Benedict Allen Libri

Benedict Allen travelled through Papua New Guinea in search of a tribe that would let him participate in an initiation ceremony into manhood. He was finally admitted to the ceremonies of the Sepik tribe, whose totemic god is the crocodile. With fifteen other young males, Allen was secluded from the village in a large nest-like enclosure. Crocodile marks were carved onto their bodies with sharpened bamboo. Grey mud was applied to stop the blood-flow from their wounds, and they were beaten every day for six weeks. This book is the story of Allen's initiation experiences - a tale of love, community through shared pain and of sudden death.

Why do explorers put themselves in dangerous situations? And, once the worst possible situation occurs, how do they find the resources to survive? The author presents a series of tales from his own experience as well as that of other explorers including Columbus, Cortez, Scott, Shackleton, Stanley, Livingstone.

From the vast island of Sumatra, Benedict Allen brings back the strangest of travellers' tales concerning black-maned ape-men asTheodore Hull - octogenarian survivor of Japanese labour camps - entices him onto the trail of the Gugu. A tangle of folktales leads Allen to the aboriginal Kubu people who can guide him into the highlands where the ape-men screech all night long, shaking every fibre of the forest. But the twentieth century is encroaching, and Kubu say that the Gugus' rage can no longer be appeased by traditional gifts of tobacco. Allen ventures into the dark, living forest, watched by unseen eyes . . .

This enquiry into the explorer mindset is part meditation, part memoir, from one of 'Britain's greatest explorers' (Telegraph)

Mongolia has changed remarkably little since the days of its medieval hero, the warlord Genghis Khan. Famed for its cloudless blue skies, it is a country of varied icy mountains and lakes, wind-blown steppe, wolf and bear, forests and vast desert. This beautiful, in parts almost uninhabitable, landscape becomes home to Benedict Allen as he travels by horse and camel from the forests of Siberia, across the open plains of the Mongolian steppe, and on alone through the Gobi Desert.Illustrated throughout in colour, Edge of Blue Heaven presents a vivid picture of this fascinating country and is as much a tribute to one of the world's few remaining nomadic peoples as it is to the tension and drama of travel at its most demanding.

The author, already adopted by a New Guinea village and tutored in tribal love during an initiation ceremony, now determines to experience the "natural" world in the light of this knowledge - how to worship and hunt in it. He slips away from the village, with its clan ties, and disappears into the forest to gain a practical knowledge of life, its "spirits" and his own powers. The eight-month quest takes the author in and out of relationships with nomads and missionaries, across the central mountain range of remotest New Guinea, over the treacherous Torres Straits and into the midst of the Australian desert, where he lives as a whiteskin among the aboriginies. The book is designed to be of interest to the general reader, and to help gain insights into a relatively closed world. Other books by the author include "Into the Crocodile Nest" and "Hunting the Gugu".