16 Quotes by Alastair Humphreys

It's such an in-your-face country. Probably the best individual moment was getting to Cape Town, getting to the end of Africa, because I really -- even until Kenya -- I didn't think I would get through.

The first year I found really quite lonely and quite hard. It was awful. I was in this horrible hotel crying my eyes out for about two days.

Adventure is just about doing something you’ve never done – doing it with enthusiasm and curiosity: doing something difficult with passion.

Adventure is a loose word that means different things to different people. It is a state of mind, a spirit of trying something new and leaving your comfort zone. Adventure is about enthusiasm, ambition, open-mindedness and curiosity. If this is true, then ‘adventure’ is not only crossing deserts and climbing mountains; adventure can be found everywhere, every day, and it is up to us to seek it out.

But that was good enough for me, because adventure doesn’t always have to be about climbing K2. Just getting out there and doing something is sometimes good enough. In fact, you shouldn’t even compare your trip with climbing K2. You should compare it with the realistic alternative that faces most people with busy lives and tight diaries, which is doing no adventure at all.

I am far more interested in being a beginner than in trying to become an expert. Life is difficult and complicated for everyone – but it’s very, very short.

But whenever you think, ‘this is an exciting idea’ and immediately follow that by thinking, ‘this is a very stupid idea’ then you know you are on to a good thing and that you will regret it if you wimp out.