The adventurer's handbook - Mick Conefrey

A witty, entertaining and utterly unique look at the great explorers and the life lessons we can draw from them.

What makes a good explorer? Survival skills, being able to plan and motivate, and a good sense of humour. Packed with practical advice, stories of endurance, serious lessons and witty anecdotes, The Adventurer's Handbook is perfect for the armchair traveller or would-be strategist.

This book is packed full of useful information - such as what to do if you are attacked by an anaconda (you wait until it has swallowed you up to your knees and then you reach up and cut its head off *), how to always have a fresher pair of underpants, how to deal with a charging lion, and how to find water in the desert. At its heart are the tales of derring-do, survival, and endurance such as Wilfred Thesiger's crossing of the Empty Quarter, an enormous, little-explored stretch of desert in Southern Arabia, the Kon-Tiki expedition, the search for the source of the Nile, Freya Stark's travels with the Bedouin in the 1940s, or Shackleton's antarctic expedition.
Tales of mutiny, solitude, leadership, crisis management, and the spirit of competition make this a fascinating and entertaining read.

Contents include:
Getting Started: What makes an explorer? Raising funds, equipment, and preparation
Getting Going: Leaving home, enduring heat, cold, altitude, wet and the sea, clothing, animals that can kill you, animals you can eat
Getting Along: Leadership, teamwork, living together, crisis management, mutiny, solitude, meeting natives, tips for travellers
Getting There: What makes an expedition succeed?
Getting Back: Telling your story, proving what you've done, what next? And the million dollar question - why?

* Note: have knife handy.