Who became the first man to circumnavigate the globe, around the equator, without motorised transport?

Walking alone in the permanent darkness of the Arctic winter, or standing face-to-face with hungry polar bears on the barren North Pole, or staring down the barrel of a gun, deep in the jungles of Amazon, high-altitude climber  and Arctic explorer, Mike Horn feels alive at the most unlikely moments.

Impossible is the word, the adventurer has chased out of his vocabulary. Yet, his ‘impossible’ is exactly the reaction his actions elicit. “I don’t do what I do to die. I do what I do because that’s what makes me feel alive,” Horn sums up his adrenaline-filled adventures in the short biography on his website.

Horn, 53, caught adventure bug early on from his father, a professional rugby player. After his father’s death, he gave up the small fortune he had made to chase his dreams of becoming an explorer.

Jumping off bridges and river-boarding down rapids, he worked as a ski instructor and rafting guide in a small village in the Swiss Alps. Till he joined an adventure sports team and scripted some amazing feats of his own.

Latitude Zero

In 1995, he sledged down a 22m-tall waterfall on the Pacuare River in Costa Rica. In 1997, he swam the length of the Amazon river using a hydro-speed board. His first major expedition was Latitude Zero, which bordered on the impossible. Walking, rowing, sailing and cycling alone through the dense Amazon, he became the first man to circumnavigate the globe, around the equator with no motorised transport. A snake bite left him blind for four days. Worse still, he was mistaken for a spy while crossing the jungles of the Democratic Republic of Congo and faced a firing squad. Despite it all, he completed the journey in 17 months, earning him the 2001 Laureus World Alternative Sportsmen of the Year Award.

Walk to the Arctic

Between August 2002 and October 2004, Horn became the first person to travel alone around the circumference of the Arctic Circle, a 20,000 km long journey that he completed in 10 stages: four by sea and six on land. The conditions were brutal. He walked 20 hours a day, dragging a sledge-full of equipment weighing up to 182 kg. Once, a polar bear walked into his tent. Horn scared him away by barking like a dog. Another time, he stumbled upon 9-foot-tall formidable creatures towered over him, breathing down his neck. Horn tackled the situation with Zen-like calm and the animals left him unharmed.

Pole2Pole

On November 2016, he embarked on the 27,000-km “Pole2Pole” journey from Monaco – a three-year circumnavigation of the globe via the South and the North poles. He became the first person to cross the Antarctic continent at its largest via the South Pole. In the second chapter of this expedition, he crossed the Arctic Ocean via the North Pole along with another seasoned polar explorer Borge Ousland on skis and kayaks. In the 87-day-long expedition, 57 days were spent in relentless darkness in the middle of the punishing Arctic winter. With only a dim headlamp to guide them, the explorers trudged through the treacherous landscape manoeuvring their skis through thin ice, sudden crevasses and freezing waters. The duo ran out of rations over the final week and rescuers had to come an meet them with food.

Never say die

Though he courts danger on every expedition, Horn is not reckless. In 2012, after scaling 23,600 feet, he turned back from K2, the second highest mountain in the world, when the conditions turned dangerous. Had he chosen to advance, he would have been caught in an avalanche that claimed the lives of two mountaineers. Horn has stated time and again that he is not afraid of failure. Life is more precious, he believes.

His recent adventures have not been quite the same: the landscape has altered, the ice has grown a bit too thin, and the polar bears have disappeared. Now, he plans to create awareness about climate change through his expeditions.

 

Picture Credit : Google