world reviewer
Meeting a Swede who dreams to cross the Sahara desert by camel
Almost as quick as I dropped the news about my next Expedition, I received an email from a young Swedish bloke, who wrote that he for years have dreamt about crossing the Sahara desert from east to west. As you well can understand, a magnicificent journey, which as far as I understand, has been done only once before, by a couple. A pom namned Michael Asher and an Italian lady namned Marianetta Peru. A magnificient feat. I bought this book years ago, about their trip, called Impossible Journey from 1988.
For some unknown reason, I remember their personal quarrels more than anything else from the book about their journey. Maybe because I knew this very well from my own Expeditions with my ex, which were plagued by quarrels. I don´t have any memories of the way they felt or appreciated the desert. I will read it soon again, as part of my planning. And, after having read Wilfried Thesigers book, Arabian Sands, I have to say, it is a beautiful book, one of the best I have ever read, a book I will bring with me on the Expedition. It is a book about life itself. Then again, Thesiger is a legend, a true human being. No wonder.
Which, yet, doesn´t apply to Christian Bodegren from Vingåker in the south of Sweden. I met him here in Stockholm a couple of days ago, where he was contemplating life, a break from his work in construction in Norway. He inspired me a lot and told me many valuable things about cameltravel. He had already done a small trip, a test Expedition, in Tunisia for a week and loved every bit of it. (The photo is from this trip, courtesy of Christian Bodegren) He doesn´t remember anything negative. He is definitely a true explorer in mind. He was also very laid-back, calm and probably got more worried after the meeting than before, me scaring him with my stories from my travels. I just llike scaring other Explorers, I don´t know why...
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Mikael Strandberg
MIKAEL STRANDBERG-Swedens internationally celebrated explorer Mikael Strandberg was born in 1962 in Sweden. He started his p…
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