‘My pin-up status? I pay no attention’
Explorer Levison Wood knows how to deal with gun-toting bandits – but a heartthrob reputation is a challenge, says India Sturgis
Levison Wood – the explorer, broadcaster, bestselling author and reluctant pin-up who made his name in 2014 by walking the length of the Nile – is acclimatising after his latest expedition worthy of Ernest Shackleton.
Wood has just spent the better part of a year walking up, down and around the Himalayas, a route that carried him 1,700 miles through five countries over six months, through some of the most politically unstable regions on earth.
His Nile trip attracted 2.6 million viewers (more than Homeland, the series that it replaced in the primetime Sunday slot on Channel 4) and spawned a bestselling book – but he hopes his latest adventure will do even better.
Wood’s USP is that, unlike a great many pretenders, he is the real deal: a former paratrooper, a major in the Army Reserve and as hard as nails. His only company in the Himalayas was, for the most part, a guide, a hand-held camera and a couple of yaks. He was separated from his team in a gorge in Kashmir and spent the night without food or a sleeping bag. The danger is palpable – and it doesn’t hurt that he looks like a hybrid of rugged Hollywood superstars Gerard Butler and Hugh Jackman.
For this new series and accompanying book, he whistles through Afghanistan, climbs walls of ice, avoids hotbeds of Islamic extremism in Pakistan, placates Kalashnikov-wielding locals, stumbles through monsoon season in Nepal and is winched over a raging river in what can only be described as a broken tomato crate. Throughout, he is charmingly British: asking polite questions, looking suitably bewildered at ancient delicacies, and ready with a smart linen shirt to be deployed at borders and meetings with the Dalai Lama.
His motivation isn’t stardom or bravado. Wood wants to prove “there is more to Afghanistan and Pakistan than bombs and bullets”, in the oldfashioned sense of exploration for the sake of others.
When we meet, he is tanned and clean-shaven but still looks reassuringly weathered. He is also nursing a broken arm, the result of a car crash in Nepal. Maoist tensions had demanded Wood travel by taxi to a nearby village (“I would never agree to drive at night, but we didn’t have a choice”) when the brakes failed and the car shot over a cliff edge, freewheeling 150m down a mountain.
“We are very, very lucky to be alive,” he says, his tone measured. “The driver was probably the worst off. He broke pretty much everything and had a lot of internal injuries. He is still alive and doing OK. I am fine. My arm is full of metal, it needs a bit of physio, but it is getting there.”
After the crash, it took seven days, due to bad weather and the remote location, to get to a hospital via Kathmandu. The mind boggles, but he plays down the episode, conceding it was “painful”.
Arriving back in London amid the sale-shopping frenzy was also a shock.
“What sometimes can be a bit overwhelming is going from where there is absolute poverty and seeing people living in pretty rough conditions, to come back and then see the grossness of life here. Especially at this time of year; you see people fighting over TVs.”
He looks perturbed. It must be equally strange, I suggest, seeing children walking around with guns and little else in far-flung locations, then swaddled in cotton wool by frantic mothers in Fulham, where he currently lives. He agrees.
“What strikes me as worse is the overzealous parenting that I come across here in the UK, where people are totally bonkers. People have been managing to breed for thousands of years in fairly rough conditions…” He trails off, unwilling to go further.
Wood grew up in Stoke-on-Trent and was inspired by TE Lawrence, Livingstone and Captain Scott. His parents, Janice and Levison, were both teachers and he completed three Duke of Edinburgh awards at school, then, aged 18, hitchhiked his way around southern Africa, India and Nepal on his gap year. The adventure seed was sown and, after enrolling in a history degree at Nottingham University, he made his passage to Iraq at 21, then from Nottingham to India a year later. A stint at Sandhurst and active service in Afghanistan in the Parachute Regiment paved the way for more epic journeys.
“It gave me the skills, contacts and the experience to do what I am doing now. It is not just individual skills, like how to skin a rabbit, it is more having an appreciation of risk. You know how to deal with a gun-toting bandit at the side of the road because you are given this set of instincts.”
And how would you deal with a gun-toting bandit? His face widens into a smile. “Offer him a cigarette.”
He needed every ounce of training during the Nile mission when Matthew Power, an American journalist covering a leg of his journey for Men’s Journal, developed heatstroke and died in a remote reserve in northern Uganda. Wood gave him first aid, called a helicopter and tried everything within his means to save him.
“It was a terrible tragedy and one that I look back on. It makes you think about what it means to go on an expedition and what the risk means,” he says.
Wood does feel a certain responsibility – “in the sense it was my expedition and it happened on my watch” – but, after speaking to Power’s family, decided to carry on, to prevent it all being in vain.
He isn’t tempted to sign up for gimmicky survival programmes. “I am sure there is a lot of money in these shows, but it is not something I am particularly interested in. I want to document a place and look at the culture, history and geography. If I have to eat sheep’s brains along the way, that’s part of it, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to do so.”
His training is simple: before he sets off, Wood eats as much as possible to put on the weight he will inevitably lose – which, for his Himalayan adventure, was more than a stone.
The downsides of exploration are being away from friends and watching Facebook updates of Ibiza holidays while he is stuck in the Sahara. “You do think: what on earth am I doing?”
An upside must be his newfound pin-up status, I suggest. Apparently not. “It is quite bewildering, to be honest. Who’d have thought going for a walk would be attractive? I take no notice of it.”
Ironically, his response is all the more endearing. Is he seeing anyone at the moment? He says he is “very busy…” before revealing that he is moving into a new place in Hampton Court soon – alone.
With that he is off, navigating the streets of London. How does he get about when he is here? “Walking.” Of course. “Google Maps is as good in London as it is in the tribal regions of Pakistan, except the signal is usually better over there. I had 4G in the desert in Sudan. You don’t get that in Covent Garden.”
Walking the Himalayas is on Channel 4 tonight at 8pm. An accompanying book, Walking the Himalayas by Levison Wood (Hodder & Stoughton, £20), is published on January 7. To order a copy for £16.99 plus p&p, call 0844 871 1514 or visit books. telegraph.co.uk
‘If I have to eat sheep’s brains along the way, that’s part of it’