
Speaker 2: but three is kind of a good dynamic.
57:27
Speaker 1: And you all, I'm assuming, kind of share roles, like
57:30
Speaker 1: you have to be multi talented or yeah.
57:34
Speaker 2: Exactly, all the all the sort of a line blairs,
57:37
Speaker 2: you know. You know, the presenter carried tripod, you know,
57:41
Speaker 2: the the director rely on a producer, producer rely on
57:44
Speaker 2: the director. You know. But you know, in sort of
57:48
Speaker 2: a more sophisticated, more sort of a bigger scale shoots
57:51
Speaker 2: like you know, man, for example, we had a drone pilot,
57:54
Speaker 2: sound man, a logistics manager I'm expert a d T,
58:01
Speaker 2: which is like guys who are doing all the backups,
58:04
Speaker 2: two cameraman, a director, a producer, production manager, loads of
58:09
Speaker 2: people on set. You know, there was quite you know,
58:14
Speaker 2: big scale and loads of people on safety and all
58:16
Speaker 2: of that because we were doing something really really risky.
58:21
Speaker 1: Oh, cliffhanger. Very cool. Uh what is your favorite piece
58:29
Speaker 1: of kit or do you Is there something that you
58:31
Speaker 1: bring on every single trip?
58:35
Speaker 2: I my Osprey backpack. It's something that I would love
58:42
Speaker 2: to carry me. It's the best piece of backpack I've
58:44
Speaker 2: ever had and always carried with me. Bob, I always
58:48
Speaker 2: carry dry bags. I mean their their multi purpose. I
58:53
Speaker 2: absolutely love it. And uh, you know, I can put
58:57
Speaker 2: my I can use it as a water container in it,
59:00
Speaker 2: I can use it as a storage. I can put it,
59:05
Speaker 2: put my all my dirty clothes in it, you know,
59:08
Speaker 2: multi multi purpose and.
59:10
Speaker 1: Light weight, very light weight obviously, so very nicely.
59:15
Speaker 2: I mean dry bags are are quite small. I mean
59:17
Speaker 2: they come from I don't have one hand. You will
59:19
Speaker 2: show it to you, but they come in different sizes
59:23
Speaker 2: so that the piece of plastic effectively they're so small
59:28
Speaker 2: and lightweight, so they can they can do a lot
59:31
Speaker 2: with them.
59:32
Speaker 1: That's awesome. I love a good drive egg too, just
59:35
Speaker 1: protecting against the elements like mud and rain and snow.
59:39
Speaker 1: But then also you can have your stuff inside of it.
59:41
Speaker 1: I love your idea about transporting water as well.
59:45
Speaker 2: You can basically you can you can put all the underwear, socks,
59:48
Speaker 2: and everything into one, and then your top tops into one,
59:52
Speaker 2: all your sort of bottoms into another, accessories into one.
59:55
Speaker 2: So your your bag is very tidy, so it's very
59:58
Speaker 2: easy to access everything and more on for your sort
1:00:01
Speaker 2: of a wet wet clothes.
1:00:03
Speaker 1: So yeah, I love a good organized bag, especially for hiking.
1:00:09
Speaker 1: So good.
1:00:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely.
1:00:14
Speaker 1: So another question for you, this is one that we
1:00:18
Speaker 1: asked quite frequently on this podcast, is what your what
1:00:20
Speaker 1: is your favorite book?
1:00:23
Speaker 2: So you said it again? Yeah, uh, First Footstep in
1:00:29
Speaker 2: East Africa by Richard Barton Richard Bardon.
1:00:33
Speaker 1: I thought it probably would be him. Nice. What is
1:00:37
Speaker 1: it about that book that makes it your favorite?
1:00:39
Speaker 2: I mean the rawness of the travel those days, I
1:00:42
Speaker 2: mean it's uh, you know when he traveled and to
1:00:49
Speaker 2: the wilderness of East Africa, you know, with bare minimum.
1:00:53
Speaker 2: He was a linguist, so he could speak so many languages,
1:00:56
Speaker 2: but he couldn't do this, He couldn't speak any African languages.
1:00:59
Speaker 2: He went and found lake in He was funded by
1:01:02
Speaker 2: real Dagoo Society in the UK. And you know, nowadays,
1:01:06
Speaker 2: you know, doing that trip is not a big deal.
1:01:08
Speaker 2: But those days, that fast footstep of white man going
1:01:12
Speaker 2: to this sort of African wilderness in search of a
1:01:16
Speaker 2: particular lake without any particular map or much knowledge. With
1:01:20
Speaker 2: all those diseases malaria, you know, how do you how
1:01:23
Speaker 2: do you know those are tough man's that he was
1:01:28
Speaker 2: an incredible individual.
1:01:30
Speaker 1: Awesome. I was going to ask you. I have a
1:01:34
Speaker 1: book that I just read by Barbara Toy. I don't
1:01:37
Speaker 1: know if you've heard of her, and the listeners on
1:01:39
Speaker 1: the podcast are probably going to get tired of me
1:01:41
Speaker 1: talking about her, But she drove her land over all
1:01:44
Speaker 1: over the world in the fifties and sixties seventies, and
1:01:46
Speaker 1: she went to Mount Wannie whenny I believe that it's
1:01:52
Speaker 1: an Ethiopia. I don't know if you've heard of it.
1:01:55
Speaker 1: So whennye Wwenny w Mount Whennie in Ethiopia m but
1:02:08
Speaker 1: apparently airs to the Imperium Throne were imprisoned, often for
1:02:16
Speaker 1: life at the top. And there's this section of the
1:02:18
Speaker 1: book where and I don't want to give it away
1:02:21
Speaker 1: just in case people read it, but there's a helicopter involved,
1:02:25
Speaker 1: and she goes from the helicopter onto this top of
1:02:30
Speaker 1: this mountain like some Larracroft situation. So I just love
1:02:37
Speaker 1: it's kind of like she was the first person in
1:02:40
Speaker 1: a really really really really really long time to be
1:02:42
Speaker 1: at the top because it wasn't accessible by just hiking up.
1:02:46
Speaker 1: And so I think there's a lot of nostalgia and
1:02:48
Speaker 1: and a lot of respect that I have for explores
1:02:52
Speaker 1: of the past and these historical trips that are just
1:02:56
Speaker 1: I just love. I just love reading about the history
1:02:59
Speaker 1: of travel and X additions, and it's also interesting and inspiring.
1:03:04
Speaker 2: It was it was quite different those days, wasn't it.
1:03:06
Speaker 2: It was about effectively going to new places. These days,
1:03:12
Speaker 2: it's it's quite different. It's not about just going to
1:03:15
Speaker 2: new places. Is what's your take on those places as
1:03:18
Speaker 2: you travel?
1:03:20
Speaker 1: Absolutely? Absolutely, that's really wise thing to say. Yeah, what's
1:03:26
Speaker 1: your take on it? Yep, awesome. Well, thank you so
1:03:32
Speaker 1: much for coming on. Overland Journal podcast has been so fascinating.
1:03:37
Speaker 1: I wanted to just wrap it up by asking you
1:03:40
Speaker 1: if there's anything in the works that we should keep
1:03:42
Speaker 1: an eye out for projects on the way that you
1:03:46
Speaker 1: can actually speak about.
1:03:49
Speaker 2: At the moment. So basically I was I was told
1:03:53
Speaker 2: by Discovery Channel that the second season of Hidden Frontiers
1:03:57
Speaker 2: has been sort of commissioned, So congrats, thank you. So
1:04:03
Speaker 2: we're looking into sort of a couple of different regions.
1:04:07
Speaker 2: That's that's what I'm I cannot disclose to whether it's
1:04:10
Speaker 2: going to be in Asia or the US. Likely to
1:04:13
Speaker 2: be the US the second season. We are looking into
1:04:16
Speaker 2: it at the moment. And yeah, hopefully I should be
1:04:21
Speaker 2: able to share more soon and really enjoy this conversation.
1:04:26
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me on the show.
1:04:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, anytime. Thanks for being here and taking the time.
1:04:32
Speaker 1: And I'm really really looking forward to seeing Rego next
1:04:35
Speaker 1: and what you discover and uncover. And if anybody wants
1:04:39
Speaker 1: to find you online or watch any of the series,
1:04:43
Speaker 1: where can they find you?
1:04:46
Speaker 2: Sure? So my series on a catch up TV on
1:04:50
Speaker 2: Discovery at the moment, So Discovery go, they can, they
1:04:53
Speaker 2: can go and see them. In the UK, I've got
1:04:58
Speaker 2: a couple of series on Amazon Prime. I'm in uh Europe.
1:05:02
Speaker 2: I have one series on Netflix which is called Captive Cape.
1:05:08
Speaker 2: If you are in Spain you can you can watch
1:05:09
Speaker 2: it if you're there, And yeah, these are these are
1:05:14
Speaker 2: for streamers and Hidden Frontiers is just about to hit
1:05:20
Speaker 2: various screens around the world. So the broadcast in the
1:05:23
Speaker 2: US has finished, so now it's doing it's sort of
1:05:26
Speaker 2: a world.
1:05:27
Speaker 1: Tour fantastic, fantastic, and then you've got your book cap
1:05:32
Speaker 1: to cape and are there any social media platforms or.
1:05:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, my website is resapacravon dot com. Social medias are
1:05:41
Speaker 2: all res Apcravon fantastic. I'm in a bit of an
1:05:45
Speaker 2: Instagram break at the moment, so haven't posted for a while.
1:05:49
Speaker 2: I'm doing a bit of a social media cleansing.
1:05:53
Speaker 1: If you like fantastic stuff, awesome, Well, thank you, thank you,
1:06:00
Speaker 1: thank you, and thank you to the Overland Journal podcast
1:06:05
Speaker 1: listeners for tuning into another episode and we will see
1:06:10
Speaker 1: you next time. Thanks