I was blowing what seemed like huge amounts of money on a bike, a raincoat, panniers. I was too naive to be nervous it was just the thrill of the unknown.
That guy, Rob Lilwall, has also gone on to be a career adventurer. I was planning to cycle around Italy in the summer after my first year at university, but then during a really boring lecture a friend of mine passed me a note saying ‘do you want to go and cycle the Karakoram Highway with me?’ After that, everything changed. What was going through your mind as you prepared to set off on your first major journey (cycling the Karakoram Highway from Pakistan to China)? Both of those struck me as absolutely ludicrous things to be doing with your life, and therefore far more exciting than anything which had crossed my horizons before.
There were two: Ranulph Fiennes’ Living Dangerously and Benedict Allen’s Mad White Giant. We talked to this former National Geographic Adventurer of the Year about his shift of focus from the macro- to the micro-, why some epic experiences turn out to be ‘Type II Fun’, and why the search for simple ways to inject a sense of adventure into everyday life seems more important than ever.įor more microadventuring inspiration (or to plan your own), check out Lonely Planet's Everyday Adventures, an anthology of 50 fun-filled ways to explore your city from a new perspective.Īlastair Humphreys and a fellow adventurer hauling their gear across Arabia's fabled Empty Quarter © Alastair Humphreys What travel literature inspired you to become an adventurer?
In a nutshell, a microadventure is a short, simple and cheap overnight trip that fits into the five-to-nine (the time between leaving work and having to return). That’s the archetypal example of a ‘microadventure’, a term Humphreys popularised to show that adventure is really a state of mind. And yet, despite all this and more derring-do, Alastair Humphreys might be best known for… encouraging people to sleep on small hills.
He’s cycled around the world he’s rowed the Atlantic Ocean he’s run the infamous Marathon des Sables and canoed the mighty Yukon River.
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