IMAGE:
MA
RC
LA
MBERT
What kickstarted your career as an adventurer? I never
expected this to become a living — it happened organically.
Throughout university, I’d scrape together whatever I could
to do some sort of trip during the summer, booking the
most affordable flight to a city I’d never heard of. I fell in
love with the places in between, the empty places.
After I graduated, I flew into Ulaanbaatar, the capital of
Mongolia, and, almost on a whim, decided to cycle across
the Gobi Desert. It was hot, and I snapped a muscle in my
leg; everything that could go wrong did — but during those
two weeks something clicked: I saw how great travelling
under your own steam was. You get to be in the middle of
nowhere, completely self-sufficient, meeting people living
very isolated lives. And even if the day was sandblasted
and demoralising, then the night would be serene and
lovely. It laid the foundations for a decision to spend the
next four years cycling across Asia and Africa.
Tell us about your most memorable encounter. Five years
ago, I was in the Ural Mountains — part of an eight-month
trip cycling the geographical divide between Europe and
Asia. My companion and I met a ‘winter guardian’ called
Phillip, who was tasked with minding a remote area, with
only a dog (and crates of vodka) in his cabin for company. It
was -30C and we hadn’t encountered a building in weeks,
so we were excited to sleep indoors and dry our sodden
clothes, but he was so lonely he kept shaking me awake to
talk. There are all kinds of people spread across Siberia’s
vast landmass, and I became fascinated by their stories.
What inspired your new expedition, the Lena River
Project? On that same trip, we were approached on the
tundra by two men on a snowmobile, wrapped in hides.
They were Nenets, an Indigenous group who live in
northwest Siberia. They were just checking in on us, but
I became interested in their life. As I researched more, I
found that there was another reindeer-herding group in the
east called the Yakut.
I realised there was a clock ticking on their mode of
existence — the reindeer’s natural food is impacted by
climate change, and people are gravitating towards towns
to survive. Where they live is also the permafrost region,
and catastrophic amounts of methane and carbon will
be released as it melts. So the plight of the Yakut is a
bellwether for all of us.How are you documenting the trip? As I ski-trek along the
Lena River, the tenth longest in the world, heading north
for 1,0 00 miles to the Arctic coast, my main focus will be
photography and writing, so every evening I frantically
scribble away in my notebook everything I can recall from
the day, and I’ve done that every journey I’ve been on.What’s been your greatest challenge? I’ve spent many
months and years in my own company out in the wild,
and it’s probably been my biggest struggle. Not weather
or whitewater: loneliness. At the beginning, that was
crippling — I’d spend days in my own head, longing for a
conversation in English, or berating myself for choosing
a task that involves such grinding solitude. But the older I
get, and the more time I spend back home in busy London,
where I now live, I realise how insightful time alone can be.Does exploration have a purpose in the 21st century?
My role is to capture and communicate a snapshot in time
of a place or a people, a phenomenon or a cultural event.
I don’t think pushing the limits of human endurance
is necessary. But I have found that a level of personal
challenge provides more access to the people you
encounter, partially due to bemusement (‘Why has this
person come here by foot or on skis?’) but also if you turn
up in a vehicle or helicopter, you’re immediately putting
up an ostentatious, first-world barrier that I don’t think is
conducive to making connections.What’s your proudest achievement? Sometimes I hear
from people who have read my books and been inspired to
undertake some journey or challenge themselves. That’s
what I’m most proud of. INTERVIEW: AMELIA DUGGANCharlie Walker is the author of Through Sand & Snow (2017) and
On Roads That Echo: A bicycle journey through Asia and Africa
(2019). He embarked on the Lena River Project expedition in
February 2022.
@cwexplore^
cwexplore.com^ lenariverproject.comREAD THE FULL
INTERVIEW
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CURRENTLY SKI-TREKKING 1 , 000 MILES ALONG SIBERIA’S LENA RIVER,
THE BRITISH EXPLORER DISCUSSES THE ADVENTURES THAT SHAPED HIM
CharlieWalker