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What is exploration?

Sunset high in the Andes above Nazca Peru

What is exploration, Benedict Allen style?

“In a nutshell, it’s about leaving things at home! Your GPS, satellite phone, modern transport, sponsorship and companions – all these things may well be useful, but they each get in the way. They impose a cost on your objective: they keep you in your comfort zone and prevent you from engaging with, and therefore understanding, alien terrain. I’mm not talking here about scientists, who of course need these devices to further a serious mission, but for all the rest of us who are trying to get to know a place. And especially the professionals: how else can we in this day and age claim to be “explorers” if we aren’t truly face-to-face with the environment we are “exploring”? We become less and less explorers, and more and more like adventurers or athletes. Incidentally, all this backup also of course undermines any physical achievement. If you’re dependent on these aids, are you really “unsupported,” or “solo” as you plod on through the wastelands? I know I’mm being harsh, but it’s also the sad truth: with such backup at your disposal how do you know that what you’re doing is through your own ability? Maybe you shouldn’t be tackling Everest, but a nearby hill!”

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Comments

  1. Would of course have to disagree a little with Benedict. This philosophy is great to have a personal adventure in a wilderness area and probably a more authentic one. But satellite phones can be used to engage as well as for safety and GPS units to plot routes and share information. I would argue that exploration needs to embrace technology (I say this to all of us you use facebook, twitter, blogs) so that what we discover can be shared on an interactive basis with people and especially pupils back home.

    This all goes back to the question – ‘What is exploration in the 21st Century?’

    Reply
  2. This one really struck a chord. Six months ago I was standing at the outskirts of Wadi Halfa in northern Sudan with no map, guidebook, GPS, phone, laptop, or company to make me feel better about the 1000km desert crossing to Khartoum. A few months later it was a similar situation on the fringe of the tribal Afar lowlands in eastern Ethiopia. In both cases it was a deliberate decision to ‘leave things at home’ – meaning not only the cushioning factor of technology, but also of meticulous pre-planning – in order to experience the raw, unpredictable journey alone and without a safety net.

    Screw guidebooks, GPS units and sat-phones – what happened to initiative, navigating by instinct and experience, and determination to succeed at all costs? These are the things that deliver the greatest benefit of all – to know the value of being alive, with all your human capability and resolve.

    Reply
  3. Tom – I agree with you entirely.

    Jamie – I agree with you entirely too!

    Reply
  4. I’m glad Neil Armstrong didn’t think the same way. When self-styled explorers start referring to cutting edge bits of
    equipment and technology as crutches, it’s usually a sign that they don’t know how to use it properly. The sextant was once newfangled to someone, somewhere.

    Reply
  5. Tarquin Posted

    At university I took part in a hitch-hiking race from Newcastle to Amsterdam. Brilliant. No mod cons. You couldn’t jump on a bus/train. All charm and blagging. A real adventure because you had no idea when (or if) you’d get there, or back again!

    Reply
  6. Perhaps the diversity of responses to Benedict’s opinion are due to terminology. Expedition, Exploration, Adventure, Journey… They can mean so many different things to as many different people.
    There is a time for hi-tech (Neil Armstrong [though it was Buzz Aldrin who was more of a tech-geek], blogging by young people from extreme locations, pushing polar limits).
    There is a time for low-tech (Challenging your own physical and other boundaries, integrating with tribes, when on more of a spiritual wander (Arabian Sands))…

    I suppose my own stance is to do whichever approach you are going for to the best of your ability. Don’t use technology as a crutch, but don’t forget that any fool can be uncomfortable.

    Reply
  7. There are infinite shades of grey here, but typically we (blokes) tend to see things in black and white!

    Technology has opened up expedition possibilities that would previously have been (dare I say) impossible, e.g. long solo unsupported polar journeys. And expeditions take place that are wrapped up in so much cotton wool that you wonder what the point is at all (sorry Ewan!).

    In between there must come a point where someone sets off to test himself/herself against adversity but ends up testing little more than equipment, and another point where someone’s ambition to achieve/communicate their goal surpasses their preparations and resources and they fail altogether. Anyone setting off on a journey faces this fine-tuning task.

    I guess pure experience and a sound understanding of the fundamental objective of the expedition in question, whether it be research, personal challenge, record-breaking, impressing the public, impressing other explorers, journalism, pure fun, or any other, helps to get the balance right. Just as it’s possible to denounce technology that you don’t understand, so it’s possible to claim reliance on technology without which you’d still make it through.

    Reply
    • To echo Tom’s conclusion: “Just as it’s possible to denounce technology that you don’t understand, so it’s possible to claim reliance on technology without which you’d still make it through.”

      Reply
  8. I think this opinion is somewhat dolefully looking back on a previous time and wishing he was part of the ‘old days’.

    Sat phones and GPS are here to stay – and careful use of the technology can keep people alive whilst keeping the expedition ‘real’.

    By intentionally leaving them behind to avoid being ‘cheated’ of a real adventure is really just increasing the chance of dying if something goes wrong.

    You can combine high and low tech perfectly easily (I think I managed it last year in the Arctic).

    The pioneers certainly used every new-fangled device available to them! Perhaps it’s just us wishing we lived then…….

    Reply
  9. “Your use of a scientific instrument has not made a dry technician of you. It seems to me that those who are alarmed by too many of our technical advances are confusing ends and means. The man who struggles in the hope of material gain alone indeed harvests nothing worth living for. But the machine is not an end in itself: it is an implement.” – Antoine St-Exupery

    Reply
  10. Interesting that Benedict includes “companions” as “something useful that gets in the way”.

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  11. I’ve really enjoyed the comments the quote provoked, but can I say in my defence that I was talking about what suits my own particular objective – which is (in general terms) to immerse myself with remote people, learn from them, and then test how much I have learnt by seeing how well I can cope alone. If I was a scientist, or was interested in precisely navigating, then a sextant or GPS would be great – indeed, I’ve often used a GPS on trips, and they are amazing of course. But when it comes to engaging with remote indigenous people or testing your own physical and mental abilities it really does mean being exposed in one way or other – in my case stripping away what you bring along and going alone, though actually I’ve often dearly wanted a companion, and usually could have considerably benefitted from another’s help! But in the end we must all do what we feel is right for ourselves.

    Reply
  12. Claire Posted

    I agree with Benedict on this… On the subject of companions, each to their own, needless to say, but I find when I travel alone I absorb more that is going around. It is easy to become immersed in a place when you are alone. Forced out of the comfort zone of familiar conversation, and reliable mutual entertainment, you suddenly discover more of the world and the people around you. I say this as an extrovert, who finds it hard to be on my own for too long… but even I too appreciate the different values offered by solo exploration. As far as technology goes… we are benefited by so much gagedtry – so useful and amazing as it is – but when do we draw the line between reliance on these things, over working it out for ourselves? Would we really know how?

    Reply
  13. I think alot of this is horses for courses. I mean you can’t go into space without technology and you’d be a fool to enter into unpopulated areas without the best equipment available. I think the definition should be between expeditions into populated areas-in which I agree with Benedict, things should be simple and driven by experience and living with the locals like the locals; and expeditions into unpopulated areas-where the adventure is significantly nullified by excessive technology.

    That said in this modern age we have the ability and I’d say the obligation to inform, educate and maybe even inspire and being able to send e-mails from remote locations helps dramatically for this. I see expeditions splitting down the middle with people either striving for the classic man against nature experience and others pushing the limits of what’s possible using every piece of technology available.

    Reply
  14. Excessive was meant to be in bold at the end of the first paragraph.

    Reply
  15. Hello all,

    And now what i think is the first non (outdoors) adventurer’s comment…
    From a pure public point of view (or just mine!) it sounds much more real, true and impressive when an adventurer has relied purely on hers or his own strength. When I hear of gadgetry/equipment it sounds like someone took the car to go to the shops instead of walking. I bet this is far off the truth in some terrains and I’m coming form a naive point of view…but that is what I think and maybe more people do also. This only matters if you are trying to impress the public of course or gain (non gadgetry) corporate sponsorship. My feelings are in line with Sir Ranulph Fiennes comment/intro in Alastair’s book Moods of Future Joys.

    The best of luck with all your techy or manual adventures!!!

    Elina

    Reply

 
 

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