VIJAY SHAH

Looking back there are definitely only a handful of times that I’ve been nervous about camping: There was the first time I ventured into the Arctic all the way back in 2001 when I was eighteen, then there was my little solo expedition climbing a 5700m mountain in the Peruvian Andes in 2006 (which was also the first time I’d been that high or climbed a high altitude mountain). This was quickly followed by my solo attempt on Aconcagua a couple of months later which is a little short of 7000m. In 2008 when my colleague and I made our first attempt at a spring crossing of the remote Penny ice cap on Baffin Island (it was really cold and my feet froze) and finally our return trip in 2011 (for which I was nervous about my feet freezing again). I make that five times with the last one a full decade ago. Last week I added to that count.

It was a week after we had returned from our late autumn holiday: two glorious weeks of campervanning around the Scottish highlands. I claimed in Part 1 of this blog post that if you want to do something cool with your child, don’t expect to sleep…

Just like every other parent in history our world was turned upside down, inside out and the wrong way round. There is a space where adventure can exist whilst safeguarding the most important part of your being. We didn’t really have a choice: Stronger than the yearning of adventure is the desire to raise our baby with our values, to let him experience what we cherish most in the world and the only way to do that is letting him grow up (semi-) wild.

Last week I had the honour of presenting the Gold Duke of Edinburgh awards at Buckingham Palace.  I talked to the awardees about my own journey of development, about the importance of pushing boundaries and always trying new things.  After the ceremony was over, and while we were soaking up the atmosphere in the Palace gardens a young man approached me and asked me a question that caused me to stop and think.  He asked me ‘after all that I’ve experienced through my travels and expeditions what is the greatest lesson I have learnt?’

The last couple of years I’ve had this deep niggling feeling inside me as I tried to reconcile my passions and work with what I deem most important and whom I aspire to be. It started of as that slight nagging feeling that we’ve all felt at some point, like a caught zip or sunglasses in long hair, but the zip didn’t free itself and the sunglasses became too entangled until it could no longer be ignored.  There was only one solution: to change.