RAJ Revisited - Final Issue

RAJ 2014-2018 Revisited

A Letter from the Editor 

Welcome to Ripcord Adventure Journal. 

Over the past 4 years or so, of creating and publishing Ripcord 

Adventure Journal, the team involved in bringing it to print and 

digital editions has been on a marvellous journey of discovery and 

adventure in their own right. None of us had prior experience in 

publishing an international periodical before, our strength was 

derived from the unstinting support given by our adventurers and 

explorers who have written and photographed their journeys for us. 

Furthermore, our delight has grown as our readership and audience 

have rocketed to unexpected but very welcome heights, particularly 

on our digital platform: www.yumpu.com/user/worldexplorers 

where we have reached almost 8 million views. 

In this period we have published so many great articles that we felt 

it timely to pick a single article from each issue and present them 

here in a 2014-2018 Revisited issue, the eight articles which follow 

have been chosen by the editorial team to reflect the broad interests 

of Ripcord Adventure Journal and I hope, will serve to introduce 

our many new readers to previous issues, all of which, continue to 

be available for free on our digital platform. 

We aimed to be the home of authentic, adventurous travel, which 

serves as a starting point for personal reflection, study and new 

journeys; we hope that you enjoy reading this free digital Journal 

and encourage you to share it widely. As this will be the final issue 

of Ripcord Adventure Journal, we hope that you took inspiration 

from our amazing contributors and that you may follow their 

adventures in to the future. 

On behalf of the editorial, writing and design team, I wish to 

acknowledge our outstanding sponsors from day one, the World 

Explorers Bureau (Charlotte Baker Weinert) and Redpoint 

Resolutions (Mark Cohon, Thomas Bochnowski, Ted Muhlner, 

Martha Marin, John Moretti and all the team).

Ripcord Adventure Journal Copyright July 2018 by World 

Explorers Bureau & Redpoint Resolutions. 

All articles and images © 2014-2018 of the respective Authors. 

Ripcord Adventure Journal is grateful to all our writers and 

photographers for permission to publish their work. 

Ripcord Adventure Journal has been typeset in 11 point Garamond 

and uses OED English spelling. 

Shane Dallas 

Series Editor 

Tim Lavery 

Editor in Chief 

Assistant Editor 

Méabh Lavery 

Brought to you in association with: 

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, 

or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, 

or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission 

of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical 

reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. 

Although the publisher has made every effort to ensure that the information in 

this book was correct at press time, the authors and publisher do not assume and 

hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption 

caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from 

negligence, accident, or any other cause. 

For further information contact the publisher: raj@worldexplorersbureau.com

RIPCORD 

ADVENTURE 

JOURNAL 

Series Editor 

Shane Dallas 

Editor in Chief 

Tim Lavery 

Assistant Editor 

Meabh Lavery 

RAJ Revisited 

2014-2018 

Featuring 

Morgan Hite 

Shane Dallas 

Megan Hine 

Bill Steele 

Francis O'Donnell 

Nuala Moore 

Mark Evans 

Mark Wood 

Publishers 

World Explorers 

Bureau & Redpoint 

Resolutions 

WWW.YUMPU.COM/USER/WORLDEXPLORERS

Contents 

Mapping Howard-Bury 

Morgan Hite 

Tribes that Time Forgot 

Shane Dallas 

A Call to Adventure 

Megan Hine 

Sistema Huautla 

Bill Steele 

Monlam Cham Festival 

Francis O' Donnell 

The Great Island Swim 

Nuala Moore 

Into the Abode of Death 

Mark Evans 

Plan D 

Mark Wood 

3 

15 

39 

43 

63 

75 

87 

101 

Image opposite © Shane Dallas 


1

Mapping Howard-Bury 

2 

Morgan 

Hite 

RAJ 1.1

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA 

Mapping Charles Howard-Bury in Central Asia 

by Morgan Hite 

One of the things I love about old hardcover books is that the 

publisher might have glued a folded map inside the back cover. 

Even books about imaginary landscapes had these, such as my 

father's 1954 hardcover edition of Tolkein's Lord of the Rings. 

Sixteen by eighteen inches, it was always there as a reference, ready 

to be opened up and consulted. This was the kind of map, I got to 

thinking, that Charles Howard-Bury's account of visiting the Tian 

Shan needed. A map that would tell the reader where the Yulduz 

Plains were, where Sergiopol was in relation to Jarkent, where the 

Agias river flowed. 

Famous as the leader of Great Britain's Everest reconnaissance 

expedition of 1921, Charles Howard-Bury made this less-known 

and possibly more intriguing journey some eight years earlier, in 

1913, into the heart of Central Asia. He went to go hunting in the 

Tian Shan mountains of what are today the Ili Kazakh, and 

Bayingolin Mongol, autonomous prefectures of China's Xinjiang 

province. In six months of travel he created a diary of 171 pages that 

Marian Keaney edited into a book published in 1990: Mountains of 

Heaven: Travel in the Tian Shan Mountains, 1913. 

He mentions every valley, every pass, and what kinds of wildflowers 

carpet them. He names specific streams and towns, and tells us 

about the people living in them. He tells us about weather and 

politics and the types of ferries on the rivers. The only thing missing 

is a detailed map, and the reader of his book will soon find him- or 

herself surrounded by open atlases and country maps, bewildered 

and unable to figure out where Semiretchinsk is. Names have 

changed. Official languages have changed. Google Maps turns out 

to be of very little use. 

And Howard-Bury writes as if you do have a map in front of you. 

“The ram,” he concludes, “finally disappeared in the direction of 

Mustamas” – without having previously explained what Mustamas 

is. Is it a town? A peak? “This place is called the valley of the Sixty 

Fireplaces,” he describes at one point, “because years ago a party of 

soldiers went through it on their way to Kuchar and in one place 

built sixty little fireplaces to cook their evening meal.” Kuchar? 

Howard Bury began his journey by rail, leaving Europe by way of 

Moscow, and finally reaching the end of the tracks at Omsk. From 

3



there he took a steamer up the Irtysh river to Semipalatinsk – 

today's Semey, Kazakhstan, but at that time an outpost of Imperial 

Russia. From here (it was now June) he and his servant John Pereira 

journeyed overland and crossed into China, reaching the town of 

Kuldja, which was to be their base for the next few months. In 

November, with snow already falling, they re-entered what is today 

Kazakhstan but was then Russia, and made it to the railhead at a 

small stop called Kabul-Sai, north of Tashkent. From there they 

were able to take a series of trains and steamships back to Europe. 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA 

I envisioned a 1:1 million map detailing the central portion of the 

journey, the area in China where they spent the most time and 

where Howard-Bury mentions the most local details. Secondarily, 

there would be a 1:3 million map showing how they got from 

Semipalatinsk to Kuldja, a ten-day journey along Russian post roads 

for whose specific route he gives intriguingly few clues. Last, there 

would be a map at 1:7 million showing their exit route from Central 

Asia, from Kuldja to Jarkent to Tashkent, and then on by rail to the 

Caspian Sea. 

Then things happened which illustrate some general hazards about 

mapping for old books. As I pinpointed more and more places that 

Howard-Bury had described, it nagged at me that the paper I was 

designing for was so small. I needed more: it should be 23” wide by 

20” high. Soon, the idea that all the mapping could fit into that space 

went out the window. The first map would need the whole sheet! 

The other two maps were discarded. 

But more importantly, just where had Howard-Bury gone? I found 

myself buried in old maps, Wikipedia articles, and all sorts of other 

documents such as you get when you search on obscure terms like 

“Chalyk Tau.” I was reading maps in Russian and putting German 

websites through Google Translate. I was converting the old 

Russian unit of versts, which Howard-Bury used to describe all his 

daily travels, into kilometres (1.067 km to the verst!) so I could 

match his account to the map. 

Ordinarily, the trick to locating a place an author mentions is simply 

to find a sufficiently detailed map of the area, but Central Asia adds 

4

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA 



an additional spin to this problem: most places there have had 

multiple names in the last hundred years. This has happened as a 

result of political and cultural struggles involving the Turkic peoples 

(Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Uyghurs), the Chinese, and the Russians. In 

China, a river that Howard-Bury in 1913 called by its Kazakh name 

of Kok-su (“Blue water”) is today labelled (e.g., on Google Maps) 

with its Chinese name, the Kekesu. Searching the web for Kok-su 

will yield many other rivers in Central Asia, but not this one. On 

their side of the border, the Russians renamed many towns after the 

Russian revolution, and these towns may have again been renamed 

after the break-up of the Soviet Union. Sometimes, as was the case 

for Mirzoyan (today's Taraz, Kazakhstan), the town's new name 

lasted only the two years until its namesake fell from favour. 

Another level of complexity is introduced by the multiple alphabets, 

or, more properly, writing systems. Places in Xinjiang typically have 

both a Uyghur (a Turkic language) and a Mandarin name: the 

Uyghur can be rendered in the Latin alphabet or the older, Arabicbased 

Uyghur script; the Mandarin can be rendered in Chinese 

characters, or two variants of the Latin transcription: the older 

Wade-Giles transliteration, and the newer pinyin. So for Kuldja you 

might see 伊宁 , Yining, ۇلجاغ , Ghulja, Gulja, Kulja, or Ili. Most 

places in modern Kazakhstan have an old Russian and a new 

Kazakh name, both of which can be rendered in either Latin or 

Cyrillic. Hence we have a city which the Kazkhs label Алматы and 

we write as Almaty; but the Russians called it Alma-ata and wrote it 

Алма-Ата. 

Old maps were invaluable in figuring out the details of Howard- 

Bury's route. I made extensive use of International Map of the 

World sheets produced by the Americans in the 1950s and 60s, and 

topographic maps at 1:500,000 and 1:100,000 produced by the 

Soviets in the 1980s. All of these are available for free on the web. 

The Soviet maps in particular provide superb detail. When Howard- 

Bury describes a small feature, say the “Little Kustai river,” and he 

says, “We pitched our camp near the rushing Kustai torrent, at a 

height of 6,000',” a topographic map that labels the river in Russian 

as М. Куштай (the Малый, or Little, Kushtai) and offers a contour 

line every hundred metres of elevation, is worth its weight in gold. 

5



You can pinpoint that camp. 

Kurai is a nice example of how the Internet and different types of 

old maps can be woven together, with sometimes only intuition as 

your guide, to locate a place. Howard-Bury talks about Kurai at 

length: Kurai is where the Has-a-chu, the head of the Kazakhs, lives; 

Kurai is 20 miles away from Kuldja and is the seat of government of 

the province. At one point he reports that there has been a 

revolution in Kurai and a number of people have been killed! In 

Kuldja he can hear the sound of cannon coming from Kurai. 



The town is clearly within earshot of Kuldja, but I could find no 

sign of it except a village on one of the Soviet maps, labelled Курэ 

(“Kure”). How could this have been a provincial capital? But I did 

notice that Курэ was more or less located where the present-day 

town of Huiyuan is. A quick check of Wikipedia's page on Huiyuan 

revealed that (my italics added for emphasis) “between 1762 and 

1866 the Huiyuan Fortress, or Huiyuan City, the center of the 

Chinese authority in Xinjiang, was located within the area of the 

modern Huiyuan town.” Aha! Making a historical map is never 

better than when you solve a puzzle like that. 

Another example was locating “Manass.” Howard-Bury wrote, 

“There were superb views of distant snowy chains, stretching from 

far beyond Kuldja, past the headwaters of the Kash river and on in a 

great semicircle towards Manass.” It shouldn't have been too hard to 

locate Manass: Howard-Bury was quite clear in the lead-up to this 

passage about where he was standing as he took in this view. He was 

about 130 km southeast of Kuldja, in mountains, at just over 10,000 

feet, looking north. I had located the Kash River, about 100 km 

north of him. And north of both Kuldja and the Kash River were 

the Borohoro Mountains, running east-west “in a great semicircle.” 

Manass, logically, was going to be near their eastern end. 

But I didn't see anything named Manass. A web search was useless: 

typing “Manass” into Google yields hilarious results that have 

nothing whatsoever to do with a town or peak or feature of any 

kind in Central Asia. The city of Urumqi was over in that direction: 

could Manass be an old name for it? A quick read of the history of 

6





Urumqi at Wikipedia suggested not. Grasping at straws, I actually 

resorted to panning around in Google maps and letting my eye 

wander. This had no chance of working, but I did spot it, flickering 

out of sight at the edge of my vision as I zoomed out, a small town 

northwest of Urumqi labelled Manas. 

It was next to a larger town of Shihezi, and Wikipedia's page on 

Shihezi referred to “the city's eastern neighbour, the much older 

historically Hui town of Manas.” Ah! And Manas had its own page, 

which didn't tell me much, except that Owen Lattimore in his 1930 

High Tartary said it was "the biggest city (after Urumchi) in the 

biggest oasis on the biggest river of the North Road, and the chief 

centre of the T’ung-kan (Dungan) population." (Dungan and Hui 

are alternate names for Chinese moslems.) 

Because readers of the book were my main audience, I labelled 

places primarily with the names Howard-Bury used, spelled the 

way he spelled them. But it was also a goal to pass along the useful 

things I was learning, things that might aid other people researching 

the Central Asia of a hundred years ago. Hence I also included 

alternate names, in whatever script they came in, as well as their 

Latin alphabet transcriptions. A very nice source for these variants 

is OpenStreetMap data, as well as the website at geonames.org. 

With each Aha! answer to a question, I discovered that I was 

accumulating obscure knowledge and specialist vocabulary that 

themselves would be useful to other would-be geographers of the 

area. Tash in Turkic meant rocks, and bulak meant spring. I learned 

what a Zimstvo was and who the Kalmucks were. I learned how to 

navigate the system of Soviet maps, to determine which 1:100,000 

maps were contained within a specific 1:500,000 sheet. So at this 

point I had the idea that the map should perhaps be a poster, the 

bottom half of which could contain notes about all this handy 

background knowledge. I added an additional 20 inches at the 

bottom to accommodate all this. It was no longer a book-map. 

Howard-Bury named perhaps 75 places, of which I found the great 

majority, but there are still those I never found. I never found 

Tsarnakai or the Karasir pass. I never figured out if the Yulding 

7

8

9



Plains were merely a variant on the Yulduz Plains, or whether they 

were a different place. I was never sure of the Big Kustai river, or 

where the Kustai Pass was. I'm sure I know which pass was the 

Chacha Pass, but I never found it labelled that way on any map. 

Of course Howard-Bury was himself carrying a map. He mentions 

how it misled him: “The Russian map marked the Kurdai pass as 

only 6,700 feet in height, but as we were already over 8,000 feet, I 

knew this to be a mistake, but imagined that the six was probably a 

misprint for nine, and that the height of the pass would be about 

9,700 feet and so did not trouble to put on warmer clothes. Little did 

I guess that the height of the pass was nearly 13,000 feet.” What scale 

was Howard-Bury's Russian map? A Soviet 1:1,000,000 scale map 

from 1974 was sufficiently detailed to have the Kurdai pass on it; in 

Howard-Bury's day however he was likely carrying the one of the 

Russian 1:1,680,000 scale or “40-verst” maps (40 versts to an inch), 

which were produced for Russia and adjacent lands. 



One reason I would love to see Howard-Bury's maps is to 

determine which Lepzinsk he went through. Although it falls for the 

most part off the map shown here, Howard-Bury's initial route on 

the Russian post roads from Sergiopol (Ayagoz) to Kapal is bit of a 

mystery, since he mentions only a few landmarks over the course of 

three long days of steady travel. In this large space east of Lake 

Balkhash many routes are possible. The key to the puzzle is a town 

he calls Lepzinsk, a town he passed through on the second day out 

of Sergiopol. 

He gives us some wonderful clues: daily distances covered (in versts 

of course), the necessity of crossing the arms of a sandy desert 

coming in from the west, the proximity of Lake Balkhash, verdant 

Lepzinsk in the midst of sandy dunes and first seen on the far side 

of a “fair sized river,” a pass at 4,000 feet in a range of rocky hills 

“that formed a kind of buttress to the snowy Ala-tau mountains,” 

and a plateau over 4,000 feet that leads on to Kapal. 

Many of these landmarks are readily identifiable, and “Lepzinsk” is 

sure to be on the Lepsi river, a major river that cuts right across his 

route. But not only are there two towns named Lepsinsk on this 

10



river, there's also a third town named Lepsy! Through a 

combination of measuring out the daily distances over a number of 

possible alternative routes, and looking at features visible on 

satellite photographs, I reasoned that his route took him virtually 

straight south from Sergiopol, crossing the Lepsi at a town that was 

shown as Lepzinsk on several old maps but is today called 

Kokterek. Seeing the maps Howard-Bury carried would be a nice 

test of this deduction. 

There have been some really interesting puzzles to solve here, but it 

seems fitting to end with one of Charles Howard-Bury's 

descriptions of the landscape. It is these which make you want to 

know where he went, to go there yourself, and which made me 

want to map his journey. You may find that he acts as a kind of 

hypnotic travel advertisement writer. 

“We climbed up steadily through glorious forests to the grassy 

meadows at the edge of the tree line which is here a little over 10,000 

feet. The grass now became shorter, but was full of iris and primulas 

and some quite new varieties of flowers appeared. The most 

astonishing flowers of all were the pansies, white, yellow, blue and 

every shade of colour up to deep purple and quite as large as any that 

are found in gardens at home. For miles the hillsides were a 

variegated carpet of these pansies, and so close did they grow that 

every step we took crushed some of them: it was impossible to avoid 

doing so. Never anywhere else have I seen such a luxuriant flora. 

The flowers in Kashmir were very wonderful, but these here were 

still more so.” 

In the last millennium, Morgan Hite was an instructor at the 

American expeditionary school, NOLS, teaching backcountry travel 

skills in Alaska, Wyoming Utah and Arizona. In this millennium he 

is a Canadian cartographer interested in topographic, historical and 

expedition mapping. 

www.hesperus-wild.org/ 

11


12 

Shane 

Dallas 


The Tribes that time forgot 

Text & Images By Shane Dallas 

A truly remarkable wooded valley lay below, its carpet of trees 

backed by mountains that cut their sharp shape in the hazy sky. The 

bright, baking sun beat down on me and my driver, Tsegay, his 

short-cropped wiry hair sitting atop a stern face that illuminated 

whenever he smiled, which was often. His softly spoken voice 

broke the silence. “That is the Omo Valley.” 

Much lay in wait in this valley in the south-west of Ethiopia 

bordering Sudan and Kenya – a place where people of different 

tribes scar, paint and pierce their bodies, where women are publicly 

whipped to demonstrate their loyalty, and where men run naked 

across bulls to prove their manhood. We returned to the maroon 

and silver Nissan Patrol to bump and skid along the dirt roads that 

kicked clouds of dust in our wake. It was the first of many similar 

journeys during the forthcoming week. 

We had travelled for perhaps a couple of hours, the sameness of the 

scenery dulling the sense of time, when suddenly on our right side 

appeared a collection of two dozen sizable wooden huts within a 

spacious clearing. It was a village of the Arbore tribe. Once out of 

the vehicle, I encountered a practice that elicits much debate 

amongst those who visit the Omo Valley – namely the payment of a 

fee to take photographs. The problems of this practice quickly 

became evident. Upon our arrival, the Arbore people rushed from 

their huts to form a long line near the vehicle hoping to be chosen, 

and paid, to be photographed. It felt incredibly forced, and though I 

am unsure where this practice emanated from, obediently lining in 

an orderly fashion was inconsistent with every other activity I 

witnessed in the Omo Valley. This appeared imposed from outside. 

I lowered my head, undecided if I wanted to participate in this 

awkward spectacle, but there was no retreat, for the Arbore would 

aggressively pursue those with cameras to photograph them. They 

would grab your arm or camera and verbally badger for a picture; 

this whirlwind of activity and attention was almost overwhelming. I 

wandered far away from the scene with one Arbore woman in order 

to distance myself from the selection line, which on further 

reflection, looked more and more like a circus with paid performers. 

By having her with me, it seemed to keep the others away, but that 

only lasted until she dawdled away after the photo shoot, for the 

chaos descended on me again. 

13



After a difficult photography session, I returned to the vehicle – and 

upon closing the door found myself inside a serene silent shelter 

from the buffeting verbal tempest outside. My first tribe visit 

proved to be a confronting experience. In 2010, the payment 

amounts were small, one or two Birr (approximately 15 cents at the 

time), whereas a larger amount (at least 250 birr) is payable as a 

village admission fee. However, these prices have increased many 

times over since then. 



While still musing on the most responsible method to approach 

photography in the Omo Valley, we proceeded to the small town of 

Turmi. Our plans to arrive in the late afternoon were thwarted by 

the road conditions. Shortly after Tsegay had changed a tyre due to 

a puncture, he leaned out of the window and muttered something 

under his breath before stopping to attend to the second puncture in 

the space of half an hour. With little phone coverage and almost no 

traffic in this part of the Valley, any serious vehicle issues would 

cause immense problems. Since we now had no spare tyres, a third 

puncture would leave us stranded. 

The journey through a terrain of trees upon sandy soil continued 

after sunset, and the surrounding scene was one of absolute 

darkness. The vehicle’s headlights were the only source of 

illumination on this landscape devoid of any other light source – 

nothing coming from huts, none marking any streets, and no other 

vehicles. Avoiding any further punctures, we arrived in the small 

town of Turmi, and the faint orange glow of the occasional street 

light enabled me to discern a town comprised of a single road 

populated with squat flat-roofed buildings on either side of the 

carriageway. 

Our late arrival on a cool evening in Turmi meant that 

accommodation was limited to the diabolical Green Hotel. If one 

considered that the hotels of the world formed a human body, and a 

doctor needed to give this collective body an enema, then they 

would insert it into the Green Hotel. It is the foulest place I have 

ever stayed in, the one remaining room was small, stuffy with 

peeling green paint and a broken fly screen that allowed entry to 

malaria-carrying mosquitoes. The linen was a public health risk and 

14





as an added feature of this five dollar room, it held a complimentary 

pile of condoms, some opened. These were obviously used by the 

clients of the women who frequented the nearby bar whose music 

reverberated through the entire room. Though the music finally 

ceased at 1 am, it was followed by a frightful fight between highly 

inebriated women who charged by the hour and their equally 

drunken clients. 

After a broken sleep and pitiful breakfast, happiness again returned 

when I saw the Green Hotel disappear in the rear-view mirror. 

With both punctured tyres now repaired, two hours of driving 

along moderately good roads saw our arrival in the small town of 

Omorante, only 40 kilometres from the Sudanese border. It was a 

very warm and dusty place where people languidly shifted along the 

roads lined with forlorn shops, whilst goats and other animals 

occupied themselves in the search for food. 

After registering at the police station, there was a choice of two 

hotels, one dire, the other dismal. As with most accommodation in 

the Omo Valley, the toilets were fetid, the showers cold, and the 

food average. The latter was the biggest disappointment, for 

Ethiopia has an excellent cuisine – arguably the best in Africa – but 

sadly, that quality was absent in the Omo Valley. The main reason to 

visit Omorante was to cross the Omo River to visit the Galeb tribe. 

However, my desire for embarking on this short voyage quickly 

evaporated when watching the elongated and unstable boats carved 

from a single tree plying the fast flowing Omo River. The boatmen 

were obvious masters of their craft for they would direct the boat 

close to the steep river bank some distance upstream before 

swinging to the centre of the river and being hurtled downstream 

whilst crossing to the other side. Even an experienced swimmer like 

me would have trouble surviving in those treacherous waters in the 

case of a capsize. Some adventures are best left for another time. 

So far the expedition to the Omo Valley had been beset by barriers 

and difficulties with meagre rewards – it had been an inauspicious 

start to the adventure. Thankfully, the situation improved on the 

third day when Tsegay drove me to a village called Kolcho inhabited 

15

16

17



by the Karo tribe. Our vehicle encountered the roughest dirt road 

conditions of this journey, and we occasionally needed to navigate 

around gaping holes that threatened to swallow the vehicle and 

manoeuvre past almost vertical declivities – Tsegaye’s driving was 

superb. 

We passed a naked man standing on a sandy dry riverbed 

overlooking the few cattle in his possession. His lean dark frame 

stood motionless, supporting himself on the long stick which he 

held in one hand. There was not even a hint of modernity in this 

scene that could have occurred thousands of years ago, rather than 

in the 21st century. 



After much jarring of bones and inhaling of dust, we arrived at 

Kolcho nestled near to a stunning lookout with a magnificent grand 

and wide panorama over the Omo River far below. This was one 

village worthy of an entrance fee, for not only were the views 

impressive but so too was the village. Covering a large area with a 

multitude of large huts that were relatively densely packed, it was a 

tremendous place to explore the numerous paths that meandered 

between the habitations. 

The Karo are a very pleasant people, it was possible to walk around 

unaccompanied and receive only occasional, polite requests for 

photographs. In this village with neither electricity nor water 

supply, I could quietly observe Karo pastoral life; women would 

grind grains for dinner and larger children would play with their 

younger and smaller siblings by sitting them on a large piece of 

metal and drag them along at speed. It was an idyllic scene of 

simple and unaffected contentment. The Karo people deserved their 

title as the region’s best body painters as they sported elaborate and 

full decorations but the reason for this artistry was never fully 

explained to me, apart from the obvious atheistic and decorative 

aspects. 

I was sauntering around the village when someone behind me spoke 

in perfect English “How are you?” I had not sighted another 

foreigner but could have been mistaken since there were so many 

huts where one could loiter unseen. So imagine my surprise when I 

18

19



turned to see a Karo woman with a painted face and numerous 

necklaces squatting by her modest hut. She only spoke a few words 

of English but was the only person who was able to communicate 

with me verbally. For everyone else, it was via gestures and the 

international language of a smile. 

One vividly painted Karo warrior and I formed a particularly strong 

bond. Proudly carrying his automatic weapon, and with a red tinge 

in his eyes that were accentuated by his white painted face, I showed 

him images of other tribes which seemed to interest him greatly. He 

posed for numerous photographs and we shared a smile and laugh 

whilst reviewing the images. When it came time to depart, he gave 

me a genuinely emotional farewell, I could discern it in his eyes. He 

did not want me to leave, and I felt the same way. There was so 

much more to learn from him about his life and his village. It is 

heartening to know that genuine warmth can be established between 

people from extremely different cultures and different languages 

within a brief time. 



We returned to Turmi and I decided to pay a relative premium for a 

spacious cabin at the Evangadi Lodge with cold showers and a toilet 

that did not make me shudder. This Monday was a special day in the 

town, for not only was it market day, but a Hamer initiation 

ceremony would occur later that afternoon. The Hamer people are 

famed throughout Ethiopia, their beautiful women plat their hair 

and coat it with a distinctive red clay, and the men are equally 

handsome. I warmed to the Hamer tribe more than any other, they 

were gentle and a smile never seemed far away. 

The market was the best in the Omo Valley, as hundreds of Hamer 

converged to interact and trade goods in an expectedly relaxed 

environment. I espied a few women with large, wide scars on their 

backs and arms, which I thought odd for a seemingly placid people. 

It felt surreal to watch this glimpse of tribal life and it was not the 

only time this journey that felt as if I had stumbled into the middle 

of a National Geographic documentary. 

After losing track of time, I needed to hurry to attend the Hamer 

initiation ceremony, one of the highlights of any Omo Valley visit. 

20





This ceremony is an elaborate affair which allows the male initiate, 

if successful, to commence the process of choosing a wife. The 

ceremony lasts hours and commences with women adorned in 

bangles and carrying small noisy horns, jumping in unison and 

following each other in a tight circle. This celebration is not so 

unusual, but the same could not be said of the public whipping that 

followed. 

Tradition dictates that any relative of the initiate can prove their 

loyalty by being publicly scourged with a thin, destructive whip. 

The process involves a woman approaching any Hamer adult male 

to deliver the punishment, but some men were reluctant to take 

part, and they had less enthusiasm for the practice than some of the 

women who needed to cajole them for another lashing. Supposedly 

a woman will plea to a man “Hit me,” he will respond “No,” and 

her retort being “You are no better than a woman!” at which time 

she would receive a single strike. Some women proudly displayed 

numerous open welts on their back, but not every female was 

similarly enraptured by the societal pressure. I espied a forlorn 

teenager with doleful eyes who had just received her first whipping; 

I pointed to a long thin cut on her back and she expressed her 

feelings by grimacing. 

While the women bravely bore their wounds in silence, the men 

continued the ceremony by engaging in ritualistic face painting – a 

rather genteel task compared to what the women endured. Most 

memorable was that the packed group of men squatting in the shade 

of an enormous tree were so incredibly intense. The concentration 

of the painters’ faces was immense, but it paled when compared to 

the recipients, whose eyes were simultaneously both calm and 

fervent; the gaze of men searching their inner thoughts as if in a 

trance. 

The gathered crowd walked the one kilometre along a dirt road for 

the climax. Whilst the Hamer men gathered around the initiate in a 

tight huddle, twelve reluctant bulls from a collection of much more 

were forcibly placed beside each other in a line, as the women 

danced, jingled and played their horns around the corralled beasts. 

Some of the beasts almost broke free to wreak havoc on their 

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handlers, but they were thankfully subdued. With scores of men 

holding the bulls in place under cloudy skies, the naked initiate 

stood at the far end as the women increased their noise to a 

crescendo and the tourists paused with cameras poised. Suddenly 

the initiate leapt onto the first bull and quickly, but ever so carefully, 

stepped on each animal before jumping on the ground near me, at 

which time I detected his expression of absolute concentration 

flicker for a moment to one of momentary relief. He returned from 

whence he came, again stepping on each of the bulls, and he 

repeated this whole process two more times. It took less than a 

minute for the initiation to be successfully completed and the 

foreigners applauded, which seemed incongruent for this traditional 

ceremony. 

The assembled onlookers dispersed and when leaving the area we 

offered a seat in our vehicle to a Hamer teenager, his youthful dark 

face a stark contrast to his shining white teeth. He saw me reviewing 

the images on my camera and requested to see the picture of the 

naked initiate crossing the bulls. 

I showed him the picture, and he asked me, “Get closer,” so I 

zoomed into the initiate alone. 

The teenager looked at the body and commented. “He is a strong 

man, and has a strong gun...” which referred to the size of the man’s 

genitalia, “he will have good children.” 

He looked away from the camera before stating, “My initiation 

ceremony will be soon.” 

“Really, that is great news,” I replied, “When will it be?” 

He paused before answering, “In a few weeks. I do not know the 

day.” 

“Will it be a big ceremony like this one?” I enquired. 

“No, a small one. There will be no women, only men,” he stated. 

24





“Will there any faranjis?” I asked, that being the local word to 

describe foreigners. 

“No, only the men of my tribe.” 

“So you can choose if you want a big or small ceremony.” 

“Yes I can. I will have a small ceremony. Not many people.” 

We had arrived at my hotel, “I wish you the best for the ceremony.” 

“Thank you,” he responded by flashing that brilliant white smile 

and he exited the vehicle. 

The only town of note in the Omo Valley is Jinka, it even had 

mobile phone coverage. As we approached I remember hearing that 

Jinka once had an airport used for regional flights, so I asked Tsegay. 

“Did Ethiopian Airlines used to fly to Jinka?” 

“Yes, but they stopped it not long ago.” 

“Why?” 

Tsegay gave me one of those of his typical wry smiles. “You will 

know when you see the airstrip.” 

And sure enough I did, for there in the middle of Jinka’s low rise 

buildings sat what was once the airport, the former airstrip an 

uneven surface now populated with animals grazing on tufts of 

grass. Any plane landing on this surface, even without the grass and 

bovines, would be a risky venture. 

“Now you see why,” stated Tsegay. 

I laughed and nodded in reply. 

Rambling around the dirt streets one late afternoon, many friendly 

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people approached me who keenly wished to talk and swap stories. 

So many were interested in my country of origin, and what I 

thought of Ethiopia and the Omo Valley. When the sunset’s scarlet 

light painted the buildings with its soft hue, I returned to my room 

where I saw my reflection in a mirror for the first time in many days 

and was surprised at my gaunt appearance. Subconsciously I had 

reacted to the poor state of the food and the worse state of the 

toilets by eating little, thus allowing me to minimise my exposure to 

both. 



Jinka was the base to meet the most famous and feared tribe in the 

Omo Valley; the aggressiveness of the Mursi is known by many, and 

some travellers have refused to visit due to episodes such as stone 

throwing and their predilection for alcohol. However, this 

promised an unforgettable experience, so undaunted we proceeded 

to the Mago National Park where the tribe resides. A sign at the 

park’s entrance states No Automatic Weapons, but this regulation is 

flagrantly ignored by the Mursi. 

At the final checkpoint we were required to acquire the services of 

an armed guard, and whilst organising this service, we met a 

departing group of half a dozen European tourists who had stayed 

with the Mursi the previous evening. 

“How was your night?” I asked a young unshaven man. 

He glanced at me with weary eyes. “It was...difficult. I had very 

little sleep,” as he turned and walked away. That was not reassuring. 

With the armed guard sitting beside me in the now dirt encased 

Nissan Patrol, we encountered another potential peril. Apart from 

the Omo Valley’s malarial mosquitoes, the park is home to the 

Tsetse Fly that can inflict a most painful bite. When one of these 

brightly coloured insects appeared in the cabin near to the guard, he 

became most anxious and feverishly waved his hands and gun in the 

air. An agitated armed guard is never a good situation, regardless of 

the cause. 

I harboured nervousness about visiting the Mursi and the portent of 

28





silence within the vehicle reflected my thoughts. This concern was 

well founded, for we came upon a Mursi village to scenes of 

frenzied activity as two vehicles with a dozen tourists had already 

arrived, and the Mursi were swarming around them like a pack of 

sharks closing in for a kill. Women were particularly aggressive in 

physically seizing people for a photograph. 

“This is not good,” I sighed to Tsegay. 

“No, it’s not,” came his stoic reply, as we watched another tourist 

disappear behind a mass of gesticulating Mursi women. 

“Is it always like this?” I questioned. 

Tsegay nodded and quietly uttered, “Yes.” 

“Maybe we should wait until the other faranji leave?” 

“A good idea,” concurred Tsegay. 

Tsegay reversed the car and we observed tourism’s ugly side from a 

distance. We hoped that it would be calmer once these groups had 

departed, and thankfully this prediction proved correct. Once 

within the small village with the simplest of huts, we noticed the 

ubiquitous presence of automatic weapons, even the women carried 

them, a practice considered abhorrent by other tribes. The reason 

for this convention was difficult to determine, it was either deemed 

necessary for protection against predators, or possible against other 

Mursi. This was even more confronting than the Arbore tribe, for 

when someone grabs your arm demanding a photo be taken, and 

they have an AK47 swinging from their arm, it does change the 

power balance of the situation strongly against the visitor. 

Communicating with the tribe was protracted as conversations 

needed to be translated from Mursi to the national Amharic 

language (courtesy of the armed guard) and from Amharic into 

English (courtesy of Tsegay) so these stilted colloquies involved not 

only the Mursi and me but two interpreters as well. Like much of 

the Omo Valley, it was difficult to garner a fuller understanding of 

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the people due to the language barrier, and the Omo Valley contains 

many languages, each only spoken by a few thousand people. But 

this communication, however protracted, did make a difference to 

our visit – when the Mursi knew we wished to learn more about the 

village and its people, their reaction changed. Many returned to 

their usual daily duties instead of focusing their energies on our 

presence. As the previous group discovered, heading into any tribe 

for a whirlwind stop just to photograph receives a less welcoming 

reaction than those who are prepared to linger and learn. 



The body decoration on the Mursi was superb, and the scarification 

used by both men and women tended towards the elaborate. 

However, the iconic image of the Omo Valley is that of the lip plate 

worn only by the women, and they vary in size from moderately 

small to more than 20 centimetres wide. This adornment is not 

universally utilised, but the women who chose to do so consider it 

an object of beauty. For those who choose to wear one, they start 

with smaller plates in their teenage years until reaching full-sized 

plates in adulthood. The plate, which has a groove around the edge 

where the extended lip is placed, is not worn continuously as the 

wearer will remove it when eating or sleeping, nor are they worn 

when visiting the Jinka markets as the Mursi believe that these plates 

appear odd to outsiders. 

We departed 90 minutes later, but I was disappointed by my poor 

reaction to the Mursi’s initial aggressiveness that allowed me to be 

overwhelmed for a second time on this journey. I vacillated on 

whether to return to the Mursi tribe the next morning. My 

photographs on the first visit were quite poor, my creativity 

bludgeoned by the intense environment. Perhaps a return was in 

order, and despite knowing that it would be another confrontational 

experience, not visiting again would be a regret. 

Thus, with a greater mental preparedness, we returned to two 

different Mursi villages. These were both smaller, received fewer 

tourists and hence less frenzy. It was such a calm contrast to the 

previous day. The more relaxed mood allowed me to capture better 

photographs, and even the sternest visage would lighten and 

sometimes laugh upon seeing their picture on my camera’s LCD 

32



screen. It was a pleasant conclusion to my tribal visits in the Omo 

Valley and showed that generalisations about a people never account 

for the nuances that they, both as an individual and a collective, can 

possess. 

As we embarked on the three-day journey to Ethiopia’s capital of 

Addis Ababa, it allowed me to reflect on the oft-described vanishing 

tribes of the Omo Valley. These tribes as so distinct that one could 

determine their identity by merely looking at clothing and body 

adornments, but how do these tribes retain their cultures? 

Tourism’s negative impact includes photography payments and I 

was part of the problem by ceding to such. Visiting tribes where 

people stand in line hoping to be chosen to be photographed was 

most uncomfortable for all concerned. 

But tourism can both destroy and preserve. The Omo Valley seems 

to retain its culture better than many places; at least the tribes realise 

that their traditional lifestyle and culture provide an income, and 

this income encourages them to maintain their identity, even if it is 

at the cost of avarice. However, I sighted people in traditional tribal 

attire far away from the tourist path, so even without income from 

tourism, many of these practices would remain. 

As Tsegay drove the vehicle out of the valley, we sighted a new 

bitumen road being constructed. It would make the journey 

between Jinka and the major town before the Omo Valley, Konso, 

much easier and faster. Development was coming to Omo Valley 

and as we passed groups of workers huddles around massive 

machinery, I wondered with trepidation what would be the impact. 

Perhaps, time will not forget these tribes any longer. 

The completion of that road changed the Omo Valley, for the easier 

passage not only meant better access to health care and trading but 

also meant an influx of foreign visitors who would not undertake 

the journey on rougher roads. One sincerely hopes that these tribes 

which have filled the Omo Valley with their richness for millennia 

can continue to retain their identity and thrive within a truly 

remarkable wooded valley. 

www.thetravelcamel.com 

33

A Call To Adventure 

34 

Megan 

Hine 




A call to adventure 

By Megan Hine 

I am proud to stand amongst the ranks of mountain and wilderness 

professionals, the silent corps with the thousand-mile stare. Gazing 

towards future adventures, dreaming of remote places, living and 

breathing the outdoors. We follow in the wake of the great 

explorers, the trailblazers, the likes of Shackleton, Hillary, 

Amundsen, the explorers and pioneers of a bygone era, discovering 

and settling new lands. Those incredible humans who lit the flame 

of exploration and pushed the boundaries of human imagination. 

In all of us there glows a residual ember of this time of exploration, 

a dull need inside to push boundaries and discover new horizons, to 

fight for survival. This ember sits waiting for the draft of inspiration 

and opportunity to fan it into a burning passion. 

For some of us this flame burns bright, ever threatening to consume, 

we need to feed it with experiences and travel, it makes us restless 

and drives us towards new goals. It pushes us, ever onwards, 

searching for the next big hit, for moments of pure clarity, those 

moments of flow where the self and nature are one, the body lost to 

the rock or to the trail we climb or run. For me, I find this in the 

wildest of places. The endless horizons offer a multitude of 

possibilities and a hefty dose of adrenalin draw me in. 

There is nothing more satisfying to me than pushing myself to the 

edge of what I thought was physically, mentally and emotionally 

possible. Like surfing on the peak of a breaking wave, nothing 

makes me feel more alive or connected to the world. 

I am privileged now to be able to share this with others, to take 

them by the hand and lead them over the threshold and into the 

wild. To help them to face their own challenges and to overcome 

hurdles they never thought possible. Watching people change in the 

wilderness and build confidence in themselves and their decisions, 

seeing that spark ignite, and their lives take on a whole new meaning 

is such an incredible experience to share. 

Somebody expressed recently to me their admiration for my 

adventures and how they wished they could be more adventurous 

but lacked the confidence. This struck a chord with me, there must 

35

A call to adventure 

By Megan Hine 

be others, others whose image of themselves and what is ‘normal’ 

stops them from following their heart. Their dreams weighing them 

down, the frustration and failure they must feel in not being able to 

answer the call. It is so often our own self that limits our 

possibilities, creating barriers of self-doubt, seemingly impossible to 

overcome. 

Stop waiting, stop dreaming of ‘what ifs’! A whole world awaits 

you! Adventure isn’t just summiting the towering, snow-capped 

peaks or kayaking the gnarliest of falls. Adventure is subjective, it is 

what drives you and what calls to you, it is different in each of us. 

I love reading articles of passion from people pushing their own 

personal boundaries and what this means to them. For them, their 

achievements equate to summiting their own, personal Everest. I 

have as much respect for the first time traveller as the seasoned. For 

those brave enough to take their first forays to discover themselves 

and their dream I salute you. 

This is a call to all of you dreamers, you ‘wannabe’ adventurers! 

Come stand shoulder to shoulder with us, bring your dull ember 

and let us help you to find the inspiration and opportunity to ignite 

it into flame. 

Let us share our knowledge with you, discover new horizons and 

give you the confidence to believe in yourself and to turn those 

dreams into reality. 

www.meganhine.com 

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37

Sistema Huautla 

38 

Bill 

Steele 

RAJ 1.4 

Images © Chris Higgins



Sistema Huautla: Fifty Years of Continuous Exploration 

By C. William Steele 

In the summer of 1965 three young Texas weekend spelunkers 

drove a low riding car up a newly constructed dirt road in the Sierra 

Mazateca of the northern part of the southern Mexico state of 

Oaxaca. They were seeking caves with the potential to be the 

deepest in the Americas. They had it right. As soon as they got in 

the vicinity of Huautla de Jimenez, they started finding cave 

entrances. 

The next year they returned with ropes and drove to the other side 

of the mountain town of Huautla. Immediately they found two 

large cave entrances in the bottom of deep sinkholes. These are the 

primary entrances of Sistema Huautla, a mega cave system with 20 

entrances, 71.4 km (44 miles) in length, 1,554 m (5,097 feet) in depth, 

making it the deepest known cave in the Western Hemisphere, the 

8th deepest cave in the world, the longest of the 16 deepest caves in 

the world, and what many cavers feel is the greatest cave on Earth. 

Fifty years later, over thirty expeditions, seven of them Explorers 

Club flag expeditions, this exploration of these caves has renewed 

momentum. Late March to early May 2015 forty-seven speleologists 

from seven countries: USA, Mexico, Great Britain, Australia, 

Poland, Switzerland, and Romania participated in a six-week 

expedition in varying lengths of stay. There was a long list of 

objectives, including exploring unexplored passages by “checking 

out leads” indicated in past underground survey field notes. 

The restarted project exploring and studying the caves of the 

Huautla de Jimenez, Oaxaca, Mexico has been given the name of 

Proyecto Espeleologico Sistema Huautla (Huautla system 

speleological project), or PESH for short. PESH was launched in 

2013 with the objectives of extending the mapped length of the cave 

system from the then 65 km to over 100 km, the depth from the 

current 1,554 m to 1,610 m (a vertical mile, or 5,280 feet), and all the 

while maintaining “full speleology”, meaning studies and papers 

written on the various study disciplines of speleology: geology, 

hydrology, biology, paleontology, archaeology, and exploration 

techniques. 

The exploration of the Huautla caves has gone through phases. The 

39



years 1965-1970 saw several expeditions organized by cavers from 

the USA and Canada, and the establishment of the cave Sotano de 

San Agustin as the deepest cave in the Americas at 600 m in depth. It 

was felt that the cave was fully explored. 

In 1976 a group went to see this cave and check out a “lead” 

indicated on the map published by the Canadians a few years 

before. In caving jargon, a “lead” is a possible unexplored passage. 

A lead is indicated on a cave map with broken continuing lines and a 

question mark. Maybe it goes on, and maybe it doesn’t. The reason 

the lead had not been entered eight years before was that it was very 

remote, taking two days of underground travel to get to it, and there 

was a very difficult overhung climb about five meters high. This 

climb was successfully climbed, a passage did indeed continue, and 

since then the cave has been explored from a length of two miles 

then to 44 miles now and the depth is two and a half times deeper. 



After the 1976 expedition there was one expedition after another 

most years until 1994. The 1994 expedition was a major three 

month-long effort that resulted a book being written about it, 

“Beyond the Deep”. The farthest the 1994 expedition reached was a 

deep pool of water at a depth of 1,475 m below the highest point 

reached in the cave system. The pool was extremely remote and 

required not only hundreds of meters of technical rope work, but 

long dives underwater too, with rebreathers and sophisticated scuba 

gear, and camping in the cave beyond the reach of any means of 

communication with the surface. 

Between 1994 and 2007 there were a few scattered expeditions to the 

Huautla caves, but several of those years saw no activity. The 

Huautla cavers were exploring caves elsewhere in Mexico, USA, 

China, Puerto Rico, etc. 

Then came 2013 and the big British-led expedition. Young, very 

active, British cave explorers sought logistical information from me 

and others to mount their own expedition to dive in the deep pool, 

called a “sump” in caver parlance, at the bottom of the cave. 

Through the years leading up to this expedition Sistema Huautla 

had been surpassed in depth by a cave not far south of it, on a high 

40



mountain range separated from the Huautla plateau by a deep 

canyon, and this cave, Sistema Cheve, had a surveyed depth only 

nine meters deeper than Sistema Huautla. 

The Brits had a successful expedition and explored 80 m deep in the 

pool of water, using mixed gases for breathing. Eighty meters was 

the limit what they could do with the gases they were breathing so 

they ended the dive there, with the water-filled passage descending 

at least another 20 meters they could see with powerful underwater 

dive lights. Sistema Huautla was once again the deepest cave in the 

Western Hemisphere at 1,554 m from the highest point humanly 

reached in the cave, to the lowest point humanly reached. That’s the 

way it’s figured in a deep cave. 

Tommy Shifflett from Virginia and I joined the British expedition 

for the last part of it. We had our own 

area to look at, looking for unexplored passages, and found over 

half a kilometer of lovely decorated, unexplored passages after 

doing an aid climb across the top of a shaft. 

Tommy and I talked while we were there together about how much 

we love the caves and the area of Huautla, Oaxaca, and there is 

much remaining to do. So, in the airport in Oaxaca, as we waited 

for our respective flights back to the USA, we sketched out a plan 

for a restart of annual expeditions to Sistema Huautla and other 

caves of the area. 

We decided to give our project a new name – in Spanish this time – 

Proyecto Espeleologico Sistema Huautla, and wrote down our 

goals: 

To explore, survey, and conduct a comprehensive speleological 

study of the Sistema Huautla area caves. 

Conduct speleological studies to include exploration and mapping, 

cartography, geology, hydrology, biology, paleontology, 

archaeology, and equipment and technique development. 

Support Mexican cave scientists in field research. 

41



Conduct annual springtime expeditions for ten years 2014-2023 . 

Survey data kept current. 

Goal of reaching 100 km in length. 

Goal of reaching 1,610 m in depth, which is 5,280 ft., a vertical 

mile. 

All results published. 

All of this is easy to say, but to say we’re going to have annual 

expeditions for ten years, it’s very important that the first one be 

successful. The first PESH expedition, in 2014, was successful on 

several fronts. Diplomacy at the state, municipio, and agencia levels 

was for the most part fruitful, with permission granted to go caving 

in the area for three years. One area remains a challenge due to the 

resident Mazatec people’s beliefs in cave spirits and what might 

happen if they are angered by foreigners going in caves no one has 

ever entered. A plan has been formulated to do diplomatic work to 

deal with this issue, but it’s going to take several years to overcome, 

if it’s ever overcome. 

The area to the east of the known passages of Sistema Huautla, was 

an objective, to search for new cave entrances that might descend 

deep and connect with the cave system below. Around 20 new pits 

and caves were explored and mapped, without anything going very 

far or deep. A cave southeast of known passages in the system 

shows promise with strong airflow and the exploration of it will 

continue during the 2016 expedition. 

Oscar Franke, Ph.D., professor of biology, a noted arachnologist 

and scorpion expert and a professor at the National Autonomous 

University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City, joined our 

expeditions in 2014 and 2015 and brought along three graduate 

students each time. They are thrilled that they have collected twelve 

new species of cave life, including new species of tarantula, new 

species of harvestmen spiders, and a new species of scorpion in the 

caves. They will return in 2016. 

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An important paleontological site was found in a cave as well. In a 

series of large adjoining rooms in a cave we had not visited in over 

30 years, not far from the village where we rent houses, large bones 

were noticed in a talus cone of dirt on the floor. We think there must 

have been an entrance above the bones at one time in the distant 

past. Based on photographs taken with scale and sent to a 

professional paleontologist in Mexico City, he feels that at least one 

of the animals is an extinct Pleistocene ground sloth. A graduate 

student of his joined us for a week this year and plans to return for a 

longer amount of time in 2016 to excavate the 1 ½ m tall cone of 

bones and other ancient surface debris. 

Halfway through the first PESH expedition in 2014, five cavers 

arrived with packs already prepared to go underground and camp in 

the La Grieta section of Sistema Huautla. La Grieta, meaning “the 

crack”, is a significant section of Sistema Huautla. It’s over 700 m in 

depth to where it connects to the system and has tributaries feeding 

into it that were initially explored in 1977, but no one had been back 

to them since then. 

Taking underground backpacks, five cavers went into La Grieta to 

stay underground for nine days. They set up a remote camp and 

explored an upstream tributary initially explored without finding an 

end in 1977. They succeeded in discovering and mapping 1.6 km of 

new passages. This was Kasia Biernacka of Poland, Gilly Elor, 

Corey Hackley, John Harman, and Bill Stone of the USA. Three of 

them camped underground for seven days and two of them for nine. 

Their most significant discovery was a passage extending over 1.5 

km to the north, directly toward the highest topography in the area. 

They turned around in 20 X 20 m borehole passage because they 

were running low on food and battery power for their lights. This 

continuing passage is a major objective for 2016. 

The second annual PESH expedition took place from March 23 – 

May 5, 2015 with 47 speleologists and support people from ten 

counties; the United States, Mexico, England, France, Germany, 

Poland, Switzerland, Austria, Romania, and Australia. 

Cavers explored the upstream sump (a sump is a cave passage with 

45



water to the ceiling (necessitating scuba gear) in Red Ball Canyon at 

the 700 m (2,296 foot) deep Sotano de San Agustin section of 

Sistema Huautla, an area not seen since 1979. On the far side of 

three sumps, 30 m, 30 m, and 5 m long, two cavers, Andreas 

Klocker of Australia, and Zeb Lilly of Virginia in the USA, direct 

aid climbed 180 m (590 feet) vertically beyond it. It continues to go 

up into the unknown and is getting bigger. 

They also discovered a new and potentially extensive new part of 

the La Grieta section of Sistema Huautla. Dubbed Mexiguilla due to 

its similarity with New Mexico’s (USA) Lechuguilla Cave (one of 

the world’s most beautiful caves), the area has the best formations 

yet found in the 44-mile-long cave system. 



Besides Sistema Huautla, teams explored and mapped small caves in 

the area in hopes of opening up new sections of Sistema Huautla. 

Progress was also made with public relations efforts to gain access 

to unexplored entrances where local Mazatec Indians believe cave 

spirits reside and fear offending them, resulting in their corn not 

growing well or their children getting sick. At the suggestion of a 

local government official, PESH designed, created, and installed a 

USA National Park visitors’ center quality display in the local 

government building, with 16 excellent photographs as large prints 

informative text in Spanish, and a profile map with scale of the cave 

showing it to be as deep at four Empire State Buildings in New 

York City stacked on top of each other. 

Another focus of the 2015 expedition was underground 

photography. Six excellent cave photographers were part of the 

team: Karis Biernacka of Poland, Liz Rogers of Australia, Dave 

Bunnell, Steve Eginoire, Chris Higgins, and Matt Tomlinson of the 

USA. A coffee table book of the best Huautla cave photographs 

through the years is being planned for the future. 

PESH 2016 Expedition 

Planning and preparing for our next expedition is underway in early 

September 2015. The dates are set: basically, the month of April 

with a week of preparation in the field prior to that. Preparation in 

46





the field includes three days of driving from Texas to southern 

Mexico, visiting local government officials and getting permits and 

permissions, renting houses in a small village near the entrance to 

the section of the cave system we will concentrate on, and setting 

the houses up, which means getting the kitchen operating, buying 

groceries, and preparing for twenty more people to arrive in a few 

days. Then it will be four weeks of high energy activity with 

unexpected and usually surprising news reports from underground 

explorations. 

We have a long list of exploration and study objectives for the next 

expedition, but then there is the possibility of the unexpected 

happening. The unexpected happened on the first two PESH 

expeditions, and they both happened late in the expeditions. “The 

unexpected” is something almost unique to cave exploration in these 

modern times. Since satellite photos are not available because caves 

are beneath the earth’s surface, and no technology exists that can 

penetrate thick layers of rock in mountains to see where cave 

passage lie, you literally don’t know until you go, in other words, 

pure exploration is still possible on Earth. The unexpected in cave 

exploration is usually when a surprising discovery is made where 

the geology of the cave as it is understood did not hold true and 

there is an unusual variation in the geologic structure. 

Near the end of the 2014 expedition, on the last day of a seven day 

stay deep in the cave, explorers working from a remote camp, 400 m 

below the surface, broke out into a 20-metre diameter tunnel 

bearing due north. It’s probably been there for five million years, 

but no one had ever reached it before. As much as it pained the team 

of five that found it, after exploring ahead a few hundred metres and 

mapping it, they took a photo to show its grandness and turned 

around to head out. That continuing passage is the number one 

objective in 2016. A team of five is already making plans to remain 

deep underground for one month and explore that passage as far as 

they can. 

Two other main objectives are in the same cave and will require 

other teams to camp deep and far in the cave to explore them. One 

was discovered late in the 2015 expedition. Three cavers had gone 

47

48

49



deep into the cave to “winterize it”, meaning pull ropes up shafts as 

they exited the cave, and leave the ropes coiled there where flood 

waters in the coming rainy season would not wash them away or 

damage them. 

Their plan was to camp one night in the remote underground camp, 

using sleeping bags and stoves already staged there for use in 2015, 

and the next day climb out of the cave and pull the fixed ropes up as 

they did. The problem was that one of them got sick once they got 

to the camp. He was going to need a day to recuperate, so the other 

two decided to do some exploring and mapping. They looked at the 

survey notes from the year before and picked a minor “lead”, a side 

passage noted but not yet explored, and decided it was close enough 

to the camp where the sick caver would be left, and they would give 

it a few hours and probably finish it. 



That’s not what happened. As soon as these two got on their hands 

and knees in soft sand in the low passage, they felt a strong breeze 

and smiled at each other. Cavers know, “if it blows, it goes.” 

Barometric exchanges with the changing air pressure on the surface 

cause breezes, sometimes even strong winds in caves, and cavers get 

good at detecting these clues and following them. 

And follow the wind these two did, to a new section with the most 

beautifully decorated passages found in all of the caves in Huautla. 

These two explorers, Gilly Elor and Derek Bristol, marvelled at the 

wonderment of perhaps one of the most beautiful places on earth, 

or rather inside the earth. Derek has done a fair amount of exploring 

in Lechuguilla Cave, New Mexico, said by many to be the most 

beautiful cave known. He thinks the section of Sistema Huautla 

they found that day in late April 2015, is as good. So, in thinking 

hard for a name for it, he coined the name Mexiguilla, combining 

the words Mexico and Lechuguilla. Mexiguilla will be explored, 

mapped, and photographed in 2016. 

Another top objective for 2016 is in this same section of Sistema 

Huautla. It’s over 700 m deep. Seen only once in 1977, there is a 

gigantic dome with a waterfall named Doo Dah Dome. It’s as wide 

and soaring as the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica, but much taller. The 

50



passage followed to get to it is named the Wind Tunnel, there is so 

much wind blowing through it. Doo Dah Dome is of unknown 

height. The lights of today are so much better than they were in 

1977, so perhaps in 2016 explorers will be able to see the top of the 

dome. But then again, maybe not. The plan is to climb it, using 

direct aid, and explore up-trending passages toward the surface, 

possibly as much as 1,000 m (3,300 feet) above. 

Gear and techniques 

A lot has changed gear-wise in the 50 years the caves of Huautla 

have been explored. In 1965 the first cavers wore denim pants and 

jackets and work boots. Their helmets were construction hard hats 

and their headlamps were carbide lights. Every three to five hours 

they had to refuel their carbide lamps. If they got wet, and the 

Huautla caves are wet even in the driest time of the year, their 

cotton pants and jackets sapped their body heat. 

Cavers not shun cotton completely. Synthetic materials make 

underwear warm even when wet. For outerwear nylon or PVC 

coveralls are worn. These are very durable and protect the caver 

from the often sharp walls. For boots most cavers wear lugged 

rubber canyoneering boots. Wet caves soften leather and leather 

boots die off quickly. 

A couple of years ago I wrote an article and got it published in a 

cavers’ journal titled “The Light is the Future is Here Now”. In it I 

recalled being miles from the entrance, deep in a cave, as a teenager, 

taking a break, waiting for someone to refuel his carbide lamp 

before it was my turn, and discussing how someday, someday way 

off the distant future, we will have very rugged headlamps with 

different settings to switch from 180 degrees of full periphery light 

to a beam that could reach the bottom of a deep, perhaps 500 foot 

deep shaft, to see if the rope we had just rigged reaches the bottom. 

It will be totally waterproof with batteries that last so long you can 

go on a long, maybe even 20 hour, non-stop caving trip and not 

have to change batteries. We laughed and someone said, “Like I’ll 

live long enough to see that!” I hope that he has. I have. 

51



I have a top of the line Scurion headlamp. Its Swiss engineered and 

made, very futuristic-looking, and does all of those things. Your 

headlamp is your primary piece of gear in caving. If you are out of 

light, you are stuck or you are borrowing a light. My Scurion is just 

one of four lights I always have with me in a cave. More often than 

not I have loaned a light to someone before I needed a backup light. 

The Scurion has never failed me. 

The ropes the first Huautla cavers had in the 60s were of a laid 

construction, meaning three strands twisted very tightly together, a 

rope named Goldline, which was known and dreaded for spinning 

anytime a caver could not stop the spinning by reaching out to the 

wall. If the rope hung in free space, a caver would spin round and 

round. Sometimes they got motion sick from the spinning. 



Packs were army surplus made of canvas. Canteens were also army 

surplus, or sometimes left over from when the caver was a Boy 

Scout. 

All the early Huautla cavers were male. That was in the 60s. In the 

70s it changed and about a fourth were female. Now it sometimes 

approaches 50%. This is a very welcome development. 

The ropes also changed in the 70s from the laid, twisted 

construction of Goldline rope, to the kernmantle, braided design of 

modern caving ropes, which don’t spin in free fall and don’t stretch. 

They are also very tough and abrasion resistant. 

Over the past twenty years the European technique of rigging 

rebelays, deviations, and using smaller, 9mm ropes has been adopted 

in Mexico and in much of the USA. Rebelays are when a rope is 

anchored on the wall of a shaft so that the rope does not make 

contact with a sharp place on the wall. A deviation is when a sling or 

a runner is used so the rope passes through a carabiner and is held 

away from the wall or sharp edge. 

Rappelling devices are exclusively either a rappel rack, or a bobbintype 

rappelling device, usually a Petzl Stop or Simple. The latter 

type is quicker when passing a rebelay and it has to be taken off the 

52

53



rappel rope in mid-shaft. 

Rope ascent is done by a technique called frogging. It’s a sit/stand 

technique, where a Petzl Croll ascending device is attached to a low 

slung seat harness and lifted by a chest harness when a climbing 

caver stands. Once seated they kick their heels back under their 

fanny, slide up an upper mechanical ascender which has a loop for 

their feet, and then stand up and do it again, moving like an 

inchworm. Once learned, it’s quite efficient, and since you are 

standing with both legs at once, it’s possible to haul a fairly heavy 

load as you climb a rope. 



Full speleology 

Speleology is the study of caves. Full speleology means conducting 

studies in all of the sub-disciplines of speleology: geology, 

hydrology, biology, paleontology, and archaeology. Huautla cavers 

even had a psychological study done on them in the mid-90s by a 

NASA researcher. After all, they were going to be in a remote place 

with a small team, no outside stimulus or distractions, doing 

difficult tasks in a risky environment and dependent on technology. 

In 2005 the first edition of the book “Encyclopedia of Caves” was 

published in the USA by Elsevier Press. Editors William White and 

David Culver invited Jim Smith and me to co-author a chapter for it 

about Sistema Huautla. We decided to convey in our chapter not 

only a brief history of the exploration and mapping through the 

years and generally how it sizes up with the caves of the world, but 

we also listed the various disciplines of speleology and cited theses 

written and published, papers in journals, and books written about 

the exploration. There have been two of them: “Beyond the Deep” 

by William C. Stone, Barbara AmEnde, and Monte Paulsen, and 

“Huautla: Thirty Years in One of the World’s Deepest Caves” by 

me. In 2012 Smith and I were invited to update our chapter for the 

second edition of the book, which we did. 

Adventure 

There is no denying that the exploration of Sistema Huautla has 

been a grand adventure. Sit around a campfire with Huautla cavers 

54



and the stories pour forth. Two books have been written, countless 

articles in journals, and there is more to come. There are videos on 

You Tube and a movie was even made by in the 90s that is on Vimeo 

(Huautla: The Mexican Cave). Portions of it have made to US 

television on NOVA, National Geographic Explorer, and How’d 

They do That? The Brits’ 2013 expedition shot video, released by 

Red Bull and is on the Web (http://www.redbull.tv/episodes/ 

1393399865559-638517006/journey-to-inner-earth). 

I’m 66 years old. I was “bitten by the bug” to explore caves when I 

was 13. I’ve been in over 2,500 caves in the USA, Mexico, Belize, 

Guatemala, and China, but my masterpiece is Sistema Huautla. I’ve 

been on twenty expeditions there and my 21st is coming up in a few 

months. I think of myself as fortunate, fortunate to be among a 

group of world-class explorers who have hammered away, 

regardless of the difficulties and danger, to be the original explorers 

of what many feel is the greatest cave on Earth. 

www.worldexplorersbureau.com/bill-steele 

55

Monlam Cham 

56 

Francis 

O' Donnell 





By Francis O' Donnell 

Like many 'Timeless Travel' adventures this one started between the 

pages of a dusty old book long forgotten, 'The Travels of Marco 

Polo.' My mother had given me the volume. It sat on my shelf for 

years until one day it ignited a dream to retrace the Venetian 

explorer’s entire route along the legendary Silk Road. Our 

expedition's name was 'The Return to Venice.' 

Now, after many arduous months, our caravan had survived a series 

of rock slides and avalanches. We had climbed through snowy 

mountain passes, to reach the seemingly endless Tibetan highlands. 

Its people are nomadic and roam this plateau with their sundry 

beasts, wild and free as the wind. We had been told by fellow 

travelers that there is a rich Gompa called Labrang which is a very 

sacred Monastery to the Gelug sect of Tibetan Buddhism and is the 

repository of great knowledge and wealth. 

In Marco Polo’s time, hundreds of Monks were said to live there, it 

was founded in 1709 by the first Jamyang Zhépa, Ngawang 

Tsöndrü. It is to be found in a blessed mountain valley named 

Sangke, hidden like a gem in a lotus flower, surrounded by 108 

sacred peaks with names like, Eternal Bliss, Tolerance and 

Compassion, Radiance and Harmony, Dragon and Phoenix, 

Everlasting Life and Tian Shan, which equates to the Mountain of 

Heaven. 

It sounded like romantic hyperbole, but I was hopeful. We had 

risked this sidetrack because a great festival was about to take place 

and thousands of pilgrims from all over Tibet would be enjoining. 

It was our intention to witness and document the festivities, seek 

out trade goods like coral, amber, silver, gold, and other precious 

gems, which decorated their “women and idols,” as Marco Polo said 

in his account of the region 700 years prior. As we approached our 

destination, the larger the gathering became, an ever increasing 

stream of pilgrims could be seen on the horizon, little specks 

focused on one heading. 

My guess was there were at least thirty thousand supplicants filling 

Images Opposite: 

Top: A masked dancer bares a fearsome countenance to scare away evil spirits. 

Middle: A group of monks watch while their comrades practice. 

Bottom: The "Monlam Cham 

57



the small town and camping in the surrounding valleys. We were 

invited to stay in one such camp with an extended family. It was 

hard for me to tell the difference between clans, the diversity of 

customs and dress was dizzying. One thing was standard, the 

friendly open nature in which everyone greeted us. Most would 

stop momentarily, bow slightly, and while smiling, stick out their 

tongue and say, “Dimo Dimo.” The way Westerners might shake 

hands the Tibetans stick out their tongues! At first, I was taken 

aback, not knowing what it meant. I have to say that the novelty of 

sticking your tongue out, as a greeting, wears off quickly. After a 

few dozen greetings it can be quite tiring, causing your tongue to 

swell, making it hard to eat. 



I first had the honor of drinking salted yak butter tea some years 

ago and had grown to like, even enjoy, its thick and oily, rancid 

taste. Our hosts had a few new twists they introduced me to. Aside 

from all the yak fat, odd chunks of meat, hair, sinew, and cartilage, 

they added a grain called tsampa into their tea which makes it more 

of a porridge. This is how it's done. You leave a little buttered tea 

in the bottom of your bowl and put a big dollop of this tsampa meal 

on top. You then stir gently with the forefinger, kneading it by 

hand, meanwhile, twisting your bowl ‘round and round’ until you 

finish up with a large dumping like object which you ingest, and 

wash down with more tea. 

The whole operation demands a high degree of manual dexterity 

and practice before you can judge correctly how much tsampa goes 

with how much tea. Unless you get the proportions right you 

either end up with a lump of desiccated dough or a semi liquid paste 

sticking to your fingers. Tibetans have many names for themselves, 

one is, “The Tsampa Eaters.” This term promotes a unified Tibetan 

identity. Tsampa meal constitutes a substantial part of the Tibetan 

diet and is used in sacred rituals. According to Polo’s account, 

“There are Holy Men here who live lives of great austerity and all 

their lives they eat nothing but this bran.” 

So, there we sat, smiling, sticking our tongues out and sucking 

down hot buttery balls of tsampa bran, and trying to communicate. 

58



Neither, my colleague, photographer, Denis, or I knew many words 

of Tibetan, so we communicated in our very limited Chinese, but 

mostly, with smiles and pantomime. 

When the vodka was finished they broke out the Chang a Tibetan 

beer. Chang is also made of tsampa bran and has a rich, deep, tangy, 

bubbly taste. We all became highly inebriated and sang ourselves to 

sleep in a mixed chorus of the old standards, 'Row, Row, Row Your 

Boat' and 'Old Susanna' and some Tibetan tunes that we tried hard 

to mimic. When I rose the next morning the nearby campsites had 

packed up and were gone. Our hosts, too, had vanished. How 

could we have slept through that? Wow, I am never drinking again, 

that is it for Chang! 

We rode on in anticipation. Soon in the distance we could see the 

golden rooftops and whitewashed walls of the great Labrange 

Gompa peeking out from behind the trees. The smell of pine and 

cedar was everywhere as breakfast fires filled the air. Even at this 

early hour the path was packed with thousands of Tibetan pilgrims 

performing parikrama as they paraded proudly past. Dressed, as 

they were, in their Sunday-going-to-festival-best. The spectacle was 

spectacular. 

Families, tall and proud, walked hand-in-hand toward the town. 

Fathers wearing fox fur hats of great height, bodies wrapped in 

inverted sheepskin cloaks, tied tight at the waist, with colorful 

silken sashes, fastened with gem encrusted broaches. A mighty 

pommel in his hand, dagger sheathed, he led his Clan, a patriarch's 

parental swagger, he did sway, as the growing crowd parted way. 

Mother and children bringing up the rear with happy grins from 

ear-to-ear. Their frost bitten cheeks were here to share in this 

Festival of Losar which happens only once a year. 

The thousands of pilgrims in attendance believe that their mere 

presence increases their Karma. By obeying Dharma and 

commemorating Guatama's spiritual victory over the forces of 

ignorance, greed, fear, and anger they can accrue good fortune for 

themselves in the New Year. So, it is a kind of renewal. This act, 

too, may help one attain merit on their path to enlightenment. 

59



After months of making our way through the Silk Roads deserts, 

dry and bleak, every hue of brown did I see. Tawny was the sky, at 

night, five shades of beige, sand our constant delight. When the 

shadows of dusk were finally cast, dark brown, sienna, and umber 

came out at last. The color flowing into this town could astound. 

Red, yellow, and blue were just a few there to be found. There were 

secondaries, too, a kaleidoscopic mix of all, a majestic vision to 

behold. The primaries were in force, in the form of coral, amber, 

and turquoise, of course. Precious stones held in place with facets 

of silver and golden lace. 



Fortunes attached to headdresses, heavy and long, with tails that 

hung behind beautiful maiden's derrieres. Rings and bracelets, for 

men and boys, items that not only the women did enjoy. Paupers, 

peasants, and princes all stopped at crowded market stalls, that had 

sprung up along the way, to separate pilgrims from their pay. There 

was a magic in the air. The tension of anticipation without despair, 

the past was the past, for soon New Year's day would be here. 

Riders, at breakneck speed, parted the human tide. Birds of prey 

swooped down with the swiftness of a whirlwind. Warrior Monks, 

whose wings were of crimson cloaks, flew through the crowding 

sky, as they took flight to roost amongst the monasteries main flock. 

Quarters of the Lampo Lama and home of the living Buddha. 

We came to stay at a chamber run by the monastery. Our cell was 

small and dark with shutters shut, a profusion of oil lamps lit the 

space. It was freezing cold, in what was once Amdo Provence, in 

late January. The coal burning stove was just being lit by one of the 

monks that oversees the residences. We threw our packs down on 

the horse hair mattress. The bed consisted of several planks of 

wood nailed together and stretched across chairs at either end. 

Exhausted we collapsed, our coma seemed to last forever. Shivering 

terribly, my teeth were chattering as I awoke, it was only 11 pm and 

our fire was out. It was going to be a long night. 

Up with the sun, over the next few days, we explored the town and 

made ourselves known. With still two weeks before the main 

festivities we had a chance to make friends with many of the monks, 

60





from the novices to the higher-ups. We spent time with them 

kicking a soccer ball around in front of the main temple, or cut in 

line joining the never ending stream of pilgrams who walked the 

circuit around the sacred percinct and spun the many thousands of 

prayer wheels which lined the way. We too chant “Om Mani..,” 

“The Jewel is in the Lotus.” 

We spent simple moments, like sharing pictures of home and 

teaching each other words of our respective languages. It was 

bucolic in its nature, pure and unpretentious. Like two alien beings 

from different solar systems, coming together, truly interested in 

one another's planets. 

Labrange Gompa is a renowned center for Buddhist thought and 

Tibetan cultural heritage. It contains eighteen prayer halls, six 

institutes of higher learning. The great library houses nearly sixty 

thousand prayer books and an area for theological debate, as well as, 

books on medicines, art, and music. They have a large collection of 

Buddha statues and murals. 

The central house of prayer contains a golden statue of the Buddha, 

more than fifty feet high, and in the main courtyard there is a 

golden stupa with a relic of the lord Buddha contained within. The 

main purpose of the Great Prayer Festival or Monlam Chenmo is to 

pray for the long life of holy Gurus of all traditions, for the survival 

and spreading of the Dharma in the minds of all sentient beings, and 

for world peace. The communal prayers, ceremonies, and rituals 

that will take place are believed to help overcome obstacles to peace 

and generate optimum conditions for everyone to live in harmony. 

The Monks have much to do during this period and we sat in as 

they did so. Each student is required to study the canon of 

Buddhist scriptures at the Mayjung Tosamling Academy. During 

Monlam they must participate in examinations for advanced degrees 

and debate. These debates kickoff the activities, next comes the 

Cham dance itself, followed by the revealing of a huge sacred 

Thangka painting. 

Closing with the ritual offering and burning of the Tormas cake and 

61



elaborate butter sculptures. Lastly, there is the circumambulation of 

the entire Gompa complex one hundred and eight times. They 

carry images of the Lord Buddha with them in prayer. 

The festival grounds where the debates were to take place were 

frozen when we got there and packed with thousands of crimson 

clad monks assembled before an open shrine housing a gilded statue 

of Shakyamuni. In unison they recited scriptures and prayers. 

They in turn were surrounded by thousands more, pilgrims, who 

squeezed into and packed every spot possible. 



On the platform of the shrine sat senior monks, teachers, and 

overseers donning huge amber colored crescent shaped bonnets. 

They would lead the rituals and debates. A chorus of monks seated 

at the base of the shrine blew giant horns thirty feet long, whose 

voices were so deep and strong it shook the very bones inside your 

frame. Others then blew high pitched and squeaky horns, 

drummers beat drums and clashed symbols while all hummed and 

chanted a foreboding tune. Next these overseers rose to their feet 

and conjured spells and incantations. 

Then their leader began to bless and throw pinches of tsampa into 

the air. Throwing tsampa as an offering is used as a petition to 

request protection from the gods. It is a mark of joy and 

celebration used on occasions, such as marriages and birthdays. 

Then the debate began in earnest for hour upon hour. Teams of 

three and four monks would debate each other in some point of 

doctrine and theology. 

When a Monk felt he had gained the upper hand or won a point of 

rhetoric they would slap their hands together, straight out in front 

of themselves as if proving a point or putting an exclamation point 

on it. The whole of the crowd was very well behaved and seemed 

enthralled by the event, but I found it quite boring. 

I never did like attending church much. Standing here looking 

across the field, I thought how similar the lives of these Monks are 

to Christian Monks. They live austere lives in religious Monastic 

communities, dedicated to worship and prayer, they dress in priestly 

62

Images Above: 

Top Left: A Lama prepares to join the debates. 

Top Right: A monk shares yak butter tea with the pilgrims. 

Bottom Left: The great "Thangka" painting being unfurled on a hillside. 

Bottom Right: A magnificent coral headpiece. 

Photos (c) Denis Belliveau. 

63



vestments and tonsure their heads. 

Then across a sea of bobbing heads and faces, I saw Denis' mug 

making his way in my direction. I had a strange moment of 

dislocation. Here, amongst the natives, I felt at home and of no 

difference. Now, seeing my friend coming towards me, I knew just 

how out of place I really was. “Good to see you, what brings you to 

the debate?” I said facetiously, “Nothing Franny, just thought you 

might want to find something to eat?” “Sure, let's go,” was my reply 

as I threw my arm around his shoulder, inquiring if he thought he 

had captured any good images that morning and thought to myself, 

you gotta love this guy. The weight of the expedition put a lot of 

pressure on our friendship and often we would take it out on one 

another. Xiahe, as the town is known in Chinese, softened this 

tension, letting us slow down and appreciate things, life, and one 

another, anew. 



We found ourselves at one of the few ‘Dining establishments,’ the 

Tashi Delek Momo Palace. We had to wait in line outside for about 

a half an hour, so, we munched on grilled wild hare on a stick from a 

street vendor out front. 

Once seated we just pointed to dishes that looked good, as they 

passed, and told the waiter to bring them to us. Specialties like 

gyuma, blood sausage, and braised boar tongue, dressed in a unique 

sweet and spicy chili sauce, which came out first. The room was full 

of diners slurping away. We ordered Thenthuk, a brothy shaved 

noodle soup, liberally spiced with garlic and onions, and studded 

with different mystery meats and leafy mountain herbs. 

A giant pile of steaming hot Momos hit the table, big fat greasy 

dumplings, filled with minced spiced goat meat. When you bit into 

one it would explode gushing unctuous fat that would drip down 

your chin and all over your chest. My favorite dish was the huge 

slab of char-grilled yak steak slathered with garlic sauce, washed 

down with the ubiquitous salted butter tea. 

The big day had arrived, at sunrise supplicants started to venture 

toward the main plaza. Now, a few days into the festivities, the 

64





Monlam Cham Dance would take place in front of the Gompa main 

temple. For months prior, monks from the College of Tantric 

Kalachakra spend every spare moment practicing their special part 

in the dance. The discipline of Kalachakra is one of perfect selfcontrol 

over each and every movement of the body. Each bend, 

twist, and curve of a hand, wrist or finger contains profound 

meaning. The placement of a foot, the act of spinning and jumping 

through the air tells a story, in a language that only those who 

understand can decipher. 

The morning had come and gone. We had great seats right up front 

sitting in and amongst the monks who had befriended us. The 

thousands waiting did so patiently. There was a special seating 

section, a loge built just below the roof line of the monastery. 

Among the dignitaries I could see several of the Gompas spiritual 

leaders. 

Sitting with them was the monastery's living Buddha, who I was 

shocked to see was just a boy of perhaps eleven or twelve. A living 

Buddha is a fully realized being, one who has attained the spiritual 

level needed to reach Buddha consciousness and nirvana but has 

chosen to stay in the world to help all sentient beings on their path 

to enlightenment, a Bodhisattva. 

Finally, the dancers who had donned majestic silken robes, and 

wore the most demonic masks ever to be seen, slowly and 

methodically emerged from behind a hidden screen. One at first 

crouching and bending, swirling, and shaking, waving his arms 

about casting incantations with sacred amulets and symbols of 

Karmic powers. He called forth his cousins, who gladly appeared, 

scowling devils with faces twin to his. All joined his evil romp, 

stomping around together, hallowing this sacred ground. With 

fierce countenance so profound as to scare the sources of bad luck 

and evil away from the town. Now, in a more frenzied fashion they 

did move, faster, and faster until coming to completion, full 

saturation. Their secret message sent again, and again, and again, on, 

and on it went, until every soul present was spent. 

Hour after hour we endured the mesmerizing haunt of drums and 

65



bones. Horns in repetition blew, the thunderous symbol clashed, 

too. Upon their demon heads they wore a crown of skulls, grinning 

at the hypnotized crowd, lost in meditation, each and everyone of 

us, proud to have been witness to this sacred troupe's operatic 

ballet. Insuring happiness and good fortune throughout the land. 

Happy Losar to one and all. 

The time had come, our fantasy over, soon we would catch the bus, 

our real 'Caravan' for the four hour ride back to Lanzhou the 

capital of Gansu Province. We stood on a hillside overlooking the 

monastery, nestled in the Daxia river valley below, as the last 

pilgrims melted back into the steppe. Smoke rose up to the heavens 

and we could hear the soul stirring song of nomadic tribesmen 

echoing on the wind and off the surrounding mountains. We 

communicated in silence, each understanding the profound 

experience we had and knowing we had been changed. Not daring 

to speak so as not to break the spell, a tear rolled down my cheek at 

having to leave. This was my 'Lost Horizon' and it extends on 

forever. 

www.wliw.org/marcopolo/ 

66 

Images Above: 

Left: A fine example of Tibetan wealth, silver, coral and amber 

held in decorative attire. 

Right: A young pilgrim who has walked many miles. 

Photos (c) Denis Belliveau

"The very basic core of a man's living 

spirit is his passion for adventure. The 

joy of life comes from our encounters 

with new experiences, and hence there 

is no greater joy than to have an 

endlessly changing horizon, for each 

day to have a new and different sun." 

Jon Krakauer 

"Into the Wild" 

67

50 The Years Great Of Island Exploration Swim 

68 

Nuala Bill 

Moore Steele 



By Nuala Moore 



Planning and purpose – the Expedition begins 

As I was peeling off my immersion suit, tears in my eyes, exhausted 

and emotionally drained just about to swim north of the Blasket 

Islands heading to Loop Head, Brendan Proctor, command boat 

skipper, leaned over to my ear and whispered, “Remember if you 

feel weak, if you feel you can’t-there are a huge team pushing each 

arm forward, each stroke is us-we’re doing this as a team, we will 

finish this as a team, you are never alone out there.” 

One deep breath and I lowered my broken body over the side of the 

zodiac, we were 36 days on this expedition to swim around the 

Island of Ireland, the uncertainty of the next few weeks and 

challenges unknown. I stared into heavy, deep and uninviting 

Atlantic water, bigger than I had ever swam in. As the waves crashed 

over my head, I kept repeating, “you are not alone - breathe and 

fight,” and I did. 

The Round Ireland Swim, as it became known, in 2006, was much 

more than a relay, it was expedition and adventure to the core. It 

involved so much passion, expertise, trust, humility, ability to 

change plans, ability to accept defeat and reassess our plans but it 

mostly reflected a team who knew that if it was possible we would 

do it. We were ordinary people doing something extraordinary. 

Ireland is the 20th biggest island in the world, the main vision was 

to be the first team to circumnavigate the 800 or so miles by 

swimming, without wetsuits. A team of six main swimmers, a 

dedicated marine unit, a command cruiser vessel, three zodiacs, a 

marine rescue group of four rotating teams, a marine coordinator, a 

communications team and a land operations team were pulled 

together. 

The Round Ireland Relay Swim was an unprecedented expedition of 

epic strength and resilience that is unlikely to ever be repeated at 

this level. The Expedition took 56 days, with 35 swim days, the 

difference being accounted for, by weather and team changeover. 

The logistics of each day began with the allocation of the Zodiacs, 

Image Opposite of Nuala Moore © Valerie O' Sullivan. 

www.valerieosullivanphotography.ie 

69



two swimmers per Zodiac, the ‘Rachel Marie’ and the ‘Dive Áine’, 

each with a dedicated marine unit, one Zodiac the ‘Abhainn Rí’ 

carried the Marine Coordinator Derek Flanagan, his team and with 

swimmer Anne Marie Ward. The Command Vessel the ‘Sea Breeze’ 

rotated within the group captained by Brendan Proctor. 

The plan was to swim 20-24 miles a day within the group and this 

allowed the boats to carry their own plans and then coordinate all 

GPS locations pre and post swims and each swim were joined to 

create the day’s plan. The Command Boat skipper, the Marine 

Coordinator, the Comms team and the swim team were fully 

involved for the two months continuously. 



The challenges presented by each coast gave us both expectations 

and often absolute confusion. I remember the statement that the 

North Coast, the East Coast and the South Coast are predictable 

but the West Coast, it’s impossible to say what is going to happen 

out there. My motto at the beginning was that “We are only 

swimming, I have no other plans for the day, dig deep and take 

every swim in the moment,” and this we did. 

The swim started in Carrigfinn beach on July 2nd 2006 off the coast 

of Donegal. Swimming with the coldest water, the prevailing wind, 

currents and through the treacherous Northern Coastline first. The 

wind for the first few days was North East which made swimming 

into the wind a big challenge. Day 1,2 and 3 we were 4 hrs behind 

our schedule each evening, we got a very clear indication that plans 

were only guidelines and our expectations would be determined by 

each day’s conditions. 

The Rescue Units served one week on at a time Alpha, Bravo, 

Charlie and Delta. These teams are members of the Sheephaven Sub 

Aqua Club in Donegal. The logistics of this would allow a fresh 

team and a fresh set of eyes and hands to join the expedition each 

Sunday. One of the unspoken rules of open water swimming is the 

swimmer can only swim if the rescue unit can take them from the 

water in the unlikely event of an emergency so the value of these 

units was priceless. Trust is vital when you feel vulnerable to 

weather and conditions. Complacency can cost lives and we learned 

70



very early on that the bond between boat and swimmer is 

unbreakable. 

The first week went like a textbook where each swim was 

predictable, the challenges and the energy required were just what 

we trained for. Swimming 4-6 hours a day was acceptable. The 

North coast was a cold average 12 degrees Celsius. The North 

channel is renowned for Lion’s Mane jellyfish and big seas; it did 

not disappoint. 

As we turned south. swimming down the Antrim Coast and past 

Belfast Lough, the Beaufort Dyke in the North Channel is one of 

the biggest arms dumps from WW2 and the water temperatures 

drop with water depths of almost 1,000 feet. The emotion of the 

swim changes, as the depth of the water drops, the water becomes 

thicker. Constant Jellyfish stings and hypothermia accompanied by 

rain and wind gave us our first taste of what it was like to sit on the 

boats in open weather with nowhere to shelter. It was so difficult to 

keep our bodies from losing too much heat as we waited for our 

next swim. The Immersion suits were wet inside and sitting for 8 

hours each day in the elements took its toll as it was not possible to 

eat properly under these conditions. The wind was exhausting, we 

learned that miles had to be continually fought for. Training for 

distance swimming was not equating well with expedition 

conditions. 

Being wet and cold every day took its toll and after a week although 

the expedition was meeting its goals, the physical depletion, the 

emotional exhaustion, the realisation of not having a physiotherapist 

or a nutritionist or even proper cover from weather conditions was 

going to be a major issue. There were no alternatives, we had to 

soldier on. 

Week Two brought us towards Dublin as Team Bravo joined us. A 

fresh team brought renewed enthusiasm. The challenges nightly for 

the Marine Coordinator, Derek Flanagan was not only to measure 

the distance but to plot the course and risk assess the route each day. 

Brendan Proctor and Derek Flanagan, together with their team, 

were routing and risk assessing tides 18 hrs a day. 

71



Each coast gave a different emotion - a different challenge. 

The feel of the water for a swimmer, down past the counties of 

Louth and Dublin was so light. We could breathe, the wind turned 

Southerly and passing inside Ireland’s Eye it was possible to see the 

sandy bottom. We recognised the headlands. The proximity of the 2 

countries, Ireland and Britain, squeezes the water, the tides run 

North South, the water races up and down the coast like a river. We 

could see our progress from the shore, the sunshine, the southerly 

wind, water temperatures of 14 degrees, the lightness of the water 

along with being so close to the coast reinvigorated our 

determination. The first week had teething troubles but now we 

breathed again, this was possible, the East Coast was a gift. 

The Arklow Banks were beautiful, the wind turbines spinning fast, 

so majestic, volumes of sand in our teeth as we breathed in from the 

surface of the water, the familiar landmarks along the coast occupied 

our minds so that the days passed easily. Turning past Tusker Rock, 

our last day in the Irish Sea-we picked up tides at 8 knots, Derek 

gave us 25 miles and water speed barely allowed my arms to match 

the speed of my body. We were flying. The Irish sea allowed us to 

swim a mile of only fourteen minutes and energy was as high as 

days were short. By day 11 we left the Irish Sea, two weeks of 

swimming and our arms had covered two coasts of Ireland. We 

celebrated, the biggest challenge yet was climbing the ladders at 

Rosslare Port. The ladders were designed for Ferries and our arms 

were weak, lifting myself up 140 rungs of a ladder was the greatest 

risk for that day! 

The emotions from swimming west, a new direction. 

Eighteen hour days filled with sunshine and water temperatures of 

14 degrees seemed possible. Our bodies were starting to feel the 

pain of repeat immersions without rest, it was becoming difficult to 

differentiate between pain and injury but the heat of each day was 

such a bonus. When Henry asked each morning if we were OK to 

swim, there were no other answers except “Yes”. It was an 

automated reply. 

72





Team Charlie joined us and brought fresh energy to the group. Our 

emotions were surreal as the new people confirmed our excellent 

progress, we were on schedule. Belief in this expedition was at a 

premium as we broke the 300-mile mark. Cold was no longer an 

issue, sitting on zodiacs with heat of the sun on our backs lifted our 

spirits up as water temps reached 16 degrees. 

Day 15 brought new challenges, we were crossing the halfway mark 

360 nautical miles at Kinsale. To avoid the bays, we travelled twenty 

miles off shore in water that was really big. With tides running 

North to South, our engine on the East coast, was now our enemy. 

A mile was now taking fifty minutes, so with twenty miles to 

complete daily this was now a sixteen-hour day. My mind broke as 

the progress and feeling of superiority was smashed by each mile 

taking twenty minutes longer than expected. It was hard to accept 

whether the miles were taking longer or if our bodies were getting 

weaker. 

The knowledge that we were tiny vulnerable bodies swimming past 

rocks such as the Fastnet which, in a moment back in 1979, claimed 

fifteen lives, from freak weather during a sailing race. In water like 

this you actually feel so small and at times the boat seems so far 

away. 

Our swim took us past bays like Roaring Water Bay which has 

claimed more than its share of wrecks such as the Kowloon Bridge, 

vessels the size of football pitches taken by the force of the sea and 

here we were, small insignificant bodies, one could only feel 

humbled by our achievements so far. I diverted to thinking why 

were the islands called Pig, Cow, Elephant, Bull, Calf, Dog, Rabbit, 

Adam and Eve, was it that they didn’t have any other names? 

Moments of sheer impossibility get lost in the absolute privilege of 

the experience. 

An Expedition that started as purely a physical challenge, of 

swimming around Ireland, was now a demonstration of human 

interdependence and the willingness of certain of us to go to that 

place that many do not dare. The following days brought Team 

Delta the fourth of the rescue units. I prayed for the Cork coast to 

73



end, even though the weather was beautiful, accumulated pain, the 

inability to properly manage our food and hydration intake and the 

lack of physiotherapy were secondary to the acknowledgement of 

what it would take to finish this truly epic project. 

The costs of these projects go much deeper than in simple monetary 

terms. The emotional costs were mounting, the questions and the 

value of being away from life started to rise, as the accents on the 

VHF radio were those of my home county. My phone started to 

ring more often with work questions, I wished for the chance to be 

somewhere that there was no communication with the outside 

world. When you can see the cost of your dreams, it can strip you 

bare of all energy and will. 



The bodies of the main team of swimmers and navigators, were 

truly breaking down, with no more than seven days’ rest in the past 

four weeks, the miles continued to take 50 minutes and days 

continued to be nearly eighteen hours. A phone call from my father 

ashore explained that once we turned past Mizen Head we would 

finally be released from North-South tides. 

Coming home mid-expedition 

Day 21 turned us into the Kerry Coast, towards Valentia and the 

roller coaster of emotions lifted again. Swimming across Dingle Bay 

was filled with panic and elation. Panic that I would not want to 

leave and the excitement that we were now swimming North. One 

more coast, one more direction, once the team turns north we are 

on the home stretch. Derek Flanagan offered us the choice to swim 

through the Blasket Sound or to swim outside the Island group. 

Inside would shorten our day so we chose this route, despite the 

great risks we would take with it. Our bodies were now so sore, that 

pain and injury morphed into the same feeling. The energy of the 

water in the Sound was frightening and the moment when we got in 

the water, I turned to the team and said, “please do not take your 

eyes of me.” 

I was on home waters, knowing the challenges of the Sound, I was 

terrified. The water hurled me along like an Orca playing with a 

74





seal, but all went well and with the final swims here completed, we 

were back under Sybill Head and home. 

The arrival into Dingle Town was special. I would never 

recommend coming home mid expedition, mainly as it allows you 

to see the cost of your sacrifice, which on reflection, was nearly 

disastrous for me. We now had Team Alpha back in place and we 

left home for the second time. 

The water on the West Coast was an animal of a different breed. The 

colour was green, the water was strong with a heartbeat that was 

thumping as opposed to beating. Every swim felt as though we were 

in thick green soup. Moving water under your body that comes 

from the Atlantic was huge. Our bodies were like plastic toys tossed 

and turned and progress seemed once again to elude us. 

The questions about the West Coast did not have any answers. 

Derek and Brendan always said that it was impossible to gauge how 

this coast would be and as the days passed this was proving true. 

Day 25 gave us spectacular experiences off Loop Head, with 

dolphins joining us, what we were gaining in tide assistance, the 

following few days showed us the true face of battle. The water 14 

miles offshore was 300m deep, as swimmers we would constantly 

lose sight of our boat with the height of waves and troughs. Hours 

of swimming and we were in the same position. Swimming is the 

only sport where we can commit 100% to going forward and lose 

distance! 

Our hearts and minds were volatile and even though our bodies 

were willing to continue, the cost of the dream was surely 

enormous. We were becoming institutionalised, incapable of 

speaking or even being in other company. The storms of the West 

Coast were proving so difficult that one night, our boats broke rope 

and for three long hours we were standing on a pier in West Galway, 

the ropes of our vessels wrapped around us, as the crews risked their 

lives to try to secure them. 

After a week of enormous battles, we finally swam past Slyne Head 

75



and had broken the back of the West Coast from the Bays of 

Galway and Achill, the headlands of North Mayo and Donegal. The 

most harrowing moment had been off Slyne Head, where a rogue 

wave crashed into the Zodiac, separating the boat from its swimmer 

and forcing the event to stand down for the day. What stood out 

throughout all of this was the courage, thinking, strength, emotional 

responses and the ability of a team to recognise the tiny nuggets of 

gold found in each of us and this support allowed us to find the 

strength to continue in particularly difficult locations such as the 

crossing of Donegal Bay when we were forty miles offshore. 



The emotions of crossing our final body of water 

Leaving Blacksod Bay, wondering if it would ever end, our arms 

and legs were broken, our ability to communicate was now muted 

in exchange for actions of holding and touching. The group of us 

small, as we were walked as one unit, always holding onto another. 

We were fragile. We were sleeping in between swims on Zodiacs 

which had engines at full roar. We were unable to stand and sustain 

a conversation, we were grateful to the families in Mayo and 

Donegal who took us in and treated us as their own for the final 

week, who dried our clothes and fed us at their tables as we were no 

longer able to eat normal food. We were like swimming automatons, 

swimming on demand. There was no love left but we needed to 

finish. We were truly unable to function as individuals. 

The team of Marine Rescue and Coordinator worked night and day 

to try and understand the final hurdle. It took one month to swim 

up the West Coast. It was as Derek had said, it was unpredictable, it 

was filled with emotion, but mostly it was filled with the strength 

that left us and filled us at the same time. We had crossed every bay, 

we had passed every headland, we swam in every body of water that 

exists. 

After 34 swimming days, we walked onto the beach at Carrigfinn, 

the same team who had left 56 days earlier, going clockwise 830 

miles of the coast of Ireland, we had returned full circle, every 

ounce of blood, sweat and tears were now left behind in the ocean. 

If ever there was a moment where a team was responsible for an 

76



achievement, it was this one. All we could do was swim – it required 

the entire team to get us there. 



The Round Ireland Swim was one of the greatest adventures to ever 

take place off the coastline of the island of Ireland. It was a sum of 

its parts; it was our arms which rotated around the island but as we 

say, we can only swim in these conditions, because the eyes allow us 

to. We became the only team in history to have circumnavigated this 

island by swimming. 

Ár Scath a Chéile a Maireann na nDaoine. 

www.worldexplorersbureau.com/nuala-moore 

77



The Round Ireland Swim Team members: 

Swimmers 

Nuala Moore, Anne Marie Ward, Tom Watters, Ian Claxton, Ryan 

Ward and Henry O Donnell. 

Marine Coordinator 

Derek Flanagan 

Command Boat Skipper 

Brendan Proctor 

Rescue Units 

John Joe Rowland, Lead operator and team members 

Sheephaven Dive Club 

Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta team members 

Land Ops 

Neil Ahern and team 

Communications and Dive Rescue 

Kathleen King 

Images Courtesy of the Round Ireland Swim Team 

78

79

50 Into Years the Of Abode Exploration of Death 

80 

Mark Bill 

Evans Steele 


Images © John C. Smith & Sim Davis




by Mark Evans 

On January 27th 2016, after 1,300km and 49 days on foot and by 

camel, Outward Bound Oman Training Manager Mohammed Al 

Zadjali and Executive Director Mark Evans, with Bedouin Amur Al 

Wahaibi arrived at Al Rayyan Fort in Doha, having followed the 

1930 trail of forgotten explorer Bertram Thomas across the Empty 

Quarter of Arabia. Their successful crossing was the first time 

anyone has attempted the journey in 85 years. 

The 1930 achievement of the little-known Thomas, and his Omani 

guide Sheikh Saleh bin Kalut, have been lost in the sands of time, 

overshadowed by Wilfred Thesiger’s beautiful black and white 

images and poetic writing. One of the aims of the recent journey, 

the first time in 85 years anyone had been given permission to 

attempt the same route from Salalah in southern Oman, to Doha, 

the capital of Qatar, was to put Thomas back on a pedestal, and give 

him the recognition his achievements deserved. 

The world of exploration at the time was a vibrant one; Peary and 

Cook had both laid claim to the North Pole, Amundsen and Scott 

had reached the South Pole, and Mallory and Irvine were at the 

cutting edge of efforts to reach the summit of Everest. With the 

poles claimed, attention was focused on the vast interior of Arabia. 

The exploits of TE Lawrence in the Hejaz had attracted the 

attention of the American reporter Lowell Thomas, and the moving 

images he captured of the dashing Lawrence played to over 4 

million people, from Covent Garden in London to Madison Square 

Garden in New York; the world was obsessed with the romance of 

Arabia, and in 1930 the race was on to become the first person to 

cross the Empty Quarter. 

Thomas came from a humble background; his father was a harbour 

pilot, guiding boats through the mud-banks and currents of the 

River Avon, and his mother ran the local post office. Thomas' early 

horizons were limited to the local area, until he signed up for the 

Somerset Light Infantry and the First World War took him to the 

battlefields of Belgium, and then on to Mesopotamia (now Iraq). By 

the time the war ended, Thomas had made Arabia his home, and 

had been seduced by the challenge of the unknown desert at its 

heart. He was appointed assistant political officer, working under 

Image Opposite © John C. Smith 

81


by Mark Evans 

such influential characters as Gertrude Bell, Philby and Arnold 

Wilson, from whom he learnt a great deal. Described as a quiet and 

serious man, Thomas was undeterred by the inhospitable terrain, 

merciless heat and fractious tribes. 

His plans began to take shape during the winters of the late 1920s. 

In 1925, he had been appointed to the Council of Ministers of 

Muscat and Oman as Financial Adviser, a position he held for five 

years, until 1930. His prime role was to sort out the Sultan of 

Oman’s finances, something he proved not to be very good at. 

Looking back, it is clear Thomas arrived in Oman with a burning 

desire to become the first person to cross the vast and unexplored 

Rub Al Khali, or Empty Quarter desert. 



“The virgin Rub Al Khali, the great southern desert! To have 

laboured in Arabia is to have tasted inevitably of her seduction, and 

six years ago I left the administration of Transjordan for the court of 

Muscat and Oman. I already cherished a secret dream. The remote 

recesses of the earth, Arctic and Antarctic, the sources of the Amazon 

and the vast inner spaces of Asia and Africa, have one by one yielded 

their secrets to man’s curiosity, until by a strange chance the Rub Al 

Khali remained almost the last considerable terra incognita …” 

This pre-occupation led to criticism of Thomas from the local 

British political agent, ‘for paying insufficient attention to his duties 

in favour of his travels and exploration, resulting in financial laxity 

and mismanagement’. He chose to work through the stifling heat 

and humidity of the summer, which enabled him to use the cooler 

winter months for exploring. In the winter of 1926 he completed a 

two-week journey on foot and by camel from Muscat to Sharjah (in 

what is now the United Arab Emirates), followed in the winter of 

1928 by a much longer journey along the coast from Bani Bu Ali, to 

Salalah, the main city of Oman’s southernmost province, Dhofar. It 

was on this journey that he developed the relay system of tribal 

teams, and fresh camels that would see him achieve success on the 

biggest challenge of all. 

All of these journeys did little to hide his secret desires, and whilst 

Thomas never publically declared his intent, it was clear that Sultan 

82

Taimur, the ruler of Oman, had an inkling of his dreams. 


by Mark Evans 

“Why aren’t you married, Oh Wazir”? I expatiated on the 

difficulties under which a Christian laboured, especially one serving 

in the east, and pointed to the comforting doctrine that for a man it 

was never too late. 

“Ah” said the Sultan, knowing my secretly cherished desire. “Quite 

right. Insha’allah, I will help marry you one of these days to that 

which is near to your heart – the Rub Al Khali, Insha’allah!” 

“A virgin indeed”, quoth Khan Bahadur, his private secretary. 

Thomas was not going to let anything stop him. On October 4th 

1930, he slipped quietly and secretly out of Muscat to board a 

British oil tanker that would carry him along the coast to Dhofar, 

and the southern city of Salalah. After being carried ashore by 

dhow, he rode along the coast by camel to make his base for 

preparations. Despite a sleepless series of days, Thomas immediately 

started an exploration into the frankincense covered Qara 

mountains, where he remained for two months, undertaking 

scientific and anthropological research before returning to Salalah, 

suffering from dysentery. 

That expedition was a prelude to the main feat; to cross the Empty 

Quarter. One problem was that Thomas knew that if he told anyone 

of his ultimate intention, he would have been prevented: the official 

position of both the Omani and British authorities was that tribal 

disputes made exploration foolhardy. 

“My plans were conceived in darkness, my journeys only heralded by 

my disappearances, paid for by myself and executed under my own 

auspices. The desert crossing would never have been sanctioned. 

Salalah knew of my presence: it must not know of my plans. Secrecy 

was imperative. To disclose them would be to invite hostility and the 

news would spread abroad, as all news spreads in Arabia, with the 

speed of the telegraph, and unauthorised accretions that would not 

disgrace a London evening newspaper ….” 

83


by Mark Evans 

It was in Salalah that Thomas was to meet Sheikh Salih bin Kalut Al 

Rashidi Al Kathiri, the only Omani who would ultimately 

accompany him on the entire journey from sea to sea across the 

Empty Quarter. As a result of this, bin Kalut has evolved into an 

Omani hero, about whom legends are still told today. Whilst the 

team that made up the first ever crossing was made up almost 

entirely of Omani’s, Sheikh Salih was the only member of the team 

that to complete the entire crossing, with others only willing to go 

to the edge of their own tribal areas. 

Bin Kalut’s skills of organisation, desert navigation and leadership 

of the men were critical to the success of the journey. Even more 

critical were his skills as a diplomat. As the group travelled from one 

tribal area to another, there was always the potential for problems, 

even fighting; the fact that neither of these became serious issues was 

in many ways thanks to his skills of negotiation. 

“I took an immediate liking to Sheikh Salih. He bore the most 

magical name of Bin Kalut – Kalut, the most famous lady in all the 

sands, daughter of a famous warrior, and mother of three warrior 

sons. Salih was a short man, big of bone, with a rather large head, 

bald – unusual for a bedu, even of Salih’s 60 years, and a heavy jowl. 

His brow was big, perhaps from his baldness, and his eyes large, his 

countenance open and frank, his voice slow and measured; he 

inspired confidence..” 

Wilfred Thesiger, the famous desert explorer dubbed Mubarak Bin 

London (our friend from London) by his Bedouin colleagues, met 

Bin Kalut in Dhofar in 1945, and described him as ‘..immensely 

powerful. His body was heavy with old age, so that he moved with 

difficulty, and rose to his feet only with a laboured effort, and after 

many grunted invocations of the almighty. He seldom spoke, but I 

noticed when he did, no one argued’. 

Thanks to the skills of Bin Kalut, and the tenacity of Thomas, on 

February 5th 1931, some 58 days on foot and by camel after they 

had left Salalah, they approached the mud brick towers of Doha (the 

capital of Qatar); the journey was over, the race had been won, and 

legendary Arabic hospitality awaited them. 

84 

The star dunes of Dakaka grow in size as we move off just after dawn.. 

Image Opposite © Sim Davis

85


by Mark Evans 

Thomas’ purpose was never solely to get to the other side of the 

desert. Despite fears of their purpose being misunderstood, he 

carried scientific instruments as well as a still and a cine camera so 

that he could collect and record the flora and fauna he found on his 

journey. He collected 400 natural history specimens, 21 of them new 

to science, and many of which are today stored in the Natural 

History Museum in London. 

News of the success, sent by telegram from Bahrain, caused a global 

sensation, making the front pages of The Times in London, and The 

New York Times. In the years to follow, Thomas lectured far and 

wide, sharing tales of his journey with audiences around the world, 

and he was honoured with some of the highest medals that can be 

bestowed on explorers, including the Founders Medal of the Royal 

Geographical Society, the Cullum Gold Medal of the American 

Geographical Society and the Burton Memorial Medal of the Royal 

Asiatic Society. 



His book, Arabia Felix, was quickly published in 1932, and in the 

foreword, T. E. Lawrence wrote, ‘few men are able to close an 

epoch. We cannot know the first man who walked the inviolate earth 

for newness’ sake, but Thomas is the last; and he did his journey in 

the antique way, by pain of his camel’s legs, single handed, at his 

own time and cost. He might have flown an aeroplane, sat in a car, 

or rolled over in a tank. Instead, he snatched, at the twenty third 

hour, feet’s last victory and set us free – all honour to Thomas’. 

Other than a black and white photograph taken by Thesiger in 

1945, and a mention in his classic book Arabian Sands, little is 

known of what became of Sheikh Salih after they had reached Doha. 

Like many Omanis at that time, there is no written record of when 

he was born, but it is known that he outlived Thomas, and passed 

away in Dubai, where he had been seeking medical treatment, on 

December 15th, 1953, some twenty two years after his great 

achievement. 

2015 was the 85th year since Thomas and Bin Kalut had left Salalah, 

and coincided with the 45th year of the reign of His Majesty Sultan 

Qaboos as the ruler of Oman; the planets were in alignment to 

86




by Mark Evans 

attempt to retrace this historic journey. His Highness Sayyid 

Haitham bin Tariq Al Said was appointed Expedition Patron in 

Oman, along with HRH Prince Charles in the UK, and His 

Excellency Sheikh Joaan bin Hamed Al Thani in Qatar. 

Our main challenge was to find the key to unlock the door, and get 

permission to not only enter Saudi Arabia at a remote, unmanned 

location, but also to spend one month walking with camels across 

the sensitive eastern province. An issue of equal concern was to find 

camels tough enough to withstand the demands of walking for 

30-40 km per day, for 50 or so days, with limited food and water. 

Camels, like humans, have gone soft in recent years; rather than 

wandering the sands in search of rain-fed grazing, today they tend 

to lead static lives, with water trucks bringing water to them, and 

locally grown fodder crops being served up each day. 

To give them every opportunity of succeeding, and to protect the 

sensitive pads on the base of their feet, we parked our four camels 

(all female, from the Royal Cavalry) at a Bedouin community on the 

southern edge of the sands, and on December 10th 2015, 85 years to 

the day since Thomas and Bin Kalut started their own journey, my 

two Omani companions Mohammed Al Zadjali, Amur Al Wahaibi 

and I set off on foot from the old souq in Salalah, on the edge of the 

Indian Ocean. As we did so, playing in cinemas throughout Oman, 

and on the Oman Air In-Flight entertainment systems was an 

awareness raising 60 second video clip that used some of Thomas’ 

original footage shot in 1930, digitized in a project funded by the 

society. 

Our journey did not set out to be a first, or fastest, but was, 

amongst other things, a celebration of slowness that attempted to 

reconnect Omani, Saudi and Qatari people to their rich culture and 

heritage, and to show a side of the Middle East different to that 

which normally dominates the media. With the Empty Quarter now 

being emptier than it has ever been, many of the waterholes used by 

Thomas are long abandoned, and full of sand. With much 

uncertainty regarding water supply, we made the early decision to 

use two 4x4 support vehicles to carry tightly rationed water, that 

would be supplemented by the possible discovery of water in the 

87

My favourite part of the day; a setting sun, the first stars emerging, 

plummeting temperatures and a roaring fire means Arabic coffee. 

88 Image © Sim Davis

89


by Mark Evans 

sands; Thomas had used a sextant to record the location of the wells 

he used, accurate enough for his needs, but little help in reality 

when searching for a small well on the ground in what could be an 

area of up to 15km square. 

At the start of the journey, our vehicles carried 50 days’-worth of 

food, carefully labelled, packed and sorted into 25 plastic crates. In 

the first two weeks we barely touched a crumb, overwhelmed by 

more than 1,000 unexpected visitors who sought us out even in the 

most remote of locations in southern Oman each day. A desert 

expedition in Arabia is no place for a vegetarian; ‘You cannot enter 

the land of the Al Kathiri without accepting our hospitality’ 

announced a proud Omani Sheikh, and in an ongoing effort to outdo 

the hospitality of the previous gathering, by the time we had 

reached the border with Saudi Arabia we had consumed twentyseven 

goats, in addition to several camels and sheep. Any hope we 

had of losing weight was initially slim. Amongst the visitors were 

some so old (none knew exactly how old, as nothing was 

documented at the time of their birth) that, despite having limited 

sight, and being unstable on their feet, several produced well 

preserved black and white images of them as young men, standing 

proudly with Thesiger and his camels at a waterhole. 



After trekking through the frankincense clad Qara Mountains, 

where we followed the footprints of Striped Hyenas, and discovered 

4,000-year old pre-Islamic rock art, we were re-united with our 

own camels. Our passage across the border into Saudi Arabia was 

uncertain until the eleventh hour; verbal assurance had been given, 

but we had nothing as yet for us to show a dubious, heavily armed 

border guard at one of the most remote of unfenced and unmarked 

borders. One day from arrival, word reached us that we were in, by 

Royal Command of the King himself. The enormous star dunes of 

Dakaka, where it had not rained for seven years made for the most 

beautiful of landscapes, and whilst the night-time temperatures 

dropped to a low of 0.4 degrees, for the most part a northerly wind 

made daytime progress bearable. 

On days when that wind did not blow, temperatures rose and 

camels bellowed, kicked and spat in protest. Our daily routine was a 

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by Mark Evans 

simple one; each night we would sleep on the sand, and Amur 

would rise first before dawn to pray, and by 0630 we would have 

un-hobbled the camels and were on the move, keen to get as many 

km under our belts in the cool morning air as we could. We would 

always walk for the first couple of hours, by which time the camels 

would have settled, ready for us to ride along at a steady speed of 

6kph. Our day would end some 30-40km later an hour before 

sunset, when we would hobble the camels, gather wood for the fire, 

bake bread under the sand and settle down for the nightly star show. 

After a few weeks that saw us following a line of small wells to the 

north west, the large dunes of Dakaka gave way to the flatter sand 

sea of Sanam, and we were able to start what Thomas described as 

‘The Northward Dash’ for Doha, still several hundred Km ahead. 

As we steadily descended to the Arabian Gulf the sands gave way to 

gravel, and eventually to the dreaded subkha, a salt encrusted 

mudflat that after rains can be treacherous territory for the camels. 

Like Thomas, at this point we were beset by several days of heavy 

dew, and thick fog, making navigation a challenge, but hiding the 

sun from view until midday. 

On January 27th 2016, some 49 days after we had left Salalah, riding 

fresh camels sent by the Emir of Qatar, we arrived at Al Rayyan 

Fort in Doha; the Empty Quarter had been crossed. 

As with all expeditions, the end of the physical journey does not 

mean the end of the project. One of the key aims of our journey was 

to create role models to which young Omani’s could aspire, and to 

that end Mohammed and Amur have been busy delivering a series 

of 30 lectures to more than 5,000 young people at schools and 

colleges throughout Oman, promoting Outward Bound Oman’s 

aim to develop the next generation of leaders for the nation. 

More information on the expedition can be found in the following 

website: 

www.crossingtheemptyquarter.com 

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50 Plan Years D Of Exploration 

92 

Mark Bill 

Wood Steele 


Text & Images © Mark Wood



Plan D 

By Mark Wood 

My initial thought for this assignment was that I could write about 

my next expedition which is happening in 2018 but to state the 

obvious, it hasn’t happened yet. It’s very easy to talk about a 

journey but a lot harder to make it happen. 

If I had lived during the days of the great pioneers of ice 

exploration, then, if I was lucky, I would have been one of the men 

scrubbing the decks of the Endurance or Discovery. In this modern 

era of exploration if you have the desire to explore, the 

opportunities are far greater. 

In most countries, anyone can be an “adventurer” – there are 

enough professional guiding companies to help support your 

dreams. There are also a few individuals like myself, who like to 

take these journeys a step further, by exploring on our own terms - 

if you have the experience, the time and funding then these kinds of 

adventures are possible. 

In the Golden Age of polar exploration, if anything went wrong on 

the expedition, the emphasis was very much on themselves and selfsufficiency 

– rescue could be months, even years away, if at all. 

However, nowadays it’s very different. We must acknowledge, that 

there exists a real responsibility to the rescue teams who could 

potentially risk their own lives to extract failed expedition teams 

from the ice and bring them home safely. 

Global warming is having a profound effect on how and where we 

explore – my journeys are about heading into these fragile, cold 

areas of our planet, to film the reality of what we are moving 

through. I connect with schools around the world to communicate 

the issues we face with changing climate and as a non-scientist 

myself, I link-up with climate experts to verify and explain what we 

have seen. It’s a new way to explore but we are governed by the ice 

and by the rescue teams who have the final say on whether we can 

operate or not. 

In 2016, I came back from the North Geographic Pole – physically 

exhausted and mentally battered. Our team sat together and made a 

documentary called A Race Against Time, based on what had just 

happened. For the first time ever, the expedition was almost two 

thirds of the way in even before we had set foot on ice. The 

instability of the arctic ice prevented our team from even setting out 

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Plan D 

By Mark Wood 

on the journey. 

One of our team members Paul “Vic” Vicary looked at the chaos we 

had just got back from and commented, that based on our initial 

mission statement we went from Plan A to Plan D. 

Expedition name: A Race Against Time 

Team members: Mark Wood, Paul “Vic” Vicary, Mark Langridge 



Mission Statement: “To film the harsh honest reality of how global 

warming has affected the Arctic Ocean through the eyes of modern 

day polar explorers.” 

Outline: Over the past two years we have liaised with logistics’ 

teams from the Canadian and Russian Arctic to find a suitable 

starting point along the edge of the Arctic Ocean. This has proven 

to be extremely difficult. 

The following report is based on the original mission statement of 

the expedition and is a detailed breakdown of events leading up to 

the expedition. The reason for this detailed analysis is to show how 

modern-day exploration is determined not only by sponsorship and 

the skill of the team but also by the commitment of support teams 

that pledge their lives to this environmentally sensitive and 

dangerous region of our planet. It is a direct reflection on how 

global warming is now affecting polar travel. 

Post expedition analysis by Mark Wood 

Plan A 

Canada - first approach 

After years of inserting and extracting teams on the ocean, in 2015, 

the Canadian logistic operators Ken Borak Air (KBA) stopped all 

flights for the 2015/16 seasons. This was mainly down to two 

reasons which parallel each other. The first was the unpredictability 

of the ice, making it difficult for their Twin Otter planes to judge a 

strong landing point; the second reason, was that some of their new 

pilots did not have enough experience landing on sea ice, especially



Plan D 

By Mark Wood 

above 87 degrees north. This is roughly 180 Nautical miles from the 

North Pole and over 300 NM from the Canadian coastline. Once a 

team passes 87 degrees, heading North to the pole, KBA would 

require 2 planes to support each other just in case one fails. 

Each member of team has had military and rescue experience so we 

understood KBA's concerns and respected their decision. 

Plan B 

Russia - second approach 

We then took the expedition to the Russian logistic team VICAAR - 

historically the main problem with starting from their coastline was 

that satellite images would show up to 40 NM of open water. This 

would mean a drop off on ice and if possible we wanted to avoid 

this. It is generally recognized that within the polar world a coastal 

starting point to the North or South Poles or even areas such as 

Greenland would be recognized within the historical stats. 

We are not glory hunters or flag wavers but if we were to commit to 

a tough, long-range journey across the Arctic Ocean, this would be 

our preferred option. The good news was that eight months prior to 

the expedition we had sanctioned a drop-off of aviation fuel along 

the coastline to support our own insertion when it would happen. 

During the flight the pilots reported the ice was solid and safe to 

land on - which meant a coastal start was possible, but we would 

need to set off at the end of winter to ensure solid ice, operating in 

temperatures below -40 C. The ice status was verified by VICAAR 

just weeks before our due departure date. 

During our pre-expedition planning with VICAAR we had many 

hours of emails and phone calls arranging contracts and trying to 

deal with a lot of red tape. One problem was obtaining the required 

Russian visas, so we recruited a private company in London to 

support our team members in processing them quickly. This was 

achieved and up to 4 weeks before departure the expedition had a 

green light. 

I then received an email from VICAAR informing me that the 

95

Plan D 

By Mark Wood 

group visa had been refused and as it was a government decision we 

didn't receive a reason and we were not able to contest it - even 

though we tried, twice! 

We can only speculate about British and Russian political issues at 

the time but in reality, we were left in the dark. As this report will 

outline there was a mass military exercise with over 100 armed 

Russian paratroopers at the North Pole when we eventually headed 

out. The timing of this was too coincidental to not rule it out as one 

of the reasons they didn't want a British team skiing through the 

middle of a military operation. However, this is just speculation. 

Plan C 

North Pole reversed 

Our motto for the expedition was “Always a Little Further” and 

our mission statement as stated above outlined our belief in the 

journey. We spoke to the VICAAR to see if they would support a 

drop off via helicopter at the Geographic North Pole to attempt a 

reversed expedition to the coast line of Canada. They agreed to do 

this and also stated that their rescue support would only extend to 

87 degrees north from the North Pole. 

Our next obstacle was to go back to the Canadian logistics team at 

Ken Borek Air, to request support for a possible rescue from 87 

degrees North to the coast line. To do this, I felt we needed 

someone in the exploration world to vouch for our experience and 

professionalism. 

At the time that we were evaluating how best to persuade the 

Canadians that we needed their support, we received some 

devastating news. Our expedition Patron, Lieutenant Colonel 

Henry Worsley had died on the 24th January 2016 while attempting 

to complete the first solo and unaided crossing of the Antarctic. 

Henry was a British Army officer and a friend of the team. In fact, 

Vic, Mark and I had been on Henry’s previous expedition to the 

South Pole in 2010, a century after the race to the South Pole that 

gripped the world, we had attempted to retrace the steps of Scott 

and Amundsen. 

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Plan D 

By Mark Wood 

The day his death was announced I was invited to appear on BBC 

Newsnight to talk about Henry and the dangers of exploration. The 

following day I was contacted by Steve Jones who was the Antarctic 

Logistics Base camp manager and had been supporting Henry. 

I shared our challenge with Steve and he also knew of our 

expeditions over the years in both the Arctic and Antarctic circles. 

Steve knew the team at KBA and immediately agreed to help and 

put forward our request. 

KBA agreed, which was remarkable in a year in which they had 

closed their doors on a lot of expeditions. As their commitment was 

below 87 degrees this would mean they would only have to use one 

plane to organize a pick-up. So, the expedition was back on. 

Svalbard - Longyearbyen. 

We left London Heathrow with 6 sledges and 29 pieces of luggage 

on the 23rd March 2016. The team trained from a small town called 

Longyearbyen on the island of Svalbard – an archipelago in 

northern Norway. Constituting the westernmost bulk of the 

archipelago, it borders the Arctic Ocean, the Norwegian Sea, and 

the Greenland Sea. 

We had arrived early in the season to be inserted into the North 

Pole which would give us the valuable time we needed to cross the 

Arctic Ocean. After a week of preparation which consisted of 

testing equipment and going over routines on the nearby glacier - 

we awaited confirmation of our departure to a temporary Russian 

ice station called Camp Barneo. Our agreement was that we would 

be dropped off on the first technical flight - the first flight sets up 

the 800 meter runway on the ocean and the second flight 

(potentially our flight) brings in the rest of the ground crew. 

The drop off date we were given by the Russians was the 1st April 

and the Canadians made it abundantly clear that their last pick up 

on sea ice would be the 5th of May with some leeway if we were 

progressing well to the coast. So, we had 35 to 40 days to cover the 

distance, tough but achievable with the training, experience and 

mindset of the team. 

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98 

Plan D 

By Mark Wood 

A Waiting Game 

Unfortunately, our wait for the flight was delayed 3 or 4 times due 

to the report that the runway at Camp Barneo was cracking under 

the unusual movement of the ice. Extensive cracks appeared in the 

area which is situated 30 miles from the North Pole. In previous 

years there had been signs of cracks and open water but not to this 

extent. This was unprecedented and we had no choice but to sit and 

wait. 



It came to the 8th April and we then needed to speak with the 

Canadian team at KBA to discuss our time-limited expedition 

which now had been reduced to 20-25 days. KBA had been 

monitoring our progress and were becoming increasingly worried 

by our delay, especially as they had seen that for 180 NM off their 

coast line there was extensive ice rubble fields - this is extremely 

difficult to cross. Even experienced polar teams would have to move 

slowly through this area probably covering 6 NM per day. At this 

point of the expedition we would hope to be covering over 10 to 15 

NM per day. 

The more serious issue was that if we encountered any difficulty in 

this extensive area it would be almost impossible for a plane to land 

- so their concerns were real. As a team, we made the tough decision 

to abort the attempt from the North Pole to Canada - the reality of 

climate change was truly affecting the expedition long before we 

even had the chance to set foot on ice. 

As mentioned before, this is the point when we learnt that the 

Russian government had launched a military exercise with their 

Parachute regiment and over 100 soldiers were based at Camp 

Barneo. Aside from the Visa issues we had encountered we 

speculated that it was this activity that had delayed our insertion 

date of the 1st April and the cracked runway was only part of the 

story. 

Plan D 

The Mission statement revisited 

Throughout this whole procedure, we were determined not to be

99

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Plan D 

By Mark Wood 

distracted from the original Mission statement, “To film the harsh 

honest reality of how global warming has affected the Arctic Ocean 

through the eyes of modern day polar explorers” 

We approached VICAAR with a request to be inserted on to the 

ocean via helicopter at 88 degrees north to cover the last two degrees 

to the North Pole. We received a negative response from VICAAR 

who wanted to drop us closer to the pole as the ice was extremely 

unstable at 88 degrees. Their helicopter crew had reported seeing 

mass open water and fast-moving ice. We held tough on our request 

because we had all of the flotation equipment and training necessary 

to deal with this and our main objective was to capture this unusual 

activity anyway. 



A Green Light was given and at last we finally received the go ahead 

from VICAAR that our expedition could commence. The 

condition however, was that if we couldn't reach the North Pole 

due to problems crossing the ice then they would pick us up on the 

26th April from whatever point we had reached by then. Even to 

the last hour we were being drained of our expedition. We agreed 

but we didn't go into the expedition with the same attitude - we 

were determined to reach the Pole and document the experience, 

after all, this was our entire reason for being there. 

Within 24 hours we touched down on the hard-cold ocean ice 

having viewed the devastation of the ice from the helicopter 

window for over an hour. They dropped our team onto the arctic 

ocean and as the helicopter disappeared from view, we became the 

most remote team in the world during the warmest season ever 

recorded, heading towards the North Geographic Pole. The 

expedition on ice had begun and we all breathed a sigh of relief. 

The one memory I have at that point, was the silence, which was 

incredibly deafening. I then became aware of the creaking of the 

ocean below, followed by the shifting surreal movement of the ice 

around us. 

There are many individuals or teams around the world who lay out 

their plans to run an expedition. Whether it’s mountains, sea, ice, 

jungles or deserts, planning and preparation is the key to the success

Plan D 

By Mark Wood 

of the journey. 

The amount of blood sweat and tears you need, to even get the 

expedition off the ground is almost heart-breaking, for every 

positive in the build-up there are 100 negatives. The desire and 

belief that you are doing the right thing combined with the passion 

to see it through is generally the fuel that will allow you to finally 

attempt your journey. But don’t expect glory or recognition, if you 

are in this for fame then you will be disappointed. If you are in it for 

experiencing how incredible this planet is and how truly remarkable 

your own life can be then its worth every bit of sweat and tears. 

Remember if you take up the title of explorer, adventurer or even 

professional camper then act accordingly. 

With over 30 major expeditions to date, Mark Wood has reached the 

Magnetic North Pole, the Geomagnetic North Pole twice, has 

completed solo expeditions to both the Geographic North and South 

Poles. He has been involved in major BBC and Channel 5 

documentaries and over the years has trained and led people to the 

extremes of the planet. 

Mark aims to communicate globally with schools around the planet, 

to have open discussions with students about climate change, cultural 

differences, and thinking differently about life. 

His own award-winning documentaries have shown the life of dog 

teams in Alaska, a solo survival film in the extremes and more 

recently a complex cutting edge expedition film showing the harsh 

reality of global warming and its effect on the Arctic Ocean as his 

team crossed to the North Pole. 

Mark is ranked in the top 5 communicators in the world on the 

Skype in the Classroom platform and has traveled over 3 million 

Skype miles by connecting with children in 34 different countries. 

www.markwood.com 

101

Editor in Chief : Tim Lavery 

Publisher, educator, artist and scientist, Tim has worked throughout 

Europe in various fields for corporates, NGOs and Educational 

Institutions over the past 30 years. 

In January 2012, he launched the award-winning World Explorers 

Bureau, a speakers agency representing over 160 of the world's most 

accomplished explorers and adventurers. 

Since 1985, Tim has earned numerous National Awards for his 

contribution to environmental awareness in Ireland including 

receiving three Resource Ireland Awards, several Environment 

Awareness Awards, Local Hero Award and an Inspired IT Award. He 

has authored more than 20 scientific papers ranging from ecology to 

new species descriptions and has edited numerous other publications 

on a variety of scientific and education technology subjects. 

Passionate about exploration and the dissemination of the results of 

authentic adventures and expeditions. In 2014, Tim was elected as a 

Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society (of London) followed in 

2015 by becoming the first Irish person to be elected to the College of 

Fellows of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and in 

November 2016, he became a Fellow of the Royal Geographical 

Society. He manages the Worldwide Expedition Professionals group 

on LinkedIn and is a Director of the Irish Explorers Trust. 

102

Publishers & Sponsors 

The World Explorers Bureau (WEB) is a speaking and events agency 

that represents explorers and extreme adventurers. 

WEB inspires audiences around the world with captivating tales of 

adventures encapsulating themes which include pushing boundaries, 

leadership, scientific and environmental research, teamwork and 

motivation. 

www.worldexplorersbureau.com 

Ripcord is the adventure travel arm of Redpoint Resolutions, a 

travel risk and crisis response company specializing in 

comprehensive global travel solutions. They serve government 

agencies, corporations and organizations that require employees to 

travel or live abroad. The company is owned and operated by 

special operations veterans and physicians who practice wilderness 

medicine and understand the challenges of medical and security 

emergencies in remote environments. 

Ripcord’s global intelligence, evacuation services, essential benefits 

and 24/7 operations center has your back no matter where your 

adventures takes you. 

www.ripcordrescuetravelinsurance.com/ 

103

Published by World Explorers Bureau & Redpoint 

Resolutions 

www.yumpu.com/user/worldexplorers

RAJ Revisited - Final Issue

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