Travelling Solo : Fun If You Survive
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I like the idea of travelling solo round the countryside. Of course I could die if I don't take sensible precautions, but the idea definitely attracts me.
When I was a student in Aberdeen, a medical student that I knew went hiking in the hills, and broke his leg. Nobody would find him. So he set his own leg, fainting several times before he succeeded, then crawled for mile after mile until he reached a road where he could flag down a motorist.
He was lucky because his abilities allowed him to survive in spite of breaking the first rule of solo travel. Always let the police know where you are going, and when you expect to arrive there. How can they send out a search party if they don't know that you are lost?
There are different dangers in different countries. In Scotland you can die of cold in a few hours. In Australia you can die of thirst in half a day. So you should learn how to be prepared in advance. I've climbed a mountain with a group of teenagers where I was the only one carrying water with me. Not even the other supervisors had water with them.
I've also gone hunting kangaroos on horseback, and again, I was the only one carrying water. However, I had learned, and only allowed half of my water supply to be drunk by the foolish ones, instead of all of it.
In survival courses they teach you how to work out your direction in degrees from the map. However, they do point out that their method gives you a line pointing in two directions. So if you calculate that you must go East to a village with water, you should look on the map to see if the village is really to the right on your map. What's that? The desert is to the East? You would die of thirst? That's one of the dangers of simple map-reading.
Why risk it?
Nowadays you can buy a hand-held GPS (Global Positioning by Satellite) gadget. You can see exactly where you want to go. Do you object that it takes the challenge out of navigation? Fine. Stick to a compass. I'll use a GPS system.
We baby-boomers aren't as strong as we were once upon a time. Come to think of it, I was never a muscle-man. So I won't even attempt to carry a monster back-pack. I'll get a travois or something with wheels to carry my hammock, and fire-lighting equipment, and plenty of water, and cameras, and... Travelling solo is still safe in the outback with proper preparation, and if there was an emergency, I might even be able to call for help on a cell phone.
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