Serious Survival: How to Poo in the Arctic and Other essential tips for explorers. Bruce Parry

      Safety training exercises during the Serious Amazon expedition

      IN AN EMERGENCY

      Before going on a trip, make your own emergency card reminding you of what to do should anything go wrong. The Serious Expedition team emergency card read as follows:

       Lost or Separated?

      Don’t Panic

      Conserve/Ration Water & Food

      S.O.S. Signal (noise or light):

      3 short + 3 long + 3 short

      OR 6 blasts/bangs/light per minute

      (Reply – 3 blasts)

      DO NOT MOVE LOCATION

      We will find you

      STAY COOL

      STAY POSITIVE

       HOW DO YOU avoid jet-lag travelling across the world?

       Jet-lag is caused by travelling across time zones, which messes up your internal body clock, disrupts sleep patterns and leaves you exhausted. It can’t be avoided and its effects are exacerbated by arrival in a hot, humid environment, so it’s wise to do all you can to minimise the effects.

       At the start of the journey it often helps to set your watch to the local time at your destination and eat and sleep accordingly. Even if you can’t actually sleep on a plane, cat naps will pay dividends.

       Don’t go charging off on expedition the moment you arrive. If possible allow several very light days on arrival to recover from jet-lag and to acclimatise.

      TRAVEL TIPS

      • Long plane journeys leave you dehydrated. Drink lots of water, avoid alcohol, and get up regularly and walk around the cabin.

      • The journey from the airport is potentially one of the most dangerous things you’ll do all trip. Invest in reliable, safe transport from the airport with a reputable company (colourful local forms of transport such as three-wheeler motorbike taxis can be death-traps).

      • As soon as you arrive in a tropical country drink only purified water. That means avoiding drinking or brushing your teeth in tapwater, and being meticulous about not eating anything that may have been washed in tapwater, for example delicious-looking salads. Particularly tempting in a hot environment is to have ice cubes in your drinks, but sadly you should refuse unless you know for sure that the ice has been made from filtered water.

      • Always clean your hands before eating, using alcohol gel rather than the local water.

      • Don’t eat any food, especially meat, unless you are sure it has just been cooked. Give the mouthwatering platter of cold meats a miss – how long has it been sitting there?

      • Don’t automatically trust the global hotel chains. Their hygiene standards may be woefully short of their counterparts in more developed countries. Many is the time folk have successfully completed the most extreme trip, only to get food poisoning at the last minute after celebrating with a blowout at a ‘luxury’ hotel before their flight out.

      • Do your research into local customs. For example, will taking photos of local people offend them? Learning a few basic words such as ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’ in the local language will go a long way.

      • Work out a secure way of carrying your money, tickets and passport, such as a waist belt (or ‘bum bag’) which fastens securely and can be hidden beneath loose clothing.

      • Keep a photocopy of your key passport pages separate to your passport, along with numbers for your nearest Embassy or Consulate in case of emergency.

Essential Kit

       Carrying on your back all you need to live in an extreme environment can give you an enormous sense of freedom, but it can also be quite a pain for a number of reasons:

      • What seems manageable for a few minutes back home may feel pretty intolerable after six hours of trekking up and down slippery slopes in humid, dense jungle.

      • Getting the amount of kit down to an acceptable weight may be an almighty struggle.

      • The item you desperately need always seems to end up at the bottom of the rucksack, requiring everything to come out (usually in torrential rain).

      WHAT SHOULD I TAKE WITH ME ON EXPEDITION?

      There are of course some absolute essentials, but the principle is to take as little as possible. Constantly remind yourself that anything that goes with you will almost certainly have to be carried on your back in a rucksack in extreme conditions – and on most expeditions you will also have to make room for group kit, such as food and pots and pans.

      Your actual kit list will depend on where you’re going (see appropriate chapters for details) and on personal preference. People get very attached to particular items of kit. But a few basic principles apply:

      • You generally need far fewer changes of clothes than you imagine. It is not at all unusual to manage for weeks on expedition with just a couple of sets of clothes and around three sets of underwear.

      • Most personal toiletries are a complete waste of space and time. Take advice before taking hair products, creams and deodorant to, say, an environment where you’ll be dripping with sweat and covered in mud all day. Once you’ve decided what is really essential, transfer the minimum amount to small plastic bottles to save weight. Replace bulky spray cans with more compact products. For example, ditch the shaving foam and use a tiny bottle of shaving oil.

      • Draw up a checklist well in advance of departure to ensure you have all essentials. Then treat them with extreme care – your life may depend on it (and replacing invaluable items once on expedition is often impossible).

      EMERGENCY

---

Скачать книгу