What travelling experiences are deepest in your memory, and in your heart?
I would also add my nose and my hands. I tend to perceive things through smell and touch. I can still feel the sensation of first shaking hands with Thor Heyerdahl, His Holiness Dalai Lama, or Jane Goodall, I remember the handshake of Miroslav Zikmund… Those are moments you cannot forget. And then there are smells, like the peculiar smell of Mongolia or the African jungle.

Which memories will you always keep?
I love to remember Cameroon, gorillas, meeting the Pygmies who welcomed us in the depth of the Cameroonian rainforest, and then started playing their traditional instruments and singing. And I cannot forget my first visit to the Easter Island in 1998. There were no fences then. I borrowed a horse and travelled all over the island, I slept at the foot of a volcano, and got soaked with rain… 

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What did you think when visiting the tribe and talking to Pena, a member of the Waorani indigenous tribe from the Amazonian rainforest?
I spent three weeks there, and could see – as I have just said – that people are the same everywhere. Girls like to be liked, boys boast, they argue about the same trifles. That was the strongest lesson I took from them. 

How do you interact with people from such different cultures, not to make it look like watching animals in the zoo?
It is just like that the first days. You watch them, they watch you. When we got off the plane, they would touch us, slap us, laugh, touch our beards. And I would touch them, and we would laugh at each other. Two days later, we got used to each other, and we could move on to what we wanted. When you get used to the differences, nobody is an animal in the zoo anymore. They live in a place with rich deposits. There are mining companies which want to take the land and start mining. The law is weak there, and indigenous people fight for their existence. 

But you also travel to locations with a very different climate, you say you are an arctic explorer. There are two poles.  Are they different?
Totally! In the Arctic, you walk on frozen sea, there is 100% humidity. The ice can break at any moment, and you would fall into the sea. Antarctica is a continent with air as dry as in a desert. The air in Siberia is also very dry, and people live there in seventy degrees below zero. The Inuit people in Greenland live in matriarchy, and have totally different conditions and values; they love fun, they laugh a lot. 

What are your current plans?
I would like to visit Papua-New Guinea. I have not been there yet. But right now, I am preparing a book about Thor Heyerdahl with his granddaughter. I describe the famous traveller from a very human angle. I remember him as a great professional, very modest. Actually, all people that I have met who have really achieved something never boasted. Many should follow their example.    

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