Take a walk with Levison Wood

Dubai - The award-winning author, explorer and photographer has walked across some of the world's most exotic and dangerous terrains, from the Himalayas to the Nile; he tells City Times why he chose to walk the talk

I don't know about you but I'm not into the idea of travelling. Put me on a beach, sure, visit a few museums, yup sounds good, some nice "authentic" restaurants in the middle of a busy city, that's me. But drop me in the middle of a jungle fighting off the elements with no real control over what happens . . . I don't think I'd survive for too long.
Although I desperately wanted to be an archaeologist when I was a young boy, I would have been an abysmal pioneer and explorer. It's because of this I've always loved reading the adventurous accounts (fictional or fact) of travellers and explorers. Indiana Jones, Tintin, Gertrude Bell, T. E. Lawrence and the novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs who always had an epic exploring theme throughout all his stories.
While reading the adventures of others is enthralling, hearing a first-hand account is even more riveting. When Levison Wood the award-winning author and photographer was passing through Dubai on another one of his journeys, I knew I had to meet him. Levison has specialised in documenting people and cultures in remote corners of the globe and post-conflict zones - by walking through them. Yup, you read that correctly. Walking. His epic journeys have taken him to some amazing places, leading expeditions on five continents so far. The most epic in my opinion was his walk across the length of the river Nile which took him nine months to complete!
The book he wrote after the journey Walking the Nile along with his other book Walking the Americas, were both Sunday Times bestsellers while his second book, Walking the Himalayas, was voted Adventure Travel Book of the Year at the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards. Levison has also presented several critically acclaimed documentaries including Russia to Iran: Crossing the Wild Frontier where he re-traced part of his Silk Road adventures - as detailed in his book Eastern Horizons - in a four-part series for Channel 4.
It's a known fact that sitting is the new smoking - we need to be more active in our daily life. And although I don't see myself walking across the length of the Nile, after my talk with Levison Wood I was definitely inspired to walk around more (at least to get up and switch the light on instead of throwing something at it in the hopes that it will just magically switch on). So thank you Levison Wood! While on a quick stop in Dubai as part of another epic journey around the Arabian peninsula, I managed to catch up with him for a chat. His enthusiasm for exploring cultures, his openness about his journey, and his passion for history and the written word has definitely inspired this writer to stop reading about the adventures of others and maybe consider travelling somewhere without a wifi signal.
Do you introduce yourself as an explorer?
It's a tough one; I don't put explorer on my business card (laughs). I call myself a writer, because that's ultimately what I spend my time doing, it's usually writing. So in the simplest terms, it's coming back with the stories. But you know there is an element of exploration, genuine exploration. It's difficult to say, what is exploration in the 21st century? Surely, everything is mapped online, you know you can zoom in on Google Earth and see what's going on. Whilst that's true, there are vast parts of the world where people haven't been to or haven't been to in a very long time. Even in somewhere like Mexico, where I walked across last year, we were basically discovering pyramids that no one had excavated before.
Are you writing continuously as you're walking on your journey?
I keep a journal, I try to write just a page or two everyday. But it's more the names of places, a bit of dialogue, the names of people - the details that if you don't write them down, then you'll forget them. And more generally though, I think the feelings of the journey I tend to remember those well. Then I write when I get back home. My writing schedule back home is usually to try to and get as much done in 6-8 weeks. As soon as I get back, I have one day off and then I'll be very disciplined. I'll work from 9 - 5 everyday just writing trying to do 1000 words a day - minimum - sometimes two or three thousand words; just get it done as quickly as possible.
You don't have moments where you freeze or where you get "writer's block"?
The whole concept of writers block, for me anyways, comes down to, not planning the time properly. Because if you give yourself six months to write something, you'll take six months. If you give yourself six weeks, it will only take six weeks - you just have to be really disciplined.
What's the hardest part of trying to capture your whole journey in a book?
The hardest part is the editing and turning what could be 150,000 words into 80,000 words. Getting it down and being ruthless about what you don't include. There is the temptation to write everything.
You also take amazing photos during your journeys. How do you select those for the book?
It's tough because on a trip, like the Nile trip for example, I'll take 4,000 photos, which I have to cut down to 40. I wanted to choose 40 to represent the journey and that's tricky because you kind of want to include the arty shots or the ones you're most proud of but ultimately that's not what its about. It's about putting that representative selection there. But I have an assistant who will look at those 4,000 photographs and turns them to 400 and then I will look at those and turn those into 100 and then I'll hand that over to publishers and they'll choose the 40. Sometimes you need that objective eye. You can't do it on your own, you can't be too protective with these things because then you'll never get it done.
During these journeys how do you balance documenting your experiences versus actually experiencing them?
It is a job now and I'm aware that we are working on timeframes and you have budgets and have a responsibility to come back with stuff. But at the same time you do sometimes just say, you know what? Today I'm not doing anything. I'm going to enjoy the moment, maybe take a few photos to remember the experience but you don't want it to be all work. I've found that the for the past eight or nine years I haven't been able to just have a normal holiday. Because I have to travel a lot. I've not just gone to sit on a beach or backpacked on my own. For the first time this year I did that and I went to Canada and the States. I left my camera behind, didn't take my laptop and just went travelling around for fun and it was great. It's good to remember why we do this in the first place, it's just to go and enjoy it.
After your journeys do you find it hard to integrate back into city life?
The Nile was hard because I think it was nine months of travelling and also the uncertainty of not knowing. that was the first thing where I went all in. Before that trip I had nowhere to live, really live, I was staying at friends' places and I thought, you know what, I really have to do this. When I came back I had no idea whether it was going to be a success, whether the book would get published or whether the TV show would go out. When I got back, for three months I just thought even if this goes out on TV at 2am and no one watches it, I have to go out and get a job and earn money. And so there was a period of a few months where it was really hard to integrate because I was so emotionally and physically involved in walking and suddenly when it's over, I was like, what's next?
The Nile Journey really made you very popular with people. Why did you decide to choose the Nile?
There is something very iconic about this great river, the longest river in the world and it has so many connotations. It really is the lifeblood of Africa. And certainly where I'm from in the UK, there is this connection, this history of exploration. It was a very wild place, I was going through a place like South Sudan, and Uganda where there were some real risks and dangers. By doing this journey by foot, experiencing it on ground level, you're exposing yourself to all these dangers. And it wasn't just getting from point A to point B, it was very interactive, it was about finding out more about the lives and stories of the people we met and that came across in the documentary and hopefully in the book as well.
How did all of this start for you?
My dream ever since I was a kid was to be a writer, so that was the original plan. So I was going to do the journey and write a book about it and then I was approached by the TV guys, who wanted to film it so that was a bonus. And obviously the TV helps with the book. I always wanted to write, the book came first, the TV was like a bonus really.
When did you think, 'I want to do this as a job'?
In 2010, I did five years in the army and I thought, I don't want to do this as a full-time career. I didn't like being told what to do (laughs). I just wanted to have a bit more freedom and you can't go from the army to a normal job cause I'd just be bored out of my mind. So I thought, well, I'm completely unemployable now, I need to work for myself. I was 27 or 28 and I thought if I don't do what I want now, I'll never do it. I thought I'll take a risk. I didn't have much savings, but I thought I'd invest it in travel, in memories and giving myself the best opportunities to write and to take photographs and indulge in my passion. I thought that was really a big risk and it paid off and it gave me the contacts and the credibility and everything that I needed to do what I'm doing now.
You make it sound easy but I'm sure it was difficult to get where you are now?
It was really hard. I was basically homeless for three years. Living on basically no money. It was cheaper for me to travel than to live in London. I mean rent and just living in London was so expensive that I figured if I kept travelling that it would be cheaper, so I just did any sort of jobs. I was doing wedding photography, I was writing for guide books, I ran a little expedition and travel company, taking people on journeys to interesting places. That's when I went mountain climbing in Iraq, we did camel trekking in the Sahara, I was the guide I was planning the logistics, organising the donkeys and camels. Also I was building up, hopefully, a reputation, within the travel community. And before I knew it, when you take these sorts of risks, you gain that element of credibility and they start coming to you.
It sounds like tough work!
It was good fun, but hard work, and I decided after I'd done that after a few years, now that I've built that platform, now is the time to go and do a big epic journey, and that was where the inspiration for the Nile came from. I knew that I had to go and do something that no one had ever done before to achieve my dream, which was to write a book about travel. Luckily it paid off.
Walking is such an important part of it, isn't it?
Yes, well humans are designed to walk. People can relate to it, if you're travelling on foot, they think, I can do that, I can walk. Maybe they don't want to walk for 4,000 miles, but it's more accessible mentally. If I rode on a bicycle, I don't think it would have worked, because people wouldn't relate it. But most people can walk right?
Do you think you'll run out of places to go soon?
The world is a big place but I think for me the writing is just as important as the journey. So I might diversify and write about things that isn't just travelling.
Levison Wood will be in Dubai for Emirates Airline Festival of Literature! Make sure you book your ticket to hear him talk about his adventures and travel writing. Visit: www.emirateslitfest.com

• Dubai