Headline, December23, 2013

''' !WOW! : SIX GREAT ADVENTURE

 BOOKS '''

Why risk your own life and limbs when you can revel in just how badly it can wrong for others?

Here, a panel of heroes, explorers, and adventurers nominate their favourite tales of suffering and survival:

1. The Kon-Tiki Expedition (1950) by Thor Heyerdahl

In 1947, to ''prove'' that the Pacific was settled from the West (they couldn't),  Norwegian Heyerdahl and his companions sailed 4300 miles from Peru towards Polynesia in   -or,rather, on  -

The kind of primitive sea-craft the oboriginal settlers would have used.

''I read it as a boy, and recently re-read it,'' says Tom Avery author of To The End Of The Earth.

''Six men crossing the Earth's largest ocean on a balsa raft? Surely the most inspiring story ever told.''

2. The Long Walk (1955) by Slavomir Rawicz

''The Narrator escapes from a gulag in 1941, near the Arctic Circle,'' says Benedict Allen, British explorer and Into The Abyss author. ''He walks for a year through blizzards and deserts before crossing the Himalayas to reach safety in Calcutta.''

Rawicz probably based his account on the escapdes of another Polish gulag survivor, but Allen remains awestruck. ''Even though it seemed wildly implausible, I found his stirring tale of endurance wonderfully inspiring as a child.''

We agree. This escape yarn makes Papillion look like porridge.

3. The Worst-Journey In the World (1922) by Apsley-Cherry-Garrard.

Ditch any suspicion of titular hyperbole: this story told by a young member of Captain Scott's expedition team, sees three men haul 300 kilos through a dark Polar wilderness in  -70 degrees C.

Yet the narrator   -British upper lip, stiffened by cold-  shows stoic wit throughout.  ''It's an epic tale of suffering and derring-do,'' says Polar Explorer Ben Saunders.

''The New York Review Of Books said it was,  'To travel, What War And Peace is to the novel   - a masterpiece.' I'd go along with that!''

4. Mawson's Will (1999) by Lennard Bickel.

''These men added more territory to the maps of Antarctica than Scott, Amundsen, Shackleton or anyone else from this heroic age of exploration,'' says author Aron Ralston of the team whose diaries formed the basis Australian author Bickel's harrowing account:

Of a blighted 1911 mission:

''Douglas Mawson lost his supplies and his team-mates, ate the sled dogs then, alone and with flesh falling off in slabs, walked 320 miles across mountains and crevasse fields to his support crew.

He missed them by hours, forcing him to await rescue at base the following year.''

5. Jungle (2005) by Yossi Ghinsberg.

So harrowing    -impossible to put down,'' is how author Joe Simpson describes Israeli adventurer Ghinsberg's account of a reckless trek through the Bolivian Amazon which he undertook with a disparate, ill-organised band of backpackers in 1982-.

Braving leeches, fire-ants, jaguars, snakes, and foot-rot along the way.

''I had to resist shouting at the protagonists to turn back, but found it impossible not to carry on reading as the grisly tale unfolded. Paradoxically, it's both tragic and inspiring.''

6. The Heart Of The Sea (2001) by Nathaniel Philbrick.

''This is a brilliantly researched account of the true story behind Herman Melville's Moby Dick,'' says climber David Pickford.

''It saw 21 seamen attempt a 2,000 mile voyage to Chile with only three small whaleboats:

A few Galapagos tortoises, some stale bread and enough water for half a pint a day, after an enraged sperm whale rammed their ship.''

Expect vengeful whales, violent dehydration and cannibalism in what Pickford calls  ''an extraordinary tale of epic survival against near-impossible odds''. What more can adventure book deliver.

With respectful dedication the all the Students of the World. See Ya all on !WOW! the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless:

''' By Far The Greatest Adventure Of All  '''

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless