Ripcord Adventure Journal 1.3 Second Edition
We begin this issue with a call to adventure from Bear Grylls' Mission Survive expedition and survival expert Megan Hine which is followed by a filmmaking expedition to the icy desert of Antarctica. Our writers have crossed the Himalaya and have cycled around the world to make sure it is indeed round. We hear of legendary explorer John Rae and venture to Kilimanjaro to witness a high altitude rescue. Brought to you by the crew at World Explorers Bureau and Ripcord Travel Protection
We begin this issue with a call to adventure from Bear Grylls' Mission Survive expedition and survival expert Megan Hine which is followed by a filmmaking expedition to the icy desert of Antarctica. Our writers have crossed the Himalaya and have cycled around the world to make sure it is indeed round. We hear of legendary explorer John Rae and venture to Kilimanjaro to witness a high altitude rescue. Brought to you by the crew at World Explorers Bureau and Ripcord Travel Protection
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"The World is round"<br />
Fearghal O'Nuallain<br />
Lessons from 18 months cycling west.<br />
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA<br />
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA<br />
We covered 20km in two hours, grinding into the relentless<br />
headwind. Then it happened, we encountered a pack of wild dogs<br />
and they attacked. Kicking vainly in the dark at their snarling jaws<br />
we tried to out-run them. They appeared unfazed and though we<br />
pedalled hard they refused to give up their eyes shining like<br />
reflective dots. Time stretched and it seemed like our fate was bound<br />
to these feral canines that they’d wear us down and tear us apart in<br />
the dark desert. It was lucky that they couldn’t see our faces, if they<br />
had they would have recognised that we were spent, totally devoid<br />
of energy, and if they hung on, chased us a little longer, they could<br />
have had us.<br />
Luckily, they couldn’t, and just when it felt like our legs would<br />
burst and our lungs would cease we left the barking behind and the<br />
green eyes melted back into the black night. Once safely down the<br />
road, we allowed ourselves to stop, listened to racing heart beats and<br />
trembled in the darkness. Then we sat staring at the horizon just<br />
sitting on the sand berms on the red sea coast looking east and<br />
seaward watching the oil rigs in the flare of the distance.<br />
In the footsteps of Eratosthenes<br />
“I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand<br />
dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something<br />
throbs, and gleams...”<br />
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry<br />
I was with my childhood friend Simon Evans and we were cycling<br />
from Aswan to Alexandria because we’d planned to cycle around<br />
the world the following year. We were ostensibly looking for an<br />
adventure but I’d kept my reasons for circumnavigating the globe<br />
by bike to myself, I wanted to prove to myself that the world was<br />
round and cycling west until I arrived back where I started was the<br />
best way that I could think of doing that.<br />
We’d come to Egypt, because of a Greek scholar called Eratosthenes<br />
who was the first person to figure out that the world was round in<br />
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