Good Life Project - He left his life to bike 46,000 miles around the world in 4 years. But, why?

Episode Date: July 28, 2016

Have you ever thought about leaving everything behind and traveling the world? Of cashing out your savings to hit the road and create lifelong memories and new experiences?This may sound like an impossible dream to most, but our guest today did just that. Alastair Humphreys was poised to accept his dream job when he made the decision to spend the next four years of his life biking 46,000 miles around the world.Alastair lived for four years traveling on just under $10,000 without taking any other jobs or earning any other money. Sounds impossible, doesn’t it? That was just the beginning of an incredible life of adventures.Alastair has become a documentary filmmaker, author, speaker, and blogger while continuing to pursue his passion for adventuring. Today, he shares why he continues to go on these adventures and what he gains from them. Alastair’s extraordinary experiences are some that I know many of you may envy and wish to emulate, and he shares the steps you can take to start your incredible journey.In This Episode, You'll Learn:How to live in the “ah” moment.How Alastair went from a bookish kid to an adventurer.The moment that started it all for Alastair.The struggles Alastair faced in his trek.Alastair’s tips for anyone wanting to start their own adventure.The best way to fund an adventure.Mentioned in This Episode:Connect with Alastair: Alastair Humphreys | Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Instagram | YouTubeErnest ShackletonInvestment Biker: Around the World with Jim Roger by Jim RogersAdventure Capitalist: The Ultimate Road Trip by Jim RogersA Journey Around My Room by Xavier de MaistreMindset Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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If you can possibly summon up the nerve to go by yourself, then I think doing a solo adventure in the world is a really, really important or really useful rite of passage thing to do. I'm certainly very glad I cycle around the world by myself. When Alistair Humphreys graduated university, he was offered his dream job as a teacher, which he promptly turned down because he decided that if he didn't do something else now, he'd probably never do it. What was that something else?

He got on a bicycle and he spent the next four years of his life riding 46,000 miles around the world. And he did it the entire thing on a savings of 7,000 pounds, which for those of you in the US is, I don't know, somewhere around 10, $11,000 without working any other jobs without earning any other money. And that was the beginning of a life of extraordinary adventures, huge grand ones, and also smaller micro ones. He has since become a documentary filmmaker and author speaker and continues to go out on extraordinary adventures and what they are all about, what they give to him, why he continues to do them is where we go in this week's conversation. I'm Jonathan Fields,

and this is Good Life Project. So really fun to meet you, to catch up with you, to learn about your adventures. And man, it sounds like the last 15 years have been sort of like one crazy long string of the types of adventures that most people dream about, but think are impossible. They have been fun, but I think I'm actually very sweaty now because I've spent the whole day today shoving trees through a wood chipper, which is something I've never done, but I now feel far more of a man than I did this morning. Have you ever done that? You know, I have not. I spent a lot of my youth sort of doing various landscaping jobs

and construction jobs, but I think I missed out on the wood chipper thing. But it's kind of like a fantasy thing. I think, you know, it feels, is it as cool as you kind of think it is or is it just pure, brutal hard work? Well, it's quite sweaty and scratchy, but if you've got a tree, sort of pretty long 30 foot tree,

but only six or eight inches wide, you can just put the whole tree in at once and just watch it come out as sawdust. So I'm quite a lover of trees, but I think I've today become quite a lover of destroying trees as well. I'm not sure what that says about me. I don't know.

It's sort of like the giant erector set equivalent of a paper, you know, like the things that chop up paper. But so where do we start with you? I want to get into a lot of your adventures and sort of the idea of how you're doing things also in a way that is really so much more accessible than most people think. You know, there's something that I've been fascinated about that might be sort of an interesting jumping off point with you over really the last few years. It's really getting a lot of my attention. And that is the idea of awe and the experience of awe and how we've sort of built our lives in a way where we've stripped so much of that out of

our daily experience. And it seems like the way you're living your life is sort of designed to maximize that. I'm curious whether that's at all part of your sort of process or your awareness. Yeah, I think it is. I think we all spend too much time saying things are awesome when they're just a little bit nice. And it's great to get to a landscape. It's usually landscapes that does it for me, actually, that is are quite small and that the world for all its problems is still a awesome place so yeah big open empty landscapes they get me very excited yeah i mean it really is amazing i think so much of it happens from nature and the more i live in a huge city i live in new york city so the more we're sort of cocooned in the city, I think the less we get added to that. It's funny, I walk around in Central Park and along just the Hudson River where I am on pretty much daily basis. And I think part of it is just because I want to feel that I'm in some much bigger, more expansive environment than I am for the entire rest of my

day. I saw a website once, I can't remember what it was, but someone had superimposed pictures of what the stars would look like above cityscapes if you could actually see them. Ah, that's so cool. And can you imagine in New York or London in the middle of the night if you could see a million stars in the Milky Way? That would really help us remember where we are because cities feel

quite sanitized at times. And if we could see all the stars, I think that would help people's office problems not seem quite such a big deal. Yeah, I think it just like it creates perspective. Yeah, I agree with it. It's funny that you mentioned that one of my most powerful travel memories is a long time ago. Now, I was out in a sheep station in the middle of australia in the middle of the night i would just lie down on my back and looked up and it was like every star that existed could be seen i mean literally falling straight down to you know like the sides of the ground it was horizon yeah it was crazy and with it being southern hemisphere you have different stars to home i I always find that exciting as well.

Yeah, no, very cool. So let's take a step back in time. You spent a lot of time adventuring, and I want to dive into that. Where are you from? I'm from Yorkshire, which is up in the north of England. Yeah, tell me a little bit about what that's like. I've never actually been there. Yorkshire is God's own country.

Some may dispute that, but that's what we say. It's a very beautiful rural part of England, some green fields. It's the sort of thing that as an American who's never been to England, you might imagine countryside England to be. It's very beautiful. I had a pretty normal childhood running around the fields, climbing trees. And then of course, when I got to being about 15, the countryside felt incredibly boring because I couldn't drive. And I was yearning for a big city then and yearning to go explore the world and see a bit beyond. But yeah, Yorkshire is where I still feel at home, although I now live just near London. So I'm in the city world these days. Yeah. So were you the kid who was always going on sort of like

day-long expeditions with friends? Not at all. I really was not a very adventurous, brave, athletic, crazy kid. If anything, I was a bit of a nerd. I spent quite a lot of time just sitting at home reading books. I like the outdoors, but I think if you looked at all of us as kids, no one would have thought that I would go on to do adventures. I'm certainly not a very adventurous person. Yeah, so what flipped the switch for you? I suppose at some point I got a massive chip on my shoulder about being a bit of a dork and wanted

to go and do something a bit more exciting. Plus, when I was 18, so between high school and university, I went to Africa for a year and I spent a year teaching in a really remote little village school in southern Africa and that year was I think the most important year of my life it just opened up my eyes that there were exciting and wild places beyond England and it that year is what got me really wanting to go see more of the world and then I came back I went to university and at university I got in with a bunch of guys who liked running up mountains and being cold and wet and miserable in the name of fun and I'd never done anything like that before but I started to really enjoy that so gradually the desire to see the

world mixed with the desire to do something physically difficult and that from there, you're well on the way then to expeditions and world adventures. Yeah, I'm curious. I'm fascinated too by the phenomenon of the concept of the gap year and how people spend it. Was it among your peers? Was that an unusual decision? It wasn't particularly. It was moderately common, actually, at my high school. I think myself, I probably wouldn't have been brave enough to do it myself, but luckily I had a friend who was much braver and cooler than me. And I essentially tagged along with him and the two of us went to Africa together. And I think I would trade that one year in Africa for everything I ever learned at university. I think it's the most cheap,

efficient way to learn about yourself, learn about the world. And I think if everyone who is in a position to do so traveled when they were younger, I think the world would be a more harmonious place. Yeah, so great. I'm curious, are there any, if you take yourself back there to that one year in Africa, are there any sort of moments or particular stories that really stand out as moving you deeply? The memory that strikes me the most was just the first day. So landing at the airport, someone picking us up and driving us for three, four hours, which to drive three, four hours in England is like the most enormous drive you can do. And we just drove down this empty road and the landscape got flatter and the sky got bigger.

And we got to this little village full of mud shacks and African people. I grew up in a very, very boring white place. And suddenly I was the only white guy. Everyone's staring at me in little shacks all around. I was absolutely simultaneously petrified and very excited. And yeah, I think that was the beginning of starting to grow up, I think. I fell in love with the place. I loved my time in South Africa. I loved the village. And yeah, it's a very special place. So how do you get comfortable quickly in a place like that? Or is it, I mean...

Well, you have no choice. And I think that's time. And again, I realized that if you just hurl yourself into something, once you have no choice, you have no way out, you quickly realize, well, I might as well get on with this. And then almost always your fears and your horrible imaginings turn out to be not really quite wide at the mark. And the reality was that it was a fun, lively, friendly village. And sure, everyone stared at me at first, but it was a fun, lively, friendly village. And sure, everyone stared at me at first, but they were doing so in a very friendly way. And I quickly felt really at

home. But I tell you, if I that first evening, if someone had said to me, hey, quick, you can time machine back to England and sit in front of the TV for the rest of your life, I'd have taken it. But because there wasn't that choice, I had to stick it out long enough to realize that it was really cool. Yeah, if so many of us could to stick it out long enough to realize that it was really cool. Yeah. If so many of us could learn to just breathe long enough to get past that initial anxiety of so much of what, you know, we could potentially embrace. I think our lives would be so different and the world would be so different. What were you actually like? What was your job for the year? What were you supposed to be there doing? We were full on proper teachers. So we just finished high school ourselves. And then we were thrust into teaching kids from age 11 right up to the same age as us.

Maths and English and geography. I had to teach accountancy, which I'd never done in my life. So I just had to stay one page ahead of the kids in the textbook. We started teaching them rugby. I remember we tried to introduce cross-country running to these kids took them running through the countryside and the next day they were all stiff and they'd never been stiff in their life and they were very unimpressed with us for for making them suffer right like why would you do this man yes exactly is this meant to be fun

so no it's good for you it's character building so you come back from there it sounds like very much a changed person in a lot of ways and then go back into school what did you actually study in school i studied zoology which is biology without the boring plants and then and then after that degree i trained to be a teacher and i really look back with regret that my university days were pretty much wasted on me because I was mostly just dreaming of heading out to the world on adventure. And if I could now be given the chance to just have four years to do absolutely nothing except learn stuff, that would be amazing. But back then it was slightly wasted on me. I'm ashamed to say.

Well, but I think isn't that a famous saying? I mean mean i think so many of us end up going to school at a moment in our lives where we would even if school is extraordinarily valuable we would potentially have been far better served by spending four years out in the world learning and then going back with a sort of specific focus yeah sure that might be very different yeah so what do you end up doing when you get out of school then? What's the next move? The next move was I jumped on my bike and cycled around the world. All right. So that's when that all kicked off.

All right. So take me into your thought process here. My thought process was, so I was through my time at university and we're lucky at British University in that you can come out or certainly when I was at uni, it's more difficult now, but certainly definitely better than it is in the States of being able to come out not absolutely crippled with debt. So I'd managed to save some money while I was there by working a couple of jobs. And I was saving for some sort of adventure. I didn't really know what, but I was saving for something. And I had two thought processes, really. One was slightly negative, which was,

I didn't really know what I wanted to slightly negative, which was I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life. I didn't really know what career I should be going to do. And I really didn't want to just get a job in the city just because that's what all my peers were doing. And then the second, which was slightly more positive, was this brewing excitement to just go and try and do something really big and massive and stupid and scary. And that's when I started thinking of some sort of adventure. But it needed to be an adventure that was possible for a novice, someone who'd never climbed mountains and wasn't some sort of Ironman athlete and didn't really know what he was doing. And that's how I came up with the idea

of riding a bicycle a very long way because I can ride a bike, I could put up a tent and therefore I had all the skills necessary to cycle around the world. And it would be a way to see the world. It was going to be physically tough and it was going to be cheap. So it ticked all the boxes. So you basically decide to travel. What was it ended up being something Something like 45,000 miles? Yeah, four years and through 60 countries. So I rode the length of Europe through the Middle East, all the way down Africa, crossed the Atlantic on a sailing boat, cycled from Patagonia up to Alaska,

up the West Coast of the States, crossed over to Siberia and cycled through Asia and Europe back to England. All right. So I want to deconstruct this a little bit. First, how do you prepare for something like that? Did you? I mean, the way you're telling it, it doesn't sound like you really did, but I can't imagine that's entirely true. No, I did prepare for it. And actually, it began when I had a bit of a, I think, you need some sort of pivotal moment that takes you from just daydreaming about it to actually deciding to do it. And for me, so I was training to be a teacher, a science teacher, and the school where I was doing my

practice teaching, they offered me a full-time job when I graduated. They said, hey, you come and work for us full-time. And I was quite flattered. That was nice. It meant I was good at what I did. It was a nice school and I'd have been quite happy there. And that was then the big decision of, right, I've got to say no to this. I wrote the, I can remember it very clearly. I wrote the head teacher a letter saying, thank you for your job offer, but I'm going to go cycle around the world instead. And so that was about Christmas time and that was my commitment. And then I had about eight months of planning. So figuring out what kit I needed, figuring out what route to go, dodging wars,

getting visas, getting injections, all that sort of stuff until I set off about eight months later. And when I set off, what I realized was that that planning had been useful really for one thing, which was that it made me have the guts to start. I think without any planning, I wouldn't have dared to begin. But because I've been planning and without any planning, I wouldn't have dared to begin. But because I've been planning and planning and planning, it gave me some confidence to set off. And once I set off, I realized that riding a bike around the world is just a matter of all you need is a bike, a tent and a passport and off you go. But I wouldn't have been brave enough to have done that on day one. So how soon into the trip had you almost entirely abandoned the plant? About two weeks.

So two weeks into it. Do you mean abandon as in give up or abandon as in change plant? Change, you know, sort of say, okay, like this is what I thought I was doing, but this is what I'm really here to do. Okay. So for about two years, I was quite close to giving up. And then in terms of changing direction of the trip, this was pretty soon because I set off at the end of August 2001. And on September 11th, 2001, the whole world went crazy, as you will well know.

And suddenly my planned ride through Pakistan and Afghanistan didn't seem like such a fun idea anymore. So that was just two weeks into my trip. And I'd been planning to cycle to Australia. And instead, I turned right and cycled to South Africa instead. What made you not just if you're two weeks into a trip, and then 9-11 hits. And I mean, like you said, the world was a profoundly different place from that moment on, especially in terms of open borders and your ability to be, you know, to come from a Western country and travel all around. Did you think about bailing entirely at that moment?

Yes, I did. I mean, the world was very uncertain, and especially as it started to then brew towards the war starting in Afghanistan. And I was in Istanbul, I was in Turkey, which is just on the sort of gateway of the Islamic world really. And I spent about two or three weeks there just trying wrestling with my options, trying to work out what I should do. And in the end, the reason I carried on was because I thought I'd found the process of committing to begin the trip so frightening and

overwhelming that I suspected that if I went home now for a little pause that I wouldn't dare begin again. So I should just keep going while I had some sort of momentum. And actually then my experience, I then cycled through Turkey, through Syria, through Lebanon, through Jordan, into Egypt and onto Sudan was absolutely overwhelmingly positive and wonderful. And I had a very fantastic time cycling through the Middle East. But it was certainly interesting times to be doing it. Yeah. I mean, were there any interesting times indeed? You know, I wonder if you did that, you know, a similar route now, how profoundly different it would be also. Well, I don't think it would be, you know,

every generation in history, there are certain countries in the world where you would be foolish to cycle. You know, in 1945, I wouldn't have been very sensible to cycle through Germany, for example, whereas now it's lovely. And I cycled through Syria. I had a fantastic time. And now Syria is sadly destroying itself. And I think humans and humanity aren't really changing very much.

There's just each country has its own times of doing crazy things to each other. So I, I don't really think the experience of cycling around the world would be particularly different, whether you did it today or a hundred years ago, really, in terms of the individual humans you meet along the way. Yeah. It's just the route would have changed sure exactly yeah i mean on the one hand it's so inspiring to and then on the other hand like the idea that human nature is fundamental human nature and the human condition hasn't entirely evolved in in a really major way it can also be upsetting well i think we have there's always a danger that we measure the wrong things isn't yeah talk to me about that in that we measure the wrong things, isn't there?

Yeah, talk to me about that. In that the world seems like a frightening place now. You know, Islamic State doing horrible things and various other countries with crazy stuff happening. But the world is statistically safer than it's ever been. Fewer people are being murdered than ever before. And the world is getting safer. But because when anything bad happens, we're instantly told about it on TV and the internet. I think there's often, we can often start to fear that the world is a more dangerous place. But rationally speaking, I don't think it is more

dangerous. And certainly in terms of cycling around the world, people often ask me about the dangers of terrorists and murderers and things. And of course, you have to be careful. There are some bad people in every country, but very few people ask me about the dangers of getting run over by a car or catching malaria, which kills tens of thousands of kids every single day. So I think we can sometimes focus on the wrong fears. Yeah. I mean, that's such a powerful point. I think we we focus on

those fears, because it almost, well, I, like you said, I think that's where the media cycle is these days. So it's, you know, front and center in our minds. And also, I think it, I wonder if we do that, because it provides that sort of justification for inaction that we sometimes want, you know, so we can sort of like validate why we're not going out and doing things that would potentially actually be extraordinary. Yeah, I think that's very true. There's always two reasons for not doing stuff. One is because of the bad stuff that might happen to you. And the other is the inner wimp inside of you that's just too scared or lazy to do it. And I suffer from that very badly. And it's always very tempting to blame

something else. And I think that's a, when you start to acknowledge that you're blaming something else, where it's the reality is you're being scared or lazy. I think that's when you can start to make more exciting things happen. Yeah. What was the experience like for you? I mean, cycling for three years, 46,000 miles, just physically, how was that on your body? Physically, it was very easy. To my surprise, I started the trip because I wanted to see wild places in the world. And because I wanted a really physical challenge to do something physically different difficult but after a few months I realized that I was now very very fit and I could ride a bike a very long way and anybody if they sit on a bike all day every day

would after six months be slim and very fast at riding a bike and therefore the physical side of the trip became far less interesting to me. And I could cycle 100 miles a day every day without having rest. And that was no big deal. And I'm just a very normal person. And what was much more difficult and one that I totally underestimated was the mental side of it. And that I really struggled with. So tell me more about that. Well, I struggled with loneliness.

I struggled with always being a stranger. Every single day I was a stranger. And that's exciting. You meet interesting people in different places and you're constantly learning. It's very exciting. But equally, every single person you meet, you have to say, my name is Alistair and I'm riding my bike around the world. And yes, it's a long way, but blah, blah, blah, blah. So that was quite exhausting. And I really struggled with the fact that my project was four years long and that if I tried to focus on the finish of it, then I was going to have a pretty ridiculous four years just building up for that one finishing party. So trying to make myself just, this is such a cliche, but it was so difficult just to try and enjoy each day and not to worry about the end. I really, I found that a struggle.

And also I was so overwhelmed by how hard the trip was that for about the first two and a half years, I was quite near to giving up as well. It was only when I crossed the border from, so I rode up from South America up through Central America. When I crossed the border into the US, that was really the moment when I thought, I can't give up now. Because riding from Mexico, from Californian border up to Alaska, that's easy. And then once I'd done that, I just had Asia to go. So that was the moment when I started to think, I might as well finish this now. Yeah, I mean, it's, there's like a certain amount of sunk cost that goes into it. Exactly. It's like once you got into a certain point and that can be really good, it can be

really bad, right? You know, if you're climbing Everest and you're in the final pitch at the top, but the weather's bad and you really shouldn't go, then, you know, some costs can, you know, end you up dead. But I mean, it's a really interesting conversation to keep having with yourself, right? Which is that if you're in this thing, you're tens of thousands of miles in, and you're still asking the question, you know, like, do I give up? Do I hold? Do I fold? You know? Yeah, it's really interesting to sort of figure out how do you answer that in a way where, you know, something changes, and you're like, no matter matter what happens i'm finishing this out i had um a couple of checks and balances for myself it's difficult because i was just doing all on my own there was no one really to rationalize it with no one really understood

what i was doing so i couldn't really get any sensible advice from anyone so i always had a rule to myself that the first one was a bit of a safety net, which was I wasn't allowed to quit when I was cold, wet, tired, scared, ill or hungry or at nighttime. I can only quit on a nice sunny day after a really big breakfast. And if I still want it to quit then, then fine. Then I can move on to question two, which was I was only allowed to quit if I thought of something better to do with my life. And if I did think of something better to do with my life. And if I did think of something better to my life to do in my life, then I, I must quit the bike ride because just persevering purely to get to the end would be stupid if I thought of something better to do, but I never did. So I just kept pedaling. Yeah. So it's so interesting then, because you could have literally gotten a few weeks. It's so hard to do this in hindsight, right? But is your sense that if you were like a month away

from finishing this and something came into your experience that, yeah, and you were feeling good, it was a sunny day and it was beautiful. And something came into your experience where you looked at and you said, this is just so clearly a better thing to do. Do you think at that point you would have actually stopped? When you said a month away, I thought, no way, no way. When you get to a month away, that's only 30 days of pedaling. So presumably there was a day at some point when I just went beyond that. So I'm just going to finish it unless I get offered a trip to the moon or something. But yeah, I don't know where that point is.

Actually, I do know where that point would have been because after about three and a half years, so I'd cycled through Siberia in the wintertime, minus 40 for three months, which nearly broke me. Oh, man. And then I popped out into Japan and I thought, man, I really have had enough now. I've punished myself enough.

I'm just going to go home. And I was pretty happy with that decision, really, that I wasn't going to bother cycling across Asia. And then I really love all the stories of Antarctic exploration, Captain Scott and Ernest Shackleton, and these are great explorers. And there's a wonderful, possibly apocryphal story about, do you know Ernest Shackleton? Yeah, sure.

Okay. So when he was looking for people to join his trip to the South Pole, he apparently put an advert in the newspaper saying, men wanted for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honour and recognition in case of success, which is the most ridiculous newspaper advert. And he received hundreds and hundreds of applications for that. I, in Japan, I decided I was going to give up. And then on the side of a shopping mall painted about three stories high in this country where no one can read English was this slogan written in massive, massive letters. And I saw that and thought,

right now I've got to finish this trip. Oh, it was that slogan from the ad? Yeah. It was for some reason, it was written on the side of a shopping mall in Japan. Oh, that's crazy.

It's like an, an omen or something. Yeah. If I believed in omens, that was one of the most omenic things of my life. Men wanted for hazardous journey. And then I thought, I've just got to stop moaning and finish this now.

But isn't it crazy though if you think about the fact that had you reached that exact same corner in the condition that you're in after three years of cycling in minus 40 degree weather three months and that sign wasn't there that there's a very real chance that you would have bailed yeah well it's the movie Sliding Doors, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. It's crazy how much. And that also speaks to this idea of the planned versus the unplanned life and how serendipity can, when you're open to serendipity, it can play such a powerful role if you open yourself to saying, i came into this with one idea but and also what you were saying before which is that you know sort of being very aware in the moment and and in the day rather than just really constantly saying like the prize is is the finishing line

because of course when you get to that finish line which in my case was getting home and thinking wow i've cycled around the world four years. This is the biggest ambition of my life. I woke up the next morning and felt exactly the same. I thought, right, now what do I do? So yeah, chasing some sort of four-year goal in the hope it'll somehow make you instantly fulfilled, happy, and very handsome is a bit foolish, I think. Well, not the very handsome part, but everything else. Two out of three.

Yeah. All right, so let me ask that question then when you when you did get back and you know you wake up the next day how did you feel i felt relief really i felt very mentally tired from essentially packing up my life every single day and cycling down the road to some place that I'd never been before and setting up tent for the night. And I was relieved to not have to do that and to be back in a community or a country where I belonged. And therefore, people didn't stare at me all the time. And I was just normal and fitted in. And I knew which way it was to the shops. I knew how to buy a train ticket and things.

So it was all a huge relief and it was of course it's very exciting to see all my friends and family and it was fun for about two months and then after that i then the uh crushing anti-climax of my life uh kicked in and i started i found life pretty hard for quite a while after that and And as I have done after every expedition I've ever done, really. Do you have a sense of what that's about? What's underneath that? Well, I think I get very excited about going off on an expedition because it's going to be bold and difficult and life will be exciting.

And I'll be trying to make the best of myself and make the most of my potential and my opportunities and all those exciting things. I go off out into the wilderness and when I get out there usually it's quite hard and I'm quite hungry and I'm quite tired and I start to think oh I really miss all my friends and normal life and so I seem to be slightly cursed with the feeling that the grass is always greener and also I've learned over time that although expeditions are very important to me I don't think they're really necessarily the meaning of life. Although I'm not yet sure what the meaning of life is, but I find that I think I'm probably quite restless searching for something I haven't really found.

And I think that gets worse by constantly going off on literal journeys. So why are they not the meaning of life for you? I guess they certainly tick quite a few of the boxes if the meaning of life is a long checklist and that they make me feel they're very good for my self-confidence. They make me teach me about the world, teach me about myself. They're fun, which is important. They're difficult and rewarding, all those sort of things. But they're also a bit pointless. Cycling around the world is an inherently pointless thing to do it's not really going to change the universe for the better and actually one of the things i miss the most when i'm away on expeditions is just belonging to a community and you definitely don't get that on

expeditions yeah i mean and that that's actually one of my big curiosities. It seems like one of the things that really makes for a meaningful life is having that sense of belonging. And that's got to be one of... I mean, I know when I've had friends that have done things like hike the Appalachian Trail. And what they say is that when there's a single trail and there's a group of people who are on the trail for a long period of time, you end up crisscrossing and they leave messages at the different huts and stopping points. And you actually, there's this sense of community, even though you may not see people for long moments of time. But it sounds like, you know, with what you're doing, that didn't exist. Yeah. And also, because when I got home,

because it was essentially a solo thing, then when you get home and you want to share your experiences, then there's no one to do that with. I think that makes the settling down process more difficult. A couple of years after that, I rode the Atlantic Ocean and I did that in a group of four guys. And that was wonderful to be able to share that experience, to be able to help other people wonderful to be able to share that experience to be able to help other people to be able to accept help from people and then to be able to laugh about it later when you're finished that's a special thing yeah so i mean for if you were speaking to somebody well i guess i'm curious about your own future adventures too at this point would you prefer always going off with other people

and making it sort of a joint thing? Or do you think there's value in both? I think there's value in both. I think going generally, I think going with other people is more fun. And I think going by yourself is more character building. And I think if someone was planning their first adventure, I would would say to them if you're not brave enough to go alone then go with someone else just go but if you can possibly summon up the nerve to go by yourself then i think doing a solo adventure in the world is a really really important or really useful right of passage thing to do i'm certainly very glad i cycle around the world by myself yeah you know one of the things that sort of popped into my head also when you're

talking about returning and sort of crashing a bit every time after a few weeks or months is um you know when you're out and every day is a massive amount of physical exertion and novelty and exposure to just completely different stimuli. So you're sort of, there's a level of alertness that happens every day and a level of just sort of massive dopamine hits that are hitting your brain every day. And if you do that for weeks or months or even years, the way you were doing, it's sort of like, I wonder if there's a similarity between doing that and then coming home and people who are, you know, people who are in military situations and they come home who report, you know, just absolutely. of constant stimulation and attentiveness and having your brain almost rewired to expect, you know, the neurochemistry to continue to operate and feed it at that level. And then

when the outside stimulus stops, you know, all of a sudden, everything inside your neurochemistry changes profoundly, and you're wired for a much higher level of stimulation at that point. Yeah, I definitely think that's true. And I've certainly had times when I've been walking around the supermarket aisles at home, and suddenly my biggest decision of the day is which breakfast cereal that I should buy that I just want to scream and punch myself in the face, which isn't a good thing to do in the breakfast cereal aisle of the supermarket. Yeah, I would imagine not. So one thing which we haven't, I want to do in the breakfast cereal supermarket yeah i would imagine not so one thing which we haven't i want to jam on some other stuff too but one thing which from

just a very practical standpoint that we haven't talked about is that i know you actually you talk about and you write about too is money so when you're out on the road for four years cycling how do you end up funding this yeah money is certainly a stumbling block i think to a lot of people's adventurous dreams and i but by the time i set off i'd saved up seven thousand pounds that was my worldly wealth which is what so ten thousand dollars approximately that was my worldly wealth which really was not enough money to get all the way around the world so then i started thinking i should just get a proper job and maybe be a teacher for a year or two till I had enough money. And then I thought, I'll never have enough money

if I do it this way. I'll always think I need a better bike and I'll need a bit more safety net of money. And if I get a proper job now for a year, then before I know it, I won't ever start this trip. So I just decided to heck with it. I'll just start with the money I've got and live as cheap as I could. And being on a bike's great. You don't have to pay for transport. You've got a tent.

You don't have to pay for accommodation. So then you're really just left with some visas and food. And I essentially lived on banana sandwiches and instant noodles for four years and actually made it all the way around the world on 7,000 pounds by just living like a bum really for four years. Okay. So that worked for you, especially coming straight out of school. Do you, I'm sure you get asked by, cause you speak a lot also, and you speak to a lot of people who aren't going to do that. So do you have ideas, tips for somebody who is a little further into life who doesn't want to do it that way, but they would really love to go on an adventure?

Any other thoughts on how to potentially fund it? Well, I think you have two choices, really. You can either do a trip and spend lots of money, or you can do a trip and spend no money. And I think both of those are very viable choices. And then the third choice is to decide that you don't have enough money and therefore don't do anything at all. And so I would suggest to people that if you're wanting to do a trip, but you're thinking you don't want to rough it that much, then you either change your thoughts and just go do it because it's better than doing nothing at all, or you do a shorter trip. I was often aware of the fact on my trip that I could have cycled through Vegas and spent $1,000 in one night and it would have

been brilliant fun, but my trip would have had to be six months shorter. And that's the trade-off and choices that you have to make. But I think if you're in the position in life, the very lucky position in life to be even vaguely rich enough to consider going on some sort of adventure, then I met so many poor people who their eyes lit up at seeing me on my bike and they would love to have done it, but they will never ever be able to afford it. So I think if you can even vaguely do it then you just go sleep in a tent for a bit it's good for the soul yeah so so here's a weird question too um even if you had the money to afford to do it differently do you think there's value in and would you suggest going out and doing it as inexpensively as humanly possible does it change the nature of the experience in a way where there's a lot of value in it? Definitely. It's a very good growing up

experience. I found it very stressful for four years to be looking at the price tag of every single thing you buy, to never buy a chocolate bar, to never buy a can of Coke, even if it's boiling hot outside, to always just buy the cheapest food. That was quite stressful. But I'm proud that I did it. And it taught me a lot. I feel it was more of an achievement. I think if I could do the trip again, I would do it as frugally as I did. But I would set aside some sort of budget, some sort of treat budget, like $5 a month, which I was allowed to blow on ice cream without wracking myself in guilt. And I also would have had some sort of emergency budget for if I was just scared and really needed to go in a hotel.

I cycled through some slums in Mexico City, and it was late at night, and there was traffic roaring, and it was all dodgy. It was quite frightening. And there were all these cheap motels that have been about $10 probably for the night. And I'd have gone in and I'd been safe, but I couldn't bring myself to do that. And I ended up sleeping by the roadside, terrified for the night. That was pretty stupid. But at the same time, there's a moment in there where you probably learned something

about yourself. I learned that I'm very stubborn and I was very hard on myself. time, there's a moment in there where you probably learned something about yourself. I learned that I'm very stubborn and I was very hard on myself. But yeah, I think doing things frugally is good. If I'd cycle around the world with millions of dollars and there wasn't any sort of struggle or sacrifice involved, it would have been less rewarding. It might have been more fun, but less rewarding. might have been more fun but uh less rewarding although having said that i read a book there's two books one's called investment biker and the other is called adventure capitalist yeah yeah i've read that okay a billionaire who goes around the world on an adventure and it struck me actually how similar many of his

experiences were to mine despite doing it with slightly different budgets yeah but you know you always know in the back of your mind that sort of like you know if you need something it's there it's i think just there's a knowing that changes it even if you never act on it i was essentially playing at being poor you know if i got really desperate i could have gone to the british embassy and they'd have looked after me if i got really desperate, I could have gone to the British Embassy and they'd have looked after me. If I got really desperate, I could have phoned up my parents and they'd have got their credit card and flown me home. So I was always very aware that I was just playing at hardship and playing at poverty. Yeah, I know.

You wonder how much that just sort of changes the decisions that you make along the way, just even if it's not front and center and conscious in your mind i think it changes it enormously and i think just the fact that i had a a university education right meant that i then could take the risk of going off and cycling around the world because i knew that if everything went wrong i could come home and walk around london and someone would give me a job by the end of the week and that's just a privilege i have which is a huge safety net which then makes it far easier to go and do bolder things yeah but and at the same time it makes it far more likely that you never will for so many people yes that's true because it wasn't what society expected me to yeah it's like the sword and the shield.

Yeah, it was funny. I have in a very past life, I was a lawyer and I left a lot and, you know, took a in the early days, I stayed a member, you know, a paid up member of the bar for a solid chunk of years before finally just saying, I'm gonna close that door and I'm not going back. But it definitely factors in. So one of my curiosities is the idea of, so for you to find this sense of adventure, you tend to go out, you know, you tend to go, you travel around the world, you get in a boat and cross oceans. And my curiosity is around the idea and the possibility of finding substantially similar experiences in your everyday life. Curious what your thoughts are on that, you know, without actually picking up and leaving.

There's a very good book. I can't remember who wrote it called a journey around my room someone about 200 years ago he wrote a book about a journey around his room which is sort of mental traveling around the world um i think i'm not i don't think i have the imagination to stimulate myself in the way that I get from just heading out into some crazy part of the world. So I think it makes a big difference to me to see big landscapes and to meet interesting and different people. I think that's a significant benefit of what I do, I think. Yeah, it's funny. I have, I agree. My sense is that from the traveling that I've done too, which is doesn't come close to what you've done, that it's those vast and like, and often just radically different landscapes that kind of blow your mind. And also the people, you know, the exposure to the fact that, you know, you're in London, I'm in New York City, we could easily just assume that where we live is pretty much the world. But when you go out and you meet people on just very different parts of the world with very different cultures and languages, you realize that, you know,

you are not in fact the world. And that tiny little speck that you call the city where you think is the center of the universe is not in fact the center. And there's, you know, there's so much more and there's, you know, the world is so much bigger. And it's funny, like, I think you can try and find people from those cultures and places near you, but being with them where they are is just a very different experience. Yes, absolutely. I agree with all of that.

And I also think that meeting those people in those places really helps you reflect back on where you come from and the things that seem very normal and correct for you to see them through different eyes helps you challenge quite a lot of assumptions you have about yourself and about your culture and your country. And traveling is great for doing that. I love coming to America. America ostensibly seems very similar to britain's in many ways and then you come to come to america and jump in a car and drive around just meet so many people think wow this is like so different and i love that it makes me think differently about britain yeah no it's very cool you also did something that i don't know if you did this more than once but from what i know you also um you ran across the sahara desert not all of it i ran okay yeah it's an ultra marathon called the marathon de sabla marathon of

the sands it's 150 miles through the sahara desert man tell me a little about that that was actually when i got back from the bike trip and i was just slipped into lassitude for ages and when i finally started to perk up again i decided i wanted to do something that was because i it was interesting before the trip i didn't see myself as a physical person at all but by the time i got home i'd cycled so far that i thought wow maybe i can push my body harder than i thought so i wanted to do some physical short sharp challenge and I wanted to do it measuring myself against other people one of the things about solo adventures is you never know if they're actually difficult or if you're just being pathetic so I wanted to do something with other people so I signed up for this race which is it's a French

organized race so it's a very it's done in a very french way lots of very loud french rock music blasting out at the start line in the desert and then off you run into the total silence of the sands and you share it with 800 people and i really enjoyed sharing that suffering with with people after being on my own for so long and the camaraderie of it was brilliant so and that was 150 mile run yes it spread over various several about seven days i think so the distances vary from about 14 miles up to one day is about 50 miles and you have to carry everything you need so all your food all your equipment and they just give you a water ration every day man that is uh how hot does it actually get when you were there

oh gosh i don't know it was over 50 celsius i'm not sure why that isn't fahrenheit but it was so i think yeah i think it's like 120 something or so fahrenheit that is brutally hot did you find that from a mindset standpoint that was challenging in a different way than the other things that you had done no it was just i found it so easy because I just thought, I've just got to suffer for seven days. And seven days compared to one and a half thousand days is nothing. I could do this in my sleep.

So I was just, I was pretty, yeah, it was mentally very easy for me. And I just ran as fast as I could till I, yeah, it was great. I loved it. That's so fascinating so the fact that you had done so much for so long before it gave you this reframe for something that was that you knew was going to be grueling and suffering but you're like seven days please yeah exactly and that's been the bike trip was so good for me because it made me in terms of the adventurey stuff it made me think hey I am physically I'm capable of doing more

than I'd realized mentally I know I can suffer and endure stuff so bring it on I made me far more self-confident yeah so after a couple of years I mean I know you've gone on on so many different adventures at this point and then you start you made a decision to start to write and to produce documentary film

and to speak i'm curious what was behind the foray into producing your uh i think it came out in 2013 right the into the empty corridor the documentary yes so the timeline really was that in the beginning there were books so before i even did adventures i loved reading stories of adventures and i always liked books. And it was reading books really that prompted me into going on the adventure. And going on the adventure then, just for my own intellectual challenge, I always thought I wanted to write a book about that trip. But I never really thought anything would come of it. But I sort of harbored delusions that I'd write a book.

And then I came home and I did write a book. I started doing talks to pay for my life because books don't pay for my life. And if you do talks, it helps. You can have nice pictures. So I started learning how to take nice pictures. And then from there, I moved on to starting to make little films

and then gradually onto making a proper, well, a 50 minute documentary about walking a thousand miles through the empty quarter desert. And that was my first foray into filmmaking. And the more that I've, as I mentioned earlier, I know now that I'm good at suffering. And once I know I can do something, that becomes less interesting. So actually, the creative side of adventure is far more exciting to me now than just the

sheer masochism of it. I mean, that's an interesting transition to make. Well, maybe I'm growing up a bit as well. I have less to prove to other people. But it's, you know, all these things I do, I really like being a beginner. I like doing stuff that I'm rubbish at and trying to become half decent at it. And that's true, whether it was the expeditions or learning to write or take pictures. And now the new thing I'm trying to learn is trying to make films. And I love that process of learning new stuff and seeing how you get better. That's quite exciting. your unique mindset. Carol Dweck has this amazing work where she distinguishes between growth and a fixed mindset. And where one sort of believes that you have a certain amount of talent when you hit the edge of it, you're done. And the other is like, no, all progress is based on effort. And that allows for you to continually go back to the beginner's mindset and to have that wiring is such a blessing. I'm curious, is that something that you feel comes naturally to you or is that something that kind of was trained into you?

No, that's a very conscious decision that I've made to try to make myself become more like that. And I guess like anything, when you get momentum, it helps. So now I've had that mindset for a while and I see that it works for me and I now now I'm no longer embarrassed or shy about being really bad at something. So when I first started making films, they were terrible. And they're still, you know, they're a long way off. Steven Spielberg doesn't need to worry yet. But that doesn't bother me. I'm just I'm more excited about the progress I'm making.

And I'm more excited about getting quite good at stuff than I am at polishing the last 1% of perfection. That never really appeals to me. So it's not so much a master request as it, or I guess it's a certain master request, but like, so this is a common thread, right? It's almost like in the same way that you taught yourself not to be attached to sort of like the finish line of the 46,000 mile bike line of the, you know,

the 46,000 mile bike ride as the pinnacle, you know, with the things that you're doing now to become the best in the world at doing this. That's not what it's about for you. It's about immersing yourself and learning and growing. And that's where a lot of the reward is. Yeah, I will never be the best in the world at anything. I came to accept that when I was about age 10. And the excitement for me is just trying to be better best in the world at anything. I came to accept that when I was about age 10. And the excitement for me is just trying to be better at something than I was yesterday. And I really, that I find an enjoyable process. And I like the phrase that good is better than perfect. That really strikes with me that I'd rather just start something tomorrow and just try and make it quite good than fretting so much about making something perfect that I

never get around to doing anything at all. Yeah. I mean, it's so interesting because there's, there's that phrase. And then the thing that you hear a lot in sort of the investment world, especially the startup world or business these days is that good is the enemy of great, which is sort of the opposite mindset. And yeah, it's funny, you know, this is, we're on a podcast called Good Life Project. And some people, yeah, every once in a while, somebody would be like, but I want to be like, what about great? You know, like, what about like, best life ever? And I'm like, you know what, interestingly enough, I don't think most people actually aspire to that. I think we just want to wake up in the

morning feeling like we're living a good life. We're doing good work. We're good people. And you've shared the suffering and the sacrifice that goes into being the absolute best is not something that I think most people are willing to actually accept or endure. No, I think that's only a realistic thing to go for. If you are either completely some sort of egomaniac, or if you're so wildly passionate about it, it becomes your one true obsession. I think, yeah, I think that in that case, that's great. If you want to be the best climber in the world, then climb for 10 hours every single day. But that's I've never had that burning desire to do just one thing. Yeah. I'm curious. Are you open to the possibility that through exposing yourself to so many different things at some point, you may find that? Find what? A one thing that so pulls you that you want to become extraordinary and the best at it? Or does it just have no appeal? It would be nice.

I'd love to be the best at something. That'd be great. But I'm too lazy to put in the time or effort to become the best at something and i've never found one thing that that will distract me from all the other things that i like dabbling with so i want to come full circle we're hanging out as i just mentioned this is called good life project so if i offer that term out to you then to live a good life what what does that look like to you what does it mean to you oh gosh onto the tricky questions now um i think it would be a life that fulfilled my potential and fulfill the opportunities that i was born into to not do both of those things really bothers me and it feels like a terrible waste and then on top of

that to try to do so in a way that is ideally helpful to others but certainly not harmful and to try to to share the stuff that I do with other people and to try and make people laugh I think all if I did those things I'd be satisfied. Awesome. Thank you. Yeah. It's easy to say that. I'm actually very lazy and a bad person, but that's what I'm aspiring to become. Just like all of us. Hey, thanks so much for listening. We love sharing real unscripted conversations and ideas that matter. And if you enjoy that too, and if you enjoy what we're up to, I'd be so grateful if you enjoy that too, and if you enjoy what we're up to, I'd be so grateful if you would take just a few seconds and rate and review the podcast.

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