Am I really cut out for a life of Adventure? – The Daily Telegraph

Am I really cut out for these crazy, dangerous adventures? In this column for the Telegraph I discuss adventure, its potentially deadly pitfalls and how TV adventurers have convinced us we are more intrepid than, probably, we really are.

I’d faced extreme heat before – in the Namib Desert, the Australian Outback and central Mexico, but the 50 or so degrees I was cycling through that day had caused heatstroke to take hold at a terrifying rate. For the first time in my life I could feel the sun killing me, rendering me so disoriented and nauseous I was convinced I was about to pass out. “Am I really cut out for this?” I growled to myself, before slumping in the hard shoulder.  

It’s a question I’ve now asked myself countless times on my adventures – or should I say misadventures – around the world. The same as the time I got stranded, off-piste, at night, in the French Alps, and when I was caught in an underwater storm while diving deeper than I probably should have in the Indian Ocean. Not forgetting the countless times I was almost killed while racing across the Pacific, or when I crash-landed into a bug-infested jungle while learning to paraglide in the Colombian Andes.

You can read the full column here.