ONE LIFE Issue 28

Wired to wander W h a t d ri v e s u s t o s e e k n e w h o ri z o n s ?

The SUV of the future Everything you need to know about the new Land Rover Discovery Vision Concept

Where are we now?

O u r e x p e r t s d i s c u s s w h y i t ’s good to get lost sometimes

LAND ROVER ONELIFE ISSUE 28

2 5 Y E A R S O F D I S C O V E R Y… WHERE NEXT?

TH IS IS THE M OST UNEXPLO RED PL ACE IN EURO PE

This issue was inspired by the Land Rover Discovery. Over the last 25 years (yes, 25) it has taken people on adventures beyond what they thought themselves or a vehicle capable. To celebrate, we went on a proper adventure, to the Accursed Mountains of Albania. Between Italy and Greece, yet unexplored by all but the hardy few, it is as our writer Nat put it, “a gap on the map of Europe�. A gap that, with typical aplomb, the Discovery enabled us to bridge... To read more, turn to page 58

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CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE

The latest ONELIFE app is available for iPad and Android.

Download it today. content director bill dunn art director dan delaney managing editor jane cloete senior account manager rachel murtagh junior account manager sara mangsbo group account director sarah turner designer laurie grattan production controller russell miller executive creative director paul kurzeja managing director gavin green CEO sara cremer thanks to nathaniel handy, geraldine lynch

LAND ROVER ONELIFE magazine is published by Redwood, 7 St Martin’s Place, London WC2N 4HA, on behalf of Land Rover UK, Abbey Road, Whitley, Coventry CV3 4LH. Colour origination by Rhapsody. Printed by The Westdale Press Limited. Copyright Redwood 2014.

All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part is prohibited without the written permission of the publisher.

Opinions expressed are those of the author and not Land Rover. While every care is taken compiling the contents of LAND ROVER ONELIFE magazine, specifcations, features and equipment shown in this magazine are subject to change and may vary by country. All necessary permissions were obtained for flm and photography in restricted access areas, and information was correct at time of going to print. For additional vehicle information, please contact your authorised Land Rover dealer. This magazine does not accept unsolicited manuscripts, photographs or illustrations, and cannot accept any responsibility for them. Drive responsibly on- and of-road.

FOR THE ULTIMATE ADVENTURER’S TOOL KIT, TURN TO… 04 / The greatest travel books in the world; the fnest torch; the best made axe; the ultimate campsite and the most impressive undersea exploration vehicle ever TO UNDERSTAND WHY WE’RE DRIVEN TO FIND NEW FRONTIERS, TURN TO… 16 / Tim Moore follows in the footsteps of Victorian explorer Lord Duferin TO MEET THE NEW EXPLORERS, TURN TO… 20 / The people who are shaping our understanding of our world and beyond FOR THE DRIVE OF YOUR LIFE, TURN TO… 26 / To celebrate 25 years of Land Rover Discovery, 25 storytellers share their epic Discovery tales TO MEET OUR NEW HEROES, TURN TO… 40 / Pioneers of today nominate the pioneers of tomorrow

WIN A LUXURIOUS LEATHER HOLDALL Tell us what you think of ONELIFE magazine and you could win a Land Rover Heritage holdall. Made from sof, natural grained leather with internal pockets, this 35-litre holdall is ideal for weekends away. To enter, complete our short survey here: www.landroversurveys.com/magazine. Terms and conditions apply.

TO UNDERSTAND WHY WE ARE SLAVES TO SAT NAV – OR NOT! – TURN TO… 48 / Google’s Ed Parsons and environmental psychologist Colin Ellard get lost together TO MEET THE MEN WHO CREATE THEIR OWN DESTINIES, TURN TO… 52 / Mark Pollock, Geofrey Kent and Carlo Brandelli all had the courage to change their lives TO GO SOMEWHERE FEW HAVE EVER SET FOOT (OR TYRE), TURN TO… 58 / We head to Europe’s most unexplored valley in the Accursed Mountains of Albania TO SEE THE FUTURE, TURN TO… 68 / Land Rover’s new Discovery Vision Concept and what it says about the future of the SUV TO GO INTO SPACE, TURN TO… 74 / Land Rover and Virgin Galactic are heading into the future together in pursuit of the next frontier

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TOOLS FOR THE 21ST-CENTURY EXPLORER

PHOTOGRAPHY: SEBASTIAO SALGADO, GENESIS, TASCHEN

Innovators, inspiration and essential equipment

Chinstrap penguins on icebergs in the South Sandwich Islands, from Genesis by Sebasti達o Salgado.

See page 7 for more information

THE TWELVE GREATEST TRAVEL BOOKS

We love adventure. But sometimes it’s better to experience it second hand. Here are our favourite travel writers in all their funny, brave, beautiful and outrageous glory

01. Seven Years in Tibet

by Heinrich Harrer Inspiring two flms and one David Bowie song, and translated into 53 languages, Harrer’s classic book describes his fight from a Second World War British prison camp in India to the Tibetan capital Lhasa.

Filled with desperation, suffering and extreme beauty, this is a hugely readable account of a Tibet that’s long gone. Harrer later became a tutor to the 14th Dalai Lama.

02. Frost on my Moustache

by Tim Moore 21st-century suburbanite adventurer Tim Moore travels to Iceland and Spitzbergen following the exploits of the

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Victorian diplomat and adventure seeker Lord Dufferin.

Moore’s lovely self-deprecating style – which you can read for yourself in his essay ‘Why We’re Wired to Wander’ on p16 – captures a voyage that turns out to be less “derring do”, and more “derring don’t”.

03. A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush by Eric Newby In 1956, seemingly on a whim, Eric Newby gave up a comfy career in the fashion business to travel to Afghanistan, his intention being to climb the 6,000m peak Mir Samir. The fact that Newby and his friend Hugh learn mountain climbing from some Welsh waitresses gives you some idea of their general

level of preparedness.

Described by Evelyn Waugh as “deliciously funny”.

04. Around the World in 125 Years National Geographic The National GeographicÕs 125 years of breath-taking photography, illustrations and storytelling is distilled by publishers Taschen into three smart volumes: Americas and Antarctica, Europe and Africa, and Asia and Oceania. Buy this book and not only will you get to travel through these rich and diverse continents, you’ll witness the evolution of the magazine itself in its journey from romantic portraiture to grittier photojournalism.

05. Holidays in Hell

by PJ O’Rourke As foreign-affairs desk chief on Rolling Stone, O’Rourke carried on Hunter S Thompson’s “gonzo journalism” ethic – getting himself into the world’s most extreme places and situations, and relating them with selfdeprecating, dry, martinisoaked wit. “The world outside seemed a much worse joke than anything I could conjure,” he said. Read more O’Rourke in our piece celebrating 25 years of the Land Rover Discovery, p26.

06. On the Road

by Jack Kerouac The youthful spirit of adventure condensed into one book.

Written in three weeks of 1951,

PUBLISHERS: 1. HARPER PERENNIAL; 2. ABACUS; 3. HARPERPRESS; 4. TASCHEN; 5. GROVE PRESS; 6. PENGUIN; 7. DALKEY ARCHIVE PRESS; 8. TASCHEN; 9. FABER AND FABER; 10. CANONGATE; 11. BLOOMSBURY; 12. PENGUIN

typed continuously onto a 120-foot roll of paper, it has inspired generations to get out and see what’s beyond the horizon. And for this we must eternally thank him.

07. FADO by Andrzej Stasiuk Stasiuk visits Romania, Slovakia, Albania and his native Poland visiting forgotten places that have a rich story to tell. Stasiuk’s writing captures the poetic, mournful and occasionally very, very funny nature of the places he describes.

08. Genesis – Earth Eternal

by Sebastião Salgado Sebastião Salgado’s “love letter to the planet”. Over eight years and 30 trips, the Brazilian

economist-turned-acclaimed photographer has captured the terrain, animals and people that have so far evaded print. The result is an elegant portrayal of untouched treasures in their sometimes ravaged, sometimes pristine, habitat.

09. The Unconsoled

by Kazuo Ishiguro Anyone who has ever arrived in a strange city for work will chime with this unsettling novel about urban travel. The protagonist is a pianist who has lost his memory and only knows he is expected to play a concert. He is feted by city offcials but there is always a sense of menace. Like stepping into a De Chirico painting.

10. Yoga For People Who Can’t Be Bothered To Do It

by Geoff Dyer With his laconic, bumbling, self-centred mien, Dyer wafts through Cambodia, Libya, New Orleans, Indonesia and many other places, powered by a set of petty grievances and minor health issues. These trvialities snowball to form a very accurate lens through which he portrays the world, and yoga. The very best part is the scene where Geoff tries to change his trousers in an Amsterdam coffee shop…

11. Explorers of the New Century by Magnus Mills If Samuel Beckett had written a novel about exploration, this

would be it. In an unknown time, in an unknown country, two teams of explorers are racing across a cold, windswept, deserted land to reach the furthest point from civilisation.

This is, they fnd, “An awfully long way”. Spoiler alert: this book has the most unexpected, shocking twist in the whole history of travel literature.

12. As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning

by Laurie Lee Armed only with a violin and the Spanish phrase “Will you please give me a glass of water?”, Lee spends a year walking through Spain, until he is trapped by the outbreak of civil war. Refreshing, clear travel writing at its best.

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THE FINEST TORCH

Despite its diminutive proportions, LED Lenser’s rugged F1 fashlight is powerful enough to guide you back to basecamp – and beyond The humble torch is a vital life tool and none exemplifes no-frills effcacy quite like the LED Lenser F1 fashlight. Whether you’re negotiating your way back to your tent or scanning the trees to reassure yourself that those are not eyes gleaming at you, the F1 never struggles to shed brilliant light on proceedings.

Its 400 Lumens Xtreme Power diode has a reach of 100m, which is no mean feat for a 69g torch that’s not much longer than your index fnger and is powered by a single, tiny CR123A lithium battery. As well as being waterproof to 2.5m, the casing is anodised to military specifcations to protect it in the feld. ledco.co.uk

ALL TOOLS ARTICLES BY HENRY FARRAR-HOCKLEY; TORCH PHOTOGRAPHY: SUN LEE

Peter Buchanan-Smith, founder of Best Made Co, and his Banderole Axe

THE BEST MADE AXE

Peter Buchanan-Smith is rekindling our sense of adventure via a carefully edited range of practical, beautiful tools built to last generations “I simply needed an axe to cut hardwood for my barbecue,” recalls Peter BuchananSmith, co-founder of New York outftters Best Made Company, “but all I could fnd was a useless yellow-handled plastic one at my local hardware store. My idea of an axe was a valuable and potent symbol, so it irked me to see it defled in such a way.”

So, as many entrepreneurs do, he set out to right a wrong – or more specifcally to fnd an axe ft for purpose, eventually designing and sourcing his own. That was 2009. Today Best Made Company sells two distinct styles – a long-handled American Felling Axe and a more compact Hudson

Bay model. Both feature drop-forged steel alloy heads and straight-grain Appalachian hickory handles hand-painted in myriad striped colourways.

While this intersection of utility and aesthetics has helped raise the company’s international profle, at heart BuchananSmith’s enterprise is about promoting a renewed spirit of adventuring: “We seek to empower people to get outside, use their hands and embark on a life of lasting experiences.”

Buchanan-Smith’s brand now stocks everything from enamelware to Japanese pocket knives, and a new product is

introduced to the catalogue every week.

In addition to its wares, Best Made also offers a breadth of experiences from weekend adventures to urban workshops.

Despite the axe being an age-old invention, Buchanan-Smith believes it remains as relevant as ever in the digital age. “Technology is behind most great tools,” he reasons. “Our axe is something that we continue to innovate and improve on. To us, moving or digital parts don’t connote technology. Take our Lensatic Cruiser compass: it’s a technical piece; it just doesn’t require batteries to operate.” bestmadeco.com

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THE ULTIMATE CAMPSITE With structural and material innovation redefning the way we experience the great outdoors, now is the time to channel your inner Shackleton

01. The Heimplanet Mavericks tent was originally commissioned by Red Bull to accommodate an entire flm crew as it chronicled a gruelling round-the-world windsurfng contest. The geodesic design comprises 10 segments that can be infated all at once via a conventional hand pump, while its exoskeleton frame is capable of withstanding wind speeds of 180km/h. Inside the NASA-like pod you’ll fnd around 13 square metres of habitable foor space – more than enough to accommodate a contemporary adventurer and his or her entourage. heimplanet.com 02. The Oru Kayak adopts a similar approach to luggable simplicity: the most portable and storable kayak on the market, the 3.65m-long transport fat-packs into its own shoulder case, with ample space left over for a life jacket, folding paddle and change of clothes. The reinforced origamioriented hull is tested to endure 20,000 folds and takes a mere fve minutes to transform from box to boat. orukayak.com

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03. The NEMO Nocturne 15 turns sleeping bag design on its head – or, to be more precise, its side. Unlike regular sleep solutions, the Nocturne’s unique hourglass shape is cut wide at the elbows and knees but tapered at the waist, allowing you the freedom to change position unencumbered throughout the night, cocooned in down-flled warmth and comfort. nemoequipment.com

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AND IF YOU WANT TO GET THERE FIRST…

Ever wondered what it would be like to man your own submarine?

Hop aboard the C-Explorer 5 There may be precious little land left to discover above the planet’s waterline, but beneath it some 95% of our oceans remain unexplored. That’s around 1.2 billion cubic kilometres of seascape still left to explore.

Designed and engineered in The Netherlands, the U-Boat Worx C-Explorer 5 is dubbed “the world’s frst subsea limousine” and carries a $2 million price tag, but – given it can descend to depths of up to 300m and is unique in having suffcient elbow room for fve sub-aquatic adventurers – what price can you put on discovering the planet’s unfamiliar reaches?

The superlative CE5 also benefts from a 360-degree acrylic pressure hull, a top cruising speed of three knots and air-conditioning as standard, while operational autonomy is guaranteed for eight hours – plenty of time to complete your own voyage to the bottom of the sea. uboatworx.com

Lef: the geographic South Pole, the frst human footsteps here were on 14 December 1911. Right: Mars, frst human footsteps on 1 November 2025?

WHERE NEXT? Our spirit of adventure has pushed us to explore almost every frontier on Earth. But what drives us to do it?

And where will we go in the future?

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PHOTOGRAPHY: NATGEOCREATIVE

WHY WE’RE WIRED TO WANDER A gentleman explorer on why some of us are compelled to risk everything to discover what’s over the horizon words by Tim Moore

Lef: Robert Peary who claimed to be the frst man to reach the North Pole, in 1909.

Overleaf: one of the last great 20thcentury explorers, Major Harold William Tilman, shown here on the second highest mountain in India, Nanda Devi, in 1936

“NEVER WONDER WHAT’S AROUND the next corner,” my grandfather once told me. “Just go and fnd out.”

Solid advice from a man who went round more corners than most, and was still tirelessly broadening his horizons deep into retirement. At 74, he drove his short-wheelbase Series III to India and back. Four years later he got married in Jamaica. When he bequeathed £2,000 to each of his grandchildren, it came with the proviso that we spend it on travel. “That means a journey, not a holiday.” He was very particular about that.

Two-thirds of Britons live within fve miles of where they were born. Raised in Samoa, my grandfather wasn’t one of them. It seems probable that along with a fair chunk of the restless other third, he was genetically wired to wander.

Whereas most can get their adrenaline fx from sex, caffeine or Angry Birds, there are others, such as my grandfather, who are obliged to seek more extreme new challenges and experiences, to push the envelope of life.

Apparently there are one in four of us, according to research, who have a DRD4-7R dopamine-receptor variant on chromosome 11 (let’s call them the 7Rs) and we need a bigger bang for our buck.

For some, a daring challenge is about glory, accomplishment and the celebratory relief of the aprèsadventure: a hot shower and a well-earned pint. It’s “I didn’t have to do that, but well done me for doing it”. But a 7R does have to do it. Many 7Rs gravitate to

high-stress, high-risk careers that satisfy their cravings: pilots, soldiers, entrepreneurs. But those with safer jobs feel compelled to spend their leisure time scaling frozen waterfalls or base jumping. They haven’t lived unless they’ve nearly died. It might seem reckless and selfsh to their loved ones, but as a species we owe them quite a favour. They’re the pioneers, it’s now believed, who have driven forward human boundaries both literally and fguratively – breaking new ground in the creative arts and technology, or simply breaking new ground. DRD47R has been dubbed the explorer gene: the risk-taking curiosity it endows, propelled our distant forefathers out of Africa, then ever onwards. A 7R thinks outside the box, then kicks a hole in it and strides off into the unknown.

My CV suggests I have my grandfather’s dopamine receptors. I spent his travel bursary touring what was then still the Soviet Union in a decrepit SAAB, a three-month trip which took in a number of garage ramps, police cells and A&E departments. That spawned my frst travel story, and an associated career in freelance adventure.

Last month I went down an Olympic luge run, and last summer I cycled 3,000km around Italy on a 98-year-old bike. If you want to know if you’re a DRD4-7R carrier but lack access to the necessary scientifc hardware, try riding down an Alp on wooden wheels with brake blocks made from wine corks.

Along the way I’ve followed in the trailblazing footsteps of some extraordinary adventurers. Lord Dufferin was one

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of those indefatigable Victorian fag-planters who took uncharted territory as a personal affront. Driven by nothing more than blithe derring-do, he sailed his tiny wooden yacht through the fog and icebergs to Spitsbergen, terra frma’s lonely last stand before the North Pole. Having a bay named after him was apparently ample reward for the umpteen near-death experiences endured en route.

The primal urge Nothing gets the dopamine pumping like that Star Trek thrill of boldly going where no man has gone before: a 16th-century Dutch merchant, who was very probably the frst human ever to set foot on Spitsbergen, felt compelled to rush straight up the nearest mountain, promptly falling off it and breaking his neck. When I followed Dufferin there, the same primal refex to conquer lumps of virgin geography almost fnished me off on a towering cliff of scree. Watching my unattached possessions skitter off into eternity, I found solace in the lord’s own stirring words: “It does not become a gentleman to turn back at the frst blush of discouragement.” Thus emboldened, the next day I crawled up an even steeper mountain to inspect a long-abandoned mine, and very nearly plunged straight down its shaft.

Exploration is like some extreme bench-test of mankind’s defning talents: wanderlust harnessed to innovation, dexterity and resourcefulness. Take the remarkable Ernest Shackleton, stranded thousands of miles from safety when the Antarctic ice crushed his ship in 1915.

In a life-or-death showcase of the explorer’s full skillset, Shackleton rallied his exhausted colleagues into reinforcing their fimsy open lifeboat with whatever lay to hand – a driftwood deck was weather-proofed with seal blood. Incredibly, everyone made it home.

Thanks to the likes of Shackleton, in 50,000 years we’ve effectively conquered the entire surface of our planet.

From that perspective, the explorers’ work here is done: once the last marine trench is charted they’ll have to settle for gambling, adultery and similarly unhelpful thrill-seeking quests for novelty. Mind you, we haven’t scratched the surface of exploration yet: outer space should keep them out of mischief for a while, and in the meantime, there are yawning gaps in our scientifc knowledge that might soon be closed through their adventurous curiosity. When Marvin Zuckerman, the professor who isolated the “explorer gene”, had his genome sequenced he found he was a 7R. Zuckerman had never thought of himself as an adventurer in the traditional sense, but now understood what had inspired and sustained his own journey into the unknown: the urge to explore our urge to explore.

Tim Moore’s adventures are documented in his books, including Frost On My Moustache, French Revolutions and others. See ONELIFE’s greatest travel books on page 6 18 / LAND ROVER ONELIFE

PHOTOGRAPHY: RGS

“It does not become a gentleman to turn back at the frst blush of discouragement”

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THE NEW EXPLORERS

Think we’ve discovered everything? We haven’t even scratched the surface yet. Here are the new frontiers of adventure words by Tom Whipple

“THERE IS A THEORY which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable,” wrote the science fction author Douglas Adams. And, he continued, “There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”

PHOTOGRAPHY: PABLO BONET / INSTITUTO DE ASTROFÍSICA DE CANARIAS (IAC)

Discovery is dead: long live discovery

Lef: refection in the primary mirror inside The Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC).

This 10.4m telescope is located in the Canary Islands at one of the most important astronomical sites in the Northern Hemisphere.

Research here addresses key questions such as the nature of black holes and dark matter

It had taken 50 years. The search for the Higgs boson particle began with an equation and ended at a conference hall 100m above the most complex experiment ever devised: CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. On 4 July 2012, the greatest journey in particle physics had come to an end. And, frankly, the physicists were a bit bored.

“The thing is,” Oxford University’s Alan Barr told me, “this is just what we expected. It’s like sailing to something you know is just over the horizon. The particle we have just found is hopefully not some lone island, but rather the start of an archipelago – an indicator of a whole New World to come.”

Jon Butterworth, from University College London, agreed. “It’s like we have landed on a shore of new physics,” he said. “The next phase is to get deep into that landscape and explore it. It really is terra incognita.”

These men, and others like them, are the world’s new explorers. Which is just as well, because exploration, in the conventional crampons and craggy adventurer sense, is dead.

Just 150 years ago, 200km from CERN, it received one of its frst mortal wounds, when Edward Whymper stood on the top of the Matterhorn: almost 4,500m of sheer, jagged rock, long considered unclimbable. Locals believed it home to a cloud city of dragons. Now the dragon had

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PHOTOGRAPHY: GETTY IMAGES / CORBIS

Markram’s cyber brain requires its own power station... human brains require the equivalent of a banana a day

been slain. Elsewhere, the Blue Nile, then the White Nile, had been mapped. The Dark Continent was enlightened, the southern continent found. Terra incognita, the white space on the map, was, well, cognita.

Over the century that followed, the great exploration goals fell – the North Pole, the South Pole… Everest.

Now, with no great peaks remaining, no patch of the planet unreachable by GPS, human exploration is surely at an end?

No, it’s not Actually, around the same time as the Matterhorn was conquered, Lord Kelvin declared another exploration over.

The work of science, he said, was nearly done: “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now,” he said.

“All that remains is more and more precise measurement.”

With the elements defned, the laws of gravity and electromagnetism derived, in his view there were only a few remaining minor conquests there to pick off. These, the Everests and poles of science, would just require time and application.

Of course, what happened was we reached the scientifc pole and realised there was a whole new globe to be explored at it. Or, more precisely, under it.

Because while today the South Pole is a place you can fy to – where charity groups go on treks and Sir Ranulph Fiennes takes his dog – the spirit of genuine exploration that motivated the original pioneers continues. It’s just that it’s under the ice rather than above it.

A kilometre below the glacier, the ice is so compacted that no air bubbles exist. It is pure, uniform; so deep that no light penetrates. But something else does: a particle whose strangeness is matched only by the detector built to spot it. A string of submerged sensors stretching across a cubic kilometre, this is the world’s largest neutrino detector.

Chargeless, almost massless, trillions of neutrinos hit us every day – and pass straight through. In fact, the average neutrino could hit a light year of lead and not be stopped. When Wolfgang Pauli proposed its existence, he felt the need to apologise. “I have done a terrible thing,” he confessed to a colleague in 1930. “I have postulated a particle that cannot be detected.”

He was wrong. It can be detected – if you have a cubic kilometre of ice. And here, beneath the South Pole, on which Amundsen’s expedition drove teams of huskies (and, eventually, ate them) spotting the neutrino could help solve two of the most profound problems in physics. The frst problem is, why are all of physics’ theories wrong? The second is, why can we only account for fve per cent of mass?

Today the main way in which our physics is superior to that of Kelvin’s is that we know what it is we do not know.

We know that general relativity explains big things very well, quantum mechanics explains small things very well… and that the two theories completely contradict each other.

Well, the fact that quantum mechanics cannot explain why this particular small thing – the neutrino – has mass could prove to be a portal to a vast new physics, uniting the two theories: and producing a theory called Quantum Gravity. For the new explorers there is no greater prize.

There is yet another El Dorado that might be found here. Because it is thought that the neutrino might be produced by the annihilation of an even odder particle, the Weakly Interacting Massive Particle, or WIMP (physicists

Lef: Prof Henry Markram, from Lausanne’s Human Brain Project and their mapping of neural activity.

Right: Peter Higgs, who predicted the presence of Higgs boson

may be literal with their names, but they do sometimes have a sense of humour.) And WIMPs, weedy though they sound, could help to solve an arguably even more embarrassing problem – that visible mass accounts for only fve per cent of the universe. At least a portion of that anomalous “dark matter” is, so the theory goes, WIMPs. So, if you fnd an unexpected source of neutrinos you might just fnd a large chunk of the missing universe.

We’re all in this together The most exciting new explorations are not happening in Antarctica, but in CERN’s canteen. Here, Nobel laureates meet over coffee and mathematicians armed with just a pencil and paper envisage multi-dimensional worlds.

On the walls, screens show the current state of the accelerators: the proton synchrotron, the super proton synchrotron and the Large Hadron Collider itself.

If science is the new exploration then these accelerators are the Golden Hindes and Beagles of our time. Except, of course, we are far less advanced on our journey. Were physics searching for the New World, it would be barely past the west of Ireland.

But ignorance is exciting. Here, there are teams exploring antimatter, dark matter, matter we know nothing about. As another physicist confded, “Every morning I get up and think, ‘I still can’t quite believe someone pays me to do this’.”

Naturally, he doesn’t get paid much. Victorian explorers funded their passion with newspaper sponsorship and government grants. Scientists, exploring frontiers no less uncharted, live from grant to grant. In some ways their sacrifce is all the greater, because in modern science

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there are few lone heroes: thousands work at CERN, most unknown. And in an age where people with physics and maths PhDs can earn many multiples the average salary if they choose fnance instead, the opportunity cost to being here is far greater. They do it because working at the frontiers of knowledge is an end in itself.

Two weeks afer applications opened for Mars One, 78,000 people from 120 countries had signed up

PHOTOGRAPHY: MARS ONE / SCIENCEPHOTO

Into the grey matter

Lef: The frst unmanned Mars One mission is billed to blast of in 2018.

Following that fourperson crews are due to depart every two years from 2024.

Below: the surface of Mars

But what if even these great minds are just too, er, stupid to process the data? Martin Rees, the former head of the Royal Society in London thinks so: “Some aspects of reality – a unifed theory of physics, or of consciousness – might elude us simply because they’re beyond human brains, just as surely as Einstein’s ideas would baffe a chimpanzee.”

Discovery might be limited not just by the fact our brain is too puny but also because it’s too complex. You don’t have to explore the fabric of the universe to fnd the limits of our understanding: you just have to look inside our skulls.

No one understands the brain. But this will be the century that will hopefully change that. In a laboratory in Switzerland, they are building a brain in a computer.

100 billion neurons. 1,000 trillion synapses. The numbers are astronomical. Perhaps this is why the brain has eluded all attempts to explain it. “The fact is,” said Professor Henry Markram, “we’re still in the Dark Ages. We’re a little better than we were 6,000 years ago… but not much.”

So, as lead scientist at Lausanne’s Human Brain Project, he is not going to try to start with theories about the brain.

Instead he and his colleagues are going to build the full size thing inside a computer – with every connection and node modelled – to see if a brain emerges.

Within a decade he and his colleagues could have a brain in a box, with all the philosophical and ethical dilemmas that entails. Will it be conscious? Will it have rights? And for the scientists, a much more pressing question: will it work?

“Digital computing with silicon is hitting a wall,” said Markram. “We need a paradigm shift. The brain is extremely energy effcient.” Just how effcient is illustrated by his project itself. Markram’s cyber brain requires its own power station. Markram’s own brain, indeed all human brains, require the equivalent of a banana a day.

“It is also robust: you can lose half your brain and not notice. And even in everyday life, each one of us does extraordinary things a computer is not close to achieving.”

Computers might routinely beat us at chess – but can they make engaging small talk at an awkward dinner party?

Mars: one-way tickets only There is one area of human endeavour though that offers even more fantastical possibilities for exploration than magic carpets. It has also consistently failed to fulfl that promise.

Space travel has, thus far, been a disappointment.

When 2001: A Space Odyssey opened in cinemas it was notable because, in a science fction genre fxated on warp drives and teleportation, its predictions were modest: manned exploration of the closer bits of the solar system. Arthur C Clarke rightly considered travel beyond our home planets inconceivable in that time frame – if travelling to Jupiter is the equivalent of climbing Mont Blanc, travelling to our nearest star is like climbing Everest. Without oxygen. Barefoot. Clarke was not, however, modest enough. You would need to be in your forties to remember a time when man actually did walk on the moon – or even leave a medium Earth orbit.

The reason why is that the Apollo missions were as much about defeating communism as inspiring new explorers. Worse, they did so by employing communist principles: a large amount of cash thrown at a prestige project, that must succeed whatever the cost.

The result was that with the fall of the USSR, human space travel seemed pointless – and costly. That is changing, and it is changing because of the free market that the Apollo missions were upholding. Routine satellite missions are now commercial, rather than state, operations – and the cost of putting a kilogram in space has plummeted.

Firing the booster rockets just behind them are space tourism operations – such as Land Rover’s partner Virgin Galactic – hoping to show that they too can put a human in orbit.

There is one yet more ambitious project though, one that more than anything else evokes the spirit of those early pioneers. Somewhere you can go where GPS does not work, where communications are patchy or nonexistent and where you are beyond hope of rescue.

Applications are being accepted for Mars One, a journey to the Red Planet in a privately-run attempt to build a colony. Two weeks after applications opened, 78,000 people from 120 countries had signed up – all knowing that if they are successful, and the experiment raises its money, they will never return. Like the Polynesians who pushed their canoes eastwards, paddling into the unknown, theirs is a one-way journey. Like the early arrivals in the New World, they expect to die on foreign soil. Like the frst to visit the poles, they expect no help if it all goes wrong. They are explorers, in every sense of the word.

The great age of exploration did not come to an end: it just took a hiatus. Roll up for Mars One.

LAND ROVER ONELIFE / 25

“WE’LL EITHER FIND A WAY OR MAKE ONE” R O G E R C R AT H O R N E , 1 9 9 5

To celebrate 25 years of epic, muddy, steep, mad and glorious adventures in Land Rover Discoverys, we asked 25 storytellers to share their most memorable Discovery moment

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Lef: Ranulph Fiennes and his team search for the lost city of Ubar in the greatest sand desert in the world, the Empty Quarter of Arabia

“WE KEPT GOING UNTIL THE MILITARY FORBADE US TO GO ANY FURTHER” Land Rover Discovery across the Sahara 1989 01 London – Marrakech, via Western Sahara. 8,850 km Our goal was to cross the Sahara.

In 1989, this would have been the frst-ever crossing of the world’s largest desert by a Discovery.

Ours was an early prototype plucked off the pilot production line.

Everything was going swimmingly until we hit the Moroccan-Algerian border, at the town of Figuig. The Moroccans cheerfully bade us farewell. And then, minutes later, welcomed us back. The Algerians were not allowing Britons into their country. They wouldn’t tell us why.

It turned out to be a backlash caused by the publication of The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie, and the subsequent death fatwa.

So we re-routed. Instead of southern Algeria, our goal was now the southern fringes of Western Sahara. There was only one problem. There was a war there.

We drove deep into that benighted country, on the watch for Polisario guerrillas.

We kept going until the military forbade us to go any further. “The road is mined. Only the Red Cross is allowed through.” What sort of impunity the Red Cross had from land mines, he didn’t say.

Gavin Green, executive editor, Car magazine

“YOU TRY REALLY HARD TO KILL IT – BUT YOU CAN’T” The Amphibious Discovery 1989 02 Around Amsterdam, the Netherlands We built a three-door amphibious diesel Discovery which we took to Amsterdam, where the Queen of the Netherlands was opening a special hotel. There was a regatta of historical boats … and us in our Land Rover.

Land Rovers continually amaze you with their resilience. Our vehicle would sit with water covering its wheels and the engine

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pretty much submerged for days on end, and you could jump in, turn the key and start it. It had no reason to do that, it defes all logic.

You try really hard to kill it – putting it in fresh or salt water – but you can’t.

We would go down the little canals, passing some coffee shops, where people were having a good old smoke, and they would look out from the haze, see a car driving in the water, and do a double-take, which was very funny.

One thing that sticks in the mind is the vehicle’s pneumatic telescopic mast, which had a little Land Rover fag on it. During the Amstel parade we forgot to lower it when going under one of the bridges, and it pulled a freworks display down into the river and onto us. Fortunately it was dark so nobody knew.

David Saunders, General Manager, Land Rover Experience

“THE GERMAN TEAM WAS ALMOST UNDERWATER” Camel Trophy, Russia 1990 03 Moscow - Siberia, Russia. 2,000km The Camel Trophy course in Russia took us through Moscow and on to Lake Baikal, the deepest and largest freshwater lake in the world, containing a ffth of the Earth’s freshwater.

We set off from Red Square. It was the fnal year of the Soviet Union and there were Baltic demonstrators who were seeking independence. Heading into the countryside, the Discovery coped with steep hills, snow, heat, deep water and more. At one point the German team’s Discovery was almost submerged in water. Lake Baikal was like a sea, and I’d promised myself I’d go in. It was very cold, so I only dipped in, but I will remember that bath for the rest of my life.

Camel Trophy opened my eyes. The event showed me a new way of life. It’s true that the best school is travel, sharing intense moments with different people. I knew I wanted to be part of it. Today I work with Land Rover Experience, which is an adventure every day.

Moi Torrallardona, Land Rover Experience Instructor

“THEY THOUGHT WE WERE SPIES” Discovering the lost city of Ubar 1991 04 Salalah - Shis’r, Oman. 180km My obsession with fnding the lost city of Ubar began when I fought in the Sultan of Oman’s army against Marxist rebels in the late 1960s. TE Lawrence called Ubar “the Atlantis of the Sands”. It was a key point on the old frankincense trading route and was mentioned in the Koran. But nobody knew exactly where it was.

Over 26 years I mounted eight desert expeditions into the Empty Quarter, the greatest sand desert in the world, stretching from the Omani coast into Saudi Arabia.

After no luck, in 1991 NASA got involved.

They took photos from the Space Shuttle of what they thought might be Ubar. So I got permission from the Sultan of Oman to look for it. We used three then-new Discoverys, which were excellent vehicles in sand.

The NASA site, in fact, turned out to be a different period of archaeology.

We spent two months digging around much of the Dhofar area [inland of Salalah, the capital of Dhofar], based in the small town of Shis’r, where we camped throughout the 26-year period.

One day in Shis’r I heard two Omanis discussing how our expedition had done much flming but very little excavating.

They suspected we might be spies. This was deeply disturbing. I rushed off to Juris Zarins, the professor who was heading the team of young archaeology students, to tell them to start digging. “Where?” he asked. Just beyond our camp there was a meteorite site with a great deal of rubble around it.

Within three days, nine inches under the surface, we found 3,000-year-old Persian chess pieces. Within three months we started to trace a city wall. We’d found Ubar.

It became the biggest excavation project in Arabia. But we didn’t fnd it with NASA technology. We found it through luck.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes, explorer

LAND ROVER ONELIFE / 29

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Clockwise from top lef: Nick Dimbleby’s Camel Trophy competitor’s bib; Camel Trophy Kalimantan; Dimbleby’s passport to adventure; Phil Poulter on the Calvert Expedition in 1996

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“THIS MEANT A HUGE DEAL TO US”

“NO HUMAN HAS PROBABLY EVER SET FOOT IN THIS PLACE”

La Ruta Maya, A Journey Of Discovery 1994 05 Belize City – Caracol, Belize. 176km

Calvert Expedition 1996 07 Geraldton – Broome, Western Australia, via the Great Sandy Desert. 2,000km

The mission of the expedition was to install two fbreglass replicas of Maya carved stone monuments that had been removed to preserve them from damage by pollution.

The replicas were created by sculptor Gregory Glasson and depict a two-ton stela erected in 613AD to commemorate the rule of the great Caracol king, Kan II, and a 1.2mdiameter fat stone altar dated 820AD that depicts a Maya ruler receiving a prisoner.

Putting up the replicas was a huge deal for us and for the site of Caracol. It is diffcult to appreciate what the site would have been like in the past without them in place. The replicas are exceedingly realistic – visitors are not aware that they are copies (unless they tap them and can hear that they are hollow).

Dr Diane Chase, anthropologist at the University of Central Florida

“WE WILL EITHER FIND A WAY OR MAKE ONE” The Hannibal Trail 1995 06 Val d’Isère, France – Turin, Italy. 113km Doing the recce for this remains one of my best memories. Our plan was to approximate the journey made by Hannibal the Carthaginian commander at the outbreak of the Second Punic War, when he marched his army, including elephants, across the Alps from France into Italy. Although he didn’t beat the Romans, he certainly surprised them. One of his mottos was: “We will either fnd a way or make one”, and that was my attitude too.

When we arrived in Val d’Isère on the frst day of the recce, there was a circus, with an elephant grazing nearby. It was a sign.

The journey covered forestry trails, goat tracks and Roman road – beautiful fne cobbles – but the frst view of the Po Valley in Italy was the most memorable moment. You really could imagine Hannibal and his soldiers, standing there, surveying their prize.

Roger Crathorne, Land Rover evangelist

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I have travelled extensively throughout Australia, but the Calvert Expedition – which retraced the 1896 expedition led by Lawrence Wells – is the most memorable trip I have ever done. We camped at one location that was more than a 1,000km in any direction from civilisation, and walked past rock carvings that were tens of thousands of years old.

Often there were no visible tracks to be seen. We travelled through country where the spinifex grass was taller than the vehicles, occasionally having to stand on the roof rack to locate the direction that the vehicle in front had gone. One day, late in the afternoon, the lowering sun lit up the spinifex so that it glowed like a sea of shimmering gold.

This made it even more diffcult to follow the tracks of the vehicle in front. We made an early camp that day.

One group of journalists few in by helicopter to join us on a particularly diffcult sandy section in their clean, fresh clothes.

They were mortifed, while sitting on their luggage, when we handed them shovels, instead of canapés and cocktails, to help us dig several of the vehicles out of a bog.

One night I walked about a kilometre from our camp and sat on top of a tall sand dune looking back at the dull glow from our campfre, then up at the star-flled night.

I thought to myself, “No human being has probably ever set foot in this place”.

Phil Poulter, chief driving instructor

“IT FELT SPECIAL...

KIND OF PIONEERING” Camel Trophy Kalimantan 1996 08 Balikpapan – Pontianak, Borneo. 1,490km Camel Trophy was always extreme, but this was perhaps one of the hardest Camel Trophy events ever to take place. It was about 1,500km but we only covered 500km in the frst two weeks of a three-week trip. At one stage the

convoy of some 40 vehicles took more than 48 hours to pass a 200m-long mudhole. I called it the Mighty Mudhole.

It involved hectic winching of every vehicle with trains of Land Rovers roped together.

Really hard work!

On another section our vehicle was lead scout. We went ahead of the main convoy in case it was a dead end. It felt special... kind of pioneering. We came across a small team of gold diggers. They had a camp in the middle of nowhere, looking for gold in a stream. They were totally self-suffcient and had a pig at the camp. What do you think happened next? Well, I was invited to try panning myself and actually found some gold. It was a great experience.

Pontus Hellgren, Swedish competitor

“AN AMAZING HUMAN MOMENT” Camel Trophy Mongolia 1997 09 Ulaanbaatar – Kharakorum, Mongolia. 1,600km Heading across the grasslands of Mongolia for the day’s driving, we’d often not see another motorised vehicle all day. There would be people on horseback, maybe a Russian military vehicle, and that would be it. Living in their traditional gers (tents), we came across local Mongolians for whom seeing a load of Land Rovers was like the aliens had landed.

We’d be invited into their gers and they would serve up fermented mare’s milk, the local speciality, and we’d take pictures of them.

We were shooting on flm back then, but we wanted to share the pictures with our hosts, so we brought along a Polaroid camera. A lot of those people didn’t have mirrors, so they were unused to seeing themselves. To not only have a picture of themselves, but one that appeared before their very eyes – it blew their minds!

There was one particular old woman who couldn’t understand a word I said, but I handed the picture to her and she held the photo against her heart and put it on her mantelpiece with her most treasured possessions – including a black-and-white photograph of what I assume was her son in Russian military uniform. Quite an amazing human moment.

Nick Dimbleby, Land Rover photographer

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Lef: reindeer antlers picked up by John Pearson during his journey from Peterborough to Nordkapp in northern Norway

“WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE” Tempest Trek 1999 10 London – Paris, via Pakistan. 33,000km My friend Bill Baker, once Land Rover’s director of communications programmes, gets fantastic ideas.

When Land Rover introduced its entirely redesigned New Discovery in 1999, Bill dictated a memo: “Drive a pair of New Discoverys around the world. This will prove they’re tough, durable and operable under thousands of feet of seawater… Scratch that last part. We’ll use a submarine. As I was saying, this will prove they’re tough and durable, and that automotive journalists are idiots who can be talked into almost anything, including travelling across the most crowded part of India during the hottest time of the year at the pace set by Craig Breedlove in Black Rock Desert.”

I joined the New Discovery Trek in Islamabad, Pakistan – three weeks after it embarked on its four-month, roundthe-world route – and I didn’t realise I was an idiot until the next afternoon.

If this sounds like the kind of road trip you go on, let me recommend the Land Rover Discovery. Storage space is ample, which India’s customs agents will confrm. The air conditioning is equal to the subcontinent’s worst climatic efforts. The Discovery has a body-on-frame construction like the proverbial brick thing of which there are hardly any in India. (And when you fnd one it has a bowl of water instead of a roll of toilet paper.)

The Discovery is doubtless crashworthy, something we amazingly did not test.

Although we did experience a side-mirror fold-in from an express bus, got a Lambretta in the back of an Ifor trailer, and had several sacred-cow brushbacks (“touched by the pot roast of God”). We did test the Discovery’s off-road qualifcations, although not on purpose. We’d go off-road abruptly and at high speed because of the horrendous events in front of us or because of sudden pavement disappearance. This is not the preferred, Tread Lightly method of exploring the wilderness in a sport-ute. Nevertheless,

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the Discovery has excellent rough terrain capabilities, including the all-important capability not to fip over.

There was, as it happened, only one problem with driving the Discoverys around India.

I couldn’t do it. I took a few turns negotiating India’s combination of fgure-eight racing, dodgem cars, and “You Bet Your Life,” and then, like the seasoned world traveller and lifelong guy that I am, I pulled over to the side of the road and cried. “I have a family!”

I sobbed. “I’m 50! That goat didn’t have its turn signal on! My glasses are smudged!

I hate the food! We’re all going to die!”

PJ O’Rourke, writer

“WE FOUND THE SHEEP” Round the World 1999 11 Dubai – the Gojal Valley, Pakistan. 1,982 km From our journey around the world, the leg that I most vividly recall is from Dubai to China.

I particularly remember standing on the dockside in Ajman Port, Dubai, watching Rabia [their 1992 Discovery] being craned onto a wooden dhow. It didn’t look as though it would make it across the creek, never mind through the Straits of Hormuz and across the Indian Ocean to Karachi.

I wondered if we would every see her again.

Despite delays caused by bad weather and the sheer bureaucracy of Karachi port, we still had 19 days to reach the Khunjerab Pass where we had to cross into China on 1 June as pre-arranged. Near the end of May, travelling through the Gojal Valley on the Karakoram Highway we decided to take a closer look at the Ghulkin Glacier.

There we met a local lady who took me by the hand and walked us down to her home where she offered us tea. Soon, half the village had joined us, including Samina, a 10-yearold girl who was able to translate for us. We spent a pleasant afternoon with them and my husband Peter took out his camera to take photos of the scenery.

Now it transpired that the local lady had been out looking for her escaped sheep.

Using the telephoto lens on the camera, we were able to spot the sheep on the far side of the valley. This caused great excitement – frstly, everyone was amazed by the ability to see so far into the distance, and secondly, because we had found the escaped sheep.

Eileen Crichton, adventurer

“I MIGHT HAVE TO SHOOT THE BUGGER” Australia’s Nullarbor Plain 2001 12 Perth – Sydney, Australia. 4,100km There is a relatively easy way to get from Perth on the west coast of Australia to Sydney on the east coast. It’s called the Eyre Highway, a smooth blacktop that snakes along the Great Australian Bight.

Then there is the more diffcult route, which takes you across the legend that is the Nullarbor Plain outback.

It’s 200,000 square kilometres of virtually uninhabited vastness, which begins in earnest once you clear the gold mining town of Kalgoorlie some 600km east of Perth. And we’ve got another 3,500km to cover, much of it on the barely-there service road alongside the Indian-Pacifc rail line, ploughing through deep, red bull-dust whilst gingerly avoiding razor-sharp limestone shards.

Then, rising like a mirage out of the scrubland, we see Chris Richards – I call him Dromedary Dundee. He’s on walkabout across the Plain, leading a quartet of spectacularly bad-tempered spitting camels.

As a friendly gesture, Chris tilts a hat ringed with a bandoleer holding live .22 calibre rounds and unfolds an enormous smile.

We talk of his adventures and the problems he’s having with one particularly nasty camel.

“Diffcult to get near him because he can kick in a two-metre radius,” says Chris. And then after a long pause for thought, “I might have to shoot the bugger.”

I’ll never know how that particular outback drama ended. But I reckon that camel survived to spit another day.

Gavin Conway, journalist

LAND ROVER ONELIFE / 33

“TRUCKERS WON’T STOP FOR SURVIVORS” Driving Dalton Highway 2003 13 Anchorage – Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, along Dalton Highway [Haul Road]. 1,287km

The promise of superb Arctic scenery and a chance to view the world’s most lucrative plumbing job [the Trans-Alaska pipeline] made driving the infamous Haul Road seem like a good idea.

At Seattle, where we scrutinised the map and waited for the fight connection to Anchorage and our rendezvous with the Discovery, we met Cookee, an Alaska veteran, a welder in the oil business and a man whose beard seemed to grow perpendicularly to his face at every point.

“Hell,” he said as we outlined the route of our expedition. “If you guys ain’t prepared you’re gonna be in it like you’ve never seen before.”

Another old sourdough joined our group.

“Woah,” was all he could manage.

The two greatest threats would be the cold and the trucks; trucks with a gross weight of up to 90 tons that “don’t give an inch”. A rumour, heard at home, that truckers won’t stop for survivors was quickly suppressed; the truth is that at 60mph on an icy downhill stretch, they simply can’t.

[We’d picked up] the Discovery at Anchorage and had it ftted with electric heaters for the sump, gearbox and battery.

We then set about flling it with contingency supplies: three fve-gallon Jerry cans (“Excuse me?”) of extra fuel, a shovel, distress fares, a

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portable stove, gas canisters, a towing chain, snow chains, two spare wheels and tyres, a candle lantern (suffcient to keep the interior of a stranded car above freezing, apparently), three spare candles, bottled water, stormproof matches, two Arctic-spec sleeping bags of exponentially expressed tog ratings, Mars Bar, three cans of baked beans and a tin of that quintessential Alaskan resource almost as vital to the state’s well being as oil – Spam.

By the time we’d reach Fairbanks [577km away], just like on the school bus trip, we’d eaten nearly all our “emergency” rations and had to buy fresh supplies. It was later explained to us that many Alaskans and Canadians keep tins of dog food in the car.

You only eat dog food when you’re desperate.

James May, Top Gear presenter

“MISTAKES DROPPED MORE POINTS THAN LACK OF FITNESS” G4 Challenge: America 2003 14 Stage 4: Las Vegas – Moab, US. 1,145km It was the last week and the stress was high. Making mistakes dropped points much more than lack of physical ftness. I was absolutely not the strongest – there were guys who did Iron Man runs – but my Air Force training gave me the skills to win.

First of all, navigation. Land Rover gave you the co-ordinates, a map and a GPS. You had to fnd your fastest way to the point. The terrain was diffcult to navigate, winding through huge

canyons. One day, we navigated to the correct spot and looked up to see another team in almost exactly the same position, but they forgot to look at the map’s contours. They were on top of the canyon, 500m up.

Secondly, planning and preparation. Small things gain you time. For lunch, most people stopped their car, took out their Kelly Kettle and made food. Around 11am, we would stuff boil-in-the-bag meals in the front of the engine. By 1pm, it was hot enough to eat, but we didn’t stop, we just swapped seats and kept going – one driving, the other eating.

And fnally, ruthlessness. We always had to take press with us, and near the end I had a guy from Belgian television who was not used to that terrain. He was throwing up inside the car, which was not so good for concentration.

I was not really willing to stop, so we left him in another vehicle. As I said, small things gain you precious time.

Rudi Thoelen, ex-Belgian fghter pilot and winner of the G4 Challenge 2003

“HE TOOK OFF IN A HELICOPTER WITH THE CAR KEYS” Top Gear Challenge 2003 15 Ben Tongue, Scotland The aim was to reach the top of Ben Tongue, at 302m one of Scotland’s most arduous off-road assaults, but we weren’t allowed to trial it beforehand. So we didn’t know exactly how the car would respond.

We planned to follow the cambers and avoid the marshes as much as possible, but Jeremy Clarkson chose to make it more exciting by getting it stuck in the mud, and at times the wheels were completely sunk, but the car got to the top which was brilliant.

At the top, Clarkson took off in the helicopter with the keys, and we realised that the car was stranded on the top of the mountain. We were just getting ready to have a key sent up from head offce at Solihull when we saw the helicopter turn round and he dropped the car keys from the window.

Phil Jones, Land Rover Events Operations Manager

ÒTHE SNOW WAS DRIFTING. IT WAS SERIOUSÓ Land Rover Experience: Iceland Adventure 2005 16 Reykjavik – Landmannalaugar, Iceland. 189km

set off in a tight convoy – in the middle of the storm. Driving snow was mixed with volcanic ash and you couldn’t see the car in front. After an hour and a half it was a complete whiteout.

You could see nothing and we were effectively following a track log on the GPS. I ended up walking in front of the lead car with a broomstick. You couldn’t tell what was snowdrift or solid surface. I used the broom to plot a meandering route past hidden rocks to the left and right of the GPS track. It was a spectacular challenge – both for the vehicle, which came out of it admirably, and for the people involved – who all made it to safety.

David Sneath, Senior Manager, Land Rover Drive Experience Events

ÒWE HAD TO FIND, TEST AND RATE THEM. IT WAS A BIG JOBÓ G4 Challenge: Bolivia 2006 17 Stage 3: loop route from Santa Cruz via Sucre, Bolivia. 1,086km

The Landmannalaugar camping hut in Iceland closes in October. That’s when we rented it out. It took all day to get there, and on the approach we drove through a river heated by geothermal springs. The water was 25ºC, despite being surrounded by snow.

We were totally reliant on the vehicles. We carried our food, our water, everything. All was well. Then one night as we got to the hut a storm was brewing. It was windy, cold, -16ºC. When we woke in the morning, snow was drifting. It was serious. We had to get out. We

We spent one-and-a-half years recceing in preparation for the 2006 G4 Challenger, and over that time we became locals.

We were based in Santa Cruz and we knew the best bars, the best routes and best contacts.

We were two Swedes, a South African, a couple of Brits and a Spaniard. Six guys looking for the best locations Bolivia had to offer. We had to fnd them, test them out and rate them. It was a big job.

We found fantastic places where no one had been – not even the local guides.

One day, we were following what we thought was a track. As it started to go up a mountainside, it didn’t do S-turns – it just went straight up. It was obvious that was where they’d laid cable. It went really, really steep.

In the end it was no problem for the Discovery, but it was scary how steep it went.

Bolivia has extreme washboard roads.

They’re all gravel and if you came across those sections in Sweden or England, you’d drive at fve kilometres per hour, because you know they would only be about 100m long. But in Bolivia, this was the road. Our mechanic said that what we did in one day in Bolivia meant more shock-absorbance than a car does in a whole lifetime in the UK. Rikard Beckman, G4 2006 competition director and recce leader From left: driving Haul Road in Alaska with James May; fossils collected by the Crichtons on their travels; Rikard Beckman (right) during the G4 Challenge Bolivia; the keys to a Land Rover Discovery 300Tdi

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LAND ROVER ONELIFE / 35

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Clockwise from top lef: in Tanzania on the 2012 Serengeti Expedition; John Pearson’s Sami tapestry from his Nordkapp trip; Iceland during the Land Rover Experience adventure; a Camel Trophy competitor’s trusty Leica M6

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“AT 5,000M, IT IS THE WORLD’S HIGHEST ROADWAY”

“WE COULDN’T COMPETE WITH FRESH BUFFALO”

Argentina’s Road to the Clouds 2007 18 Cafayate – Salta, Argentina. 473km

Land Rover Experience: Serengeti Expedition 2012 20 Arusha – Serengeti Migration Camp,

The invitation was captivating: to drive Discoverys along sections of the legendary Ruta 40 across the highest roadway on the South American continent, Argentina’s “Road to the Clouds”.

Meeting in Buenos Aires, we few northwest across the Andes in a Lilliputian 18-seater on a three-hour white-knuckle ride to the Calchaqui Valley. From there we headed on road toward the 5,000m Abra del Acay pass, the world’s highest such roadway.

We travelled through twisting canyons, across waterways, and crawled up and down huge boulders and vertical cliff faces. We were soon deep in the pockets of the backcountry.

Finally, stepping out at the Abra del Acay summit we were whipped by ferce winds and caught off-guard by the incredibly thin air – overnight in a local hostel, medics provided oxygen to those in need. But when it comes to oxygen, I found mine in the adventure and backcountry driving out there.

Sue Mead, rally driver and journalist

Tanzania. 850km

“IT’S THE UNSUNG HERO …

THERE’S NO FUSS” Land Rover Experience: Morocco Adventure 2010 19 Loop route from Marrakech, via Essaouira and Taroudant, Morocco. 800km

This trip had everything from the coastal dunes near Essaouira and desert terrain of Taroudant to the highest pass in North Africa, Tizi n’Tachddirt, at 2,260m above sea level.

For me, most impressive was the sheer ability of the vehicle to carry all the support kit and food and drinks, as well as pulling the other cars out in the dunes. We at Land Rover Experience see the Discovery as the unsung hero of the Land Rover feet – it just does what is needed without fuss or complaint.

Steve Purvis, Land Rover Experience Senior Instructor & Global Event Leader

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If you ever want to view game, the Serengeti has to be the place to do it. The amount of animals you see is overwhelming.

One day we were having lunch nearby in the Ngorongoro Crater, with white tablecloths and napkins. Over the other side of the swampy area there were eight lions, and a few buffalo foolishly wandered close to the pride. Realising their error, the buffaloes bolted, one headed into the swamp followed by six lions. They were headed for us – so we all leapt into the cars and waited.

The animals charged through our picnic area and, after a little while, the lions strolled back past us. They showed absolutely no interest in our lovely steak. Obviously we couldn’t compete with fresh buffalo.

Andrew Brown, Land Rover Experience South Africa

“A WARLORD HELD A REVOLVER TO MY HEAD” Rif Valley expedition 2012/3 21 Djibouti – Mozambique. 5,000km We’ve been adventuring for decades and our Discoverys are the most comfortable, capable Landies we have ever used. There is no doubt that “Discos can do it”. With them we’ve been across Africa to promote trans-frontier conservation and we’ve led a Land Rover humanitarian expedition to South Sudan to celebrate the world’s newest country.

Recently we followed Africa’s Great Rift Valley from Djibouti on the dangerous Horn of Africa to Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique.

There were so many highlights along the way: reaching the Gulf of Tadjoura on the Red Sea and, with a camel to carry water and armed gunmen for security, climbing to the rim of the lava-spewing active volcano of Erta Ale. Back at the village, a warlord of the Afar Triangle pointed a revolver at my head, but we

talked our way out of it. Two weeks later, a group of geologists weren’t as fortunate: 12 were killed by rebels and four kidnapped.

A far more beautiful highlight was in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest where we saw silverback gorillas. Staring into the soft brown eyes of a silverback before looking down submissively, knowing that he could break you in half, is incredible. Bwindi is a true jungle of King Kong proportion. The young gorillas are extremely curious and any shiny objects you may be wearing will attract their attention.

I didn’t think my somewhat grey beard would count as a shiny object, but before I knew it a juvenile female had positioned herself behind me and began touching my beard and hair. All the while, the large dominant silverback looked on possessively.

Thank God she paid only a feeting interest and moved on to eat some shoots.

All our journeys are always underpinned by humanitarian campaigns. This trip, one of the key moments was on leaving the Omo River in Ethiopia. We came across a group of Dassanech tribes people carrying a naked young child on a homemade stretcher.

The child had contracted malaria and was unconscious, sweating profusely. We loaded the family – who had been walking for six hours – into the Discovery and drove to the closest clinic, nearly 100km away.

At the clinic a quinine IV drip was quickly administered, and the child was draped in wet clothes to break her fever. That night we camped in a dry riverbed and shared a sombre meal with the family. The next day the child had improved dramatically – she was out of danger.

We made an arrangement for the mother and child to be transported to the village when they were ready, and we returned the rest of the family home. The frst thing we did then was make sure that every pregnant woman and child under the age of fve received a long-lasting insecticide treated mosquito net.

We fnally emptied our symbolic calabash into Gorongosa’s Lake Urema. The calabash is an expedition talisman, we fll it at the beginning with water from our starting point, this time from 30 lakes in the Great African Rift valley and then empty it at the end of each journey. It’s probably the most travelled Zulu artifact in the world.

Kingsley Holgate, humanitarian

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“RACING IS ‘MY THING’”

“AN AVALANCHE APPEARED…”

Land Rover Experience: Nordic Adventure 2012 22 Hämeenlinna – Helsinki, Finland. 100km

Birmingham to Beiing 2013 24 Birmingham, UK – Beijing, China. 18,000km

The Discovery was perfect for our winter driving adventure – it handled the snow and ice perfectly. In these conditions, you must remember to act earlier than you usually would, so depress the brake or turn the steering wheel sooner than you would on tarmac.

Driving has always come naturally to me, I’ve not needed to practise much, so racing in rallies was just me doing “my thing”.

Instructing has been far more challenging, because now you need to tell people what to do, when it’s just instinctive for me.

But it’s great seeing a scared frst-timer go from “no, not me, I can’t drive” to smiling and confdent after learning a new skill – it’s a huge reward.

Minna Sillankorva, former rally driver, now a Land Rover Experience instructor

“FROM HERE IT’S JUST SEA AND ICE UP TO THE NORTH POLE”

PHOTOGRAPHY: NICK DIMBLEBY , TOBI JENKINS, ANTHONY CULLEN, LEE FARRANT, NEIL EMMERSON, RICHARD NEWTON

Nordkapp adventure 2013 23 Peterborough, UK – Nordkapp, Norway. 8,371km

Clockwise from top lef: a battered notepad from the Camel Trophy Kalimantan; along the Birmingham to Beiing journey; a small Roman vase picked up by the Crichtons on one of their journeys; photographer Anthony Cullen documents the 2013 Trans-America Trail; a Cobra walkie talkie; Discovery crossing the Empty Quarter; photographer Nick Dimbleby’s one-month visa for Mongolia in 1997; Cullen heading to the coast on the Trans-America Trail; (centre) fossilised coral collected by the Crichtons from the edge of the Rub al Khali

I wanted to prove that it’s possible for anyone to do a major adventure like this in a standard Land Rover Discovery, equipped only with a small pop-up tent. We were aiming for the most northerly point of Europe, Nordkapp in Norway, so from the UK we travelled through eight countries, over eight ferry crossings, through two tunnels (twice) and over one major bridge.

There was so much wonderful scenery on this adventure. The highlights were the Bognes to Skarberget ferry crossing, which provides the most glorious backdrop, camping by the water’s edge on the picturesque Ramfjord campsite near Tromsø, and the drive along the coastline from Russenes to Honningsvåg.

I’ve driven through some beautiful places around the world, but this ranks with the best in terms of wild magnifcence. The sea is gleaming turquoise and rocks at the roadside have been eroded into incredible patterns.

And then there’s our arrival at Nordkapp, the North Cape. From here it’s just sea and ice all the way to the North Pole. My euphoria was heightened by the shining sun and cloudless sky – and of course it continued to shine all night, in this the land of the midnight sun.

John Pearson, editor-in-chief Land Rover Owner International magazine

To celebrate the millionth Discovery, we headed across Europe to Beijing.

And, at our last border crossing, from Kyrgyzstan into China, we took the Torugart Pass. It was a remote crossing up in the mountains, at just under 4,000m, and it was peak avalanche season. Avalanches were happening daily and we really didn’t know what we were going to fnd.

We didn’t see a soul. There weren’t any settlements up there. We saw a lorry on its side, abandoned. It had possibly been hit by an avalanche or sunk in snow. You could see they’d had some massive avalanches, the amount of earth that had travelled down the mountain.

Then an avalanche appeared, rolling across the road in front of us. With avalanches, you don’t know whether you’re seeing the beginning, the middle or the end. Has one just hit, or is it about to get worse?

This is where the Discovery comes into its own. Suddenly the road goes from being a dirt gravel track to no road. You’ve got a freshly landed avalanche in front of you. We put the suspension up, got into low range and picked our route through. We could see small rocks and boulders, almost a constant fow of them, coming down. Not waiting to see what was going to happen, we just drove over whatever was there, and kept going.

Toby Blythe, project manager, D3 Events Ltd

“COAST TO COAST WITHOUT PUTTING A TYRE ON TARMAC” Trans-America Trail 2013 25 Jellico, Tennessee – Portland, Oregon, US. 6,722km The idea was to cross the US, without putting a tyre on tarmac.

We managed this along dry riverbeds, mountain passes, railway lines, and over tracks of thick, milky dust – with a short nod to tarmac at the start. The bit that made me go “wow” was on Colorado’s Black Bear Pass. We headed up an almost sheer face of slippery rock, and then downhill, on insanely tight switchbacks. The Rock Crawl function on the Discovery really steadied us.

Tom Patterson was driving one of the Discoverys ahead of us and Warren Blevins was spotting for him. I watched, holding my breath.

Tom had to go to the edge of the switchback – with a 300m drop! – in order to reverse back to make the tight angles. I was amazed at how the Discovery gripped to the road. We were driving on stock tyres that you could use to go to the supermarket, but that day we were using them on one of the highest peaks in America.

Anthony Cullen, photographer

LAND ROVER ONELIFE / 39

TOMORROW’S PIONEERS

BY TODAY’S PIONEERS:

SIX PEOPLE WHO’VE CHANGED OUR WORLD NOMINATE THE PEOPLE WHO THEY THINK WILL CHANGE OUR FUTURE as told to Simeon de la Torre

nominates Sir Peter Bazalgette Chair of the British Arts Council and legendary broadcaster

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Tom Morris Theatre director of War Horse and Artistic Director of the Bristol Old Vic

nominates Hervé This Chemist and the true father of molecular gastronomy

Paolo Samori Scientist who is pioneering the research behind nanodevices

nominates Sir James Dyson Inventor, industrial designer and founder of Dyson Limited

Dan Watson Design engineer and creator of SafetyNet

nominates Will Travers OBE Conservationist and CEO of The Born Free Foundation

Shivani Bhalla Conservationist and Founder of Ewaso Lions in Kenya

nominates Professor Jacques Marescaux Performed the world’s frst transatlantic surgical operation

Sacha Loiseau Creator of the optical biopsy that allows on-the-spot analysis

nominates Monty Halls TV broadcaster, explorer and marine biologist

Cayle Royce Ex-serviceman who’s not allowed his amputations to stop his adventuring

LAND ROVER ONELIFE / 41

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Will Travers OBE Shivani Bhalla

NOMINATES

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Professor Jacques Marescaux Performed the world’s frst remote surgery

Will Travers OBE CEO, The Born Free Foundation

In 1987, I visited a car manufacturer and was amazed by the application of robotics in such delicate movements.

Once home, I met with my collaborators as I knew surgery would develop thanks to robotics. It was inspiring.

Medical imaging is a major contributing factor in the development of the operating room, and Sacha Loiseau is a man who understands the importance of its expanding use. He works on confocal laser technology that enables us, in real time and during one surgical intervention, to determine if a cell is normal or cancerous. What huge progress. I predict Sacha will change our future.

I’ve been doing this for a long time and when we started in 1984, people simply didn’t challenge the exploitation of wild animals in zoos and circuses. I am very proud of our achievements, such as the introduction of the EU Zoos Directive and fghting the bloody ivory trade.

I’m impressed by Shivani Bhalla of the Ewaso Lions project. Her approach to compassionate conservation, working with local communities to reduce wildlife confict and helping them to understand the importance of lions, marks her out as a conservation leader of the future.

Sacha Loiseau CEO, Mauna Kea Technologies

Shivani Bhalla Founder, Ewaso Lions, Kenya

It’s extremely fattering to be nominated by Professor Marescaux, he’s been at the forefront of new surgical techniques for a long time. He did everything to fulfl his vision – it is so hard today to make that happen.

My background is science, I used to be an astrophysicist and was really into telescopes. I thought it would be fascinating to apply the technology to the human body and so my company is pioneering a new medical imaging technique that is poised to revolutionise the way physicians do their work.

For instance, with cancer, you need to see the tissue at a microscopic level. Previously, you would have to extract tissue from the body to examine it, but we have invented a microscope that goes inside the patient. It gives a better understanding of what is going on, in real time, in one single procedure.

It’s called an optical biopsy and it’s much less stressful for the patient. I often hear from physicians who say “thanks to your device, I was able to see that what I’d planned for the patient wasn’t right. I could change my approach before I operated”. I’m proud to say that this happens all over the world, every single day. There are so many things yet to be achieved. We face a diffcult task, but we would like to be able to say that we have changed medicine for the better. There are parts of the body where it has been impossible to take a biopsy up to now, and in the feld of gastroenterology especially, it is close to becoming a new standard of care.

My mission is to promote co-existence between people and lions in northern Kenya. The problem is not hunting, it’s to do with retaliation when lions kill livestock. In Samburu – which is where the project is based – livestock are easy prey and yet they are life and wealth to the locals.

There can be a lot of resentment towards the lions.

The country’s lion population could be extinct in the next two decades. The African lion population has declined by 30-50% in the past 20 years, and yet the Samburu people love wildlife. They have wildlife stories that go back generations and the creatures are part of their culture. However, they will kill if they lose livestock.

We try to stop that confict. We do this by preventing the livestock from being killed and by talking with the locals – so far, we’ve had great success. Lion killings have almost stopped in our local area.

Will and his team have supported us for fve years or so and their help has been invaluable.

But it is hard. We work in remote locations under diffcult conditions. The lions we deal with are unlike those you see on TV: sleeping in packs, hunting at night, then lazing around. Here, they’re often solitary, silent, and hunting by 1pm because they’re surviving against the odds.

We meet angry people and every day we deal with confict – we’ve even been caught up in rival cattle raids. Yet, every time we see a lion we get so excited.

You see beautiful cubs or come across a lioness that you have known for 10 years and it all becomes worth it.

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JAMES DYSON PORTRAIT: CAMERA PRESS; SHIVANI BHALLA PORTRAIT: TIM JACKSON

Professor Jacques Marescaux Sacha Loiseau

NOMINATES

Sir James Dyson CBE Inventor and industrial designer I question why things work the way they do, and try to develop a better solution. In 1978, I ripped my top-ofthe-range Hoover Junior apart to work out why it was losing its suck, and we’ve continued developing our vacuums ever since. This year we reached a milestone, by removing not just the bag, but the flter too.

But it’s not just me – I’m surrounded by 1,700 bright engineers, and the entries to the James Dyson Award every year make me confdent for the future. Two years ago, Dan Watson won the award with an idea of a fshing net that allows juvenile fsh to escape. It’s simple, but potentially has big impact – Dan really is one to watch.

Dan Watson Design engineer Inspiration comes from the world around me. I’m not one for Eureka moments – more of an amalgamation of many ideas generated from reading, discussion and observation. I fnd the key is to fll my brain with a range of interesting things – often not related to my project – and let it churn away in the background.

Sir James Dyson CBE NOMINATES Dan Watson

SafetyNet was developed as a response to some of the issues facing the global commercial fshing industry.

Current capture methods can be unselective, leading to them catching juvenile and endangered fsh as well as simply catching more fsh than they should. So the Escape Rings, which are part of the SafetyNet system, present an emergency exit, using species-specifc behavioural responses to guide different types of fsh out of the net through apertures.

The James Dyson Foundation has helped me in a very direct way by publicising SafetyNet and raising my profle as a designer.

The biggest challenge is often convincing people to look at things in a different way. Design takes a holistic approach to problem solving, and Sir James has brought the iterative design process to the mainstream.

This helps me because I can point to a case study that people know of, and explain why design may be useful to them. To have been nominated is a great compliment from someone who’s done so much for design engineering in the UK. Here’s hoping I can live up to expectations.

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LAND ROVER ONELIFE / 43

“Tom is talented artistically, commercially astute and is redefning the role of arts and culture at the core of our life”

Sir Peter Bazalgette, Chair of the Arts Council, broadcaster What motivates me? Pressure and panic. In the ‘90s, I was on the train with a producer and we were off to pitch a show to the BBC. I knew deep down it was a second-rate idea and so we were forced – within eight stops – to come up with something better. Changing Rooms was what we came up with and it went on to make hundreds of millions of pounds and regularly got 12 million viewers.

Tom Morris, works a little differently, I suspect.

He directed a production when I was at the English National Opera a few years ago, and is truly one of the new breed of cultural entrepreneurs. He is talented artistically, commercially astute and is redefning the role of arts and culture at the core of our lives.

Tom Morris Theatre Director, Artistic Director of the Bristol Old Vic I began working in theatre almost by accident.

I became a journalist writing about theatre and the arts and the work of people like Steven Daldry [multiaward winning director] inspired me. It enabled me to think about what artists were and the value they add to society.

These people see the world in different ways and, through their skills, they are able to articulate it for

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others to understand. I thought – and still think – that was very powerful.

So I got involved in theatre producing. I applied to take over the Battersea Arts Theatre in London and thankfully all the other applicants withdrew their applications so I got the job. I got involved with all sorts of experimental work and we built a bit of a name for ourselves. From there, I went to the National Theatre, and was given the freedom to explore yet more ways of engaging with the audience.

I proposed the idea of War Horse with Marianne Elliot and the creativity of the show – with incredible puppetry from Adrian Kohler – resonated with people.

I don’t think that anyone would describe themselves as a pioneer, and I’m only able to do what I do because of the infuence of pioneers like Marianne and Adrian.

I’m now at Bristol Old Vic and I am lucky enough to be able to work with the very best people in the industry.

They inspire me and they make me still think about how we can articulate things in different ways for audiences.

Let’s not forget that if you’re making a piece of theatre, it doesn’t mean anything without an audience.

We need to learn more about what our audience is capable of and what it wants from the theatre. This, for me, is the most exciting part of my job. I’ve been here for four years and it still feels like there is so much that is yet to be achieved. In essence, I want to die looking forwards, not backwards.

TOM MORRIS PORTRAIT: RICHARD SAKER / THE OBSERVER ; PETER BAZALGETTE PORTRAIT: GETTY IMAGES

Sir Peter Bazalgette NOMINATES Tom Morris

LAND ROVER ONELIFE / 45

Hervé This NOMINATES Paolo Samori

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Molecular gastronomy is not cooking; it is studying what happens during cooking. For me, a carrot is a basket full of chemical components, and when you cook it you change the chemical nature of these components and the organisation of the molecules.

I am fascinated in these phenomena because, perhaps, we’ll fnd something new. Today, chemists are on the verge of being able to make “artifcial living cells”, but will I see it in my lifetime? I’m not so sure.

Now, I don’t know if he is working in that particular direction right now, but Paolo Samori has to be one of the most exciting people in my world. He is a young, brilliant guy and his discoveries in the feld of nanoscience and nanotechnology are quite incredible.

To me, he is the future.

Paolo Samori Director, Institut de Science et d’Ingénierie Supramoléculaires (ISIS) of the Université de Strasbourg I think that my endless curiosity has been key for becoming a researcher, and as a child when I connected a lamp to a battery I thought that the light I was observing was a result of a miracle. Later on, when I was teenager, the question of how small a molecule was fascinated me, and things became more clear when I started my Laurea thesis in Italy and began to play with new microscopes that allowed you to see and manipulate molecules, one at a time.

“Paolo Samori has to be one of the most exciting people in my world. To me, he is the future” 46 / LAND ROVER ONELIFE

What I do today is play with these molecules and try to encourage them to self-associate into ordered architectures which could, one day, make high performing nanodevices that are smart, light and portable. So far, we have combined complex, multi-component molecular assemblies into working devices, but we’re really just at the beginning of a long yet exciting path.

I’m lucky to be surrounded by very inspiring, enthusiastic and highly talented students and colleagues, and we have the freedom to defne and pursue scientifc goals. Such a liberty is very rarely offered in industry. Every single evening we have the chance to go back home with a new discovery.

Hervé is a pioneer and he is a real innovator. He brings science very close to society, which is one of the key problems that scientists face nowadays. For someone like me – a chemist and a “gourmand” – he is a real hero. And while he does not inspire me a lot in my work (since my feld of research is rather far from his), his work does infuence my daily life – he makes me think much more deeply when I am in my kitchen preparing food.

I think though that I draw inspiration mainly from a) nature and b) my colleagues and younger collaborators. When you work with people from different felds, they encourage you to become interdisciplinary and to look at the bigger picture.

Also, the enthusiasm and inexperience of younger collaborators make things happen – they are a great source of thrilling new ideas. It is thanks to them I learnt to have the visions that lead to breakthroughs.

PAOLO SAMORI PORTRAIT: CNRS PHOTOTHÈQUE / CYRIL FRESILLON; HERVÉ THIS PORTRAIT: CORBIS

Hervé This Chemist (molecular gastronomy)

Monty Halls TV broadcaster, explorer and marine biologist We have many “icons” in the modern world, and it seems to me that it’s a word that is bandied about somewhat casually in the media today. I was very lucky indeed to work for Nelson Mandela in South Africa during the seminal years of 1993-94 and he remains one of the dominant fgures of my life.

Today, however, there is a new brand of hero emerging from the smoke and dust of Afghanistan. It is that of the wounded serviceman, and one that inspires me is a young man called Cayle Royce who comes from my home town of Dartmouth. A triple amputee, he has squared his shoulders at life, rowed the Atlantic, and is a star of exploration of the future.

Cayle Royce Atlantic rower I joined the British Army when I was 20 and ended up serving as a sharpshooter with the Brigade Reconnaissance Force. In Afghanistan in May 2012, I stepped on an IED and immediately lost both of my legs above the knee, most of the fngers on my left hand, and broke my neck in three places (among other injuries).

Waking up in hospital after spending 48 days in an induced coma, all I could think was “what on Earth am I going to do now?” I thought that I was going to have to spend my life in a wheelchair watching the world go by as men and woman pushed the mental and physical boundaries of adventuring to the limit. But I have an

Monty Halls Cayle Royce

NOMINATES

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amazingly supportive network of friends and family and their constant encouragement got me through.

I have always loved being in hostile environments, and in April 2013 my friend James Kayll approached me to ask if I’d row across the Atlantic. I seized it! I really didn’t feel like I needed to prove myself. This is the person I was beforehand, and I’m certainly not going to let the loss of some limbs and fngers get in the way of the things that I am passionate about.

The race itself was pretty brutal. The weather was awful the entire way; enormous seas with 12m rolling swells were not uncommon. We rowed two hours on, two hours off non-stop with one three-hour shift at night to rotate the watch. Salt sores were a constant issue as there is no real way to clean yourself apart from a few baby wipes after every shift. Reaching Antigua after 48 days and 9 hours was amazing. I must have showered for an hour.

For a guy like Monty Halls to talk about me like this is amazing. He always seems to be smiling, always positive, keen to hear how I’m getting on and if he can help out. He’s a truly genuine guy.

As for me, the future is looking positive and later this year I will be fying a paraglider/paramotor from Mount Kenya to Kilimanjaro with Flying4Heroes. I would love to raise the profle of wounded servicemen and women and hopefully motivate the guys and girls in the early stages of recovery and rehabilitation to participate in outdoor and sporting activities. After all, the majority of them are very young and have their whole lives ahead of them.

“WHERE ARE WE NOW?”

Colin Ellard

Environmental psychologist, lives in Toronto

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“I’M GLAD YOU ASKED…” Do you ever get lost? Are you a slave to your sat nav? ONELIFE puts two navigation experts in lively conversation to understand how we fnd our way in the world words by Ed Parsons and Colin Ellard illustration by João Lauro Fonte

Ed Parsons

Google’s Geospatial Technologist, lives in London

LAND ROVER ONELIFE / 49

Hi. I’m Colin Ellard, and I sometimes describe myself as a cognitive neuroscientist, other times as an environmental psychologist. Part of what I do looks at how people respond to place – which could include everything from how we fnd our way to how different kinds of spaces make us feel

WHERE ARE WE NOW? Ed Parsons: So Colin, do you think there is a simple way of explaining how we use maps and how we navigate the world?

activities that have been illustrated using Google Earth – but people are still most interested in their very local neighbourhoods.

Colin Ellard: No!

CE: Interesting. The frst thing I did on Google Earth was to poke around in my own neighbourhood, then I looked at the house in England where I was born, which I hadn’t visited for many years.

EP: Oh good, I’m glad you said that [laughter].

CE: But knowing where we are is fundamentally important to us.

What distinguishes us from every other animal is that we use story to understand place.

For example, the Inuit use things like sled tracks or dog prints to identify individual sleds or sled dogs to give them an important social clue as to their location. Bedouin trackers have this legendary ability to be able to recognise people’s footprints and to use that to build up a story – “I must be here because Joe was here and here’s which way Joe was going”.

EP: I’d love to say modern cartographers have taken all of your work on board, but if we’re brutally honest, we have never been particularly infuenced by the cognitive processes of users! It’s been more focused on the technical requirements to map a sphere onto a fat piece of paper.

However, today, maps are becoming much more task-oriented.

If you use Google Maps now, the map will be unique to you based upon your history and your location, your social network and if you prefer to walk, cycle or drive. All of those things mean that the map itself becomes a dynamic thing.

EP: One of the reasons why we’ve invested so much in Street View, is that it allows you that fnal level of zoom, it’s the world as we see it and that’s very powerful. I think Street View is very good at encapsulating a sense of place. It’s amazingly visceral having those images available.

CE: Yeah, I agree. That’s something that I think generally people fnd hard to do is to translate from a god’s-eye view that they’ve never actually seen to the view from the ground.

EP: I think that as cartographers we make the assumption that most people can make that transition from the god’s-eye view and translate that to the world that they see around them. I guess I’ve learnt how to do that without thinking about it. But perhaps we assume too many people can do that easily.

“Some of my best travelling experiences have been those times when I’ve been lost”

CE: There’s a shorthand method that we use to fnd our way from place to place.

Without a map you might do something like memorise a series of turns. With sat nav you’re doing something that’s really quite similar, because you’re responding to a set of simple commands. When you do that you’re effectively shutting down the parts of your brain that are designed to build those kinds of detailed representations of place.

CE: I think how we’ve engaged with maps has always been personal. The Ed Parsons, Google Geospatial Technologist mental maps that we carry around with us are filled with our own stories and relate to our own feelings and experiences. What’s been EP: Right. Every year newspapers run a story about how sat navs are happening with digital maps is that they’re maybe coming killing people’s ability to navigate and people end up driving into more into line with the ways that we actually mentally represent rivers. Obviously, there is an element of truth, but I think the majority and use spaces ourselves. of people previously found it diffcult to navigate using traditional road On the other hand, if maps become too personalised then atlases or maps. For lots of people – my wife included – having the there’s a risk that something gets lost in terms of our ability to sat nav is a huge confdence boost; particularly if you’re travelling share spatial information. somewhere unfamiliar.

EP: You’re absolutely right – that’s dangerous territory for us.

“Everything is about me and if I don’t want to know that there is a slum in this area, it won’t appear in my map.” I think we’ll end up looking at maps serving different purposes.

If you use Google Maps on your phone it’s about wanting directions.

But then I’d use something like Google Earth to explore the world.

We all use it pretty much in the same way. The frst time we all zoom in on our house. We develop a sense of trust and understanding in the tool by looking at a neighbourhood that we know and because we’re looking at pictures that are less abstract than a traditional topographic map. And yes, you can use it to look at deforestation in the Amazon and you can look at genocide in Darfur – both of which are, I guess,

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CE: I couldn’t agree more. With people who are not natural navigators, it would encourage them to undertake adventures that they might otherwise be afraid to do. But I do think there is a tendency for people to fall into a habit of overusing their GPS systems. And there are circumstances where people are eroding their native abilities to fnd their way.

EP: Yeah! I often have these conversations with my teenage children.

Anywhere they go, their phones are just one app away from telling them where they are to two metres’ accuracy. So they won’t know what it feels like to be lost. And that’s an interesting experience, because some of my best experiences have been those times when I have been lost.

Hello, I’m Ed Parsons, Google’s Geospatial Technologist. Geospatial is the modern, shiny word for geography so I’m Google’s map guy in Europe.

My background is in cartography, before that I used to teach Geographic Information Systems at universities. So cut me in half and it says map

CE: All of my best travelling experiences were the unexpected ones and most often those unexpected experiences frst arise when I don’t know where I am.

EP: It is a case of packaging those things up isn’t it? Because there are times when we need to get to a meeting at 2 o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon and the last thing I want to do is get lost!

CE: My concern about how people use electronic media to understand place is the blurring of the idea of authenticity. I was talking to my son the other day and I said, “What’s your favourite thing about the Royal Ontario Museum?” And he answered, “It’s when we go there and look at the dinosaur bones and I can hold up a screen and see what that dinosaur looked like when it was alive.”

It’s fantastic to be able to do that, but what seems to get lost is the fact that he was standing there in the presence of these fossilised bones that are hundreds of thousands of years old. That kind of contact with the authentic seems to get diluted by the synthetic overlay.

EP: I take your point, but I think we’re some way off virtual worlds and virtual reality replacing the real experience. When Google Glass is more widely available, you’ll have this sort of information projected into your eyeline. It’s the same information that you might portray on a map but you’re augmenting, you’re adding it as an overlay onto the real world.

If I’m wandering around London, I can always work out which direction south is just by looking at the satellite dishes – they always point south. I can work out my rough orientation from the planes fying into Heathrow, because they tend to fy east to west. It’s subconscious but it’s part of the toolbox that I use to navigate around town. Perhaps in the modern world we’re developing some of those capabilities.

CE: Thinking about the Inuit, there is a parallel. In addition to observing these really subtle signs they made signs themselves, to mark their environment. And I think there is a potential for us to do the same kinds of things for ourselves by marking out our maps in the way that we’ve been talking about.

EP: We’ve mentioned maps being more personalised. But I think the experience is also going to become powered by the experience of others. A couple of years ago now we acquired an Israeli company called Waze. They specialise in building up a sat nav based on crowd sourcing, using human experience, human knowledge. So rather than saying, “I just want the shortest route between A and B”, you could say, “I want the most picturesque route, or the historically most signifcant route, or the route that passes by the sorts of pubs that sell real ale”. The current restraints are basically time and distance, but there are many other elements that make a route interesting based on your preferences and you wanting to have a particular experience.

“When you follow a sat nav you’re effectively shutting down a part of your brain”

CE: As for what we’ll do in the future, I would CE: I still think that even in these early stages say that as far as the basics are concerned we haven’t really changed much in thousands of we’ve got to think carefully about what might years. But I think that as you have said, there get lost in the face of the augmentation that are really interesting ways that the technology you’re describing. During the last Summer Colin Ellard, environmental psychologist that’s emerging can tap into things that we Olympics I noticed that at the Opening already do to give us more varied experiences.

Ceremonies we had this huge stadium flled with excited athletes who were having the experiences of their lives and more than half of them were recording that experience with phone EP: One of the things that I’m most proud of is a mobile phone game cameras up in front of their faces. When that’s happening there is a that we’ve developed called Ingress. In the game, you work as a team dilution of the “real”. They’re not there in a sense, they’re not actually with your friends, and visit various sites in your own neighbourhood. having that experience in place… what they’re doing is imagining that It might be public artwork, statues, maybe places where historically experience in places as their friends will see it when they get home. relevant fgures lived. You, in effect, take control of these sites to basically take territory from competing teams.

EP: Yes, perhaps it dilutes the experience a little bit but I think everyone potentially benefts from it. If my daughter was one of those athletes CE: Location gaming is fantastic. It’s a great way to tap into the I’d absolutely want to share that experience with her and I’m sure all technology that’s available and emerging to encourage people to her friends would. I guess it’s an overly used simplifcation but it does undertake a playful relationship with space. A really simple example seem that the generation of today are far more focused on sharing the that’s been out for a long time now is geocaching – among those who experience and wanting to demonstrate their emotions much more do it, it seems like it’s almost a religion. broadly than the traditional stiff upper lip Brit.

EP: People have this perception that computer gamers are overweight CE: Yes, point taken. That’s an interesting perspective. kids who sit in their bedroom playing games all day. The people who play Ingress, and there are many thousands of players now around EP: It’s funny, the point you made about the Inuits and the Bedouins the world, are a complete cross-section of society – from 14 year olds being able to navigate based on their knowledge of the environment, to 80 year olds. And they’re out meeting up. So much for the digital I think as urban tribes we’re almost developing that capability ourselves. world turning us into recluses.

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PORTRAIT: SCOTT WITTER

MASTERS OF THEIR DESTINIES Ever thought you’re stuck in a rut? Here, three unstoppable, inspirational and revolutionary pioneers remind us that you are always in control of your life

Unstoppable: Mark Pollock This man knows more about disaster than most. Yet it has taught him that every single knock you take is an opportunity to get back up.

Lef: Mark Pollock photographed in what he calls his “robot” in Los Angeles

In the course of my life I have rowed millions of strokes as an international oarsman and covered thousands of miles as an adventurer. But my biggest challenge came two years ago in Berkeley, California, as I prepared to take a step into the unknown on bionic legs.

Everything that I had previously learnt was important now. My experiences of feeling unstable, of building strength and of persevering – all combined in a single moment. The concentration was so great, and the tension of the muscles was such, that I forgot to breathe.

I transferred my weight onto my left leg and then propelled forward. My right leg took a step. I moved the walking frame forward and shifted my weight onto my right. My left took a step. I was up and walking…

In the spring of 1998, I was about to take my fnals at Trinity College Dublin and planning a career in investment banking. I rowed for the university and for Ireland. I was a student, a sportsman, and a man with a clear career path. Two weeks later I was completely blind. Twelve years on, I was paralysed from the waist down.

I knew the blindness might happen. I lost the sight of my right eye to a detached retina at the age of fve, and the left retina detached when I was eight. Although it was fxed, I avoided contact sports and got involved in rowing. Then one day I noticed blurring in my left eye.

The retina had detached again. Two operations later, I was told there was nothing more that could be done.

I went through cycles of denial and anger; hoping for a miracle and then feeling desperately low. Then there was the problem of my identity: I was no longer a rower, or a student, or a soon-to-be banker. But I am competitive

in both sport and life, so I got a white stick and a guide dog, and took a Masters degree in business studies.

In 2001, I started rowing again, with the aim of competing at the Commonwealth Games the following year. Racing with my old rowing partner Brendan Smyth, I won silver in the lightweight eight and bronze in the lightweight four, alongside some memorable pairs victories over the year.

My next step was to take part in the Race of No Return in the Gobi Desert – essentially converting myself from a rower into an adventurer, and through the infuence of business guru Charles Handy, I developed a career in motivational speaking.

By 2010, ten years after losing my sight, I was on a high. I had recently competed in the South Pole race against James Cracknell and Special Forces soldiers and my speaking career was fourishing. Then, one evening, while staying in Henley for the Royal regatta, I fell out of a second-foor window.

I woke up in intensive care with serious injuries to my head, body and legs. In the months that followed I suffered pain, blood transfusions, sickness and endless infections. This proved to be a major test of my principles.

I always tell people to deal in facts, build the right team around them for the job and make it happen. Now I had to put that to the test.

Starting with sitting up in bed – itself a hugely signifcant moment – I set about using muscles that had wasted away.

I entered the Project Walk Spinal Cord Injury Recovery Center with the aim of getting out of the wheelchair. The next step – literally – was at Ekso Bionics, where I frst tried out a robotic exoskeleton called Ekso.

As the frst person to have access to an Ekso on a daily basis, I walk miles and miles and explore the impact that this has on my health and on my paralysed body. My identity as an adventurer has shifted and in a funny way,

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I feel closer to the polar explorers than I ever did while skiing to the South Pole.

Of all the things I have ever done this has the greatest chance of failure over success. There is so much at stake, and we don’t know where the cure is. But I feel it is out there, somewhere, like the South Pole.

For details of Mark’s adventures and other projects, see www.markpollocktrust.org

Inspirational: Geoffrey Kent The man who put experience into luxury travel was 52 years ahead of his time. The founder of Abercrombie & Kent tells us how and why he did it.

I’m kind of like a Land Rover – I combine adventure and luxury. I was born in Africa, lived on a farm in Africa and I’ve never really left. So on one hand I’ve got this rough, tough streak. But the other side of me is from my military training – I went to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and served in a great regiment. I was also a champion polo player – I captained the Prince of Wales’ Windsor Park polo team for fve years. So I acquired a certain amount of cultivation.

At the Duke of York School in Nairobi where I grew up there was only one thing the boys dreamed of becoming – a professional hunter with the local safari company Ker, Downey and Selby. But that was seven years’ apprenticeship and after I left the army, I didn’t fancy doing that. So I decided to set up a rival.

Together with my parents, I started Abercrombie & Kent in 1962 with a dream, £100 of my own cash, a made-up name (the “Abercrombie” bit just put me at the top of the Yellow Pages) and our old farm Land Rover – KBH 482.

I decided to focus not on hunting, but on photography.

My slogan was “shoot with a camera, not a gun”. I made it exactly like a luxury tent safari – I got refrigerators, ice, caviar, Champagne and the fnest wines. My Major General in the 5th Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards, to whom I was an aide-de-camp, liked to live very well. He used to tell me, “Only a fool should be uncomfortable”.

I expanded into travel. I wanted to bring to the world all these wonderful things that can be seen and done, but with a simplicity and style underlined by the ruthless effciency and logistics from my British military background.

I’ve recently been inducted into the travel hall of fame – they said I was “a visionary who created the experiential holiday”. I was surprised it took people so long to “get” what I had believed implicitly since 1962 – why would you want to spend two weeks on a yacht swanning around the Mediterranean, when you could be going to Antarctica?

I’ve always had an adventurous spirit. At 16 I left school a little early (I won’t go into the reasons) and drove my motorbike from Nairobi to Cape Town – the frst time it had ever been done. I think I got it from my father. He was in the King’s African Rifes and when I was a boy I remember him going away on big safaris. He’d say, “I’m

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going somewhere where you can’t drink the water”. When I started Abercrombie & Kent, that was my business plan – to take people places where you can’t drink the water.

When we’re thinking up new experiences for our customers, the key is I’ll always do it myself. I’ve climbed Mount Kilimanjaro twice in a month, spent 67 days in China and Tibet in the Seventies, crossed the Drake Passage in waves that were over 20m high. I always take a yellow pad with me – on the left I’ll write down all the most dangerous things we come across, and on the right, “How do we alleviate this danger through logistics and the best local guides we can fnd?” I did a trip down the Mara River in a Zodiac infatable boat. This hippo grabbed the thing, and ficked us all out. Luckily it didn’t attack us – it was loving its new toy. I climbed out onto the bank, got out my pad and wrote, “NO. We don’t go here.”

I always say an Abercrombie & Kent holiday will change your life. I took Bill Gates to Africa and it changed his life, but it also changed Africa’s. He saw how people were living, saw the inequality and, millions of dollars later, he and Melinda have changed the world.

I’m so lucky because most people don’t get a chance to meet these people until they’ve become a huge success, get private jets and travel in these circles. At 20 years old I was guiding the Rockefellers and the Firestone families, and they introduced me to their friends and then they travelled with me.

In the future I see the travel industry helping communities.

Every natural environment has to have an income, otherwise it will be poached, or fshed or destroyed. The only way to get this income is from sensible, low-impact, high-spend tourism.

This will mean people will become very aware of the problems in the world – like the extinction of species such as tigers, rhinos and elephants. There will be more ecologically-focused luxury travel. The internet will continue to make people very aware – but that doesn’t preclude the Abercrombie & Kent personal way of doing things.

Let’s face it, there aren’t many more new places to go, so we have to be inventive. Over the next 25 years, we’ll be bringing on Iran and Cuba. We’ve just gone into Sri Lanka. Russia is going to be interesting – the Russian ambassador just asked me to open up the hinterland for great adventures. I also think there will be more expedition ships – a great way to travel round places like Indonesia.

Not bad for a Kenyan boy. I was born on safari and I travel 300 days a year, so I’ve been on safari ever since. And we’ve always had Land Rovers. We were driving Land Rovers at the age of six all over Kenya’s South Kinangop. We just put a couple of cushions behind us and we were off…

Clockwise from top right: Geoffrey Kent, age 12, driving the family home after a crocodile hunt; the level of luxury to expect with Land Rover Adventure Travel

by Abercrombie & Kent – in this case, a camp in Tanzania; Geoffrey today

This hippo grabbed the Zodiac, and ficked us all out. Luckily it didn’t attack us – it was loving its new toy

Land Rover Adventure Travel by Abercrombie & Kent has launched, with luxury self-drive adventures in the UK, Tanzania and India in 2014. Morocco and China are on the menu for 2015. Visit landrover.com/adventuretravel

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PORTRAIT: BEN DUNBAR BRUNTON; ARTWORK COURTESY OF RCM GALERIE

Revolutionary: Carlo Brandelli He transformed Savile Row with his tailoring, and then took Paris by storm with his sculpture. Carlo Brandelli explains why he sees no boundaries to artistic expression.

My outlook is shaped by my childhood. I grew up surrounded by artisans, craftsmen, sculptors and artists.

For me, it was everyday life. A Dutch painter lived in our building and made a big impression on me. My uncle worked in luxury leather. I watched my mother and aunt cutting out bespoke jackets every day for years and learnt by osmosis. As a result, I don’t see myself as a tailor or an artist – I’m a designer. That’s the common thread to everything I’ve done.

A sculptor and a bespoke tailor might sound dramatically different, but to me they have a natural connection. I see clothing design as a form of sculpture: building a shape, working in layers. If you’re working in stone you make a paper template and then model in another material such as clay, before moving to actual stone. It’s the same with tailoring: a paper template, the calico, and fnally the fabric itself.

Lef: Carlo Brandelli and right, one of his sculptures

I’ve always felt that menswear, and particularly Savile Row – with one or two exceptions such as Hardie Amies – hasn’t moved on since World War II. I founded Squire in my early twenties with the idea of taking the craft and heritage of bespoke tailoring and creating a modern innovation. My approach was different and led me to the breakthrough of “unstructured” tailoring in 2003. This was my response to the Japanese “deconstruction” of the silhouette, which had become a kind of box shape.

I wanted lightness.

I brought back the one-buttoned single-breasted suit, which was big in the Fifties and Sixties but had been forgotten. A single button gives you perfect symmetry, with a “V” above and below, so it elongates the torso.

I also pioneered the wearing of suits with V-necks instead of collared shirts – a V-neck is much more comfortable and it preserves the integrity of the bespoke line.

My work as creative director of Kilgour has allowed me free rein to modernise Savile Row. It was an artistic project. I designed the store and the campaigns and imagery. Meanwhile, I set up my own sculpture studio in Milan, and the two go hand-in-hand.

My frst sculpture exhibition was in 2010 at RCM Galerie in Paris, which specialises in artists who also design. I used Travertine marble, a very natural material, and focused on purity of form, and also perspective and balance. Soon after that, I exhibited at Casey Kaplan’s New York gallery.

Today, I continue to work at Kilgour on seminal items such as the covert coat, the fat-front trouser without belt-loops, the unstructured jacket and the fy-fronted shirt with the buttons covered to keep the line. I use a grey palette that I see as a camoufage for the city.

I associate tailoring with the tradition of British engineering, and see it as a sort of engineering for the body. It’s ‘ft for purpose’ – to borrow a phrase from architecture – whereas fashion is just about looks. I never really see myself as part of the fashion world. I don’t follow trends.

Although I always evolve, there’s a consistency and timelessness in what I do, and I think you can see this in my latest collection. And my redesign of the new Kilgour fagship store brings to life the essence of my work: contemplation, refection and layers of thought.

Which of course takes us back to the sculptor and his block of stone…

For more on Carlo Brandelli’s designs, visit kilgour.com

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NOB O DY YOU KN OW HAS BE EN H E RE Can you identify Albania on the map? Its location, halfway between Italy and Greece, might come as a shock. Albania is not just unknown, it is unseen – a gap on the map of Europe. ONELIFE sets of to fnd the least explored valley in Europe words by Nathaniel Handy – photography by Paul Calver

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PAVLIN POLIA WAS BORN IN THE THETH VALLEY. Four months a year, it’s completely cut off by winter snows.

“I love it here and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else,” he says.

He is a mountain man and it shows. Holds himself poker-straight, avoiding unnecessary movement. When you speak, he turns his head slowly towards you, but his eyes appear to look right through you. The unreadable Albanian stare – as though they are always keeping an eye on the mountain peaks beyond your head for signs of danger.

Winter is a time of hibernation. Stores of four dwindle, dry-cured meat hangs from the kitchen ceiling and families gather together until the fre has burnt to embers, knowing that in all other corners, the deep chill of winter has penetrated every mattress, every pillow. It’s the time of year when wolves prowl around homes, seeking lambs or kid goats.

Albania is a name that still draws blank stares from even the most seasoned travellers. While its neighbours Italy and Greece are familiar to the point of cliché, Albania is like a gap on the map of Europe.

The descent into Tirana International Airport gives the frst glimpse of why this might be. Tirana sits on a dead

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fat coastal strip, but long before you land, your window is flled by a looming mass – marching ridges fading into the grey-blue distances of the Balkan interior. Albania is 77 per cent mountain in fact, and 100 per cent mountain in the mind.

We pick up our Discovery 4 HSE in Tirana, and head north, following the coastal plain past smallholdings, bulbous haystacks and farmers bent to their toil with scythe in hand. Even on the outskirts of the capital – where one in every three Albanians now lives – the scene is one of self-suffcient market gardens.

This road is the main artery of the country, yet it only has two lanes. This fact is easily questioned on your frst half hour out of Tirana, however, by the fact the very leisurely art of overtaking in Albania. To execute the manouevre, one merely pulls into the other lane and drives. One continues until faced with oncoming traffc. When that traffc is within a few metres of a head-on collision, one nudges comfortably back into the right-hand lane again. It appears suicidal, yet at the same time strangely calming.

These roads were frst laid under Enver Hoxha’s dictatorship, and one of the many paranoia of his regime was a fear of imminent foreign invasion. Alongside over 700,000 concrete bunkers dotting the most remote

Clockwise from above: the hidden fertile world in the heart of what’s also known as the Albanian Alps; our Discovery 4 HSE makes light work of our adventure in Albania; a goatherd in the Shala Valley en route to Theth in the Accursed Mountains

mountain villages and heavily mined frontiers, he also chose to make the roads – especially the major roads – wiggly to prevent an enemy air force from landing on them.

When we leave the northern city of Shkodra, we are also leaving behind ATMs, reliable electricity and all trace of medical facilities. We are still in Europe, but not as you know it. As we watch the thunderclouds boiling on the horizon, we wonder why the mountains flling the skyline are named the Accursed. We are about to fnd out.

The road leaves the asphalt abruptly next to an old Catholic church on the Kiri River gorge. It is almost like a fnal benediction before the ride ahead. As soon as we hit the rough rocks, the track begins to climb and the gorge narrows. The Discovery is in its element, making light work of sharp rocks. Soon we are high above the turquoise waters, and realising that this is a road only in name. More accurately, a ledge has been blasted out of the side of sheer cliffs that twist in and out of side valleys. The surface is either a cascade of loose rock or intact rock face.

A few hours in, we are now deep in the Kiri gorge, far from civilization, and apparently alone. Suddenly, improbably, two outer bends away, a small minibus lurches round the corner, swaying briefy over the abyss as it eases over a larger boulder. Where on a road that is only just wide enough for a vehicle do you pass oncoming traffc? We do the only sensible thing in the circumstances, and squeeze hard against the mountain wall, our wheels and noses against the rock. The driver of the minibus smiles. Surely not, we murmur. Yes, he is going for it.

With loose stones tumbling from his wheels into the gorge below, he shudders round us and away. We drive on in awed silence.

As we come to another gut-churning outer bend, we pass a forlorn shrine. We count the names in silence.

Seven. About a minibus load. We turn our eyes quietly back to the road and ponder the good fortune of sitting in a capable Discovery 4.

The road fnally leaves the Kiri gorge in long, winding switchbacks high onto the karst limestone peaks of the Accursed Mountains. Our altitude dial rises over 1,000m, the rain turns to snow. As we approach the summit, the track disappears under virgin snow and we plough on in zigzags. Occasional breathtaking glimpses of the massive presence of the mountains around us reveal themselves through the cloud. It is an unsettling experience.

The locals have various theories for the Accursed name – that it is the route the Turks invaded by, that a mother

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cursed them after her son married the wrong highland girl, but looking at them now through our windscreen, the name appears obvious enough. These are surely the craggiest, most menacing peaks the world has ever known, designed specifcally as the lair of an arch villain, designed to be impenetrable.

“The house of the Albanian belongs to God and the guest” Law 602 of the Kanun of Lek

The Theth valley is geographically astonishing. From the pass is revealed a fat-bottomed valley of remarkable fertility. After hours of windswept boulders, scarred mountainside and sheer gorge, it is an oasis, a hidden Shangri-La of Europe. The valley is long and thin, enclosed by walls of white limestone, with beech and pine clinging to its crevices.

The only route in or out, save for goat tracks and the snowbound Qafa e Thores pass, is by the ledge along the Shala River gorge, where the river fows out of the valley.

It is an extraordinary lost world. When it was discovered

by Edith Durham, one of those irrepressible Edwardian travellers who set out to fnd the world, in 1908, she said simply: “No place where human beings live has given me such an impression of majestic isolation from the world.”

Thanks to the legendary isolationism of the 20th-century Hoxha regime, not many irrepressible explorers have followed her since, and what we fnd matches her description to a tee. The mountains appear to contain and hold up the whole world and the canopy of sky above. The sun does not appear until long after it has risen elsewhere, and sets long before. It’s life on the very roof of the world.

Our Discovery makes its way through the mist, and slowly we become aware of homesteads amid green terraces on precipitous slopes. No road leads to these homes. With steeply pitched roofs, these three-storey stone buildings appear like mini-fortresses. Their existence seems improbable.

Here are the people of the Accursed Mountains, still living by their own rules – and what rules they are. This is a land that breeds men of heroic stature and key among them was Lekë Dukagjini. This 15th-century nobleman codifed an ancient set of laws now known as the Kanun of Lek, which to this day govern the lives of Albanians.

Clockwise from top: in the village of Theth; local lad Fran•esko Harusha; our Discovery 4 HSE heads up the Accursed Mountains; a lock-in tower where men would wait out a blood feud

Left: our driving expert Rob Clacy gently zigzagged the steering wheel as he navigated the snowy paths. Right: Lule Gjeçaj photographed in her Theth home; the Accursed Mountains

Long after nightfall, with the snow swirling in the yard, we reach the frst homestead of the Theth valley. In a doorway illuminated by frelight a lady stands, arms outstretched. On her head is a pure white headscarf and over the starched embroidery of her blouse is wrapped a red-striped apron, its stripes denoting her married status.

Lule Gjeçaj welcomes us inside, replacing our shoes with footwear she provides. She seats us around an open fre and offers homemade çaj mali – mountain tea infused with oregano. We compliment her on her complexion – a wide, high-cheekboned face of the smoothest 60-yearold skin we’ve ever seen – and she smiles and points to the çaj mali.

These mountains contain at least 3,200 native plant species, some 400 of which have medicinal qualities.

While mountain dwellers swear by çaj mali as a cure for all minor ailments, they also use wild chamomile for indigestion or nervous disorders, St John’s wort for infections, sleepnessness or depression, and marshmallow infusions for coughs and upset stomachs.

Add to these pure mountain spring water, an entirely homegrown diet and what must be the most unpolluted air in the world, and no wonder Lule is looking good.

There is a self-suffciency to this hidden world that is quite breathtaking to those used to the realities of plucking their berries from low-hanging supermarket shelves.

“The guest must be honoured with ‘bread, salt and the heart’” Law 608 of the Kanun of Lek

The words “no thank you, I am full” are not translatable into Albanian. Which is fne for the frst three helpings of thick corn bread, borek (flo pastry flled with spinach and cheese) and a painstakingly layered pancake named fi.

The trouble starts when the man of the house produces his homemade raki.

It is written in the Kanun that the guest must be the frst to stop drinking raki and to stop eating. If only I had the heart and stomach of a fghting elephant, I could get my host into real diffculties, but as it is, his steady gaze and even steadier hand warns me not to test his mettle in a head-to-head raki-off. Such hospitality is not merely a politeness – it’s an obligation.

For an Albanian not to show a guest such courtesy would be a stain on their honour, and if there is one thing that binds this society together, it is the preservation of honour. The Kanun clearly states that, “the guest occupies the place of honour at the table, and is thereupon under the protection of the house”. To be under the protection of the house in Albania means a whole lot more than a nice cup of tea. It means going under the besa (protection) of the homeowner’s fs (extended family or clan).

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In a land where state authority has always felt a very long way away, besa is vital to life and limb. It beats travel insurance. As recently as the late 1990s, an unaccompanied traveller in these mountains would be viewed as fair game. Only the protection of a local fs will preserve your life, as your death will undermine the honour of your protector, an insult that only blood can expunge.

“Blood is never unavenged” Law 917 of the Kanun of Lek

The blood feud – gjakmaria – runs through the heart of the Kanun of Lek. It requires that the murder of a member of your fs be avenged by the death of any male over the age of eight who belongs to the fs of the murderer.

This may all sound like the romance of history books, but the difference is that this is a living tradition. Today, in a downtown café in Tirana or Shkodra, a man can fnd himself gunned down in revenge for a murder committed by a distant cousin in a far-off highland village.

It is believed that the soul of the dead man will not rest until revenge is exacted.

Mria Polia is an old lady with an angular gait and bright blue eyes in a face like lined parchment. She knows men who have shut themselves into the stone lock-in tower that stands in the centre of Theth. They would spend months inside waiting for a blood feud to end while taking parcels of food from their womenfolk.

Women are exempt from the blood feud. It is the reason why, in long-running blood feuds, families have run out of men, requiring a woman to swear an oath of celibacy and take the role of the male patriarch – the famed sworn virgins of Albania.

“Are you a Catholic?” I ask Mria, for these valleys were too inaccessible for conversion to Islam to ever have become necessary. “I am a Christian, inshallah,” she replies. A more oxymoronic reply could not be imagined in the multicultural hubs of the early 21st century, and yet here in the highlands of Albania it’s a natural response.

DRIVING IN ALBANIA’S ACCURSED MOUNTAINS It might be March in northern Albania, but at over 1,000m, it is still very much winter in these mountains. We are experiencing rough mountain tracks, loose rock, mud and some very deep snow on the passes. Here’s how to handle them…

The accretions of history rest lightly in a land where the only real law is that imposed by nature. To live in this high, wild fastness makes the realities of a snowstorm, an avalanche, a fash food or the death of a cow all the more visceral. All precious things, from your baby to your prize cow, carry colourful tassels, metal triangles or a sheath of red cloth. They ward off the syri i keq – the evil eye.

Pavlin has one last view he wants us to see, from the top of the 1,770m Qafa e Thores. Working over up icy rocks, the track soon vanishes beneath a blanket of new snow. Our Discovery cuts deep tyre tracks until the snow banks on either side dwarf the vehicle. At last we hit a wall of white, the summit out of reach.

Pavlin stares up at the clouds dragging like torn clothing on the airy peak and then turns his resolute mountain eyes upon us. “We walk,” he says, matter of factly. So we walk.

The snow grows deeper as the gradient increases.

With dusk descending, Pavlin indicates that we must avoid the switchbacks and head directly up the side of the mountain. He sets off, the snow rising to his waist.

On hauling ourselves through the drifts onto the summit, the last rays of light illuminate the brooding peaks, home to Europe’s southernmost glaciers. Far off on the other side, a snowplough is attempting the impossible.

Pavlin looks down at it. He allows himself a half smile.

The magic of the Accursed Mountains is that they are not for day trips. Only those who really want to get here will make it. In the distance we can hear the low bass note of an engine in frst gear, working its steady progress up the mountain track towards us, getting in the only way you can, with perseverance and the desire to discover.

SEE US IN ACTION Watch our Albanian adventure flm and learn a few technical driving tips from expert Rob Clacy in the ONELIFE app. Available to download now.

ROCK

FOREST

SNOW

“The Discovery 4 HSE has fve Terrain Response settings – Everyday Driving, Grass/ Gravel/Snow, Mud and Ruts, Sand and Rock Crawl. On these types of mountain tracks, it is important to judge your surface.

Sometimes you may need Grass/Gravel/Snow, at others, Rock Crawl.

The key thing to remember is to go slowly, keep your revs up on steep inclines and watch for sharply protruding rocks.”

“Some of the rough forest tracks around the Theth valley are very steep and slippery, covered in snow with hidden boulders. On a particularly tricky section, I am negotiating a large protruding root system on a very steep initial incline. For this, I use Rock Crawl because we have big articulation movements going into it, so I want the dif locks coming in quickly. I also manually select second gear so I’ve got the momentum to carry on up.”

“When driving in deep snow, it is better to be equipped with either of-road or standard tyres, rather than snow tyres. Strange as this may sound, snow tyres are essentially a slightly sofer winter tyre for dealing with icy asphalt roads. On these rough tracks, a tougher tyre is needed. When driving into deep snow, I use a zigzagging action of the wheel, to push the snow aside, allowing the vehicle to move forward.”

Rob Clacy, Senior Instructor, Land Rover Experience

We would like to thank Elizabeth Gowing, Political Tours and Land Rover Hungary. Each played a key role in our exploration of the Accursed Mountains.

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WELCOME TO YOUR SUV OF THE FUTURE The reveal of Land Rover’s Discovery Vision Concept showcases not only the next generation of Discovery vehicles – but also Land Rover’s intention for the future words by Gavin Green

“A Land Rover is already an extension of your life. As our new Discovery Vision Concept makes clear, in the future they will be even more so”

It’s not about status The global growth – equally strong in North America, Russia, China, Europe, India or South America – is because SUVs “have gone from being specialist tools for utilitarian needs, to becoming versatile vehicles that ft well into everyday modern life – and great for families in particular,” says Hill. “It’s not just about a badge or the status either, they can help facilitate the interesting and active lives that people live today – and it’s for that reason that SUVs continue to fnd favour in new markets, and why the segment continues to expand.”

So with that backdrop, the new Discovery Vision Concept ramps up the SUV’s leisure appeal. It also boosts all-round capability, connectivity and showcases a suite of advanced technologies. “Our cars will be fully integrated into everyday life,” notes Jaguar Land Rover Director of Research and Technology Dr Wolfgang Epple.

“A Land Rover is already an extension of your life. As our new Discovery Vision Concept makes clear, in the future they will be even more so.”

Dr Epple highlights two key interconnected global trends that the Discovery Vision Concept addresses.

The frst is a growing and more affuent population. The second is the growth of megacities, as we become ever more urban.

As resources become pricier and scarcer, so new Land Rovers will become increasingly effcient and hence more environmentally friendly, a trend that’s already well underway. This includes plug-in electric

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hybrids, and utilising Jaguar Land Rover’s upcoming new family of highly fuel-effcient four-cylinder Ingenium low-emission engines, production of which begins next year. Jaguar Land Rover’s long-standing investment in strong, lightweight technology – it is already the world’s biggest producer of aluminium car bodies – will increase.

Right: Shanghai, one of the world’s major megacities

Staying in touch As people spend more time in their vehicles, so “versatility and connectivity are going to get more important than ever,” says Dr Epple. “The interior of the concept takes the Human Machine Interface [HMI] to a new level.”

He cites “smart glass” as an example. “If you are driving past a landmark like the Empire State Building, you could imagine a Wikipedia page appearing on the smart glass, and a rear seat passenger swiping that information from the window to their infotainment screen or tablet. Look around and it’s obvious most people know how to use a smartphone or tablet. The smartphone interface is accepted, adopted and loved all over the connected world.

“Tablet computers and smartphones will merge with the car to provide both the functionality of the device plus the functionality of the car’s control systems. This will have the happy effect of greatly simplifying car interiors.

With the recent Range Rover and Range Rover Sport, our designers pushed extremely hard to reduce the number of buttons and switches by more than 50 per cent. This trend will continue.”

Smart glass also enhances the view through the window. Awkward manoeuvres are made easier by projecting camera feeds onto the driver’s view out of the smart-glass window.

Gesture control is a key feature in the Discovery Vision Concept. The doors and tailgate are both activated by gesture. “Gesture control will become a reality soon – but it is only one opportunity,” explains Dr Epple. “In the next 25 years we will use gaze and biometrics to interact with the vehicle. Then there’s the almost unlimited processing power of The Cloud, which will enable more sophisticated algorithms for speech recognition and interaction than could ever exist on board the car.

“In the Discovery Vision Concept, clean, intelligent glass surfaces are black until they respond to the close proximity of a fnger to display various buttons. We have identifed which functions still need to be controlled by physical buttons and which could be controlled by gesture and carefully calibrated motion sensors.”

PHOTOGRAPHY: GETTY IMAGES

THE SUV IS CURRENTLY the world’s fastest growing vehicle sector, and whether you live in Shanghai or Sydney, or use your car on Wilshire Boulevard or the road to Muckle Flugga, the reasons for buying are much the same.

According to Steve Hill, Land Rover’s Consumer Insight Manager, “Customers from all around the world clearly live very different lives and have very different needs – but the way they look at Land Rover, and the way they like the brand to express itself is surprisingly similar.”

So when Land Rover’s top designers and engineers went about creating the Discovery Vision Concept Car, star of the recent New York International Auto Show, they were previewing a vehicle that should have universal global appeal, way beyond the shoreline of Manhattan.

Built as the Land Rover Discovery celebrates its 25th anniversary, the new vehicle is designed to showcase Land Rover’s vision of the perfect leisure SUV. It points towards a future family of Discovery vehicles.

“We are creating a whole new generation of vehicles that are relevant and compelling in a world that has changed from when Land Rover was born”

PHOTOGRAPHY: 123RF

A growing sense of adventure

Lef from top: Land Rover’s Terrain Response evolves to Terrain Scanning where lasers are used to assess the terrain and automatically choose the correct traction system; the Vision Concept’s versatile seating can be adapted from a seven seater to a limo-style four-seater

The trend of cities becoming busier won’t mean less desire for mobility; quite the opposite, says Dr Epple. “People will certainly not lose their desire for mobility just because they live in a megacity. The desire to move around is part of the basic make-up of every human being. We know that people will still want to leave the city to experience life in a different environment just as they do today. They want a car that allows them to make short city journeys and longer trips at the weekend. Our customers will retain their sense of adventure and passion for experiences.”

A key difference is that this mobility will be able to drive itself. “We see the autonomous car taking away the boring, the tedious, the routine part of the journey while allowing the driver to actively stay in contact, do some work, or relax with the vehicle’s infotainment system,” says Dr Epple. “But when the driver wants to enjoy the driving experience, our new driver assistance systems will give them more because customers will still want to be engaged with their vehicle. A smarter car should not take away driving pleasure – it should enhance the driver’s experience on and off-road.”

These driver assistance technologies will also help Land Rover retain its leadership in all-terrain capability.

“That’s crucial for us, and a key differentiator between us and rival car-based SUVs,” says Dr Epple.

The Discovery Vision Concept takes Land Rover’s innovative Terrain Response system a stage or two further.

Terrain Scanning uses infrared lasers in the car’s front fog lamps to scan the terrain in front of the car. The vehicle can then quickly and automatically engage the appropriate traction system. Wade Aid uses lasers to judge the depth of a stream or pond. “This pre-emptive water measuring lets the driver know the feasibility of the intended wading manoeuvre even before the tyres get wet,” says Dr Epple.

This extra off-road capability means that, sometimes, the car can tackle the most diffcult terrain without the driver being on-board. “A Remote Control function will allow the driver to control the vehicle while not actually sitting in it, at very low speed, using a tablet or smartphone, or a rotary control removed from the car.

Possible applications include reversing up to a trailer and parking. Or in an extreme off-road situation, it might be safer and easier to inch the vehicle over obstacles with an outside vantage point. So the driver can become his or her own off-road spotter.”

Extra driver confdence is also crucial. Dr Epple points to the Discovery Vision Concept’s “Transparent Bonnet”

as an example. “This new concept allows a driver climbing a steep incline, or when cresting a sand dune, to see terrain normally obscured by the bonnet and to see the direction of the front wheels. Cameras under the vehicle’s grille project images to the Head-Up Display.

This effectively creates a “see-through” view of the terrain through the engine bay, improving visibility and driver confdence.”

Dr Wolfgang Ziebart, Jaguar Land Rover’s Director of Group Engineering, stresses that the company’s priority is not “to get rid of the driver, but to avoid those 99 per cent of accidents caused by human error. It’s not about giving autonomy to the car; we will give autonomy to the driver. We want to help you safely enjoy your car.”

The company will soon open a new research and development centre in Portland, Oregon, to work with the technology community centred on the West Coast of America. There are extended relationships with Intel and Apple. It’s not just to beneft from their technology.

As Dr Epple says, “It’s also about bringing automotive technology to the heart of this community, and infuencing the direction these companies are taking.”

Practicality still drives design Land Rover Design Director and Chief Creative Offcer Gerry McGovern stresses that the Discovery Vision Concept is not a straight replacement for the current Discovery 4. “Rather, it is the essence of what a new family of Discovery vehicles will represent in terms of versatility and capability.” He says it’s about recognising the Discovery’s heritage, “without being harnessed by it”.

In the Discovery Vision Concept, we fnd a continuation of the Discovery’s popular stadium seating and the command driving position. The reconfgurable fold-andslide seating is even more versatile than before. It can change from a seven-seat confguration, to six-, fve- or even a four-seat limousine mode. “Its silhouette alludes to its Discovery roots with the stepped roof and clean surfaces while pushing the design forward.” Practical and appealing touches include waterproof and dirt-repellent Foglizzo premium leather upholstery and a wood veneer foor that will become production feasible.

In many ways, the core priorities of Land Rover’s perfect leisure SUV haven’t changed that much – great capability, part of your life, huge versatility. Yet, says McGovern, “we are also creating a whole new generation of vehicles that is relevant and compelling in a world that has changed signifcantly from when Land Rover was born”.

A new age of Discovery has begun.

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NEXT STOP: SPACE Virgin Galactic pilot Michael Masucci sets the controls for infnity and beyond, ahead of the world’s frst commercial space fight words by Michael “Sooch” Masucci

I WAS YOUR TYPICAL SPACE GEEK growing up. Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Isaac Asimov… all the sci-f classics. I dreamed of going into space, I even used to play in my mother’s old washing machine and pretend it was a space capsule. This was the era of Apollo 11, so we all thought that in a few decades, everyone would be going into space.

I’ve been a pilot for 30 years – I started out as a test pilot for the air force and after 23 years, I moved into the private sector before joining Virgin Galactic. It’s a huge privilege to be one of the pilots who are now helping people to experience space for themselves.

As a company, we’ve done 150 test fights with our mother ship (which takes our spaceship up), and 30 with our spaceship so far, and I’m going to be doing a lot more fying this year.

For passengers on a Virgin Galactic fight, the journey up will start very leisurely. Your comfortable seats will be adjusted to your height so you have the best view out of the window, and the mother ship will take us up to altitude.

Right before launch, we’ll readjust your seats into a more upright position, getting ready to leave the mother

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ship. As we boost off, you’ll feel a force push you into your seat and hold you there as we accelerate. You’ll hear a rumble, a deep noise, feel the vibration as we go faster – some say this is the most exciting part of the journey.

Looking out the window, you’ll see the sky go from blue to dark blue to black. Then the rocket will cut off and you’ll feel weightlessness. This is where you’ll be able to leave your seat, foat around and, most importantly, look at Earth from a perspective that, to date, less than 600 people have seen. It’s really amazing.

Heading down to Earth, you’ll feel some G-forces on your body as we enter the atmosphere, and the spaceship will transition into a glider as we fy back down to land.

If the commercialisation of space ventures follows the same growth as that of the airline and vehicle industries, then I think that in 100 years we’ll have fying hotels in orbit, sightseeing trips to the Moon and Mars and maybe even the opportunity for long distance exploration that could take generations. Human nature is to keep exploring, after all, that’s what drives us and that’s why we’ll never stop.

To fnd out more about the Land Rover and Virgin Galactic partnership, visit virgingalactic.com

Lef: Michael Masucci, Virgin Galactic pilot.

Below: Land Rover and Virgin Galactic announced their partnership at the New York Auto Show.

Right: the Mojave Desert, where Virgin Galactic is based

“Land Rover exists to help you make more of your world” PHIL POPHAM, GROUP MARKETING DIRECTOR, JAGUAR LAND ROVER