From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the British adventurer Graham David Hughes.
For the Scottish film director of the same name, see .
Graham David Hughes (born 1979) is a British adventurer, filmmaker, television presenter and
holder. Hughes successfully visited all 193
member states and several other territories across the world without flying. He did so over a period of nearly four years and completed the task in November 2012. While on his journey he presented the television program Graham's World on the , a weekly look into his ongoing quest to break multiple world records by visiting every country on earth without flying.
The Odyssey Expedition was a quest to drop in on every one of the 193 . For the , Hughes visited all of the four
that make up the kingdom, and counted the UN member state as four separate countries. Hughes also visited the non-member state of , as well as the
non-member states of , , , and , for a total of 201 "countries" without flying. He says people tend to wonder how he got into the further-out countries like North Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan, but he says they were the easy ones. The rules of his trip were: no flying, no private transport (a rule enforced by the
race regulations, which cannot condone a public race in private vehicles) and no travelling to far flung territories and counting them as visiting the motherland.
Hughes completed his expedition on Monday 26 November 2012 after entering . He traveled overland back to his hometown of
so that if other countries come into being following the end of his journey, he can travel there and back without flying to keep the spirit of The Odyssey.
were reportedly unhappy with his entry into
as it was the only country he entered without passing an official border post. In January 2013 Hughes returned to , this time with an official visa.
While on The Odyssey Expedition, Hughes helped raise funds and awareness for the charity .
On December 12, 2013, Hughes was declared the winner of SOS Island, a -like show featuring
which relied on social media to promote
products on a desert island setting. The prize was $100,000 towards a future island adventure of his choice.
Hughes set a new Guinness World Record by visiting "133 countries in one year by scheduled ground transport" during the first year of his four-year journey.
In February 2014, it was announced that
had confirmed Hughes's Odyssey Expedition was "The fastest time to visit all countries by public surface transport" (4 years and 31 days) after an extraordinarily long verification process. , Head of Records at
was quoted as saying "I can't remember a more absorbing record to verify in recent years."
Hughes's personal video log of his trip has been converted into a television series called "Graham's World" on the . It is an eight-part series covering Hughes's first year traveling to every country in the Americas, Europe and most of Africa from January 2009 - December 2009. Highlights of the trip included imprisonment in the , getting caught sneaking into , and running the blockade into . He was arrested in
and spent jail time in
and Cape Verde.
With his company, Hydra Studios, he has written and directed a number of short films and won the inaugural Liverpool 48 Hour Film Challenge in 2006. Hughes has worked for , producing several travel videos. He has also been heavily involved in the Liverpool music scene, shooting or producing videos for , , The Basement, (We are) Performance, Peter And The Wolf, Lyons And Tigers, , , The Real Kicks, The Sonic Hearts, Metro Manila Aide,
and filming for the release of the
second album, .
In the summer of 2013, Hughes's "One Second Every Country"
video went viral, amassing almost one million views in just a few weeks, which led to appearances on BBC News
and CBS This Morning
as well as articles about his travels on Buzzfeed and Esquire.
Blake, Matt (27 November 2012). . .
. National Geographic Channel - Videos, TV Shows & Photos - Asia 2014.
. reddit 2014.
Luke Traynor. . mirror 2014.
. Wateraid.org 2014.
. heatworld 2014.
Guinness World Records. .
. The Japan Times 2014.
. Telegraph.co.uk 2014.
. News.bbc.co.uk 2014.
. The Independent 2014.
. BBC News 2014.
. BBC News 2014.
Dan Martin. . BuzzFeed 2014.
. Esquire 2014.
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Edward Michael "Bear" Grylls (born 7 June 1974) is a British , writer and television presenter. He is widely known for his television series
(), originally titled Born Survivor: Bear Grylls in the United Kingdom. Grylls is also involved in a number of wilderness survival television series in the United Kingdom and the United States.
In July 2009, Grylls was appointed the youngest-ever
at the age of 35.
Grylls grew up in
in , , until the age of four when his family moved to
on the . He is the son of the
politician
and Lady Sarah Grylls. Lady Grylls was the daughter of , briefly an
, and cricketer and businessman . Grylls has one sibling, an elder sister, Lara Fawcett, a cardio-tennis coach, who gave him the nickname 'Bear' when he was a week old.
Grylls was educated at Eaton House,
and , where he helped start its first , and , where he graduated with a degree, obtained part-time, in
studies in 2002. He also graduated from the . From an early age, he learned to climb and sail with his father, who was a member of the prestigious . As a teenager, he learned to skydive and earned a
karate. At age eight he became a . He speaks English, Spanish, and French. Grylls is a Christian, describing his faith as the "backbone" in his life.
Grylls married Shara Cannings Knight in 2000. They have three sons: Jesse, Marmaduke, and Huckleberry.
After leaving school, Grylls briefly considered joining the
and hiked in the Himalayan mountains of
and . Eventually, Grylls joined the
and, after passing , served as a reservist with the
in , for three years until 1997.
In 1996, he suffered a freefall parachuting accident in . His
ripped at 4,900 metres (16,000 ft), partially opening, causing him to fall and land on his parachute pack on his back, which partially crushed three . Grylls later said: "I should have cut the main parachute and gone to the reserve but thought there was time to resolve the problem". According to his surgeon, Grylls came "within a whisker" of being paralysed for life and at first it was questionable whether he would ever walk again. Grylls spent the next 12 months in and out of military rehabilitation at
before being discharged from his medical treatment and directing his efforts into trying to get well enough to fulfil his childhood dream of climbing .
In 2004, Grylls was previously awarded the honor and in 2013 he was awarded the honorary rank of
On 16 May 1998, Grylls achieved his childhood dream climbed to the summit of Mount Everest, 18 months after breaking three vertebrae in a parachuting accident. At 23, he was at the time among the youngest people to have achieved this feat. There is some controversy around whether he was, as claimed, the youngest Briton to have done so, as he was preceded by James Allen—an Australian climber with dual British citizenship who reached the summit in 1995 at age 22. The record has since been surpassed by
who summitted at age 19.
To prepare for climbing at such high altitudes in the , in 1997, Grylls became the youngest Briton to climb , a peak once described by
as "unclimbable".
In 2000 Grylls led the team to circumnavigate the British Isles on , taking about 30 days, to raise money for the
(RNLI). He also rowed naked in a homemade bathtub along the
to raise funds for a friend who lost his legs in a climbing accident.
Three years later, he led a team of five, including his childhood friend, SAS colleague, and Mount Everest climbing partner Mick Crosthwaite, on an unassisted crossing of the north
Ocean, in an open . Grylls and his team travelled in an eleven-metre-long boat and encountered
with waves breaking over the boat while passing through icebergs in their journey from
to , Scotland.
In 2005, alongside the
and Lieutenant Commander Alan Veal, leader of the Royal Navy Freefall Parachute Display Team, Grylls created a world record for the highest open-air formal dinner party, which they did under a hot-air balloon at 7,600 metres (25,000 ft), dressed in full
and . To train for the event, he made over 200 parachute jumps. This event was in aid of
In 2007, Grylls embarked on a record-setting Parajet paramotor in Himalayas near Mount Everest. He took off from 4,400 metres (14,500 ft), 8 miles south of the mountain. Grylls reported looking down on the summit during his ascent and coping with temperatures of -60 °C (-76 °F). He endured dangerously low oxygen levels and eventually reached 9,000 metres (29,500 ft), almost 3,000 metres (10,000 ft) higher than the previous record of 6,102 metres (20,019 ft). The feat was filmed for
worldwide as well as
in the UK. While Grylls initially planned to cross over Everest itself, the permit was only to fly to the south of Everest, and he did not traverse Everest out of risk of violating Chinese airspace.
The expedition provoked some controversy. Grylls initially reported on his blog to have broken a new world record by flying over Mount Everest, when in fact – though reaching a height greater than Everest – he did not actually fly over the top of the mountain but was in fact some miles away from it. Some explorers have cast doubts on the veracity of other aspects of the flight, such as its purportedly record-setting height, which would have put him into the "death zone" where the amount of oxygen in the air is insufficient to sustain human life.
In 2008, Grylls led a team of four to climb one of the most remote unclimbed peaks in the world in Antarctica. This was raising funds for
kids charity and awareness for the potential of alternative energies. During this mission the team also aimed to explore the coast of Antarctica by inflatable boat and jetski, part powered by , and then to travel across some of the vast ice desert by wind-powered kite-ski and electric powered paramotor. However, the expedition was cut short after Grylls suffered a broken shoulder while kite skiing across a stretch of ice. Travelling at speeds up to 50 km/h (30 mph), a ski caught on the ice, launching him in the air and breaking his shoulder when he came down. He had to be medically evacuated.
Grylls, along with the double amputee Al Hodgson and the Scotsman Freddy MacDonald, set a Guinness world record in 2008 for the longest continuous . The previous record was 1 hour 36 minutes by a US team. Grylls, Hodgson, and MacDonald, using a vertical wind tunnel in , broke the record by a few seconds. The attempt was in support of the charity Global Angels.
In August 2010, Grylls led a team of five to take an ice-breaking rigid-inflatable boat (RIB) through 2,500 miles (4,000 km) of the ice-strewn . The expedition intended to raise awareness of the effects of
and to raise money for children's charity Global Angels.
Grylls entered television work with an appearance in an
deodorant, featuring his ascent of . Grylls was also used by the UK Ministry of Defence to head the Army's anti-drugs TV campaign, and featured in the first ever major advertising campaign for . Grylls has been a guest on numerous
including , , , , , ,
and . Grylls recorded two advertisements for Post's Trail Mix Crunch Cereal, which aired in the US from January 2009. He also appeared as a "distinguished instructor" in ' Most Interesting Academy in a webisode named "Survival in the Modern Era". He appeared in a five-part web series that demonstrates urban survival techniques and features Grylls going from bush to bash. He also has marketed the , a course on the basics of the Christian faith. In 2013, Grylls appeared in an airline safety video for
entitled Bear Essentials of Safety, filmed against the backdrop of the
on the southern tip of New Zealand's .
Grylls' first book, Facing Up (UK) / The Kid Who Climbed Everest (US), described his expedition and achievements climbing to the summit of Mount Everest. His second, Facing the Frozen Ocean, was shortlisted for the
Award 2004. His third book Born Survivor: Bear Grylls was written to accompany the TV series of the same name. It features survival skills learned from some of the world's most hostile places. He also wrote an extreme guide to outdoor pursuits, titled Bear Grylls Outdoor Adventures. In 2012, Grylls released his autobiography Mud, Sweat and Tears: The Autobiography, followed by A Survival Guide for Life in late 2012 and True Grit in 2013.
Grylls also wrote the Mission Survival series of children's adventure survival books titled: Mission Survival: Gold of the Gods, Mission Survival: Way of the Wolf, Mission Survival: Sands of the Scorpion, Mission Survival: Tracks of the Tiger and Mission Survival: Claws of the Crocodile. He also wrote Scouting For All published by the Scout Association in 2011.
Grylls filmed a four-part TV show in 2005, called Escape to the Legion, which followed Grylls and eleven other "recruits" as they took part in a shortened re-creation of the 's basic desert training in the . The show was first broadcast in the UK on Channel 4, and in the USA on the .
Bear Grylls in front of an Alaska Air National Guard, 210th Rescue Squadron HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopter before heading out to Spencer Glacier to film Man vs. Wild (Born Survivor)
Main article:
Grylls hosts a series titled Born Survivor: Bear Grylls for the British Channel 4 and broadcast as Man vs. Wild in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, and the U.S.A., and as Ultimate Survival on the Discovery Channel in Europe, Asia, and Africa. The series features Grylls dropped into inhospitable places, showing viewers how to survive. Man vs. Wild debuted in 2006, and its success led it to lasting seven seasons over five years.
The show has featured stunts including Grylls climbing cliffs, parachuting from helicopters, balloons, and planes, paragliding, ice climbing, running through a forest fire, wading , eating snakes, wrapping his urine-soaked T-shirt around his head to help stave off the desert heat,
saved in a rattlesnake skin, drinking fecal liquid from elephant dung, eating deer droppings, wrestling alligators, field dressing a camel carcass and drinking water from it, eating various "creepy crawlies" [insects], utilising the corpse of a sheep as a sleeping bag and flotation device, free climbing waterfalls and using a bird guano/water enema for hydration. Grylls also regales the viewer with tales of adventurers stranded or killed in the wilderness.
The show caused controversy after a programme consultant revealed that Grylls actually stayed in a motel on some nights – including an episode in Hawaii in which Grylls was ostensibly stranded on a deserted island – and that certain scenes were staged for him. In one example, Grylls was portrayed lassoing a wild
in the , but it was claimed that this was in fact a tame animal from a nearby pony-trekking centre. Grylls subsequently apologized to viewers who might have felt misled.
In March 2012 the Discovery Channel dropped Grylls from its lineup because of a contractual dispute, although he has subsequently worked with them again.
In 2010, Grylls came out with a new project titled
which aired on Discovery in the USA. It is based on the popular books of the same name. Twelve episodes were produced before the show was cancelled.
In 2011, he made two specials under the title Bear’s Wild Weekend for
in the UK which was broadcast over the Christmas holiday that year. Each special featured Grylls taking either
on short two- Ross to rainforest in the Canary Islands, Hart to the Swiss Alps. These screened in the US under the title Bear Grylls' Wild Adventure. A third episode with , this time in the Dolomite mountains of , screened in late 2013. In 2014, two further episodes were aired in the UK under the title Wild Weekends. The first of these was the 2011 special of
featuring , and the second was the
episode featuring .
He hosted, , a reality competition series filmed in , which premiered on NBC on 8 July 2013.
In Bear Grylls: Escape From Hell, he reveals the true life stories of ordinary people trapped in extraordinary situations of survival. The six-episode series premiered on the Discovery Channel in the UK on 4 October 2013, and in the US on 11 November 2013.
He presented , first shown on
on 5 May 2014. This series features 13 British men on an uninhabited Pacific island with very little equipment. An American version of the show was also made and will be broadcast on 25 May 2015 on NBC.
from NBC which premiered on 28 July 2014, Grylls took celebrities on a two-day trip in the wilderness. This celebrities who took part in the 6-episode series are , , , , , and .
Bear Grylls branded .
Main article:
In 2015, he began presenting six-part ITV series
which features eight celebrities on a twelve-day survival mission. The series began airing on 20 February 2015. Mission Survive will return for a second series in 2016.
On 17 May 2009,
announced Grylls would be appointed Chief Scout following the end of 's five-year term in July 2009. He was officially made Chief Scout at
on 11 July 2009 in a handover event featuring Peter Duncan in front of a crowd of over 3,000 . He is the tenth person to hold the position and the youngest Chief Scout since the role was created for
Grylls is an ambassador for The Prince's Trust, an organisation which provides training, financial, and practical support to young people in the United Kingdom. He is also vice president for The JoLt Trust, a small charity that takes , ,
or neglected young people on challenging month-long expeditions.
, a UK charity which seeks to aid children around the world, were the beneficiaries of his 2007 accomplishment of taking a powered para-glider higher than Mount Everest. Grylls' held the highest ever dinner party at 7,600 metres (25,000 ft) in aid of
Scheme, and launched the 50th anniversary of the Awards. His successful circumnavigation of Britain on jet skis raised money for the . Grylls' Everest climb was in aid of , a British-based charitable organisation set up to help former and serving members of the British Armed Forces and their families and dependents. His 2003 Arctic expedition detailed in the book
was in aid of . His 2005 attempt to para-motor over the Angel Falls was in aid of the charity . In August 2010, Grylls continued his fund-raising work for Global Angels by undertaking an expedition through the Northwest Passage in a rigid inflatable boat. Many of his expeditions also support environmental causes such as his Antarctica expedition and his circumnavigation of Britain which tested a pioneering new fuel made from rubbish. In 2011, Grylls was in New Zealand during the . Following the incident, he appeared on New Zealand advertisements encouraging people to donate money to help rebuild the city.
Outside of TV, Grylls works as a , giving speeches worldwide to corporations, churches, schools, and other organisations. He is also a spokesman for and owner of a
franchise.
, British adventurer and a hero of Grylls' growing up
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