INTO THE ABYSS

the long version

"Benedict Allen is often referred to as 'a cat who has lost six of his nine lives'." "Aged twenty-two, he set off into the Amazon, and, fleeing through the forest after an attack by gold-miners, he was forced to eat his dog to survive; since then he has been shot at, endured weeks alone in desert and rainforest, been poisoned, and has had to sew up his own wound with a needle and thread from his boot-mending kit." "In 2003 he trained a team of hardened icedogs' and headed into the remotest corner of Siberia to cross the ice of the Bering Strait alone, unarmed and without backup of any kind; as problems began to pile up, he and his ten faithful dogs found themselves heading ever northward through frozen tundra and pack ice, and on a night of sub-zero temperatures they plummeted off a cliff." "As he fell into the abyss, Allen asked himself: why do explorers put themselves in such dangerous situations? And - once the worst possible situation occurs - how do they find the resources to survive?" "In answering these questions, Allen weaves a series of tales from his own experiences driving a dogsled across the ice-bridge linking Siberia with North America, as well as that of other explorers including Columbus and Cortes, Stanley and Livingston - and their modern counterparts Joe Simpson, Wilfred Thesiger and Chris Bonington."--Jacket.