Benedict Allen Knihy

Benedict Allen travelled through Papua New Guinea in search of a tribe that would let him participate in an initiation ceremony into manhood. He was finally admitted to the ceremonies of the Sepik tribe, whose totemic god is the crocodile. With fifteen other young males, Allen was secluded from the village in a large nest-like enclosure. Crocodile marks were carved onto their bodies with sharpened bamboo. Grey mud was applied to stop the blood-flow from their wounds, and they were beaten every day for six weeks. This book is the story of Allen's initiation experiences - a tale of love, community through shared pain and of sudden death.

Benedict Allen travelled through Papua New Guinea in search of a tribe that would let him participate in an initiation ceremony into manhood. This book is the story of Allen's initiation experiences - a tale of love, community through shared pain and of sudden death.

Benedict Allen is often referred to as 'a cat who has lost six of his nine lives'. Aged twenty-two, he set off into the Amazon, and, fleeing through the forest after an attack by gold-miners, he was forced to eat his dog to survive; since then he has been shot at, poisoned, and has had to sew up his own wound with a needle and thread from his boot-mending kit. In 2003 he trained a team of hardened 'Icedogs' and headed into the remotest corner of Siberia. Unknown to Allen, the Russian Arctic was about to face the worst winter in living memory; as problems began to pile up, he and his ten faithful dogs found themselves heading alone across tundra and pack ice and on a night of sub-zero temperatures they plummeted off a cliff. As he fell into the abyss, Allen asked himself; Why do explorers put themselves in such dangerous situations? And - once the worst possible situation occurs - how do explorers find the resources to survive? In answering these questions, Allen weaves a series of tales from his own experiences driving a dogsled across the ice-bridge linking Siberia with North America, as well as that of other explorers including Columbus and Cortez, Stanley and Livingston - and their modern counterparts Joe Simpson and Ranulph Fiennes.

From the vast island of Sumatra, Benedict Allen brings back the strangest of travellers' tales concerning black-maned ape-men asTheodore Hull - octogenarian survivor of Japanese labour camps - entices him onto the trail of the Gugu. A tangle of folktales leads Allen to the aboriginal Kubu people who can guide him into the highlands where the ape-men screech all night long, shaking every fibre of the forest. But the twentieth century is encroaching, and Kubu say that the Gugus' rage can no longer be appeased by traditional gifts of tobacco. Allen ventures into the dark, living forest, watched by unseen eyes . . .

This enquiry into the explorer mindset is part meditation, part memoir, from one of 'Britain's greatest explorers' (Telegraph)