Do we still need explorers today?

In November 2017 Benedict Allen found himself at the centre of a media frenzy. He’d been in Papua New Guinea (PNG) on a one-man expedition and hadn’t been heard of for weeks. Declaring him ‘lost’, several papers turned on him, accusing him of being overprivileged and imperialistic. One even suggested the whole thing was a stunt. It didn’t help that he was picked up by a helicopter, sent by the Daily Mail. This was a story the paper’s rivals wanted to spoil.

Explorer is Allen’s account of that journey and how it all began. It’s no excuse or apology, but is written with anger and passion. The story begins in adolescence, with a boy who was idealistic, stubborn and determined to travel the world alone and in his own way. It seems he was searching for a variant of perfection, and the Garden of Eden is a recurring theme. Later in life he would bridle at his youthful obsession, but by the age of 22 Allen had traversed hundreds of miles of the Amazonian rainforest.

Over the next decade he was constantly travelling, at the ends of the Earth. There were numerous books and six TV series. But there were anxieties too, and he is never afraid to admit his fears — or his folly: ‘Nine times I’d almost died.’ He got lost, shot at and robbed. Often he’d contemplate Hamlet’s ‘undiscovered country’, otherwise known as death. Eventually it became too much, and Allen had an epiphany out on the ice in the Bering Strait. There would be no more expeditions for the best part of 20 years.

During the hiatus there was time to reflect on the role of the explorer. Allen studied great adventurers, including Freya Stark and Edward Whymper, and knew his subject cold. But he was surprised to find that, despite their skills, these champions often ‘needed to exorcise their demons, to show off or run away’. He also had time to move among the modern-day aristocracy of explorers, and there are some charming descriptions of these meetings. We encounter Thor Heyerdahl having lunch at Foyles, a blind Wilfred Thesiger, and Bear Grylls who ‘pinched my bum’ at Buckingham Palace. Meanwhile, the Queen, notes Allen, has good warm hands (‘She’d do well in the Arctic’).

Then, in the late Noughties, Allen was off again, with three expeditions to PNG. The first two were arranged by a television company with an eye to drama. Allen, they decided, would be reunited with various tribesmen he’d met 30 years earlier, and who’d since been lost in the gold rush or inter-clan wars. As if that wasn’t enough, he would be accompanied by Frank Gardner, the BBC’s security correspondent, who’d been left paraplegic after a terrorist attack. Gardner was made of tough stuff, but he’d need to be carried everywhere in a wicker chair. The miracle of these agonising journeys was that everyone survived.

The third expedition becomes the focus of the book, and is utterly absorbing. At the time, Allen was still wrestling with the idea of exploration, and what it all meant, but in the end he decided this was a trip about unfinished business. He needed to know what had become of the Yaifo, a particular clan high in the mountains. He also wanted to travel as he had in 1987, without a sponsor, phone or GPS, and with only the help of the indigenous people. Even at the outset he was beset by doubts but decided that only ‘total immersion’ would do: ‘We need to experience, to taste and smell and touch.’

A remarkable journey unfolds. Self-deprecating and curious, Allen is an enjoyable companion. He writes clean, honest prose, creating startling images of all he sees. This part of the book reads like a movie, shot in a single take. We hear the clatter of home-made guns, and we’re right there among the leeches and thorns. But Allen is never the hero of his stories, and he always clears the stage for the people he meets and who save his life. Among them, there’s a guide who knits, and a man dressed in cans. As malaria takes hold, so does the sense that nothing is real.

Allen ends this journey bewildered and spent. As a self-confessed ‘misfit’, he’s learned to expect taunts, however unfair. But he’s still troubled by the same questions: what is an explorer — and do we still need them in modern times? He offers plenty of ideas, but one in particular strikes a chord. Humans are poets at heart, and science alone doesn’t explain our world. Understanding and inspiration also feed on experience, and that’s where the wanderer still has a role. So, here’s his book: an extraordinary story, painfully assembled and beautifully told.