Hair-raising stuff

Ask most people whether they fancy a four-month, 5,000-mile trek across the Middle East and they might conclude you need your head seen to. With civil war raging in Syria, Iraq mired in internecine conflict while mopping up the remnants of Daesh, al-Qa’eda running amok in southern Yemen and simmering strife between Israelis and Palestinians, walking across 13 countries might not seem like an obvious itinerary.

But Levison Wood, it is fair to say, is not your average traveller. A committed biped, he is the author of a trio of books on walking the Nile, Himalayas and Americas respectively. Ostensibly unlike the other television-led journeys which preceded it, this expedition was meant to be a lower key affair, though online publicity for an accompanying documentary suggests otherwise.

The adventure begins in Iraq, where, before you can say rocket-launcher, Wood has launched himself into a military operation, sitting on the front of an advancing tank as the Shia Hashd militia flush out the last diehards of Daesh.