Rob’s wife Christine: whilst the boys are walking through the Gobi, I look through some of the blog posts which Rob had sent me earlier, and found this. I have to try and keep positive and remember one of Rob’s favourite quotes: Present fears are worse than horrible imaginings (Macbeth)… (So I need to stop imagining…)

[Rob] It is now just six days until we fly to Ulan Bator. Once there, it will take us five days to make some final preparations on the ground, before we start walking 5,000 km to get home again. I am feeling very excited, but also daunted, and, I must also admit, exhausted from all the planning.

I think the main things I am daunted about (which might go wrong) are:

  1. Our bodies can’t take it. We will be carrying heavy packs through thousands of kilometers of rough terrain in winter.  Will our backs, our knees, our feet, be up to it?
  2. The weather goes against us. We are well prepared for cold and snow, but in winter, things can sometimes be even worse than you expect.
  3. Bureaucracy. Always a challenge when travelling in distant lands. I hope we don’t get caught up in any complicated local politics anywhere.
  4. The Yellow River – will it be frozen? Can we paddle down it? If so, how far?

These are the big problems that could potentially undo us. We will need to dig deep, I am sure, to keep going, but we are determined, and I hope by the grace of God we will make it.

Find out more at Walking Home From Mongolia.

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I’m delighted to announce that the website for my new expedition Walking Home From Mongolia has now been launched. Please do check it out for regular blog updates, photos and videos!

Less than 3 months from now, I will be embarking on a 3,500km winter expedition through the heart of China. A fellow adventurer and an expedition cameraman, Leon McCarron, will be joining me for the whole journey.

Carrying all of our gear, including portable kayaks in our backpacks, we will start amidst the wastelands of Outer Mongolia from where we will head south by foot through the Gobi Desert. Crossing into China, we will follow the Great Wall down to the turbulent waters of the Yellow River, where we will then inflate the kayaks in order to paddle downstream to the legendary city of Xi An. Leaving the water, we will then hike onwards through the snow-capped mountains of central China, until finally we reach our finishing point at the glittering skyscrapers of Hong Kong!

The expedition has been commissioned to become a television series by National Geographic, and it will also act as a sequel to my televised three-year Cycling Home From Siberia expedition.

Over the next weeks we will be regularly updating you with our preparation for the expedition (which will no doubt be grueling with the winter conditions!), so stay tuned.

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A bit of inspiration to be more wild

Here is a short and brilliant video from my old adventuring friend Al – I am definitely inspired to do this kind of thing more often (and I have no excuses, as I live at the foot of a beautiful 700 meter high hill). Watch, and please leave a comment when you have managed to [...]

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American edition of Cycling Home From Siberia – out now!

I’m delighted to announce that the American edition of Cycling Home From Siberia is now out. It’s got a cool new cover, the s’s have been changed to zs, and I’ve also re-written a couple of sections. I’m really thrilled with this version , and it’s available now from all good bookshops, and of course [...]

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Dropping ice-cubes down the vest of fear

I laugh in the face of danger, I drop ice-cubes down the vest of fear – Edmund Blackadder If you haven’t seen this already, it is a brilliant YouTube showing the reaction of an 8-month-old boy while his at-home daddy rips up a job rejection letter. It made me think that perhaps next time I [...]

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The Cycling Reporter comes to stay

Last year,  Christine and I had a few days stopover in New York on the way back from a corporate talk , and I happened to do a tweet (I am not usually very good at tweeting, but was inspired by the city). A young cameraman, who had read my book and was signed up [...]

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Quote about why humans are not just after comfortable lives

We tend to believe that what we want out of life is comfort and security and absence of stress, but that is only half right. We also want to experience heightened emotions. It’s not that we accept pain, fea and anxiety as an acceptable exchange for moments of euphoria. We also crave the pain and [...]

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Beating The Odds and Defying What People Say is Impossible

If I am honest, there were numerous occasions when I felt like giving up during my three year, 30,000 mile Cycling Home From Siberia expedition. The first time was actually right at the start, as I set off from the notorious Russian outpost city of Magadan, and rode off into the huge emptiness of Siberia. [...]

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Facing the fear

Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave                                                          - Mark Twain     I’ve been thinking a bit about fear recently, and how to overcome it. I have always been a very fearful person, with some different fears which appear at different stages of my life, but with [...]

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Goals for the year: 2011

Never will I be of concern that my goals are too high for is it not better to aim my spear at the moon and strike only an eagle than to aim my spear at the eagle and strike only a rock? Og Mandino [my apologies to eagles] I once heard a (possibly apocryphal) story [...]

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