The Joe Rogan Experience - #1410 - Ash Dykes

Episode Date: January 14, 2020

Ash Dykes is a Welsh adventurer and extreme athlete. He achieved three world-first records, trekking across Mongolia, Madagascar, and the course of the Yangtze River.

Do you think a salt lamp's real? Do you think that thing does anything? I don't know how much you'd need, hey? Well, it keeps, it's got a hat on it, so it's not being taken too seriously. And that's actually a big one, you get a lot smaller than that, don't you? Yeah, I saw that one, that was the biggest one you could find on Amazon, so I got that. Because I'm a glutton. I like big things, big salt rocks. Why the hell not? Yeah, why not? I'm like, I want a big one big salt rocks why the hell not yeah why not i'm like i want a

big one do it it's very uh very flashy do you think that does anything though i don't know good question it's um what's it just lets the the air off and just breathing in the natural salts on you helps with the sleep as well but how is it doing that it's just by being in the room maybe i should have them everywhere well isn't it the light underneath as well so the light off the heat from the light sets off the air I believe so it sounds like horseshit right I did it could be could be a little bit yeah it looks good though right so you asked me before if if you were the first Welshman yes I think you are is that the KLA Jamie do you know if that's the case somebody might have snuck in

and didn't tell us there we go yeah yeah what is this uh thing that you brought i thought if i'm the first welsh person i've got to keep this try to keep this like a fifth sure there we go i got to bring a welsh dragon for you a welsh dragon welsh dragon so this is on our flag in in wales goes back a long time ago since we were like protecting ourselves and pride wow it's cool i don't really know the history but there we go so this is a classic welsh dragon welsh dragon yeah i think his name like one of the coolest flags in the world he's just got this big big raging dragon on a flag that is pretty cool so i thought if i'm the first welsh player i gotta gotta bring you a the red dragon look at it right there there's some some images there we go yeah have

you been to wells before no no no how badass is it should i go yeah beautiful it is a good place lots of mountains right on the coast there as well of course forests lakes good for training that's where i do all my training yeah hardcore elements speaking of training ash tell everybody what you've done so i've recently only five months ago now, five and a half months, came back from achieving my third world first record in walking the entire length of the Yangtze River in China. So it's the third longest river in the world, the longest to run through a single nation.

So it's 4,000 miles. It took 352 days. And it's from the Tibetan Plateetan plateau in the west of china so you're talking 5100 meters above sea level which is equivalent to everest base camp and and yeah 4 000 miles later 352 days you end up near the near shanghai where it pours out into the east china sea you know when i thought when I heard that you did this? I thought two things. One, I thought, this guy's insane. What kind of willpower does it take to walk and hike 4,000 plus miles?

But the other thing I thought is this kind of validates a lot of the ideas that people have always had about human beings migrating from Africa and through Siberia and through the Bering Strait. If you can do that, what you did, what you did is not dissimilar. That's it, yeah. You've got trails all over the world. And you're just doing it for a world record. Imagine if you're doing it because you're trying to stay alive.

You're trying to keep your family alive. Yeah, yeah. I'll tell you what, yeah, we would have had. Oh, there's so much history in journeys that mankind kind of taken on since, wow. I'm reading Sapien at the minute. Oh, it's great. I only just started. But that's just mind-boggling with the numbers, you know.

It takes you right back and it's like, whoa, whoa. But yeah, so the source of the Yangtze, it was actually only discovered in 2009, the true and scientific source. Really? Yeah, that gives us, we had to do two, it took over two years of planning. So it was a case of working heavily in China, finding out whether this had ever been done before it took. We had to get different teams involved globally. And then we discovered that I was always,

I was always preparing to go from the traditional source, which is most famous for the source of the Yangtze River being there. But then we only discovered about a year into the planning that actually there's a true and scientific source found by the same guy who mapped the traditional source, yet he partnered up with NASA, used all the satellite technology, was able to correct his wrong.

It's slightly longer than the traditional source. And that was it. We're like, right, it's got to be the true and scientific source. How much is it it's probably only a distance of 20 to 30 miles which that's only really a day's trek but it was more close to tibet it was more south uh southwest of china so it was closer to the tibetan border which means it's a little bit more sensitive so it was tougher to go from from the true and scientific source for sure. But it's the longer one.

If you're going to walk that distance, you've got to do it the proper way. Yeah, I agree with you. I'm glad you think that way. But obviously a person that's willing to walk 4,000 miles would think that way. You wouldn't skip on 20 miles. Imagine if you skipped on 20 miles and everyone's like, well, you did a pretty good job. But actually, Mike over here just did the whole thing. The actual scientific one.

He's the real one. Well, that happened towards the end as well. So coming up near Shanghai, there's an official point of where the Yangtze pours into the East China Sea. And they're like, you know, you only have to go to this point. I'm like, no, I'm walking to where the land ends. So that took me an extra, only an extra couple of days. But can you imagine finishing? It's like, oh, you didn't quite make it, did you?

You were close, but you didn't quite make it. What is the feeling like when you know you only have two days left? Oh, man. Well, we were hit by storm, storm Lekima. So it was one of the biggest storms they've had in the past 30 years. And that put me into hiding, you know, I had to shelter up after everything that I faced over 350 days you know and that stopped me only a couple of days before

I crossed into the East China Sea before the finish but at that point it's almost I had visualized the completion over and over again in my head I'd played it so many times of what it would be like what it would feel like, you know, everything to cross the finish line. That almost, when that day happened and I did cross the finish line, I almost over-visualized.

I didn't feel anything. It's just like, well, it's about damn time, you know? Wow. Yeah. And I believe, you know, the law of attraction, visualization,

I've always been a big believer in that. And same with Mongolia and Madagascar, which were my previous expeditions. I almost lost my life on both of those trips at a time that i'm suffering i'm just constantly visualizing you know i was focusing on recovering getting better visualizing the finish keep getting up keep pushing on i want to get to that i want to get to those but i want to i want to ask you when you decide to plan this trip yeah so how much had you learned from the first two crazy trips that you had and how did you calculate like

how much food you're going to need where are you going to meet neat pit stops were you going to be able to like how did you do it so with that we're always looking for communities along on a long route you know if there's a community there's's food. And actually that brings me back to the traditional and then the true scientific source. If we went from the traditional, we'd go maybe one week or one and a half weeks without coming across any locals. So we'd have to carry a week and a half worth of ration packs in our backpack. But the true and scientific source sent us back i think it was two or three weeks we couldn't find um any community along the way via satellite and via the people that we were they are my logistics managers so that meant we need to carry craziest way to try to visit people yeah find them through satellite

as you're trekking through a forest yeah and then try to get food that's it and we're always maximizing it as well so we're saying saying, okay, that's three weeks. So let's carry food for three and a half or four weeks. Because if that community is now empty or abandoned, then we're out of food. What are you carrying for food? I would carry ration packs. And the ration packs were pretty good. We had like chicken tikka masala, spaghetti bolognese, carbonara.

And each ration pack was around 800 kilocalories. And are you using like hot, are these dehydrated? Yeah, that's it. So you just boil the water. And you pour it in there. You wait about 15 minutes. It's like a mountain house, like that kind of a deal? Yeah, yeah, similar.

That's it. Wow, you must be so looking forward to regular food by the time that's over. Big time, yeah. Oh, what's the first thing you ate? You know, the one that I was craving was just protein. So I was thinking of peanut butter. I was thinking of cheese on toast. Because you had just mostly carbohydrates.

Yeah, exactly. So I was like chicken as well was a big thing. I was just craving all of this big time. But I don't know what the first thing I ate was. It's funny how your body knows what you need. Exactly, yeah. You've got to listen to your body you've got to listen it's hard to listen i mean it's hard to know well i don't i'm not really sure what i hear yeah you know you had an odd craving sometimes i'm craving ice cream is that supposed i'm supposed to listen just have ice cream that's it yeah exactly seems weird yeah it's weird just listening to your cravings that

seems ridiculous yeah and i think yeah no you know it does i think almost listening to you've got to be stripped of all the all of the protein and whatnot running for you your body currently having you i think if you're full you crave an ice cream you know if you feel you want a dessert but i think if you're now at the point of not starvation but if you're really hungry and you know what's good, what's not good. I think your body gives a good tail sign of what you can. The last month of Mission Yangtze, I was really bad. I was coming across cities every day. Because you can imagine, like, towards Shanghai, you're coming across cities,

you're coming across towns, communities. And so I was just craving protein. I was craving fats. And a lot of the time for that last month, I was just eating really unhealthily. Just getting in stodgy foods, stod craving fats. And a lot of the time for that last month, I was just eating really unhealthily, just getting in stodgy foods, stodgy fats, protein. You know, there was fast food chains along the way, KFC, you know, that sort of month of it.

Yes, I was out of the wild. The wilderness was like six months worth. Once I'd finished the first half, it was gradual for then another two or three months. But the last three months, you're going through city after city, all really built up high population there. And I found that my body was crow so i was listening to my body scraping fat scraping protein and yeah you're right it did get ridiculous i was going to these you know fast food

and i the translation i could speak chinese a little bit i was just gonna ask i could get by but when you say chinese like which dialect oh there's over a hundred dialects yeah so that's where it got difficult oh no so even yeah um it was nails it was nails really difficult so what do you speak mandarin what do you speak your basic mandarin basic mandarin yeah yeah enough to just about get by but I skipped all of the basics and went straight into the sentences where are where are their bears here are there bears where are the wolves uh Where are, are there bears here? Are there bears here? Where are the wolves? Where are the wolves? Water, food,

shelter. Oh my God. So yeah, I skipped a lot of the basics, went straight into the... Dude, those are two questions I don't ever want to hear.

Yeah. Are there bears here and where are the wolves? Yeah. Not, not are there wolves here, where are they? Where are they?

Fuck, man. That's it. And you're out there walking. Yeah. For a year. Yeah. That's it. And for out there walking Yeah For a year Yeah That's it And for the first six months

Especially So the first six months Is mostly hiking in the woods It's hiking Yeah in the wilderness On the Tibetan plateau Are you carrying your camp On your back

Yeah So you have a bivy sack Like what are you sleeping in That's a tent So we have this Really lightweight Sort of Kailas tent Just get it up

Storm proof It's amazing how light They can get those Damn things to now It was great It was incredible We needed it A tent. So we had this really lightweight sort of Kailas tent. Just get it up storm proof. It's amazing how light they can get those damn things to now. It was great. We needed it. Because I had to carry all of the, we were filming for a documentary, so I had to carry electronics and got too heavy. Now do you, when you're in this tent, do you go with a double layer tent so it provides more insulation and it's a little heavier? Or do you have like a really lightweight tent and just try to tough it out in the cold we have uh i had a double layer but

that's because the double layer was just so small and so light yeah and it was a case of yeah you know that's your comfort that's your shelter right and i'm gonna be facing some big storms yeah that's what i was thinking i was, you'd sacrifice probably the weight for just something that's going to keep you insulated in there. That's it. Yeah, for sure. Do you have a pad that protects you from the ground? Yeah. And then a mattress pad on top of that?

Yeah, we've got the pad, like the waterproof pad on the ground from the tent. And then we've got a sleeping mat, maybe about this thick, about half an inch to an inch thickness. maybe about this this thick about a half an inch to an inch thickness and then I had a minus 25 or minus 30 degree celsius sleeping bag and what that is in in fahrenheit but that was a you know you got toasty inside it could be minus what is the issue with the ground though like do you have to have an insulated pad to make sure that the ground cold doesn't get to you? Yeah, for sure. That's what the sleeping mat is. So it's sort of, you can roll it down.

It's really small, really tight, really lightweight as well. But once you roll it out, it's got like memory foam almost inside, something similar. And you have to blow in it, pump it up a little bit more. Oh, I see. Only takes 10, 20 breaths. Easy to pack away as well. It protects you from the cold of the ground. And it protects from the, because that's what you need. Yeah.

The ground just sucks all the body heat away. Dude, I've never been comfortable camping. It's always just like. It's always like you wake up like popping. Fuck. Yeah, that's it. You made it, but still you feel weird. Yeah, you can do.

You do get used to it. Yeah. But especially after the trekking, we were covering 50 kilometers some days. We were covering about 20, 25 miles, especially in the Tibetan Plateau. So after that day's trek, only two ration packs per day. So you're taking in 1,600 calories. That's not a lot. That's not a lot.

And we were carrying 30. How much weight did you lose? I probably, and I've still lost weight now, about 13, 12 to 13 kilograms, I would say, in weight. Which over the year was, I lost the same amount in Mongolia. Got like 32 pounds, something like that? It's about 32, is it? 32 pounds. Yeah.

So. Wow. That's a lot of weight to lose. You're not a big guy. Yeah, that's it. That's it. Fuck, man. That must have been, you must have been really drawn out at the end.

Big time. Although it kind of worked itself out because towards the end, I was coming across more food. Didn't need my ration packs, of course. So I was coming across more restaurants. I can collect food as I go. It's not a solo and unsupported journey. So I was just utilizing that.

I was eating with the locals and I was taking as much calories down as i possibly could whilst i was trekking did you pick like the cut the type of meals based on calories did you like when i'm talking about like the mountain house type deals or i don't know what company you used what kind of oh what yeah expedition foods i think so they have different ones that are more nutrient rich and more calorie rich yeah they have the smaller light ones as well which you get about 600 calories um they are smaller they are lighter easier to pack but i need it as much as i could possibly get you know yeah they have a bunch of healthy options now because a lot of crossfitters are out there camping these days yeah yeah that's it they want to get that healthy paleo food while they're out there in the mountain but the what's undeniable has has got to be for you is that once you've made those steps the first steps for the first day you have this monumental thing in front of you yeah like what what was that like knowing when

you started like here ready all right bye ash bye it was see you in the air oh man yeah it was exactly that it was exactly that it was exactly that it was daunting it was so before we got to the before we got to the source of the Yangtze River we lost I think

four members when I say lost they survived but they got altitude sickness they were fearing for their lives because of the bears because of the wolves so before we reached

day number one before we reached the start line we've already got four members of the film crew of guides uh evacuated taken off the mountains which brought me off the mountains as well because i needed to regroup with a different team so everyone was scared and people also got altitude sickness how high are you up there we are just over 5 000 meters oh my god point yeah so it's equivalent to everest base camp i'd say oh my god you can get altitude sickness from that's really fucking high that's 15 000 feet right that it's about that yeah yeah and there's wolves up there there's wolves

you can't even run you got no air yeah what how help us would you feel At 15,000 feet When you see a pack of wolves You're like Oh man Yeah And they're looking at you like Hey you don't look too good buddy It's the bears that scared me the most

Oh they should scare you the most You can't do anything against a bear can you You can't do anything against a wolf Yeah you can't do anything against a wolf either Especially at 15,000 feet Exactly You can barely tie your shoes And a pack of them as well

Oh my god Yeah Yeah And we can't carry any weaponry. No? Oh, great. Yeah. Oh, sitting duck.

Really? You can't carry any weaponry? Yeah, yeah. You can't even have a knife? I tried. I took a knife out. Did I say? Yeah, I took a knife out, but it was taken from me in security, flying out to the west.

So I bought another one in Yushu. Yeah, I did have a knife for the first month or two. Yeah. But again, a pack of wolves. Yeah, you ain't going to do shit with a little baby-ass knife. Yeah, exactly. They're going to rip your ankles apart. That's it.

They tear your legs apart. Yeah. Wolves are the nastiest hunters. Big time. And we had a close encounter as well with a pack. Really? Yeah, there was a Tibetanan he was trying to warn us he was trying to say well this is this is my angle we were just talking to him he looked a little bit worried it looked a little bit stressed we're high on the mountains he keeps pointing down at a valley talking to his into tibetan we didn't

understand we just sort of waved oh thank you bye big smile off we go say it was me and my friend also videographer kyle we cracked on but kyle filmed all of that conversation and four months later we found out that from a girl from my editor team in beijing who could speak tibetan that he was saying right ahead right down that valley is a pack of wolves and only yesterday they had killed a local lady and trying to you know they were trying to get us not to go down there, saying don't go. But we didn't know, so we were like,

oh, yeah, all the best, thanks, see ya. And we cracked on and for the next two days we were followed. We believe we were followed by, stalked by a pack of wolves. Oh my God. And they cover a bigger distance than humans cover, you know, and for two days they were just howling

in the same proximity, same distance away. Fuckity, fuck, fuck, fuck. How do you go to sleep at night? What's that like? Yeah, luckily it was windy. The wind would pick up at nighttime. So it would rattle your tent so you couldn't hear the howling. You could only hear it during the day.

Oh, my God. But, yeah, you still stood there. Your knife's there. Your torch is there. You're constantly shouting over to your buddy. Are you okay? Are you worried that you're just going to become a burrito in the middle of the night? Yeah.

A tent burrito. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was scary. I felt vulnerable. A tent burrito. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was scary. I felt vulnerable. Really vulnerable up there. Fuck, bro. And the locals... How many days were you doing this with the wolves?

So it was two days that they were following us. But we were in sort of Wolf County, if you like, for the best part of two or three months, I would say. Oh! With the bears as well. And the bears became an issue because I sort of went out there with a healthy mindset. As long as I leave the bears alone, the bears are going to leave me alone, right? But the locals were telling me otherwise.

And they would start showing me photos, start showing me videos and sending me clips saying, this happened only one, two kilometers away from where you are now. People were killed by bears. People were killed just running into huts, killing families.

And they were trying to say that they're coming off the mountains because it's too cold. They're looking for calories before they go into hibernation. So we were there in the wrong season. And it's that that terrified us the most. It was the stories of the locals. And, you know, if the locals panic, then you should definitely be panicking is what I would say. There's a lot of parts of the world where you have to be really worried about wild animals all the time yeah we here in america for whatever reason we've forgotten that

i think everybody that lives in a big city has basically kind of forgotten that yeah yeah but when you make that trek you realize like oh there's no rules out here they're they'll eat you that's it they'll eat everything they'll eat a caribou they'll eat a moose why wouldn't they eat you yeah what do they think you're special? They don't even know what the fuck you are. That's it. It's probably the only thing that keeps you alive is they haven't eaten a person lately. Yeah.

And they take, like you said, caribou. They can take the bears big enough to just take out a caribou. Like moose. Yeah. Moose are huge as well. My friend watched a moose kill, or excuse me, watched a bear kill a moose on a spotting scope. He was looking through a spotting scope and he saw a bear swat

down the back of a moose and just break its back. He said the grizzly hit the moose so hard it snapped its back. I'm like, what? The power, the sheer strength in a bear. And they are big on the moose. moose are huge

yeah this bear swatted that thing and broke its back and he said he watched it go down he watched this chase there's like this

altercation between this bear and the moose and he stayed on it and the bear gets a hold of the moose and just fucking swats it the moose is like I gotta get the fuck

out of here and the bear's like bitch you're going nowhere yeah yeah those animals are up there in China too yeah they're a very similar type of bear right it's a type of brown bear isn't it type of brown bear yeah slightly you've got the big ones here haven't you the grizzlies in alaska

not here they killed them all in california everything that they had yeah that was here in california it's on our flag it's our state flag if you look at the california state flag there's a giant grizzly bear in the middle of the California state flag. No way. Yeah, because it used to be an issue here. Got you. They killed so many people that we just killed all the bears. Not we.

I wasn't here. Got you. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah.

So they're further north now, are they? That's it right there. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. They're nowhere near here. You got to go up into like Vancouver. British Columbia has them.

So what's the Rockies? British Columbia has a lot of bears yeah they have montana has them montana has grizzlies wyoming has grizzlies colorado may or may not my friend adam saw them there yeah but uh they're not in california anymore and it's just because they killed them there's actually a town named after the last guy who died lavec california the last guy who got killed by a grizzly bear. Just out hunting, was it? Just probably being a dude that was alive back then. Yeah, man, terrifying. So you experienced this in China.

What are your precautions? Are you allowed to bring bear spray? So we had an air horn. We had a whistle. Oh, Jesus, a whistle. A whistle, yeah. So they say that the biggest attacks happen from where Tibet Tibetan's out farming, doing their business in the mountains. They're in the forest and they're surprised. They come up the top of the hill. There's a bear there.

And obviously the bear's shocked, it's scared, and it just attacks. Yeah, that does happen with bears in America as well. That's it, yeah. So they would say pretty much, take a whistle, take an a-horn, make yourself aware, well, make the bear aware that you're that you're present you're approaching and normally they would be they would you know scare off they'd run away but there was a local that told me that so they have these big to better masters have you seen those to better masters like yes the dogs that god the two hundred plus pounds are terrifying more of a problem than the the wolves they were for me um because they can scare away the wolves they scare away snow leopards the bears but this one local was telling me that he wasn't living in his gur which is like a white

felt tent like a yurt he was living in a concrete hut and he had a courtyard with a fence the fence was open but just outside the fence is the tibetan mastiff chained up and he said that this bear wasn't phased about the tibetan mastiff it walked straight past it into the courtyard and was scratching at a steel door whilst he was hiding in one of his empty cupboards and it lasted about 30 40 minutes and he was telling me this story and i'm like i'm in a tent oh my god scratching against a steel door and i'm just in a tent in the wilderness fuck man they're monsters if they weren't a real thing if grizzly bears or brown bears weren't real and then they were in a movie you'd be like what imagine that poor guy and imagine you you'd like you someone would ask someone like you like why in the world yeah if you know they're there would you gonna

want to walk for that long yeah bear country yeah well that's that's it that's how many people are with you um towards the start so it was myself it was two guides that i had tibetan guides so we couldn't even communicate oh um but safety in numbers and we took a horse for the film crew but the film crew got altitude sickness and left us with the horse which i i named casta choy have you ever seen the movie face off yes the the badass castaaster Choi oh that's hilarious I've got this thing where I name like my bicycles or like carried a chicken we'll get to that carried a chicken in Madagascar I've been giving them old crazy ridiculous granny names and I was like this

horse is the last one standing whilst my my crew my my guides are suffering with altitude sickness and being taken off the mountains you've got this horse still suffering with altitude sickness never knew that but apparently horses can animals can suffer with altitude sickness but he's there like a badass still going so it's just me and him and i'm like i can't give you a granny's name like elder or dot or gertrude i'm giving you cast a joy from face off that's hilarious yeah yeah we've made fun of that movie multiple times like the preposterous nature of switching faces you look exactly like nicholas cage now man so the people come with you in the beginning and then do they stay with you the entire trip yeah we we hoped so uh no sorry so

it'd be so the first two guides that i had got altitude sickness as well as the film crew. I came off the mountains. I found two new guides who were willing to join me. About 50% now of the UK team and the China team were saying, you know, abandon the expedition. Start again next year. Start again? Yeah, try again next year because it was getting too close to winter season. How many days had you already walked? We hadn't reached the start point yet.

Oh. So I think it was four days it took for we hadn't reached the start point yet oh so we had we i think it was four days it took for us to get to the start point but just before we reached the start point that's when the film crew got altitude sickness we sent them home and the next day my guide he was vomiting he had nosebleed we had to get him off the mountains too so we left the horse with some local nomads got him off the mountains regrouped with a different team and tried again. So our first attempt towards the source was a fail. We regrouped, it was myself, it was two guys,

it was the horse and we eventually, finally made it to the source. It was on that gap in a nearby city of regrouping with a new team, with new guides that my team in the UK and China were saying, I think it's best if you hold back and we try again next year because you'll be in the Tibetan Plateau during the depths of winter,

which drops to about minus 30, minus 40 degrees Celsius, which was a worry. But I believe that we could get off the mountains. It was the altitude that was the problem, down into lower altitude before the depths of winter. And for people who don't know the conversion, I think that's where it meets in the middle, negative 40 is where Celsius and Fahrenheit is the same.

Right, okay. So people in this country use Fahrenheit, a lot of us, you say Celsius, we're like, yeah, minus 40 degrees Celsius. I think minus 40 and minus 40 Fahrenheit are the same. Oh, yeah, really? I think that's where it hits the button. Got you.

What does it say there, Jamie? So minus. Minus Celsius is minus 22 Fahrenheit. You're right. Go to minus 40. I think minus 40 is right where it is. No, not minus 40. Yeah, see?

Got you. That's where it's exactly the same in Celsius and Fahrenheit. There we are. It's a weird thing, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, how the fuck does that happen? How is it the same thing? Like, you're never the same in Celsius and Fahrenheit. There we are. It's a weird thing, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, how the fuck does that happen? Yeah. How is it the same thing?

Like, you're never the same thing. Yeah. Like, how do you become the same thing? Like, who's got the wonky system? If that minus 40, it becomes the same. There we go. Very weird. Minus 40 Fahrenheit.

Yeah. Right, because it showed, like, 40 Celsius. It's very hot, right? It's like 100 plus degrees. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 40 plus 45, you're melting. That's a struggle. But minus 40 is the same.

What the fuck is going on here? Who's got the wacky... What's 40 degrees Celsius in Fahrenheit there? 40 degrees Celsius is probably 100. Because we will come to that. What is it, 104? 104. 104.

Yeah, 104 Fahrenheit. Yeah, it's 104? 104. 104. Yeah, 104 finite. Yeah, it's hot. Yeah. Weird. Melting, melting. Now, what kind of gear are you guys taking with you in terms of like, are you taking a jet boil? Are you taking just matches?

Are you hoping to find wood? Are you trying to stay light? Do you have a lightweight stove? Like, what do you... So we took a lightweight stove along what do you so we took a lightweight stove along with us we took flint with us as well uh matches and a lighter no no uh jet boil or anything like that because you wouldn't be able to refill i'm probably yeah what we had actually we had a um a bottle that connects to the stove and with that bottle you can either fill it

up with gasoline but you can also use vodka, and you can run off the vapors. You get pumping up, pump the bottle, the vapors leak out, sparks a flame, and you're good to go. Really? Yeah, so that's what I talk, especially in Mongolia. Oh, because you can just get hammered everywhere. The nomads get how you're rushing vodka. Oh, that's wild. So you're drinking vodka just to, like, people think you're a drunk.

You're really just trying to stay alive out there in the wilderness. Yeah, you're not drinking it. You're using it to fuel. How much does it, like, is it efficient, the use of vodka? Like, how much vodka does it take to cook your meal? Luckily, I didn't need to try it. That was just a precaution that we took. I always carried enough gasoline with me because by using the vodka or the whiskey um it does ruin the stove oh i see i see

it like blocks the the small hole that sparks the sparks the flame um and you don't want that when you're in the middle of the wilderness isn't that funny you would think that like if anything gasoline would be more fucked up yeah you would yeah that's it yeah yeah yeah it's probably because it's not all alcohol right yeah there's a bunch other shit in there it's got to be it's got to be but if you had rubbing alcohol like pure rubbing alcohol probably burn even better yeah potentially hey you would have thought so yeah this whole idea that you you had um to do this um how much encouragement did you get from people that you told the story to and how many people like you can't do this you're going to die up there uh i'd say a healthy mix for those who had seen the

previous adventures that i had done they had a um they had hope they held hope they had faith in you yeah they had faith come on surely he's got this they knew you'd already accomplished two amazing things that's it and it was never done recklessly first it was never really done for the record there was always environmental angle sustainability awareness etc um but it's also the planning so it's not i used to do really reckless stuff we'll get to that but now it's meticulous planets the details looking at what can go wrong but also learning how you can possibly overcome it to make it back home a good cliffhanger i'm glad we're going to get to that yeah let's let that sit for a second yeah but when you're um walking what kind of equipment are you using

are you using a gps and if so do you have uh solar panels that you're using to gather electricity yeah like what do you so yeah we would take solar panels so we had solar panels we had the uh a couple of power banks so we'd use the solar panel to charge the power bank and then that will charge like the the gps the um the cameras can i ask you how you do that are you are you putting it on the back of your backpack as you walk that's it yeah we would strap it to the top of the rucksack okay um and you know it's mongolia especially is known as the eternal land of blue sky um and where i was wasn't too far so we did have a lot of blue sky decent sun rays i was able to charge the power bank and that power bank could last up to about

a week and a half of charging depending how i use it really charging so it's really really useful that's incredible so when you're walking like how much does it take what is the milliamp hour in the so what is it um i think i think I studied it by how many charges I can get from the iPhone. So I think it was seven or eight charges from 0% on the iPhone to 100%, seven to eight straight charges. And that sometimes requires quite a bit. Sometimes I was just charging the GoPro or the little satellite phone. And you're able to get that full charge just from that solar panel and how long? Just from the power bank. Yeah. The solar panel would take a good while

to charge up the power bank. So what I did is I took- Like a good while, a couple of days? I'd say a couple of days to get to 100%. Yeah, for sure. For sure. 25 to 30% per day, I think it was. That's interesting. So it seems like you could almost get everything you need just while you're walking every day. That's it, yeah. Like you're right there. If the days are good, you know, if we've got access to blue sky. But I took...

Does it work at all when it's cloudy? It does, but painfully slow. Like maybe after an hour, you've bumped up a percent. How crazy is the idea though of the they're stealing energy out of the sky amazing yeah the sun the energy of the sun is powering your phone that's it that's it i want to do it that way just to do it that way it just sounds so badass yeah and that's the air exactly exactly that's the way the world's moving as well isn't yeah the energy of the sun powering your phone i mean just the world just needs more efficient ways to use solar and they're going to get better at it for sure

yeah it's far better than it used to be yeah i was shocked to see it all over china as well actually so you i would imagine right there's a lot of rural places in particular that don't really have too much access to the grid yeah yeah so when you are um you're traveling around, you've got, are you using the phone as your GPS or do you have a standalone GPS unit? So with China, I was using like the GPS and that would keep me. Like a Garmin or something? Yeah, I got an in-reach.

In-reach, okay. That's the one you can communicate with people, right? With that one, you can send text only. Right. But I did, I took a navarino um satellite phone sat phone and that would allow for calls and that got me out of a lot of a lot of difficult situations many times were you ever in a situation where you're like i think these people are gonna rob us um i was robbed in mongolia but in China, no. You got robbed in Mongolia? What happened?

They stole my solar panel. Really? They did it so politely, so nicely. They just came over. They were visiting. I was chilling with them, eating my ration pack. They brought some food and some tea over. We all sat out in the sun.

And at one point, they would have slid my solar panel under my tent, and I didn't see it. So when it came for me to pack everything back into my tent, which I did, put my head down, fell asleep, and then I all of a sudden felt like nudging on the tent and something was yanked from underneath it. And I just shouted, hello. And then someone was just running away. And I thought, oh, maybe he came to say hi

and I've just scared him off, not realising. But then the next morning, I realised the solar panel's missing. And then whilst I was trekking, I clicked and thought, okay, very clever. Made another number 10. Came back a few hours later at dark, took it from underneath and ran. So now what do you do without a fucking solar panel? I had a spare. Because at that point, I took a trailer.

And the trailer weighed about 120 kilograms of everything that i had in it which is about 260 pounds uh and so yeah i with that journey i made sure how are you moving the trailer so yeah so with mongolia it's just strapped with me it's like a four-point harness what on wheels so you're not just walking 4 000 miles you're walking 4 000 miles or 260. so this is a whole different expedition oh yeah so this takes i i when it came to robin there was nothing in china okay okay so that's that but in china no i had difficult situations with the authorities with the police they're trying to get bribes no they were just i was in a sensitive area you know to get to the source the planning it took over two years. So I needed government support. I needed national park access. I needed a green development foundation, which is like an organization to make me ambassador, to make me doctor for a year, to be able to get all of this access. to be able to get all of this access.

When I went through the motions of getting these different organizations on board, that would give me access to the authorities and allow me to get to the source. It blows my mind now. It was really, really difficult to get off the ground. But we did that. But still, we were so close to Tibet that the Tibetan police would come over

and threaten to get rid of us and deport us and whatnot. So that came as a worry. But again, I carried 13 different documents, all stamped, all official, all signed. So I had to show them that. I had to use the satellite phone, call into the Beijing team, use as translation. I think that one time they made me delete all of the information,

all of the tracked information I needed for Guinness World Record. They made me delete that, but luckily it was backed up because they didn't want to have me seen walk in this region it was quite sensitive there it's like but i was definitely in china and definitely in chinghai province um sensitive how so just because you've got tibet and you've got china and they're very close to each other so i I needed to make sure that I was always in, in China. Sometimes you'd get the police come over. Did they think that you were a spy or something? Yeah, no idea what they thought, but it came as a shock to them. They were also very worried for my safety. So there was that angle as well that they were saying once they found out it was official, it was legit and they'd apologize. They'd actually follow me on the Chinese social

media, you know follow the journey so that was great but after that they did say we are just you know bringing you in for your protection there's bears there's wolves we've not seen a westerner out here in i don't know how long so that got tricky and there was one stage where they they said you need to be on the other side of the river so they drove us 40 miles back on ourself to a bridge dropped us off on the other side and we had to do those 40 miles all over again that was day six into the journey and we were desperately trying to get off the mountains and now we just dropped back 40 we had to walk those 40 miles again no way around it nightmare dude fuck so yeah it was really tricky the source around that

area really sensitive and it was just and then we found that the locals would call the police as well. They would radio to the next girl, to the next girl, to the next girl, until eventually there was a phone signal and they would call the police. And the police would often rock up at 2, 3 o'clock in the morning just at our tent. They had the location bang on. They rocked up, like, what are you doing here? So we found out that the locals were amazing very hospitable but they were worried and they didn't know if they've seen a

westerner do do they report it will there be in trouble if they don't report it so they did so it came it pretty much went from mission yanksy to almost mission escape and evade we had to escape the sensitive region that we were in but we had to evade the locals because we realized that it was them calling the the police that went on for about three weeks maybe think that we were in but we had to evade the locals because we realized that it was them calling the the police that went on for about three weeks maybe think that you were an escaped fugitive right yeah yeah because if you think of a fugitive from america or the uk is trying to get away yeah what better way to just jump into the middle of nowhere in china and walk yeah that's it yeah potentially or just again threat from your fug look like you could be a fugitive. Yeah. Maybe some sort of bank robber type character.

I'd say. A Guy Ritchie movie. There we go. So you are avoiding this sensitive area. So the sensitive area that's close to the Tibet and the Chinese border.

Did you anticipate any of these things beforehand? Like, did you guys sit down with the team like when you were... And did you say, okay, this could go wrong. That's it. How many things did, this could go wrong, this could go wrong?

How many things did you figure could go wrong that didn't? So many things that could have gone wrong that luckily didn't. This was really sketchy. Just the Yangtze is just known. It cuts through a lot of diversity. It's a beautiful, stunning part, one of the beautiful places that I've been. But there are sensitivities. There is the elevation. There is the wildlife there's the uh temperatures as well did you ever see that

video of i don't know if the girl's from china or from japan it's turned out to be fake but she's uh snowboarding and behind her you see a bear running yeah i did see that video yeah yeah yeah is that possible it's not the video is fake where where is that? In Japan? That's a good question. I'm not sure. I think it's Japan, isn't it? It might be China. I did see that. They exist in Japan as well, right?

They do. I believe so. Can you, Jamie, I'm sorry, I'm double Google asking you. Yeah, bring that up if you can. Yeah. It's a fun video to watch. After that, I want to see a picture of that Yangzi River. So she was oblivious.

She looked back at her camera. I don't think it's real. I think someone just did some cool shit with cgi but it looks pretty good yeah it looks like if it was in a movie you'd be like oh fuck oh fuck because the girl's got headphones on she's just fucking rocking out yeah do you see that tiger as well recently it was in india just sprints across the road and how fast it was going. See, here it is. So it's really well made, whoever did it. It's like she's got a GoPro. Yeah. It's on the ground.

And then as she's going down the hill and her snowboard, at a certain point in time, you look and see a fucking bear. And she has no idea. And she's laughing and everything's cool. And then watch it turn to the side again. Yeah. I think you see the bear terrifying yeah that's the second one is where i'm skeptical because it seems like this oh

fuck it looks pretty goddamn realistic pretty damn good doesn't it that would be hard to do yeah like the bear just gave up at that point yeah and that chick is flying i have never snowboarded from what i've heard from my friends when you snowboard it's easier to break your head like you see your feet go up in the air and your head goes down yeah it's easy to break your head this girl it's difficult actually the snowboard is trying to try it supposed to be japan yeah i've got that tiger one tiger one this is the one recent well did you ever see the one where the dudes, I think he's in India and they're on a bike

like a motorbike. That's the one that I'm talking about. And the tiger's chasing behind them. Yeah, yeah. Have you seen that? Oh my God.

It almost gets them. It almost gets them. Yeah, it does. That's definitely not edited. It's chasing them too. Yeah. Dude, that's petrifying.

That is fucking horrific. Here we go. Here it is. So these guys are Look at this tiger Just going for it Almost got him Almost got him

No way Oh man Right about then Imagine the adrenaline right there That dude Is wishing he had the cash For a bigger engine Just right there

Right there is when you Oh my god What a killing machine And so beautiful Amazing What a fucked up way to die From like the most beautiful thing nature's ever created. Yeah.

If a tiger wasn't a murderous, horrific predator that definitely eats people, you would look at it and go, it was in a movie, like Avatar or something like that. A tiger doesn't even look like a real creature. That's it. It's so beautiful. Oh, stunning. They are beautiful creatures, aren't they? Beautiful and spectacular and murderous. And terrifying at the same time. Yeah. Chasing you on a moped. Oh, the. They are beautiful creatures, aren't they? Beautiful and spectacular and murderous.

And terrifying at the same time. Chasing you on a moped. Oh, the speed as well. Same with a bear. You think they're going to be slow, but they can run. Oh, they run way faster than people. They run faster than Usain Bolt. He can't even get away from a bear.

And if he touches you, all they need is one little ankle pick. One little, just kick that ankle. Woo! You go flying through the air. That's it. Head first. They tear you apart. we came across bare footprints and we believe that the bare footprints were fairly fresh maybe maybe past our set exact track that we were on in west china show me with your hand how big it was maybe about this big oh fuck you got a picture actually on the instagram that's

big dude you got a video actually yeah it's a pen mastiffs as You've got a video, actually. Yep, yep. Tibetan Mastiffs as well. Oh, dude. You've got a Tibetan Mastiff running up to me, trying to attack me. Really? Yeah, the guy just steps in, throws the stone. You don't see that bit, but the Tibetan Mastiff. Yeah, there you go. That's a pretty good size.

That's not as big as I was thinking, but that's pretty big. So that's its front paw, isn't it? Yeah, I think. Yeah. I'm not a bear tracker. And then it's like the back paw is almost like a human paw, isn't it? Yeah, I think. Yeah. I'm not a bear tracker. And then it's like the back paw is almost like a human footprint, isn't it? Well, the big brown bears, there's a photograph, a famous photograph of a woman. She's a wildlife biologist, and they had tagged this grizzly to put a collar on it or find its location or something like that or maybe do a test on it.

And she's holding its foot up and it is literally like a huge dinner plate the foot so see if you can find that picture of you know what biologist holds up yeah i saw that one actually it was a massive grizzlies part yeah it is fucking huge and the claws on it yeah it's like as wide as my chest that's what the the bear's foot looks like and she's holding there we go yeah Look at the fucking size of that paw You don't stand a chance That's so crazy It's so crazy that nature created that

Just a clean up system for the fucking woods Anything with a limp Anything that's fucking around Places it shouldn't be You're having too many babies Oh I smell them Come and get them Done

So here you are And you're you're out there with these things and you just have a little tent and no weapons yeah and no weapons and there's three of you three of you or four of you there was three for the first three weeks and then there was two of us for four days then from then on it was pretty much solo most of the way um for the first sort of half of the expedition and then the second half was super interactive opened it up people were joining oh so people knew about it yeah it was pretty it went pretty big in in china we'd have journalists we'd have chinese celebrities and they'd walk with you and they would trek with us yeah we'd sometimes organize events where it'd be rock climbing we'd

be teaching them how to belay off the cliff and we're like do they have instagram in china no so i had to get all of the different social media uh platforms there you go that's pig's liver whoa so they marinate it in vodka and chili and you're drinking it no you're blowing it up blowing it up that's pascha worm so that's like a rare delicacy you can eat it raw straight from the yangtze river how sick did you get yeah i had to have some serious stomach bugs over the past decade i've eaten all sorts the lot so there's like towards the east so it was super interactive as well it was so these kids all knew that you were doing this yeah yeah there's a news channel there as well and we're creating a documentary oh that's pretty cool at one point it got hospitality yeah amazing hospitality they were so friendly at one point adidas got wind of it and they invited me out to launch do you

know jet lee yes he had a co-branded range between himself and adidas it was like a photoshoot gq adidas and jackie huang who's like a big movie star uh and i just jumped at the chance it was one day off one day in in shanghai straight back into the wilderness and that was crazy contrast one minute in the wilderness next minute flying out to shanghai got all of these stylists makeup artists like whoa photo shoot boof straight back yeah and that was good they wanted like a face of the east to represent the the brand but also a face from the west so it came from nowhere so it was great you know lots of people started getting wind on it again i had to start i think eight to nine different social media channels in in china because they have their own platforms they don't have google instagrams band youtube etc so yeah i had a great team andrew and films

in beijing who who really helped support set all of this up and we were translating and was there a certain point in time knowing these people going with you they're like hey bro i'm done you're on your own and was that kind of weird like when the crowds yeah yeah now you're back to being yourself again yeah yourself again that's it the second half of the expedition it was okay so it's coming across many people but the first half oh man the first half it got quite difficult yeah it was lonely at times it was boring like the hiking i don't really it sounds funny i don't really particularly enjoy that the hiking the dressing the walking but that's what you chose to do for a whole year. I know, right? I can get pretty boring.

Well, if you eat porridge every day, you're like, I don't really like porridge. That's it. It's actually, it's the survival, it's the challenges, and it's the people you meet along the way. So did you ever have a point where you had large groups of people, but then not? Yeah, quite often. I think the largest we had was about 35 or 40 people. And then afterwards they went away? Afterwards they went away. I was like, back on the grind, quite often. I think the largest we had was about 35 or 40 people. And then afterwards they went away? Afterwards they went away. I was like back on the grind, pushing forward. That must be the weird part.

A bunch of people join in with you and then they're gone. That's it. And then you're still trudging. Yeah, and you've got to keep going, get some Joe Rogan podcast on the earphones as a maker. There's only 290 days to go. Look on the bright side. Yeah, that's it.

And the first part was more so, because the second half there was lots of people it was very interactive the first half like i had a uk photographer fly out um martin lyons and he joined me he was supposed to join me for two weeks but there was a terrifying landslide pretty much was it just blocked the way and there was only two options to cross and again you know this isn't his profession that's not what he does he's a photographer so he's coming to my world and he's you know seeing these two options either one could go terribly wrong you're dropping a hell of a distance and you're straight into the yangtze river so he was supposed to join me for two weeks but he ended up going back on day number one after six hours just because the danger of trying to cross it and so that for my mindset having company

for two weeks of a good friend of mine as well from the uk i could speak i can converse and communicate with to then having no one back to my own it's still in the wild side of china still bears still wolves and i'm solo so that hit me hard i was like are you keeping a journal in your tent at night yeah i would actually stick to i did on the previous expeditions. With this one, I stuck to voice memos because it would capture my thoughts, my feelings, my emotions.

And so I was, especially for the book, I was capturing as much as I possibly could. And you're doing this with your phone? Doing this with the phone, yeah. Were you worried

about dropping your phone and losing everything? I was. I was. I would try, each city I came across, I just tried to back everything up. With Wi-Fi?

Especially with like the,. With Wi-Fi? Yeah, Wi-Fi. What are you allowed to use over there? Do you have to use an Android phone on their system, a Chinese system? No, no, we were okay. I just took my iPhone. I was connected to all of their social media, of course. I had my own bank account, transactions, all of that with China.

So I was very much on the system. You can't use Twitter or Instagram over there? No, you can't. You is that oh virtual private network that's it yes but i thought it meant was like one of their apps so what are their apps that you're allowed to use what's their social media so they have like weibo which is kind of like an instagram okay they have a wechat which is kind of wechat's clever it's kind of like a whatsapp merged Facebook. So are you having to translate all of their comments, like when they write things? Oh, when they write? Yeah, I can. But sometimes there's too many you can't.

You've got to open it up on the VPN, open up the Google, translate it. I would just send it to the team. The team would actually do most of the posting for me. I'd send it to the UK team to post on the international social media website. Oh, so you could send them that post and then they could put it on Instagram or Twitter? That's it, yeah. I would send them like a voice memo or a message of text,

what to say. Was there ever an issue with the Chinese government that you were doing that through a third party, that you were somehow or another getting the information out into the real internet? Not so much, no, because even the satellite that we had to carry, I carried like a Navarino satellite Began system, if you like, and that we had to carry i carried like a navarino satellite um vegan system if you like and that we had to register with the government and he had to sign

off so they knew what i had with me and it was with that satellite that i was able to send to the beijing team they would forward on to the uk team and from there we were able to make it one of the world's most interactive firsts did they have any concern at all about you using the regular internet like instead of just using the chinese approved social media sites that you were also using the other ones that were international that's it using international and the in china did they have did they have an issue with that at all the chinese no not that i'm aware of no a lot of the chinese are also on instagram as well really yeah how do they do that vpn of course yeah so a lot of the chinese government tolerates that yeah i think there's only a certain amount of lockdown that they can they can have

that's interesting there's a lot of chinese travelers as well so they go to these foreign countries they yeah you know get the instagram the twitter they get woke they get woke yeah foreign countries so that that's got to be weird using their government approved social media that did it feel weird while you're using it yeah yeah i got so used to i think there was 10 or 11 different social networks that i was on it was mainly my team so there was just too much you know do they have more over there than we do over here yeah i'd say so oh and they're well connected their phone is just like an extension is Is it different? In what way? In terms of, like, do they have different apps that they use more often

or different things in their phones? Yeah, they have their own apps, so they have everything that we have, but converted, just different. Yeah. Now, we have an issue in this country with Huawei and a lot of these Chinese companies, you can't even buy a Huawei phone anymore over in America. But the ones that they sell over in China are super sophisticated.

Yeah, that's it. They're like the top of the food chain phones right now. Yeah, big time. And the cameras as well. Yeah. Because that's what all of the Chinese love as well, to be able to take good photos, good videos. And that is just an instant sell of the camera that's come

with that phone yeah they've blocked them from google though this is where it gets really interesting with me that's why i'm asking google no longer lets them use google apps so you can't use the google play store so you have to either sideload apps you could sideload some apps or you have to get the huawei version of these apps so i I'm like, I wonder if what, like from the United States trying to stop them from taking over and they're worried that it's a branch of the government and they're going to get their hands in all these different enterprises and businesses and they'll be able to spy on everything

and extract information because they can do that with their Huawei devices. I think that's how it, yeah. But it's interesting that I wonder if leaving them out of the system will make them create a system that's better and they don't even need our system anymore it's almost better to like yeah you know i think that's the way it's going you know you they don't have google but they have baidu baidu is just like you but they won't control it more they'll have whatever their version is of of wikipedia but it's all government control information now they got so many good i think they've got an app as well like a delivery app where if the guy is like one minute late you can throw a complaint in and then it's free

delivery costs pennies as it is one minute yeah so sometimes you'll call i'm gonna be a minute late is it okay can you not phone in because he won't get paid then. Oh, wow. It's a deadline. Yeah, and like even the bullet trains, they're so advanced. The bullet trains are like leaving on the second, let alone the minute, a couple of seconds before the minute, if anything,

they're just so sufficient. And you see that everything's in-house. They've got things cogging over there. It's made in China. It's almost like they don't need the rest of the world. That's the scary thing, you know. But it's, again, a pleasant place to be. I had my friend, Martin Barrington, who's here as well,

say that because he joined me on Mission Yangtze. He had this idea that maybe it might be a little bit more suppressed. And when he joined me, it was like, wow, everyone's happy. Everyone's doing their Tai Chi, dancing. Everyone's active. Really? There's a strong sense of community. And what part of China was this? over all over so do you think that we in america have a misconception of what it's

like to be chinese yeah yeah not not just in the us uk as well i think i think most countries yeah do you think it's because we don't communicate or because their language is so different they seem so different because they're you know they're all the way over there like what is it yeah i think it's just because it's so locked off isn't it you know it's they're locked off the grid they don't really shout about what they're doing like right now that we were saying before the amount of solar panels wind farms they sent like i think 19 000 soldiers out to plant trees but all of that they're not shouting to get attention they're just doing it and so i sometimes see that our china aren't doing enough but on the inside when i'm over in china i see it all you know like whoa we

didn't know about this so i i you know i'm to to blame as well before i went to china i thought maybe it's going to be the same but that's why i go to these places you know get out there explore its interior meet the people of the country and uh yeah it's a pleasant place to be for sure that's pretty badass man they get a totally different view of a country than what most people do and to do it for a full year. Do you think that's going to be a place you go back and visit now? Yeah, 100%. I think it took off so well. I had such immense support there that it would be a shame not to continue it.

So I will be going back. Me and the teams out there are already looking at next ideas. I'm sure you are. So is that how it works? Like how much time do you take when you're done walking for a year? How much time do you take before you go,

okay, now what? You barely know. So as soon as I got back from Mission Yangtze, I had an Asia tour. So I was straight back out there, Korea, Singapore, Myanmar, and back out to China

doing lectures. I've been out there four times already.apore uh myanmar and back out to china doing lectures i've been out there four times already it's going to be aired on cctv the documentary and yeah i'm just tedx talks as well so i'm all i've been back four or five times already since i finished only four or five months ago every month i'm pretty much back out there when did you do the first one the first one was the first one mongolia so the first year was mongolia that was 2013 2013 and how long did that take that took 78 days so it all so it all pretty much started you know living in wales there you know i went from high school i went on to college to do an outdoor education course uh i was working various different so my first job what was it 14

15 fish and chip shop, $4 an hour, grinding away. And then I went into waiting on. Then I went into lifeguarding because I heard that the lifeguarding money for a young teenager, 16, 17 is pretty well paid. And then it was from there that I started to save up as much money as I can,

got rid of my little jalopy of a car, bought myself a little bicycle, cycle to and from work, just saving the pennies and eventually left at age 19 and the first place i went was china uh great war i was only there for two weeks i left china when i look back on the map i thought china's a big place i barely even touched the surface you know i need to get myself back there but after that it was just various reckless extremely low budget adventures held around Southeast Asia.

When I say low-budget, it's like buying a bicycle for $10, finding string on the side of the road that we would use to strap the rucksack onto the back with. No pump, no puncture repair kit. We're about to cycle over Cambodia, Vietnam, over 1,100 miles. Why wouldn't you get a puncture repair kit? Just saving the pennies we actually got a tent that was about i know man we got a tent that was five dollars found out the hard way it wasn't waterproof just really just silly things you made it on the bike though made

it the bikes no 17 times until i was with my friend matt norman you know both i named mine little elder a ridiculous and i think the bikes may be on my Instagram. Ridiculous little bicycle. Basket on the front, a little pink bell. Off we went, both of us. Bikes broke 17 times in total. How'd you get them fixed? We would rock up at the locals and rock up, see if they can help.

And they would fix it. Really hospitable. Did somebody have to translate to you that? Did you have a translator with you? No. No. So we were just out there. We you know rock up with a smile i think smiling is the biggest communication sign isn't it you don't see you as a threat the barriers are down i'd point at the problem and then they would help me right if you walk in like a dick with a flat tire yeah that's not good yeah that's it exactly yeah yeah so we just rock up even saw us out which was by

dogs hit by mopeds dodged by lorries so that was the first away from home adventure i'd say that that was the catalyst you said dodged by lorries yeah what does that mean that the roads were extremely sketchy okay enough only to translate and they would be like coming straight down the at the mountain pass. Almost like the brakes weren't working properly. We're squeezing and it's going past us. We're like, we need to get off this road, man. We're panicking, trying to cycle faster.

But after that, we just found my niche, found my passion, thought, wow, this is great. It's cheap, it's reckless. But after that, we were in Thailand. We hooked up with a local guy that said, we can cross the border into Myanmar to a community it's like a Burmese hill tribe and we can learn jungle survival so we did, we went there

and this group living out there in the mountainous jungle region of the border of Tibet and Myanmar they were teaching us berries that act as a mosquito repellent you can pop them, rope them in your skin it'll repel the mosquitoes they were teaching us berries that act as a mosquito repellent. You can pop them, rope them in your skin. It'll repel the mosquitoes. They were teaching us how to hunt, how to gather, what berries or what leaves were edible, what plants weren't edible, how to build rafts and shelters using natural resources, normally bamboo, banana leaves as a

bed or as a slanted shelter for the rain rainwater to run off it was amazing we just continued these sort of adventures around southeast asia hopped over to australia found some work as an australia power and gas i think it was knocking on people's doors i thought this isn't me this what not what i'm traveling for i'm in a suit now and you know um i remember i was shadowing my boss we walked up to this drive and there was this guy at the end of the drive doing all of these pull-ups. At that point, I'd become quite unhealthy, put a bit more weight on. I wasn't sticking to the train. I wasn't sticking to a good diet.

And he jumped down. He wasn't interested in the Australian pound gas. But he mentioned something like, yeah, I respect you guys out here, 40 plus degrees Celsius, 108 Fahrenheit, knocking on people's doors in the suits trying to sell them a good deal and one of them my boss replied something cringeworthy said something like yeah but we get paid a lot of this you know I drive a skyline so unnecessary and the guy replied the guy who's doing the pull-ups it's not all about the money it's the lifestyle too and all of a sudden that was a slap in the face for me that's why I started to travel so the next day I quit the job

got myself a little bike with my friend again and we just carried on cycled so you think your boss saying something douchey that sort of leaned you in the right direction yeah i was i was thinking for a while this isn't this isn't me you know this isn't you know it's foolish yeah yeah i was doing something that it wasn't wasn't right you know but his behavior is yeah oh i know his behavior that was the sort of because i was looking at this guy and i was like i'm not stood on his side i'm stood with the this is the way that i'm going this is my boss right and he would eat like fast food every single morning you know kfc and i was just like this isn't how i'm sometimes you just need someone to say something like that right exactly yeah

little nudges and i've had a lot of those little nudges along the way. If it wasn't for that nudge, I don't know, maybe I would have just continued and no idea. Yeah, I think we all encountered those. Yeah, for sure. So you said you got robbed that one time where they stole your solar panel. That's it? So, yeah. It seems like you would get robbed a lot.

Madagascar. Madagascar was more sketchy, I would say. What was that like? We'll come to Madagascar. But yeah, so just before, after that Australia cycle and before Mongolia, it's like this links us into the Mongolia. It's actually then working in Thailand

because the money was so low. I had to find work as a master scuba diving instructor. But I was also doing the Muay Thai out in Thailand, which was awesome to see their discipline, you know, their ankle beating their shins. Had you ever done it before? No,

I come from a boxing background, so I was doing boxing in Wales. Did you know how to kick at all? Nope. So I went, I learned the hard way. I learned such the hard way actually that, you know,

I had the boxing stance, left foot in front, and the Muay Thai stance is more square on, it's different. And they just jacked my leg up instantly. Jacked it up. Just kicked. They didn't need to get into no fists with me. It was just jacked my leg up.

The next day I had to cancel work. I couldn't climb out of the ladder with all of my scuba diving kit because I couldn't bend my leg. And from there I just corrected. I was training five, six times a day, killing my nerve endings on the shin. just loved it i had a stadium fight did you yeah which stadium it was in kotow a little island in kotow so a guy sailed from mainland over to kotow and the winner the loser you can make money of course you know so that's kind of my way of paying the rent if i won you leave with money if you lose you leave with nothing really yeah and you've got the locals around the ringside sort of banging down on the canvas, holding money up.

They're either pointing at you or they're pointing at your opponent. How do you know when you take a fight like this that it's well-matched? Yeah, well, you don't really. So that was my first stadium fight, and apparently this guy, my opponent, that was his sixth. But we looked similar height we he was he looked to be maybe more experienced because of the fighting but hadn't been fighting since a young age like a lot of the tires have you know they start from such a young age as you know

and um so yeah it was a little bit on my my heart i was just like right i've done my training it was about how many five six months in So that was pretty fast, you know, straight to there. And you said you had boxed before that? I had boxed before that. Had you competed? No, not competed. So it was just amateur fighting. Look at you.

Yeah. That was in, yeah, that's Madagascar. That's actually just playing around with my guide. But, oh, I love it, yeah. So how many fights did you have over there? It was probably about eight club fights, but only one stadium fight. The one stadium fight was the big one, you know. You won that, paid for about two, three months worth of accommodation.

It was good. I needed it. You don't earn much money as a scuba diver in Thailand. So you won your stadium fight? Won the stadium fight, yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. What made you stop?

Mongolia. So I loved this lifestyle. I was doing it for like two years, like. That's awesome. Yeah. Where made you stop? In Mongolia. So I loved this lifestyle. I was doing it for like two years, like living in Thailand for two years. But I was like, I missed trekking the Himalayas. I missed my time with the community, the hill tribe in Myanmar, cycling Vietnam. So I was like, I need to do something, you know, big,

something that'll take me to a country that I'm very unfamiliar with. And that brings in Mongolia. So that was the first world first record. Not the first to attempt, though. A guy from Britain had attempted on three occasions. Unfortunately, evacuated just before the halfway point. Tell people what the record is.

So it was the first to walk solo and unsupported across Mongolia's length. So it was from west to east. And when you say unsupported, does that mean there's no one monitoring you at all that's right so you're you're on your own you're trekking by apart from the you know the people that you see along the way the communities unsupported meaning everything that i needed for to make the journey from start to to end point was in the trailer that i was pulling and it was a bog standard trailer built in a family friend's back garden. So you said this trailer weighed 200 and what pounds? Yeah, 120 kilograms, which I think is 260 pounds.

So here you are pulling this thing with a four-part harness. First of all, that's hard. That's hard to do. Yeah. Is it a flat road like that? So this is entering the Gobi Desert. So it's three weeks over the Altai Mountains, five weeks across the Gobi Desert, and a's three weeks over the Altai Mountains, five weeks across the Gobi Desert,

and a further three weeks up through the Mongolian steppe. So the Altai Mountains were excruciating, you know. It's no suspension, of course, on the trailer. Even one little pebble or stone gets in the way, and, you know, you're struggling to... This is a sandstorm that I came across. It was actually one of the smaller ones. What? That's a small one? That's the small one, across. It was actually one of the smaller ones.

What? That's a small one? That's the small one, yeah. It's so painful as well. Oh, I'm sure. Have you ever been in a sandstorm? No. I can only imagine. It sort of picks up the stones and grits,

a whipping effect. Well, I could imagine it could be deadly. You can't see anything, right? I've seen some of them that roll into Iraq. There's soldiers that have taken videos of them and put them up on social media it's crazy it looks like something out of a biblical music so I'm movie rather yeah you see this scary scary giant clouds of dirt yeah have you ever seen those Jimmy sandstorm pull up

sandstorm in Iraq it's it's some of the people in the distance yeah you see it coming yeah and everybody's just got a hunker down. Yeah, that's it. Just ride it out. Yeah, like I was able to. Look at that. There you go. That video is fucking bananas. Al-Asad Air Force Base.

And as soon as it hits the wind, the disorientation, there's darkness inside and you can't hear anything. And you're going to get in your tent and you're going to have to breathe through that. Yeah, there wasn't one big enough, I would say, that I had to hide. It was still big, but I carried on walking because sometimes it would just come out of nowhere.

So it was more like this without the wall that you can see and the distance coming towards you like that video. Go back on that, Jamie. This is how you see the storm overtakes them them and it literally kills the day and turns it into night yeah because it blocks out the sun this is where it's really crazy because you see this guy standing there and the storm starts to overtake him and everything starts to get dim and then after look at that look at this difference in the color so fast changing as well yes and now they're in the middle of it and now it literally blocks out the sun they're in the center of that fucking horrific storm that guy's just walking around breathing

yeah so that looks more like a dust dust storm where it's um so kind of similar but the sand it moves it depends on the speed of the wind but with a sandstorm you've literally got to cover up so you saw me with a mask with either wear gloves had to wear a fleece it's just pounding your skin almost like sandpaper you know so it is uh how long that lasts they would last about 15 20 minutes do you keep walking or do you stand still i carried on walking yeah i did carry on walking you can see where you're going yeah as long as you've got the heading on the compass just keep going keep going yeah but you're also following a track so this was the b so i almost actually lost my life in the goby desert because i was trying to follow a track um and the track is like your lifeline if you're not

following if you're off the track it could be hundreds of miles the track is where there's a water source there's a well always alongside but the goby took me five weeks to get across so week after week i was suffering slowly dehydration heat exhaustion slipping into heat stroke which is usually fatal at this big 20 liter water container sort of remember just rationing my last remaining dribbles of water if you like um i was hallucinating got such to a bad state one of the water wells was dry and now i had to push on to the next one the hope that i had water it was a mix of hard sand or gravel and soft sand so now you can imagine pulling the wheels through soft sand they were just digging it's like pulling a concrete block through hell oh my god yeah and i was just i got really skinny i got really weak the weeks went by i was disorientated i was hallucinating i was sort of could feel my organs drying up if

you like it was at the point i just continued to rest under my shells it was 40 45 degrees celsius no breeze no natural shelter the only shelter i could find here was was underneath the trailer i remember just lying there on my back for about 45 minutes to an hour thinking what i've done you know i didn't have the evacuations the previous guy had. No helicopter's going to come and rescue me, you know. The only backup that I had was my logistics manager, my fixer in the capital city. I needed to allow at least three to four days for him to get to me and at least another day or two for him to get me out to safety.

Or I knew that there was a community which 100% had water. It was about three or four days trek away. And I continued and I pretty much passed the option of pickup at that stage. The only way to make it was pushing on those extra few days to the community. But again, four days, it was just too much for me. I was in agony, man, absolute agony. All of the thoughts, all of the feelings. But that's when I've always been a big believer in

breaking my goals down i couldn't visualize the three or four days of course but what i could visualize is 100 meters i could see 100 meters so i was just if i can if i can rest for five minutes not an hour and walk for 100 meters and then rest because that's all i could manage before i was just in a mess hide under my trailer again for another five minutes. If I can continue to do this, maybe by breaking my goals down, after four days of 100 meters, I can make it to the community. And I did just about.

It was off the radars. My urine was almost black. I was in a bad way. Your what was black? My urine. Urine. Yeah. Oh my God.

So you probably had severe dehydration. Yeah, I was in an awful way. I was lucky to make it. If that community wasn't there, if it had been abandoned, if the locals weren in an awful I was lucky to make it if that community wasn't there if it had been abandoned if the locals weren't there I definitely wouldn't have

wouldn't have made it now when you walk into a community like this how many people were talking like how big is the community talking probably five six huts maybe

five or six huts 20 30 people wow just in the desert yeah and you just show up some weird white dude yeah yeah

pulling a sled. Pulling a big, yeah, trailer behind him. And then you're like, yeah, I've been doing this. There you go. So that's it. Oh, my God, dude. So with this, this is before I started feeling bad. So with that, I had to run ahead of myself, set up my camera on a tripod, put it on a video or either a timer.

And with this one, it was a video because I was trying to show how difficult it was to pull the trailer through the sand. So it was leaning forward. It was 90 degrees and each step was agonizing. How many miles in the soft sand did you do? So it was five weeks in the Gobi Desert, but not five weeks worth of soft sand. I'd say maybe a week solid, but scattered over the five weeks. Folks, we're looking at a photo on Instagram instagram of ash pulling this sled leaning into it like dude you must kick ass at tug of war all you have to do is just go backwards just think about think about how much time you spent dragging

a fucking sled your your legs must be made out of steel it was painful it was painful you probably never got a chance to recover, right? Yeah. Because you're basically lifting a little bit of weights every day. And you feel each step is just a run of lactic acids, you know. It's horrible. So this is why I was just resting awful. Did you worry about rhabdomyelosis?

No. No, I was. Look, you see, I was still training in the Gobi Desert. I was trying to keep my mind set, you know. What were you doing there? Oh, you were doing sit-ups? Yeah, I would try to stay regimented. You know, I have no military background, of course,

but the mindset, I was trying to stay focused. I would do my push-ups, my sit-ups, always been keen into the fitness. It's funny, actually, even when I came back from Thailand to attempt this, I moved back in with my parents. I had no money, of course. They allowed me back in with them, which was great. And I didn't even have money for a gym membership. So I had my uncle drop me off a tractor tire,

a local sledgehammer, worked on like a bar, bit of calisthenics, and that's what I was doing. Out in the rain, hardcore conditions of Wales, flipping the tractor tire, beating it with a sledgehammer, trying to prepare myself, not physically, but mentally. You know, when you're in you as you know your quilt cover five o'clock in the morning you can hear it's howling with wind rain outside the last thing you want to do is go out and train but i wouldn't have that option in

mongolia so again you know that's saying um by putting yourself in more uncomfortable scenarios the more comfortable you become i was just trying to do that so did you develop some sort of a workout program like you have to stick to a specific routine what was your routine my routine was just full-on calisthenics so it'd be with that with the mongolia i was training for two three hours a day uh five days a week so it was i was i think actually on the instagram the highlights there's a section fitness with a few different clips um and it's yeah push-ups sit-ups um uh pull up uh flipping the tractor tire sledgehammer work i was working on ticking off all components like flexibility agility balance speed reaction time coordination and i knew that my inner core was going to be crucial because pulling the trailer if you come

over a over a stone um you're literally your hips are being pulled left and right so you need to be crucial because pulling the trailer if you come over a over a stone um you're literally your hips are being pulled left and right so you need to be agile enough to be able to you know push on through that that's interesting about the core i didn't think of it that way yeah the core was like all of these sort of pull-ups really helped as well for the um now did you have someone coordinating this with you did you get some advice from like a physiologist or a personal trainer i didn't know i'm sort of just self-taught yeah watch some clips on youtube through a lot of it through trial and error i was training since 13 14 you know um based a lot around yeah calisthenics and the martial arts help as well i took a lot from the muay thai

and still implemented that into the into the training regime i'm just i love it but body movement it fascinates me i love the training i get super ratty as well if i don't train you know i've got a even training today in la went over to the uh to the pier got some rings there i was straight oh yeah yeah lost a lot of weight so i'm trying to you know put some weight back on me as well um i love it and the fitness is a crucial part without the fitness is a crucial part without the fitness there's no way i would have made these these expeditions i can only imagine i mean just seeing you pull that sled oh my god that looks like hell and the fact you're doing 100 yards rest for five minutes 100 yards i mean just amazing that your body didn't break

down just from overexertion amazing what the human body's capable of in general isn't it yeah and i had huge fears and massive doubts before this expedition and that's sort of my message out to everyone is you know you're far more capable than you than you think you always see little doubts into your mind don't you and that's what i was doing until mongolia i was like you know don't have your fear i think fear is healthy um but doubt can be toxic on it Did you get tested for rhabdo? If your piss is that color, you're that dehydrated. I think I did. When I got back,

I was slightly worried. Just my organ, what I was feeling with my organs, almost like they were drying up. Just needed to check that everything was still functioning fine and everything was good. The body recovers fast

and I was only 24, I guess then, 23. How much weight did you lose by the end of that? and i was i was only 24 i guess then 23. what what how much weight did you lose by the end of that so that was 78 days and i lost 13 kilograms in 78 days which is like that's what we're talking about earlier that's it so yeah so i lost 13 kilograms as well with mission yanks but that spread over a year so that was like very concentrated lost a lot i was having a ration pack at 5 30 in the morning i would this was two weeks of the gobi desert or a week and a half where i'd wake up at five i'd have a ration pack at 5 30 and i'd go a whole 14 hours before i had my my next ration pack at about 7 30 no food and

burning insane amount of calories yeah how many calories do you need a day just isn't it like at least 2000 calories if you're doing like nothing, if you're just in it, you know? Yeah, probably close to 2,000. Isn't it? It depends, though, on your body weight. If you're just sitting around, obviously it'd be less than someone who's moving around,

but everybody's varies. That's a crazy thing to do, to slowly starve yourself while you're pulling a sled through stiff sand. Peanut butter, cheese on toast was in my mind the whole time. I'm sure anything, just food. Get it in there, man. Yeah, but, you know, the guys, when I rocked up to that community, super friendly, really looked after me.

Oh, that's nice. Yeah. And you didn't speak their language? I didn't speak their language. You know, one funny story, actually, in the Altai Mountains, it was a Kazakh family, so I'd always try to eat and rest up with them where I could. It was a Kazakh family in there, sort of hot in actually, in the Altai Mountains, it was a Kazakh family. So I'd always try to eat and rest up with them where I could. It was a Kazakh family in their sort of hut in the middle of the Altai,

rocked up 45 minutes inside, sipping on their chai, their tea, eating whatever they gave me. And towards the end, I was like, right, it's been 40, 45 minutes. I need to make a move now. And just as I was about to say that, I looked at the guy, the man of the hut. It was a man and his wife, a girl. He's looking at me very weird. You know, eyes slightly squinted, slightly closed like he's thinking of something, you know.

He looks over to his wife or his girlfriend and he looks back to me, looks back at his wife and then all of a sudden right there and then in hand gestures offered me his wife. Whoa. Right there like that. That's sort of ancient. Does he do this? No, he just pointed.

When you say hand gestures, just point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He pointed to the bed and then pointed at us and I didn't know what to do. Whoa. I was like, whoa.

Was she hot? No, not really. I was trying to get rid of her. That's it. I was trying to say, she's yours now, bro. It was awkward silence for about 10, 15 seconds.

We were all exchanging looks. She was looking at me. I was looking. I just put on a fake laugh. A couple of seconds later, he laughed with me, and I made a swift exit. She continued breastfeeding a child. So she was breastfeeding while he wanted you to take a piece.

Yeah. And I was like, is it one of those things that this actually happened, or will I leave? And they're having a big joke right now and they're laughing away at the fact that, you know, you just never know, do you? I'm going to guess if they live in tents in the middle of nowhere and there's five tents and it takes forever to get there,

those people are probably freaks. They're probably doing some weird freak shit. They probably have no attachment whatsoever to sexuality. Or maybe it's like you're here don't you like to be really hospitable like that's super hospitable you know but you do hear old school exploration i've heard it before but i didn't think in this generation this day and age that'd still be going on well they probably live in like old school mongolians did yeah you know they're just a little wild sexually right yeah in the far west so that was a kazakh family so they would have come over the

border which is like mountain you've got the outside mountains almost separate so this was it was in kazakhstan this was west mongolia west but there's a heavy population of kazakh they're the ones that actually hunt you know the eagles riding their horse they got the eagle perched on their hand so foxes wolves how different did they look there they look like the kaz Kazakh is more of an area that's closer to what? So Kazakh is right on the border. So you've got Mongolia sandwiched between Russia up north, China down south. Because just the name Kazakh sounds Russian. Yeah, and then directly on the west, you've got Kazakhstan.

Ah, okay. But yeah, I think that's the second largest line a first largest landlocked country in the world mongolia is the second largest landlocked country in the world dude and you're walking through this yeah so gangster and that was my first trip there as well so i didn't have the money to do a recce like i did with china and madagascar i'd never been to the country i rock out with a with trailer. When you show up at someone's tent, do you offer them something for food? Like, how do you work that out? I had a piece of paper translated.

It described who I was, what I was doing, why I'm here. And you're hoping they can read in the middle of the note. Yeah, that's it. Hoping. And some, you're right, some couldn't. But again, you know, you see a guy looking a mess you know big beard down looking in pain looking hungry looking skinny you pretty much know straight away you need shelter food water so they did every time and they were they were so friendly counting on people being nice to you

that's amazing yeah and that's all i've ever done you know i just it's a human right i love it i love people they're just so so friendly so hospitable even the uk cycling the uk is when i was 20 i was raising funds for the nspcc um it was illegal sometimes to camp in a city so i go on knocking someone's door knock knock knock do you mind if i set up my my tent in your front garden or back garden please wow only had the door slammed on me once maybe it was an old guy probably felt friendly he just looked at me slam went back inside okay archie bunker yeah for some families yeah they were they were fine and that's amazing that you that but did you have any funds like could you give them money for food if they weren't willing to give it to you for free yeah what did i take so i took paper and pens uh for education purposes

they love if you can give their child, like, paper, pens, their kids would just be playing with that, you know? So you had, like, a barter thing going on? Yeah, almost, but sometimes they just wouldn't accept it. They just plainly, simply, like, no. I had that a lot in China as well. But you didn't have any money? Did I have cash?

Yeah, I had cash with me. But you never offered anybody any money for food oh no did i know yeah no maybe i did maybe i did yeah but they would just again they wouldn't accept it wow especially if i was sleeping the night i would 100 i'd take it and they'd be like no no they'd stuff it down my trailer they you know yeah and then i learned that was it then i learned that it was offensive to offer them money uh because you're in their environment and they know for themselves if they see i had a guy once run run me down on a horseback from the distance coming at me at speed and it was all just to

give me a bottle to take away with with tea inside so i try again trying to offer you came a distance i've been watching you for 10 minutes. Coming from a distance, from a distance, little girl, just to give me hot water, tea. So, yes, I learned that it was offensive to give them money. It's almost saying that I'm better than you. I have money. You don't, but they're rich in life. They've got all of the livestock, the products they want to be given,

and you're in their harsh environment. So I was like, wow, that's cool. So that's why I stuck to the paper and pens. Wow. What a life-changing experience that must have been yeah walking through a place where you don't know any language at all meeting these people and having them take you in and feed you yeah yeah it was incredible did it renew your faith in people at all what's that did it renew your faith in people it did you know You know, I've never not. Yeah, enhanced,

I would say. It enhanced, yeah, everywhere I, everywhere, all of the different countries and the travels that I've done, the people have just been

absolutely amazing and I'm always trying to give back in return. Sometimes they'll take it which makes me happy. Sometimes they're just not interested and they're like,

no, I don't want any money. In China, there was one that they gave me loads of food. They gave me um accommodation they then gave me breakfast they gave me three days worth of food to take away with me along the yangtze and they just wouldn't accept my money wouldn't accept anything then i'm like no man you know all the best wow uh incredible madagascar was

a little a little bit different madagascar was a beautiful country but down south it's very impoverished, people suffering with malnutrition, malaria is big out there I caught malaria, almost died from it You caught malaria? I caught malaria, yeah So you weren't on malaria medication either? Yeah, I was on malaria medication I came across a community

that had suffering with bubonic plague such an ancient disease and they pretty much said I had two guides with bubonic plague, such an ancient disease. And they pretty much said, I had two guides with me at this time, so they were able to translate. They pretty much said, stay in your tent. You know, we've had relatives die.

We've got the suffering with the plague here. That instantly made me feel unnerving, on edge, you know. There's rats and dogs running around. Go away, go away. Zipped in. So they would do the cooking and they bought me this eel. Smelled a little bit funky, but we were hungry were hungry me and my two guides we eat the eel and for the next few days we were suffering with diarrhea um and i believe that the anti-malarial pills they only cover you up to 80

anyway it was going in one way out of the other and i didn't have the full 80 percent um protecting me from the strain of malaria. I caught malaria. And it threw me back to the Gobi Desert, to the symptoms and signs I was suffering with. I felt like I was just suffering with dehydration. And I was getting weaker and weaker. I was losing a lot of weight. I was vomiting.

And it got to a point where days went by that I was like, this isn't dehydration. This is a disease. I'm suffering with something bad. I pushed on, made it to a community that I was like, this isn't dehydration. This is a disease. I'm suffering with something bad. I pushed on, made it to a community that I knew had overland transport. How far did you walk with malaria? I think I probably walked four days or so with malaria. Holy shit. Yeah, it was brutal.

But at that time, I had no idea, right? So I'm like, I'm dehydrated. So I was just drinking, drinking, thinking I'm going to get better soon. Made it to the community, arrived at one of the nearest hospitals, and she said you potentially made it in time, potentially a few hours before you slipped into a coma. And that's when I realized, and then it was the deadliest strain of malaria. It's falciparum, so you've got four different strains of malaria.

You've got the deadliest, and it usually kills you within 24 hours. But I believe I lasted five days because I was taking the anti-malarials. And then that one, you can eradicate fully out of your system. Now, when you're on the anti-malaria medication and you're shitting yourself so it doesn't stay in your system,

are you taking more of it when you think you have it? No, I wasn't. I was scared to as well overdose because you can't, you know, you can't, you don't know how much is, you don't know how much is still in your system. So you can't just be taking it.

How much are you allowed to take of it? One pill a day, it was. See, that's what Justin Wren was saying that he experienced toxicity because he was taking five pills a day. Remember when Justin was talking about that? The anti-malarial doxycycline. Yeah. We actually researched that there's been problems with some troops that get on that anti-malaria medication and they get really sick from it. Yeah. And actually, doesn't it do something to your brain? Yeah.

Do you remember? I think that's the Malarone that you're talking about. Yes. That's like a strong dose, isn't it? What stuff are you on? What anti-malaria? I was on doxycycline. Doxycycline.

It says 80%. I think the Malarone. How do I say it? How do you say it? Malarone the marlone the marlone how do I say it how do you say it marlone marlone covers you about 100%

I think my dad was on that did I say it mefloquine mefloquine oh so that's a different one that's right so what's this

a stronger strain I don't know but he was on it and he's gotten it Justin he runs a charity called Fight for the Forgotten they build wells for the pygmies he's gotten it Justin He runs a charity Called Fight for the Forgotten

They build wells For the pygmies He's gotten it Three times Whoa And what strain Is that Maybe it wasn't the one

Yeah that was it man Was it Yeah that was it Yeah I remember him Talking about it Because the three lower strains You can actually remain Dormant in your system

That's what they said With him He got it again After he had it Malaria drug Causes brain damage That mimics ptsd fucking a malaria drug the drug the drug the drug yeah that's insane not even just the malaria which will fucking kill you before yeah i have heard of that before so i became i i pointed up with malaria no more uk after that because once i

contracted it, I was the lucky one to survive. And then as I pushed on, still had four months to go. I got it in month one of a five-month journey to walk south to north of Madagascar, somewhere to the eight highest mountains along the way. So it took 155 days, this journey did.

And it was 1,600 miles, slightly bigger than the Mongolia journey. And a lot of it was just machete in hand hacking through the jungle leeches dropping down spider bites hunting gathering you were hunting and gathering out there too yeah in the jungle yeah how do you know what you can gather the local so i have no military background at all doing this which is usually strange it's normally a military background to come in to do the survival but everything that i've learned i've've tried to get as much knowledge as I possibly can from the locals. So like the Myanmar hill community, Mongolia, how they survive, Madagascar,

what's edible, what isn't edible, how to build rafts, et cetera. So I always try to take a small percent. And that's what you can ever take because they're so knowledgeable when it comes to what they can eat, what they can gather, what they can't. You know, it's a lifetime, isn't it? So I just had to try to pick up as much as I could in a short space of time. But again, I was learning as we went. We were, yeah, doing some hunting, doing some gathering,

but we were losing weight. Yeah, there was three or four weeks of jungle territory further up north of the island and we had a photographer join us for that one um and it got to a point where they just hated it i did too it was the cyclone season we were covering we were walking about 14 hours a day and we would cover maybe three miles if we were lucky just just hacking through a sheer, dense jungle up and down mountains. One day we had to turn around and do a U-turn and walk three days back on ourself to find a different way up the mountain. No.

Horrible. Puts into perspective now when you do a U-turn in a car. I'm like, right, it's just a U-turn. Yeah, three days. Now, when you say gathering, you mean like stuff to eat? Stuff to eat. So how do you know what you say gathering, you mean like stuff to eat? Stuff to eat. So how do you know what you can eat and what's not going to kill you? Again, we had the local guides there.

So I had a local guide, Max, who was nails proper Bushman. We were collecting chilies. That's such a great English statement, nails proper. He was nails proper Bushman. You said that in America. What the fuck did you just say, man? Nails proper Bushman? What the fuck does that even mean? Nails proper bushman you said that in america what the fuck did you just say man nails proper bushman what the fuck does that even mean proper proper bushman so like what kind of stuff did you guys gather what did you eat a lot of fruit a lot of plant-based um

coconuts mangoes oh we got excited oh so you see wild mango trees yeah yeah we just scramble on up there throw them down ten rec the little rodents kind of like hedgehogs without the spikes. They burrow underneath trees. I see it took a shelter with us. There you go. Look at that. And there's Max there. That's wild, man.

Making this little campfire. Yeah. Cooking under the shelter. So that was the shelter that you used most of the time? That was it, yeah. So you slashed it down the trees? We did have a tent as well, but yeah, depending on the weather, we just get this one out. He's sleeping with a lot of creepy coolies and whatnot, but nothing really venomous in Madagascar.

Are you sure? Got the boa constrictor, the snake, but again. Fuck. Yeah. You have a machete, right? Did you keep that bitch gripped in your hand? Got a machete everywhere that I went. Yeah, we got lost a lot of the time.

There's a foe of me and Max trying to find our way. The team just got demotivated. They just didn't have it in them. And I was the same. That's me all broken there with blood, got the leech bite. But again, like with anything, you know, I think no matter what you do, you can't always be motivated in life.

But you can be disciplined. And that was the difference. We stayed disciplined and we focused on the little steps, 50 meters, rest, 50 meters and rest. I bet nobody appreciates a comfortable bed like you. Oh, man. They are. And everything's so convenient.

I get back home, I switch the kettle on, I can take a shower, I can do whatever. It's going to toast, push it down, it's going to pop up when it's done. When you're out there, you've got to stay alert, you've got to stay focused. Attention to the smaller details, but back at home, home everything's just so and you do appreciate it more you get back and it's like wow we don't know how comfortable we actually have it well your your gratitude for that stuff must be off the charts yeah just from those experiences yeah but so yeah no i do suffer as well sometimes i take it for granted after a few months of being back you get used to it yeah i have to throw myself back to the Malagasy jungle and be like look yeah it's soft

could be worse that's fine how many so how many all told of these crazy journeys have you been on whoa over the past

decade now so the three big ones of course the Mongolia Madagascar and the biggest one the most ambitious was Mission Yangtze

I wanted to see a photo of the Yangtze River. You were talking about how beautiful it is. Yeah, I think on the Insta highlights, you've got 2019 it starts with. But you can see it goes right from west, goes down south, curls back up and ends in Shanghai and East China Sea. So there's these three big giant ones, but then there's some other ones? Yeah, so there's the Vietnam-Cambodia cycle.

There's trekking the Himalayas, which was a scary one because we wanted to trek the Himalayas. They said that we needed to buy a permit, but we didn't believe that we did. It was like a way to get money out of it. We were shoestring budget travelers. We were like, nah, we can do this. Let's go. It got worse. It got to a point where it was like, you know, you can't go.

The Pakistan army roamed the border of Indianian himalayas and pakistan himalayas he said you go on your knees if you come across the pakistan army put your your your thumbs behind your ears and say allah harigbi repeatedly and that like sort of means allah have mercy on me so it's at that point we were like should we trick the himalayas so we almost failed with that one yeah yeah it was insane fuck so they taught you how to beg for mercy if we came across the military it's that much of an issue

I thought that was his way of trying to scare us to get us to pay for a permit that we didn't need how much was a permit I have no idea

I should know this it should be if it was reasonable I would say probably yeah we were such budget

it was crazy that's so crazy you got like little hammock hammock shops um in Vietnam as we were cycling sometimes we sleep in the hammock shop it would cost you about 20 cents for the night in a hammock shop hammock shop so you test the hammocks yeah that's a good deal great that hey yeah good sleep uh it's not hotel you don't have your toilets don't have any of that. So hammocks, if you're in a real woody area, that seems like not a bad option, right? Yeah. Did you get one?

No, we were only stuck to the hammock shots because we were on a bicycle. So we were on roads. So that wasn't necessarily. How much does a hammock weigh? Oh, you can get super light ones now. You can probably get one for a kilogram, maybe even, yeah, around a kilogram, I around a kilogram i'd say maybe even lighter yeah that would be a great way if as long as there's enough trees what a great way yeah you're screwed in the goby desert on you but uh you're taking away off the ground with all the creepy crawlies yeah yeah for sure did you get stung by any creepy crawlies

i did spiders spiders i was so when you're hacking through the jungle, you've got the jungle canopy. And the leeches, believe it or not, they go as a spider bite. Fuck, man. How do you know that that's okay? When it's happening, are you worried? I didn't feel it, you know, when it happened. Because as you're hacking through the jungle, you've got loads of bamboo shorts. And they all razor sharp. And they're stabbing you.

So you're just getting scratched everywhere. You've got leeches. At the nighttime, you take your top off and you've got to apply six, seven leeches off your body, flick them at the tent. You've got this bite which infected. There's a lot of aloe vera plants around that area though, so you can just rip off the aloe vera. Yeah, that looks really infected.

It looks like you got lit up. If you click on that photo with me standing on the rock. With the dragon? Can you notice anything weird about that image? You got a bird on your back? Gertude who's gertrude gertrude the chicken so in order to summit the highest mountain in madagascar you gotta bring a chicken you it's it's tradition you must take yourself a white cockerel protect it keep it alive and it protects you from the bad spirits and witches of the rainforest. The locals say, so I'm all about respecting the local culture, of course.

So you have to bring a chicken. How long? I took a chicken. How long are you carrying this chicken around? How many days? Two and a half weeks. Two and a half weeks. Oh my God, that's so crazy.

So you have to feed the chicken? You have to let it shit? Yeah, shat all in my bag, shat all over my tent. It would sleep on top of my tent. It wouldn't leave me. Became domesticated like a little dog. Became your buddy? Yeah, just followed me around everywhere.

Oh my God. Two and a half weeks, chirping in my ear, praying for a little bit of rain. Because when it started raining, he would tuck himself inside the bag. He wouldn't make noises. But can you imagine, 14 hours, you've got this chirping chicken on your shoulder. Now, is he just perched on your shoulder or do you have him strapped down? He's in the top compartment on the back. So you have him strapped in so he can't get away.

Zipped in. Yeah, he can't really get away. Oh, so he's like, what in the fuck is going on? Yeah, going through the jungle. So that's why we let him out a lot of the time. He'd just be running, trailing behind us. Wow. It was great.

And you've got to leave him on top of that mountain. So that was his freedom day. That is so ridiculous. He's just hanging around with you. Yeah, that was a couple of days in. Do you have video of this chicken hanging around with you? Do I? I don't.

Like, I do, but I don't know if it's on my Instagram. That is hilarious. But yeah, got lots of footage. You and your boy are just chilling with a chicken. There we go. By the way, that guy has, like, woman's dress shoes from the 1950s on. Yeah. What are those shoes?

Man, sometimes he'd walk barefoot. And it was only when i said you've literally missed a scorpion by a foot those sandals look like like a five-year-old girl would wear yeah they are right yeah yeah hilarious that was the the nails bushman oh look he didn't give a fuck he doesn't care like yeah he's just there to hike that is a crazy fucking chicken man that whole thing that's so strange at the end of it did you eat it no so we have He's just there to hike. That is a crazy fucking chicken, man. That whole thing, that's so strange. At the end of it, did you eat it?

No, so we have to set him free on top of it. We can't even take him back down. So I was hoping he'd follow us down, you know, build a bit of a bond with a flaming chicken, you know. But he didn't. We couldn't eat him either because they say that the bad spirits then go inside. Yeah, it seems like a bad idea if you eat him. Yeah.

No barbecue sauce either, you know. He's your pet. Yeah. Unless you were starving, right? What would you do if you're stuck and you're starving we would have no choice would we yeah we'd have no choice no choice survival first but then you would be worried about the spirits exactly yeah and if we took him down to a community that community would apparently flip on us you know oh really we'd be introducing the witches and the bad spirits witches yeah they believe in witches chickens carry witches with them chicken no witches are scared of white chickens oh so that's why we needed gertrude that is hilarious they believe in witches witches and

yeah yeah what do they think and they've got some they got some mad stories as well so max my guide he said so my take on it is we were we were in the middle of this community deep in the jungle high up in the mountains in the middle of madagascar you know the fourth largest island in the world and um we came across a community and they allowed us to stay in their little wooden shack sort of hut and i woke up about two o'clock in the morning let's say i don't know what time two o'clock in the morning, let's say, I don't know what time, two o'clock in the morning, and it's Max coming in. He should have been sleeping right next to us. It was Max,

my photographer, me and Lever, and the chicken next to Max, Gertrude. And he came in with this machete. I was like, you all right? He was like,

yeah, yeah, good. Anyway, his story is that me, Lever and Suzanne were all convulsing in our sleep, all shaking. And then he looks up to the door and the silhouette of this lady was stood on the outside from the moon stood on the outside of the door peering in and he shouted like hey you know get away in

malagasy anyway he was freaked out we were all three still cursed i have no i don't remember any of this and i was thinking now come on you got to be lying takes the machete and then he chases this witch-like figure into the jungle, runs about 100 meters. When she enters the jungle, boom, she disappears. And then when he walks back to the hut, he said, you'd stopped convulsing. You woke up, Ash, and asked if I was all right. And I was like, no. And I was like the only one that I felt I was the only sane one there saying, come on, that's got to be a load of rubbish. Like, weren't you sleepwalking?

Suffered with a night terror, maybe? but surely like weren't you sleepwalking suffered with a night terror maybe and he said no and the only reason that I wasn't convulsing is Gertrude was sleeping

next to me so I was like whoa Susanna our photographer from Belgium was just absolutely bricking herself then you know

she's like what is going on where are we it's like something like the Blair Witch Project yeah so you're stuck in this tent now with people that are crazy

you think the witches are like peering into like you gotta be weirded out and they're all telling me their individual stories project yeah so you're stuck in this tent now with people that are crazy yeah the witches are like peering into the like you gotta be weirded out and they're all telling me their individual stories of their witch experiences as well great but they were very um um you know there was a time with my two guys we had many crocodile rivers to cross oh fuck yeah madagascar's full of crocodiles and sometimes they would they would ask the local community you know whether it's safe to cross and i would say how do they know safe to cross and he replied once well they've made a deal with the crocodile so what do you mean they've made a deal with the crocodile it's like

yeah you know they've they've rocked the crocodiles have promised that they won't eat the locals if the locals let them be and leave them alone so you're gonna cross that crocodile infested river on the hope that some contract has been signed or some handshake, give me photo proof, you know? They're like, yeah, I'm doing it. I'm not doing it. I'm building a raft. I'm finding a different way, you know?

Even a raft. Yeah, even a raft. And we did it. It took us four hours to construct the raft. Yeah, just to get to the other side. Never knew what was in. You must have been shitting your pants just looking down at that water.

Crocodiles, they target people. They do. There's always three ways to the other side. Never knew what I was in. You must have been shitting your pants just looking down at that water. Crocodiles, they target people. They do. There's always three ways to cross a river. Cross where the locals suggest. If there's no locals, cross where there's white water or rapids. If there's not that either, then yeah, a raft is the final option. There's a terrifying story about these explorers that were, I think they were on the Congo. And they were in kayaks and the

guy in front of them got attacked by a crocodile and the guy watched the crocodile come up grab the guy flip the kayak under and then pull pull and then pop the kayak pops up without the dude in it boom and then the the guy's gone scary scary so reached up snatched him out of the kayak and then just kicked him ripped him off the popped him the rope popped him out of the kayak and the kayak pops up and the guy's like what in the fuck he's right behind him why this thing happened oh you his boy his boy just got eaten by a dinosaur in a crazy muddy river right in front of him. He was like, fuck! What do you do?

Get to shore, get the heck out of there. Did you see them? No, we were, again, super vigilant. We crossed at the right places where there was white water. And rafts, yeah, maybe they could have been below, but luckily we didn't see them. And you didn't see them there at all? Didn't see, no. No crocod there at all didn't see no no crocodiles at all no oh no and it's all murky water so you can't you can never tell you know but they can be yeah they can what is that 1961

david attenborough and madagascar with the crocodiles where they're worshiping this guy's gonna feed it yeah what's he bringing over to feed feed them? So they were just cutting it up here. So this is the people that think they have a deal with the crocodiles. Yeah, this is long history. Oh, yeah, Madagascar. So they've been feeding these crocodiles for a long time? That's probably the move. Feed the crocodiles so the crocodiles don't get into hunting.

I mean, they want to preserve energy. If they think they can just show up to the shore and every day you toss them some food. Yeah. Look how evil these fucks look. And the crocs know normally where the people cross and they'll just try to stay away from human activity normally but there are stories of people being taken of course. Of course. Look how evil

that goddamn thing looks. That doesn't give a fuck about you. You're not making a deal with a croc are you? No. And they were laughing at me saying yeah of course we've made a deal. And they're laughing are you? No. And they were laughing at me saying, yeah, of course we've made a deal. I'm like, don't be silly. And they're laughing thinking I'm weird. It's like, come on.

But they also believe in witches too. But it's interesting. Without the real outside world, right, we take away the internet, take away access to education, take away all the things that we think of in the Western world. And then in their world, like even if witches aren't real, if they operate that witches are real they're gonna they're gonna set these like very specific patterns things they're allowed to do and things they're not

they're not allowed to do and that at least gives them this idea that carrying that chicken around is protecting them yeah you know that a chicken's gonna protect you from the bad witches like and they just keep living that like you can't take a chance yeah you're gonna take a chance and abandon the chicken what if you get killed by a witch yeah you're gonna feel like an asshole yeah right yeah yeah it's stuck in these patterns because life is so sketchy there as it is you're surrounded by dinosaurs you're hacking your way through fucking terrible forests it's almost to protect them as well as at the younger by creating these stories there was another one that if a leaf falls if you're resting in the shade it's hot in stories. There was another one that if a leaf falls, if you're resting in the shade,

it gets hot in Madagascar underneath the tree. If a leaf drops, it means there's a snake in the tree warning you to get out from underneath. If the second leaf drops, it's warning it's about to spiral down and spear through your skull. And again, I'm like, that's impossible. I'm like, no, no. So I'd just wind them up, you know, a second leaf dropped and they would scatter and I'd still be there relaxing under the tree. But I do love that

you know that's why I travel to amazing stories isn't it people living in so many different ways big beautiful world lots to see lots to do

and that's why you know so with Madagascar I partnered up with the Lima Network Conservation they've got 60 organisations on the ground helping to protect

and preserve the unique biodiversity so with these expeditions it's almost the record is like the enticement, the motivation. But if I can do something worthwhile and highlight certain issues, so with Mongolia, I was actually raising awareness about climate change and the effects that that has on the nomadic way of life.

It gets so cold out there now that the livestock struggle to survive, which means that the nomads are out of work. So they move to the capital city, Ulaanbaatar, to find work. But there's now like a Gur district or a Yurt district. You know, they're white felt tents surrounding the capital city. And it gets free. It's one of the coldest capital cities in the world. It gets cold.

They burn what they can. A lot of it is dirty coal because the clean coal gets sent to China and plastics. So there's now a smog that covers the um the capital city it's a difficult place to live in the winter only and babies are lasting three four days after birth before they're suffocating oh my god just from the burning plastic and yeah just difficult to breathe and the doctor just says evacuate the city get yourself out so i was just trying my best to raise funds for the red cross raise awareness of actually mongolia you don't hear go to that picture again make that picture larger jamie look how crazy that way of life is yeah there's all these tents everywhere in the background you see looks like some wall tents but

maybe some hard structures looks like there's a few hard roofs there yeah yeah they'll be different hurts they'll just be most of them are just tense yeah there's one building back there a multi-story building scroll back go that go back this is there see that one yeah so this is a multi-story capital Ulaanbaatar so you have not even even in the center you know it's pretty pretty nicely developed in there but it? But it's crazy, right? All dirt roads. What do they do with sanitation and sewage? Yeah, again. I don't like hearing that noise. It says, though they lack access to drinking water, proper sewage or internal heating,

many are reluctant to leave behind their unique millennia-old way of living. Yeah, just shit and a hole in the ground. Whatever, whatever. Forever. Yeah, so it's... Imagine not wanting to leave that imagine being like this is the way to go yeah these were all out in the wilderness in the mongolian wilderness it's absolutely stunning but they've been forced pretty much to to move

here so in the camp it's stop that please go back up and make that larger again what is that uh background city what is that that's the outside that's the capital city of mongolia ulaanbaatar wow so all that stuff on the outside is how most of the people live district yeah yeah wow so you can it drops to like minus minus 40 fahrenheit fucking amen and so they just need to stay alive so they burn whatever they can they can find to stay warm jesus so there's always you know always environmental environmental at my heart, first and foremost, especially seeing the world. You see it in its rarity.

You know, you're out in Madagascar trekking, it's wilderness. And 80% of all plant life and wildlife found in Madagascar alone is found nowhere else in the world. Really? Literally walking past stuff on a daily basis, thinking you're not found anywhere else, only native to Madagascar. Giant comet moths, big bright yellow to lemurs over a hundred different species so i'd do my best to try to meet up with as many organizations as i possibly could who were helping to protect and

expand national parks who were helping to educate the locals supply different means of work protect the species living within and highlight like the press we're interested in the journey but i would direct and highlight you know the real unsung heroes i call them the people volunteering doing this day in day out and how often there's just a lot of you switch on the tv and it's just all negative isn't it but i believe positivity spreads more positivity so um highlight these issues all of the amazing workers doing their utmost to protect the environment um and yeah that makes you want to do more as well doesn't it you know yeah well it seems like it's got to change your just your frame of reference shifts you've

seen so many things that most people haven't seen just haven't been to that place and knowing that there's massive groups of people that are living like that, that are burning plastic in the wintertime to try to stay alive. Yeah. It just shifts how you view things. That's it, for sure.

Yeah, and you know once you've seen it, you can't unsee it. Right. It's one of those where you just want to try to keep helping where you can. How many people are living like that? Oh, right. So there's 4 million people in Mongolia,

but probably about three million are in the capital city uh probably half of that are districts nomads almost half maybe so more than a million people in tents potentially it's getting that way anyway yeah fuck and the air quality just again so poor Can you imagine that? Just giving birth to doctors. Get out of the city. Wow. There's a high chance that you're going to lose your child.

And the people that do stay, the older people, they must be taking years off their life. Yeah, most likely. And then in the summer, so I didn't experience it in the winter, but in the summer, you've still got the good district, but it's warm. So you can see the sky. What do these people do for a living a lot of the is livestock so they raise their their yak um dairy you know meats that they'll transport over to the capital city but they're just out there living the purest way of life I remember walking through a part of

Mongolia actually I went over eight days without seeing a single person. Over eight days. I was like, wow, if you want to know what the world was like, I don't know, a million, two million years ago, Mongolia is the place that you'll get to experience a bit of that, you know? Just wilderness. Just out there. Did you encounter any wolves or anything there?

Wolves. They were the bigger wolves as well. They were gray wolves. anything there? Wolves. They were the bigger wolves as well. They were gray wolves. I didn't, luckily. Saw footprints, but you couldn't see whether that was wild dogs or wolves. I had a wild dog approach my tent like 2, 3 in the morning. Just heard heavy breathing and footsteps outside my tent. I'm in the middle of the Gobi Desert alone.

Hadn't seen a human in days. And I'm there in the middle of my tent and knifing one hand, a torch in the other, shaking, shaking adrenaline thinking this is a person outside oh my god i'm shouting and they're not replying unzipped it's like a wild dog but it was fine it wasn't aggressive wasn't aggressive but yeah it was just so i remember my logistics manager my ulam batal based my mongolia based logistics manager i said to him can you imagine how quiet how silent it's going to be in the gobi desert and he replied he just said there's no such thing as silence so what do you mean there's no such thing as silence they have like silence rooms you know torture panic room silence room with the

headphones and whatnot he was like i'm not going to tell you you know you'll get out there and if you've hit the right spot of the gobi desert you'll know what i mean and i did i remember i was just again in the middle of the gobi desert hadn't seen anyone in days and there was no breeze there was no flies there was no people there was just no noise pollution whatsoever and I was just looking around I could just hear this faint noise almost like a a high-pitched humming noise very faint though and I thought it could be like air leaking from my water container could be my trailer so I walked a few hundred meters away from my trailer and i could still hear it took me five to ten minutes to figure it out that it was like i'm at such the point of silence now it's so quiet i can hear my own body functioning and that's what he meant there's no such thing as silence

because when you're at the point of silence you can finally hear your own body ticking over never heard it before never heard it since. What are you hearing? Just the faintest humming noise. Almost like coming from the inside, but you can't not hear it. As long as you're living, as long as you're breathing, you're hearing that noise. I went everywhere and I was just like, yeah,

nothing, it's my body, it's ticking over. So how long are you walking through the Gobi Desert hearing your body? Oh no, when you're walking, you can't hit when you stop yeah and it crunch yeah and it's got to be no wind a lot of the time it was very breezy sometimes there were storms you know you see you're essentially walking through a dead area right it's lifeless yeah how much water you have on you when you're doing this with that so my container was 20 liters 20 kilograms but it was never always full um that's a lot of weight that's a lot of weight yeah a hell of a lot of

plus you have all the other stuff yeah that's why it mounted really i think the trailer on its own was 40 kilograms don't know what that is a pound 60 70 pounds maybe on an empty load because it was mild steel just built in my family friends's back garden, you know. Really? Yeah, just puncture-proof tyres, full rubber. So it was heavy, but it was robust. And then the water container, yeah, 20 litres, 20 kilograms. I needed at a maximum load. Yeah, so when I was... True.

Effectively, I went through the water when I was really suffering with the dehydration. So at that point, the trailer was a lot lighter when I was really suffering with the dehydration. So at that point, the trailer was a lot lighter. It was under 100 kilograms at that point. But I'm low on water, you know. Right. I'm sort of rationing the last remaining dribbles up to where I make it to the community.

So on maximum load, yeah, 120 kilograms. Water was the biggest issue and always was the biggest issue. That's why the previous guy was evacuated on three occasions, which terrified me as well. He was a Navy soldier, desert explorer. I was just a scuba diver, Muay Thai, living on a beach in Thailand, you know. So I did have my worries. I did stop planning Mongolia as well because of that. I started to doubt myself. At the same time, I realized, you know, just because no one's found a way to do something, it doesn't mean it can't be done. What you feel like mongolia was the wildest place uh probably because it was really close like i'm living in thailand my initial my initial idea was get a cheap bike

ten dollars cycle up to mongolia cycle across mongolia and walk back the other way or cycle to the start point in the east and then walk to the west and i thought if i did that would have died i wouldn't have made it that was lack of preparation um so that's why i went back home back to the uk for the right preparation the right training and again as i say now it's not like vietnam the cycle when it was all very reckless it was all meticulous planning detailed planning and mongolia for me just struck me it's that i was on the travel route for two years at this point and i'd come across people they say they plan to go here next they plan to go there next what Mongolia for me just struck me as that. I was on the travel route for two years at this point, and I'd come across people, they say they plan to go here next,

they plan to go there next, or they've come from Cambodia, Vietnam, but no one had ever said Mongolia really. So I was just fascinated, home to the Altai Mountains, the Gobi Desert. You go, you reindeer tribal community up north, you've got your eagle hunters in the west, your camels down south of the Gobi. I was just like, this country is fascinating. And from that point on i was just like i wonder maybe 100 miles let's walk maybe 200 i was like heck why not go for the length and then i started to look for people who'd done it before

it wasn't for any record it was just for the fascination that's when i realized i couldn't find any evidence to suggest that anyone had completed the solo non-upported walk. But I did find the guy who previously attempted. And he was a nice guy. He responded. I asked him what the dangers are. It's a big list. The gray wolves, the drunken nomadic drifters, the stagnant wolves. Drunk nomadic drifters?

They can sometimes be a problem, yeah. They're drunk. They'll go on their horse. They'll roam. And they're big. They're big Mongolians. Wrestling is their sport. So they're stocky're big mongolians wrestling's their sport so they're stocky uh it's in their history as well isn't it with chingas chingas khan or

as we know him yeah you know um but yeah they can they could be big an issue and he just sent this huge list and i was like yeah maybe i'll look for a different country maybe i'll walk across a european country or something it's a while I didn't know much about it until I listened to Dan Carlin's hardcore history piece on Genghis Khan. Right, yeah. I think it's five episodes. And it's insane. You just realize, like, how do I not know all this? Like, how many people they killed.

The Mongols killed everybody. They conquered half the world almost. Half the world. And they would rock up in the dead of winter. Rock up at Russia's border. And wouldn't they just slit the jugular of their horse? Yeah, and drink some of the blood and? Half the world. And they would rock up in the dead of winter, rock up at Russia's border, and wouldn't they just slit the jugular of their horse? Yeah, and drink some of the blood and mix it with milk. That would heal them.

Yeah, they would use that to stay alive. They apparently killed so many people that they altered the carbon footprint of human beings on Earth during King Iskahn's lifetime. They think that during his lifetime, they killed 10% of the population of the planet. Jeez. That's ridiculous, isn't it?

As many as, they don't know the real number. They think as the low number, I think they were saying like 50 million. The high number was over 100 million people were killed by Genghis Khan during his lifetime, by his Mongols. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he fucked so much any any fucked so much

yeah he fucked so much she left so much DNA out there five you simple crazy percentage of people have Genghis Khan's DNA to this day that's insane that's man not it's not true that it went away it's like you had this military genius that came along at the right time you know with uh they had just massive skill with archery and bows and arrows and catapults and just strategy they were just really good at figuring out how to take over cities they invented the the bulletproof vest as well didn't they did they invent that yeah they realized that the the biggest concern to his soldiers to losing soldiers

it was from the the arrow the arrow kept taking his men out so he came up with an idea how can we possibly chain mail or something

yeah and it was yeah chain mail straight over a vest I thought they had had that before maybe I don't know and it's the

I was shocked to see the I went to like a museum and there was the you know the Schwartz sticker the Nazi symbol yeah Okinawa had that as well so did India yeah it was a different thing I was shocked to see the, I went to like a museum and there was the, you know, the Schwartz sticker, the Nazi symbol.

Yeah. Okinawa had that as well. So did India. Yeah. It was a different thing. It goes way back. You know, a few years ago. Hitler just ruined a cool design. Yeah.

Yeah. That's what happened. That's it. Yeah. Hitler ruined a cool design. I mean, you can never bring that back. Oh, hey man, I'm just really into Okinawan karate. Because I went to a martial arts supply store in the 90s.

Yeah. And they had swastika. And I was like, what in the fuck is this? Yeah. And then apparently it was just a part of Okinawa and Okinawa karate. That symbol was a very common symbol. Oh, yeah. Pre-World War II.

Whoa. Nobody knew what it was. Yeah. I mean, obviously back then it was a different thing. Yeah. In the 1200s it was, wasn't it? The Chinggis. Yeah. The yeah there's 1200s it was wasn't it the chingas there's a dynasty there's a place i think it's in west hills there's an indian temple and this indian temple is covered with swastikas and they had to explain that the construction of the temple and the designs on it predate the Nazi adoption of this symbol.

Yeah. It was... I mean, imagine. Look what Hitler did to that fucking mustache. You know, no one can have that mustache. All the people in the world. It's crazy. He ruined a mustache. Not to say that anybody should have it, but

I don't remember ever a time where someone was such a piece of shit that they ruined a hairstyle. Like you can never. So many years on his mind, isn't it? I mean, think of, I mean, there's no other mustache. No other hairstyle, no other. No, just his. Facial thing.

He just ruined the whole thing. But this, see if you can find that Indian temple. I think it's in West Hills. I'm pretty sure. What's the date? When is that date? How long? There's a big one in Chino Hills.

Where's Chino Hills? Does it look like this? No. No, that's beautiful. Fuck. Where's that? No, this one doesn't look that cool. Is there a fierce one in Calabasas?

Maybe. Let me see. Maybe that's it. Out of the't look that cool. Is this one in Calabasas? Maybe. Let me see. Maybe that's a Hindu temple. Nope. That's different too. I think it's an Indian temple. I don't necessarily think it's Hindu.

I think it's an Indian. And it's just got the signs all over. That's why I searched internationally and this is what we're talking about. God, that's so pretty. Anyway. It is. Anyway, the use of the swastika for whatever reason,

the Nazis just decided to look cool yeah everything up that's it yeah he probably did he take inspiration as well from like chingis khan that's why he used it he conquered almost half the world and he wanted to go in that direction i think that's what someone told me so i didn't know it would make sense as well wouldn't it would he was trying to do exactly what Angus Carne did. But it's interesting that there are these people in history that sort of shift the civilization in a certain way where they just become incredibly dominant and conquer everything.

There's a few of these people that throughout history, they pop up and then everything changes because of them. That's it. And he's a big one. Massive. So you're in this area knowing the kind of history that's involved in this place like what did it feel like knowing like how many battles took place on that land yeah you can and fairly recently right i mean relatively speaking it's the 1200s that's it yeah yeah and you can see how the the fields are massive and actually, going back to that guy who ran after, you know, on his horseback,

who came to deliver me the bottle of tea. Yes. Imagine that in the thousands, the noise it would make. Like, I could see him. He was a dot in the distance. It took him about 10, maybe 15 minutes to get to me. Imagine a whole line of them soldiers, you know, warriors, Chinga's empire, running toward the noise.

Oh, you'd be terrified wouldn't you and this mass land as well the step just goes on just rolling fields of grassland forever right yeah i'd see a girl in the distance it would be like a little dot in the distance i'd wake up in the morning and i'd know it's going to take me a full day to get there that's that's camp for tonight effectively you know it took me a whole difficult day just to get there. Dude, you're a ballsy man to take that on. That is a courageous journey and one of many that you've done. It's got to be a weird feeling to be walking around regular people that have never experienced all the crazy shit.

If you're around privileged people that are like really kind of soft and civilized and do you do you almost want to take them with you like hey this will help you yeah yeah no for sure for sure and i think for the younger generation it's great isn't it i'd love to yeah and it's also the the mental health side the mindset you know take someone out there to mongolia or the jungles of madagascar or towards the source of the yangtze and i know you just appreciate it you have more faith in humanity you think what a beautiful world we live in they do things like that with troubled kids my friend my friend dan dodie used to do it he would uh they would take kids that were all fucked up and all sorts of problems in school yeah and he would take them camping just reconnect them to nature take them up there for like a long period of time months at a

time yeah they'd live off the land they would fish and they would they'd live in tents and you know come back with a reset mindset wouldn't you know yeah start appreciating the little things like the kettle of the toaster i told you about you know you know that old expression you can't really appreciate the sun unless you've experienced the rain. Yeah, that's it. It's an old expression, but it really seems to be true. You know who had that? I think Dylan Danis had that on his fucking Instagram post today. Oh, yeah, really?

When he was sparring with Conor McGregor, obviously meaning Conor's raining on him. Yeah, yeah. He's beefed up, hasn't he, McGregor? Yeah. Well, Conor's fighting this weekend. Who do you reckon's got it? I had to ask you that. There it is right there.

You can't appreciate the sun if you never stood in the rain. Bam. So true. So true. Yeah. Ancient saying that is 100% accurate. Yeah. He's fighting Cerrone, isn't he?

Oh, yeah, yeah, he is. Yeah. A couple days. Yeah. Today's Monday. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday's here. Yeah. Who do you think?

I do not know, my friend. No? I never predict fights, my friend. No? I never predict fights because I think it might feel disrespectful if we were alone. I would tell you my thoughts. No, but not in this one. In this one, I feel like this is a legitimate 50-50 proposition. Yeah, yeah, same. I don't know.

He's a warrior. Both warriors could go either way. Well, also skill-wise. Yeah. I look at a bunch of different things i look at damage age skill motivation and then like past results like all these things yeah so when you look at all those things you you give connor a slight advantage with stand up like with his speed he's very explosive and he tends to knock guys out like that left hand

isn't it left hand's a piss so explosive he tends to catch guys with a lot of explosive punches very fast whereas cowboy is more of a steady pace wears on you but can also finish head kicks yeah has the most finishes in ufc history most submissions i believe he has the most finishes In UFC history Most submissions I believe he has The most submissions Holds a lot of records Doesn't he A lot of records A lot of records Against

You know He's fought nothing But tough guys Like for a long Fucking time He's been head kicking And strangling tough guys How old is he now as well

Cowboy I think is 36 36 yeah Yeah And Conor I think is 31 31 is he Is that right Does it say I think 31 makes sense

Connor has less miles on him for sure but Cowboys never look better than he's had over the last few years and you give him a fight

where he can really get up and this is a fight where it's like a really I mean this is the red panties night you know

Connor always talks about red panties night this is it everybody's gonna tune into that fight majorly it's a giant fight. It's a giant...

And it's also an interesting fight because even though both guys are not title holders, it's still a five-round fight that has the same super fight feel that any other world title fight would have. You want to see that fight. The world title, I've been arguing this forever, is very important.

It's always good to know. Kamaru Usman is the best 170-pound fighter in the world, and it's proven because he has the world title, I've been arguing this forever, is very important. It's always good to know. Kamaru Usman is the best 170-pound fighter in the world, and it's proven because he has the world title. Yeah, beat Woodley. Beat Woodley, and then he beat Colby. Colby, that was a great, yeah. I agree that that's important, but I also agree that that's not required for a great fight.

What's required is a great matchup, and this is a great matchup. This, to me, is a pay-per-view matchup like i mean i am that could genuinely go either way as well and i'm working the event but if i wasn't working the event i'd be like what is happening here yeah how's that go down yeah how's that go down you know i don't know how it goes down it might be connor tries to catch him real quick with a straight left it might be cowboy takes him down it might be cowboy tries to kick him real quick with a straight left it might be Cowboy takes him down it might be Cowboy tries to kick his legs on the outside

it might be you know it might be you know Conor takes a slower approach because he thinks that Cowboy's strategy is for him to wear himself

out in the first round so maybe Conor fights light and easy in the first round maybe he looks to prove a point to go the long run just in case

well not just that because he has gone he's gone heavier, hasn't he? Bolted up more. So third, fourth, fifth round, it's going to be a struggle endurance-wise. It could be. He could also... I don't think so.

I don't think he's bulked up as much as he's not cutting weight. Right. I mean, he's starving himself to, like, 145. 155 is more comfortable for him. 175 is no weight cutting. So I think he's probably going to be walking around just a little bit over that.

I know Donald is. I think Donald in a video said he was walking around somewhere around 177, 178. So that's nothing. That's nothing. That's a day in the sauna and Don's on weight. And then Cowboy just rehydrates and he's good to go. And he's done it 100 times. Oh, yeah.

He's well-exposed to that. I think he's better physically like without the drain you know i and i think size wise he's better as a 55er because those big giant guys like darren till at 170 are just a little bit too much a little bit too powerful right but i think that at 170 with connor at 170 they're both guys who are 55 pounders they're just not cutting weight so there's no i don't think there's an advantage for either one of them. I think it's great. And I think I would love to see that trend where guys just fight at their natural weight.

Cause I think it's terrible for your kidneys. It's terrible for your system. You know, you know, as much as anybody did it involuntarily. Yeah. I mean, that's basically when you're dying like that and you're dehydrated, that's how those guys are the day of the weigh in. And then they have to have a goddamn cage fight 24 hours later. It's crazy.

That's it. It's crazy. All the weight back on, everything's forgotten about then, isn't it? Yeah, maybe 30, 40, maybe 35 hours later at the most, right? Because they're weighing in in the morning, and then there's probably another 12 or so. I mean, shit. It's not that much.

And that's after the fight, can they just go straight back to like hydrating no as much as they want they're gonna be broken into that gently yeah you got to bring into it gently yeah you got to do it carefully depending upon how much you lost of course but some guys there's some guys that were enormous and they would they would go through radical weight cuts right and then for them it was very important that they didn't shock their system and some guys did shock their system and then they had to pull out of fights. Their body was like, fucking, what are you doing? There's an overfeeding thing that can happen to you when you just eat too much,

and your body doesn't know what the fuck to do. It goes into a state of shock when you've been starving yourself for so long. It's hard. They start storing the fat. I found after the expeditions, if I went really skinny and started eating a lot, I'd put on loads of weight super fast. Your body's probably like this asshole. It's storing the fat.

Yeah, because it thinks you're going to do it again. Yeah, it thinks you're crazy. Well, that's the thing they think about knockouts too. When fighters get knocked out, it's easier for them to get knocked out afterwards. Yeah, really? Yeah, it's not just about damage. It's about the body recognizing what's going on and trying to prevent further damage by shutting itself off. Yeah.

Yeah, because it thinks you're going to just take the punishment. And it's easy. It thinks it's easy. If it just shuts off, it'll be better. Yeah, your body just goes, fuck this. Check, please. Shuts itself down. Old fighters, you know, they lose their ability to take a shot.

Oh, yeah. So I would imagine that was the same with all the methods of the body like if you dehydrate yourself it's probably easier for your body to go into kidney shock later yeah your body's like hey asshole you gotta stop doing this you put me through yeah yeah for sure it's probably harder for you like um when you think about these things do you worry that you've done these gigantic ones in mongolia and madagascar and now in china do you worry that you've done these gigantic ones in mongolia and madagascar and now in china do you worry that you're going to have to outdo the china one because the china one was a whole fucking year man yeah a whole year ridiculous really isn't it do you worry that okay now i'm

going to walk across the whole world like if i said that to you no no uh i'm you know the business has taken off but there's a lot you got've got the expeditions, but then you've got the books, the promotions, the brand endorsements, everything. As you know, the tours that go on on the outside of that. So you don't feel obligated to try to kill yourself? No. I want to get them shorter. Definitely shorter. Shorter trips?

352 days is ridiculous. But people are not going to want that, man. You're already fucked up. It's like if you meet a girl and she's your favorite girl ever and you're like, oh my god She's the one and you show up at her house with a dozen roses and then you don't have a dozen roses The next day she's like this motherfucker. Yeah, appreciate me. Yeah. Yeah, right. That's it. That's it I think if we can make it just as extreme just as ambitious even more so interactive I loved the interactivity man man. That's cool.

And do it with a good, so I partnered up with WWF in China. So I want to work with them again. Okay, that's not wrestling. You're not talking about wrestling. No, no. That's it. World Wildlife Fund.

They used to be over here. Yeah, they did, yeah. How the fuck did they use WWF when WWF was wrestling for so long? Yeah. They did sue them, didn't they? I think WWF, World Wildlife Fund had to. They won, so. Who, World Wildlife Fund Had to They won

Who World Wildlife Fund won Oh that's why It became WWE That's it Oh I didn't know that I thought it was I heard that only recently I was like whoa

I thought That it was because They had to admit That they were Scripted So they called it Entertainment Rather than

Federation World Wrestling Entertainment I think there was Conflict with the World Wildlife Fund Wasn't it Yeah That's interesting no makes sense yeah so they were first they were before pro wrestling yeah yeah maybe even if they were after i think that just the power it's global isn't it world wildlife fund is it yeah all over all over so um

potentially just because the sheer size of them you know what excites you when you start thinking about your options for potential future trips? Do you have anything that seems like really bonkers that excites you? What about walking all the way across Africa? Yeah, you know, something that has always fascinated me. I'm not ruling it out. It's always potentially an option, but I've always been drawn to the Congo. Always been drawn to the Congo. Talk to my friend Justin.

Talk to my friend Justin. Yeah, hook us up. no for sure because he's he's currently got a new parasite that they don't they don't yeah he's had it for more than seven i think more than eight months yeah and they don't know what it is they're yeah they think he might even be the first person that they've ever diagnosed with it because he caught it so deep in the congo and a lot of these people that are catching parasites and of you know and could be an evolving parasite too yeah yeah the congos of oh there's all sorts there there's all vibrant crazy ecosystem of all kinds of different things so what's he suffering with what's his symptoms he's got all kinds of problems right he's on all sorts of uh anti uh anti-parasitic medication,

but he was saying that after he worked out, he had to get into the shower because he was shivering. He had to turn on the hot water. Yeah, he looked pale and he was shivering. I think it might be in his brain. They don't know what's going on. That's even worse, isn't it? The fact that they don't know what's going on.

They don't know how to help him. And he's got brilliant doctors that have been working with him for months. They're trying to run They're running these batteries Of tests They're trying to figure He detailed it on the show

And he's such a nice guy He's like one of the most Selfless people I've ever met Yeah While he's talking about it He wants to start Praising the doctor And telling me

I should get the doctor On the podcast I'm like let's Let's get to the point What's going on with you man I'm like Tell us what's He's like even

In describing his own Life threatening illness He's trying to promote point. What's going on with you, man? I'm like, tell us what's happening. He's like, even in describing his own life-threatening illness, he's trying to promote people and help them out. Amazing. That's the way forward, isn't it? That's the way forward. I like him, man. I mean, he's got a, it's a wonderful story. I don't know if you ever heard it, but it's,

I don't use that word wonderful that often, but with him, I do. It's like he was bullied. He was bullied when he was a kid and then got into fighting and then became depressed and was a UFC top heavyweight and left

he was he didn't win the ultimate fighter but he was one of the top guys in the ultimate fighter and then he left the UFC and just started to do

all this work in the Congo and started to build wells for the Pygmies and then decided to come back to fighting just to sort of raise work in the Congo and started to build wells for the Pygmies and then decided to come back to fighting just to sort of raise awareness for the Congo and to start this foundation. So he starts his

fight for the Forgotten Foundation, starts his fighting career off again, becomes one of the top heavyweights for Bellator, catches malaria three times and keeps going back and forth to the Congo to spend these long trips out there. But in the process, he's gotten really sick.

The last one. He doesn't know what. He looks great still, but it's still fucking with him. Yeah, what now? What's he? I don't know. I mean. They've just got to find what it is.

They've got to figure out what it is. The cure. And hoping that these anti-parasitic medications are putting them on to have an effect on whatever it is. Yeah. Maybe it goes away. I don't know man the the worry for me is when someone says they might it might have gotten into his brain i'm like what does that mean what is it what happens then when something's in your fucking brain like what's going on in there terrifying yeah or you see where have you seen the disease yes was it the worm yes behind the eyeballs yeah you can actually see it

yeah we played that on the podcast we played the video of it it was frogs right and people too can't people get it people can get it too yeah

there's lots of parasites in the eyes dude then you're gonna go in there I was that not so much anymore

you've just put me off but no this was I was planning to walk I was looking into walking the congo before the yangtze the yangtze made more sense um but now after that i'm like no no if i'm going to the congo it wouldn't be the duration of hiking a river that would take probably over the years shorter so much more dangerous you know got everything there so um

maybe we'll just stick to a two-week holiday in the congo hey and plan my journeys elsewhere if you go to the congo you gotta go walk through the stretch that has that giant chimp living in it do you know that about that giant chimp what is it what's this what's his name the bondo ape the bondo yeah it's a larger version of the chimpanzee it's like six feet tall huge 200 plus pound chimps jeez the locals call them lion killers yeah really yeah they nest on the ground we got an image of yeah they nest on the ground like gorillas yeah yeah well this one is not that this is images of dead ones see if you can go to, there's, if you just Google Bondo ape, there's some really good, see that one in the upper left-hand corner, Jamie?

Yeah, but that picture I don't think is real. I want to say that's fake. Congo's giant Bondo ape. See, that one's real. That one's real. Those people with the dead one. Okay. Make that larger, please.

Can you just make the... There you go. That is... That's the first evidence of one that they ever found. And then they shot this thing and they took pictures of it, but I believe that was in the 1930s. And then they got another one that they

shot at an airport. And these guys are posing with this thing. See if you can find the one. That's it at the bottom, the very bottom. That right there. Bang. Look at that. Go full screen the one below it.

Yeah. Look at that. Make that larger. Look at the size of that fucking chimp. So that is this thing that they call the Bondo ape. And it has a crest on its skull like a gorilla. Yeah. Yeah.

It's not like a skull is not skull like a gorilla yeah yeah it's not like a it's not skull is not shaped like a chimpanzee skull and so go back to the picture please that's okay that's big enough but because it's not a very clear picture anyway so these guys shot this at an airport and uh look at the hog on them too but the size of that thing i mean look at the men behind it i don't know how big they are, but let's assume they're tiny and they're 5'5". That thing is 5'10", 5'11", probably well north of 200 pounds. And it's a chimp. Oh, my God, I've ripped you to pieces.

Yeah, easy. But the cool thing is this is a weird subspecies that's only in this, I think it's called Bili in the Congo. And they either call it the Bili ape or they call it the Bondo ape. But it's an enormous... But I'm sure I've stopped picture there where the guys are either side holding it up. I'm sure I've seen that somewhere. Google Bondo ape camera trap photo. There's a camera trap photo of one of them walking upright.

And it's about six feet tall upper left hand corner that one six feet yeah they said by measuring the stuff around it they think that that is a six foot tall chimpanzee walking through the fucking jungle and that's this guy there's a guy named carl amman he's a i think he's from switzerland he's a wildlife photographer and he spent a considerable amount of time Trying to find these things and take photos of them Because of all the descriptions That the natives have of these enormous chimpanzees

They got video of one of them Eating a jaguar They don't know if it killed it or if it found it dead Such mysterious parts of the world Whereabouts in the Congo is that? In Bili I think it's called B-i-l-i it's not a large place but it's incredibly dense jungle so it's very hard to get to but for a long

time it was just legend but now they have actual video of them they have photographed they have scat samples dna and then they have the skulls the skulls that are not quite gorilla and not quite chimpanzee got you when they first got i'm pretty sure they thought it was a hybrid they thought like a gorilla fucked a chimp like come here bro yeah and then um now they think it's a totally different subspecies of chimpanzee so there it is there you go yeah billy uli forest so that's where you got to go bro yeah that's not far from the it's at the sort that looks like the source there yeah is that the congo could you go through there? So that area looks small, but it's probably bigger than Florida. Oh, it's massive, yeah. The area where these things...

I mean, the Congo's so big. It's like the heart, isn't it? The Congo's just always fascinating. From a young age, you hear all sorts of stories about the Congo, don't you? Isn't it wider than the contiguous United States? I think the Congo itself is wider than the United States. I think there's more land mass in the Congo. There's an amazing BBC documentary on the Congo from many years ago.

I think it was like from the 90s. But they spent 29 times, the United States is 29 times bigger than the Congo. Okay, hold on. Stop, stop. 342,000 square kilometers, but the width of it i think it's the width there are only five million people living there for the size of it oh that's it okay no it's not okay it's not as wide it's not even as close texas or something yeah it's like it's bigger than texas for sure it's like texas and california and maybe like one other state

smushed in there. It looks like it's like 30% of the United States. Still a lot of wilderness that though, isn't it? Oh, yeah, man. And if there's a fucking giant chimp living in there. Yeah. And all kinds of other shit in there. All sorts.

All sorts. Have you seen that shoebill bird that lives there? No. Oh, my God. It's a five foot tall dinosaur of a bird with an enormous face. His face is like this big and it looks like, like it doesn't look real. Like you see it walking around.

With the way that you're describing it, maybe photos, videos. Oh, the face that they have there. There's some great high resolution photos of the shoe bill where you look at them in the eye and you're like, what the fuck is that?

Is that real? They look like the most ferocious looking bird it looked like that right there yeah come on bro look at that face imagine imagine walking through waking up and seeing that looking down at you yes or walking through the jungle and you part some leaves and that thing is staring at your face oh my god we came across you know have you heard of elephant birds no i think david attenborough elephant birds elephant birds i think david attenborough first discovered it or went to madagascar because he was fascinated by the elephant bird went extinct i don't know how long ago but their eggs were about there about what's half a foot like a

football yeah almost like a yeah rugby ball football yeah um in in size oh there we go oh my god look at the size of that egg that'd be painful that's so big look at the size of that fucker there you go look at that comparison with an ostrich oh my god um on the there you go yeah holy fuck and these were big but I came across the elephant bird eggshells they're about this thick as well maybe quarter half a centimeter

in thickness and they're just scattered across the southern beaches of Madagascar and there are thousands still there so this thing is still alive or the eggs are

no this has gone extinct it's just the eggs but the eggs are still there yeah there you go there's David Atterborough I think he bought one back it's in Cardiff which is the capital city

there's that many of them you can just go get one this thou yeah just crushed because they're so thick oh I look at that come back they just last forever they just last oh holy shit they're huge get how many years ago they went extinct shows couple of thousand how many of these things have been capped or collected I'm not too sure I don't know how many why the elephant bird disappear what does it say human people what yeah i believe it was the humans wasn't it scroll down humans may not be

to blame oh goddamn pop-ups get us every time wow immense that's huge though isn't it yeah but did you ever see the ones they had in north amer, the terror birds? No. Oh, fuck. They had seven feet tall, murderous, carnivorous birds that couldn't fly running around North America. Jeez. Yeah. Pull up terror birds. Jamie, he's searching overtime on this episode. I'm just trying to scare you with all the shit you've seen your whole life. These were enormous birds.

There's one that shows – look at the size of that thing. trying to scare you with all the shit you've seen your whole life these were enormous birds there's one that shows look at the size of that thing there's one that shows the really go to back to that national geographic thing that you just had right there jamie in the middle yeah i think that was like a cgi documentary that they had done on one it says verse wolves i don't even want to click oh well i think there's so much bigger than the wolves, they probably hunted them down and killed them. There's a size comparison there, isn't there? See, next to a human. Yes.

It's a far left chain. Well built as well. Chasing horses and shit. Can you imagine exploration back then? It would be a whole different ballgame, wouldn't it? Oh, you had no idea. So much more exciting but dangerous as well, you know? Well, when you're talking about people that believe in witches

and people that believe in witchcraft Like back then You almost had to have Some belief system To keep you going Because you had no idea Yeah What was around the next corner

So these terror birds Were alive I believe When human beings were alive Right When did these things When were these things alive If I had to guess

I'm going to guess They died out A million years died out a million years ago? Half a million years ago? 62 to 1.8 million years ago. Whoa. 62 million to 1.8 million. It says the temporal range covers from 62 to 1.8 million years ago. So I think that's 62 million, not 62 years ago.

Okay, so no people. So definitely no people yeah so definitely no dinosaur dinosaur rage cenozoic era so we just some kind of monkey chimp type thing was all we had back then you know i think like that was like australia pithicus or something like that what was what year was that okay you're i'm over googling you still stuff living living with us though isn't that that's terrifying have you had a camel spider yes where it injects you with like an anesthetic yeah and they're like stories of soldiers waking up half an ear missing because they've been being injected in the middle of the night by this big ass camel spider size of a dinner plate isn't it what is this jamie mammals of the mycocene which

are i guess the same the same era so it looks like giant sloth time period that north american bear time period look how small the horses are holy shit compared to those giant sloth things like avatar oh that's a short-faced bear that's what that is that's that enormous bear you've seen that thing right the uh short-faced bear short-faced bear have i seen no bro the short-faced bear was the most terrifying bear in all of history short-faced bear was way bigger than a polar bear and super carnivorous and they think it might have been the thing that kept human beings from successfully navigating the trek through the bearing landmass until they went extinct they're huge there's there's a picture of a guy standing next to a recreation of a short-faced bear.

And it's fucking crazy. It's so big. They think people probably hunted him off to extinction. They don't really know. Do you get an image of a short-faced bear? Yeah, it's a ridiculous animal that I didn't even know existed until a few years ago. Oh, there's probably so much. That's why that's sapient.

I don't know if it goes into the details. Yeah, sapient. Does it go into the details of this? Go with the one in the far right corner. Upper right. Oh, yeah. Look at that. Yeah. That's what it looks like.

Oh, man. You just would not venture outside. Fucking imagine how big that is. That's a brute, isn't it? It's like a cartoon comic book version of a bear. Like, you can't believe. We're looking at this thing where literally this thing is standing up these gentlemen let's just assume they're somewhere

in the neighborhood of six feet tall this thing is their entire height plus a couple of feet so double their entire height i should say plus a couple of feet that's ridiculous like their their head this thing's standing up and their their heads are like right around where his hip bone is. Although he is on a little bit of a mound. I'm counting that. It's pretty close to 14, 15 feet maybe standing on some legs. Yeah, but why do they have him on a mound? Listen, bitch, we know he's tall.

You're exaggerating. You're making it look more ridiculous. It's ridiculous as it is without him being on a mound. Why do you have them you're trying to make it even crazier it's crazy enough but super predatory faced bear yeah between that and saber-toothed tigers there was an african lion that used to live here look at that because we were just the bottom of the food chain weren't we oh yeah as soon as we invented the fire wasn't it as soon as we discovered the fire boom change control of fire probably helped weapons flints yeah that's it i wonder what

came first we were just after scraps weren't we leftovers from lions do you feel when you're doing these treks and you're going on these these journeys and you're walking through places like mongolia that are incredibly wild do you do you try to like envision what it must have been like to be an early person yeah without all these amazing resources that you have at your disposal to help you get to this area that you're going to yeah oh it would be a whole different kit and everything like so in mongolia didn't he actually even use that gps because that failed me or community yeah or communities were in different places it just didn didn't work. I went back to bog standards, map and compass. Can you imagine even before then as well?

Map and compass? Yeah. So a fold-up map? Yeah, a fold-up map. Let's get out, yeah. Did you use Google Earth? No, none of that. No, again, bog standard, low-budget journey,

the Mongolia one was. So if you lost your map, you'd be fucked. Yeah, that, but also the the track that i was on as i said you could be following goat track or camel track and that is your lifeline that leads you to the next water source so if you're in a desert storm for example it'd make more sense to try to keep going uh well no just try to camp down hide under your shelter if you lose sight of the track but if you you don't, you can keep going. So if you did do that... That's why I didn't walk at night as well.

A lot of people say, well, it's hot during the day and you're suffering with dehydration. Why don't you walk at nighttime? And you've got the Amur pit vipers, the snakes. You stand on the back end of them because you don't see it. You're pretty screwed. But you've also got the tracks.

You need to be able to see in the distance the tracks splitting off because you able to see in the distance the tracks splitting off because you'll come across um almost like a junction four to five different tracks that are splitting off that's when you need your map and compass to be like oh which one which track should i go down you know terrifying oh my god i can't even imagine and you can't communicate if you come across if you're lucky to come across locals as well they'll just point you in the wrong direction they'll normally point you in their community which is down south up north and you're lucky to come across locals as well, they'll normally point you in their community, which is down south, up north, and you're trying to go east.

They try to say, no, I want to go that way. No, no, no, next community is this way. So I don't want the next community. I want to walk to the most eastern, you know, so it gets difficult. But yeah, that was always a threat. The dehydration in Mongolia really terrified me. Now, what happens if a standstorm covers the track up yeah back to your map and compass and just hoping that you can be aware of the people around you hoping you've got enough water hoping you make it to another community or

settlement um whereas the jungle harsh environment that you know um spiders wise snake wise etc but same time you've always got water you can hack in the bamboo and it just leaks out water you know you always got food does anybody know where you are yeah i had a tracking device and especially for mission yanksy because it was guinness world record we set off a tracker and every five minutes it'd come up with my speed so even if i jumped in a car on a bicycle boom every five minutes it's my speed it's my altitude my longitude latitude coordinates distance covered uh whether i'm active and you'll zoom in and you can see my current location within five meters and that was part of the interactivity so i wanted to make this expedition as interactive as possible for the full year of like sharing blogs videos live streams photos getting people

to join um again presenting in schools getting the kids out litter picking along the yangtze river doing the filming for the documentary um which was securing uh international international documentary the mission yangtze will go out as um so that's exciting so all of this was very very well planned planned in terms of the interactivity. It's like six months of survival, six months of interacting with all the locals and just sharing it, getting out there as best as we possibly could. So I was heavily on the radar with the GPS systems, the trackers, the lot. Wow.

Well, listen, man, you've got an infectious sort of way of talking about this that makes me almost want to do something like this. Yeah, come join me. No way. But it does make me appreciate what you've done in a unique way because I can see how it's affected you. And what we were saying earlier about things being – when you do something incredibly difficult like that, it sort of like enhances you as a person, enhances your view of the you have you have just more things you've seen than the like how old are you 29 yeah for the average 29 year old person there's no comparison the things that you see and the way you've experienced them in a very difficult way and very difficult and you know it's it's a very courageous way too like the way you're

just asking people for food like it's kind of nuts yeah yeah yeah that's it I appreciate it man it's really cool but again you know it's normal upbringing normal background so again I can I do all of these school talks corporate talks and that's the main message that I want to portray is there's no financial background there's no financial background. There's no even university degree, no military background, sort of just working through hard work, you know,

and if I can do it, you can do it type of message. You know, it's out there. You've just got to hold your vision, hold your dream, protect it. It doesn't matter what else anyone says, and it doesn't matter if they don't see it for you, what's important is if you can see it for yourself. Also, you have to be a special person to be able to do this. what else anyone says and it doesn't matter if they don't see it for you what's important is if you can see it for yourself hold the gun go for it also

you have to be a special person to be able to do this all you knuckleheads out there that are thinking I'm going to go walk across Africa now don't don't

don't that's it discourage I want to discourage people preparation yeah for sure and do it the way you've done it

the right way that's it well listen thank you for coming here man I really enjoyed it thank you for having me I really enjoyed talking really enjoy it. Thank you for having me. I really, really enjoy talking to you. It was really cool.

And like I said, your story is very, very inspirational, man. But it's also exciting. I like to know there's people like you out there. Oh, that's great. So thank you. Thanks, buddy. Much appreciated. Oh, tell people how to follow you on Instagram.

Yeah, on the Instagram, it's just ash underscore dykes. Is everything ash underscore dykes? Yeah, everything's ash dykes. Twitter as well? Twitter, Facebook, YouTube. And that's D-Y-K-E-S? D-Y-K-E-S, yes. Okay, beautiful.

Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. Bye, everybody. That was fun, man. Thank you.