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.

We hear the clatter of homemade guns and we’re right there among the leeches and thorns of Papua New Guinea

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.