Instead, there are stories about the world, “and all that is in it,” just like early Society member Alexander Graham Bell wished for.Īfter 125 years of global exploration and all the amazing stories and pictures, it almost seems perverse to be sitting here, amongst champagne and caviar, whilst zooming high above the French Alps.įrom up here, the lines of misted peaks are no more than a wispy snapshot of the mind, or some geographical afterthought. These are not your typical in-flight magazines-there is no Sudoku or list of complimentary beverages. On the armrest of my large leather airline seat lie the latest issues of National Geographic and National Geographic Traveler magazines. “Storytellers can change the world, and National Geographic is the best storytelling institution in the world,” adds Wade, and his words wake me from the colored reverie of his lecture in the air. “Nomads are what we all once were,” states our lecturer, “We used to be wanderers on a pristine planet.” Listening to Wade is like tumbling through some psychedelic dream sequence, falling from Himalayan firesides into a Haitian voodoo trances and landing in the sacred heart of the South American jungle. Such is the essence of culture-and this is what travel gives us-a different way of knowing, seeing and thinking. As an explorer, Wade has spent his life learning different ways of knowing, from Inuit hunters to shamans in the Amazon and the nomads of Borneo. “A different way of knowing,” explains Wade, without a hint of the academic-he actually believes this. Ours is an incomparably well-traveled group, but every one admits to me that the compelling factor for joining this expedition was the range of new and unknown destinations. We are not going to Rome or Cairo or Beijing-we are going to Bhutan, Palau and the Okavango. “All of these destinations were chosen based on the recommendations of our own National Geographic Explorers.” That evening, we dined together-all eighty of us fellow travelers, seated at round tables in the Four Seasons, while National Geographic CEO John Fahey explained what lies ahead: Whippy vans while I stood on the bridge, admiring the shiny gold trim on Big Ben. In Westminster, tourist crowds bought ice cream from Mr. Green Park was rather green, and mothers inducted their babies to the cult of the sun by rolling away the plastic rain shields on their prams. Indeed, London was not herself yesterday, wrapped in happy sunshine and the unseasonal warmth of mid-October. I began mine in Paddington, beneath a glass-paneled roof that glowed with unusual sunlight. Then I woke up in London, where all great journeys begin. Next, I lay wrapped in beige airline blankets, curled up like a sleeping cat across three empty seats on a British Airways flight, six miles above the Atlantic, five hundred miles west of Ireland. It began two days ago at National Geographic headquarters in Washington, DC. Listening to Wade’s first lecture of our expedition, I try to remember how it is that I got here. He stands in the aisle of the plane, gesturing with his hands, while on either side, a dozen flat screen TV monitors all show the same image of a young Polynesian man, crouched on the prow of his seafaring canoe, concentrating on the horizon and the travels ahead. So says our professor, anthropologist and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Wade Davis, explaining the sailors’ process of navigation, dead reckoning. “You only know where you are by remembering how you got there.”
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