Grand Adventures

Grand Adventures
Alastair Humphreys

Recommended for viewing on a colour tablet.Adventure – something that’s new and exhilarating, outside your comfort zone. Adventures change you and how you see the world, and all you need is an open mind, bags of enthusiasm and boundless curiosity.So what’s a GRAND ADVENTURE – it is the most life-changing, career-enhancing, personality-forging, fun adventure of your life.Following on from his popular Microadventures, in Grand Adventures Alastair Humphreys shines a spotlight on the real-life things that get in the way: stuff like time, money or your other commitments. Grand Adventures is also crammed with hard-won wisdom from people who have actually been there and done that: by boat and boot, car and kayak, bicycle and motorbike. People who had one epic trip then returned to normal life, or who got bitten so badly by the bug that they devoted their life to the pursuit of adventure. Young people, old people. Men, women. Mates, couples, families. Extraordinary, inspiring people. People like you.Saving your pennies, overcoming inertia, generating momentum, getting out the front door: if you want it enough, you can do it.Tiny steps to a grand adventure.Are you in?

COPYRIGHT (#u3689e309-d6a2-59bd-97c6-37b83ba5049b)

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

WilliamCollinsBooks.com (http://WilliamCollinsBooks.com)

This eBook edition published by William Collins in 2016

Text © Alastair Humphreys, 2016

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Cover photograph © Alastair Humphreys

Cover design by This Side

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this eBook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Source ISBN: 9780008129347

Ebook Edition © March 2016 ISBN: 9780008131944

Version: 2016-03-03

For my parents,

Who taught me to save up, work hard

and make stuff happen.

© Alastair Humphreys

CONTENTS

COVER (#u215f21bd-c653-549e-b8fd-1b58d745b9ee)

TITLE PAGE (#u60bab3c4-2c80-5b0e-9d03-3337171d870b)

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION (#uf30357e9-dc73-5c9e-bc0b-4f2cf9dde84b)

INTRODUCTION

Part 1 PLAN

MONEY

TIME

COMMITMENTS AND RELATIONSHIPS

HATCH A PLAN

KIT LIST

Part 2 CHOOSE

BICYCLE

FOOT

ANIMAL

WATER

MOTOR

TRAVEL

CLIMB

EVERYDAY

GRANDER

BIOGRAPHIES

INDEX

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER (#litres_trial_promo)

INTRODUCTION (#u3689e309-d6a2-59bd-97c6-37b83ba5049b)

Everyone loves adventure. Bookshops have bulging travel sections. Adventure film festivals are springing up all over the world. The web groans with exciting expedition blogs. I love adventure so much that I turned it into my job. I am a professional adventurer. It says as much on my business card, so it must be true. (Never mind that I made them myself in one of my many procrastinating-from-book-writing mornings.) I write books, give talks and make films about the adventures I’ve done, such as cycling round the world, crossing oceans or staggering through the heat of deserts. Enough people enjoy hearing these stories for me to earn a living from them. This means that more people read about adventures than go on big trips themselves. But this book aims to help you realise that grand adventures are within your grasp, that you can begin taking the steps necessary to make them happen for you, too. Why settle for reading about adventures when you could be out in the wild doing them yourself?

‘Why settle for reading about adventures when you could be out in the wild doing them yourself?’

Many of my friends are also adventurers. They’ve climbed great mountains, trekked to the Poles, exciting stuff like that. These are special experiences. I love sitting in the pub with my adventurous friends, listening to increasingly far-fetched tales as last orders approaches. But here’s an important thing: I know these guys and girls well enough to see that they are not particularly special people. They are ordinary people, but they do things that many people deem to be more than ordinary, even extra-ordinary. Being an adventurer is not a genetic gift. I know, for example, that I certainly am not brave, strong or athletic, yet I claim to be an adventurer. Usain Bolt was born fast. Albert Einstein was born brainy. Living adventurously, however, is nothing more than a choice.