No journey is too long and no country too remote for Charley Boorman, the star of Long Way Round and Extreme Frontiers. He talks visiting the places you won’t find in guidebooks and slap-in- the-face moments ahead of his appearance at the Active Travel Show
switch-back gravel dirt road 2,000m up in Lesotho, the country within South Africa that’s known as the mountain kingdom. We couldn’t get the bikes up because all the roads had turned to ice, so we convinced these guys to take us in their jeep but the back wheels failed and we started sliding down towards the cliff edge. We were about to bail out of the car when it thankfully came to a stop. Getting to walk away from that was exciting, kind of.
testicles in the pot, bubbling away – people there don’t waste anything
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What’s been your most hair-raising experience – was the above it? That was definitely dodgy but I think one of the most dangerous things I’ve done is the Dakar rally. When I did it it was in the Sahara Desert and I did it on a motorcycle, which was pretty bad. Of the 260 bikes that started, only 67 finished. It’s really…exciting, and such a challenging adventure.
What’s the strangest thing you’ve eaten?
Testicles – in Mongolia – from goats, sheep, horses and anything else. There were 200 of them in the pot, bubbling away – people there don’t waste anything.
Where’s the most breathtaking place that you’ve been to? Gosh, each country has its own special ability to astound. I call them slap-in-the-face moments, such as when we were sitting on our bikes on the plains of Africa and the sun