Tom Williams: Surviving the Canadian Wilderness & Creating Desert Island Survival Adventures

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Tom Williams went into the Canadian wilderness with a gill net, a knife, and a handful of survival skills he'd honed on tropical desert islands. He came out 35 days later as the winner of Alone UK — feeling, by his own account, the happiest and healthiest he'd ever felt in his life. His IBS had cleared up. His anxiety had gone. He'd been sleeping 11 hours a night. He was genuinely sad to leave.

That's the thing about Tom's story. It isn't really about a survival competition. It's about a kid from Portsmouth who was bottom of his class, bullied by his teachers, and so uncomfortable in an office cubicle that he signed up for a race to the North Pole after a few beers with a mate. One expedition led to another: coral reef mapping in Honduras, sailing 8,000 miles across the Pacific on a superyacht after a cold email, moving to Chile, losing his mum, and finally finding his purpose in the place he'd always been drawn to — nature, isolation, and the oldest
kind of living.

Chapters
00:00 Peak happiness in the wild 
01:00 Who is Tom Williams? Adventurer, founder, Alone UK winner
03:30 Portsmouth upbringing: the chip on his shoulder and the cubicle he had to escape
07:00 The North Pole race — a pub bet, 28-hour days, and hallucinating polar bears
13:00 Training, resilience, and the 40 per cent rule
18:00 Fundraising, white-collar boxing, and getting to the start line
23:00 The catalyst year — North Pole, 8,000-mile Pacific crossing, and losing his mother
30:00 Coral reefs in Honduras and the seeds of Desert Island Survival
36:00 How Desert Island Survival works — and the transformation it triggers
41:00 Learning bushcraft from Tom McElroy — one of the world's leading primitive skills experts
46:00 Getting cast for Alone UK — and the mixed feelings about winning after just 35 days
50:00 Inside Alone — the gill net, the duck, and the drop-shock moment
55:00 Peak health, mental clarity, and how long he could realistically have lasted
58:00 Reintegration, health changes, and the book — You Are an Animal
01:01:00 New expeditions — Okavango Delta kayak safari and the Sweden Alone experience
04:30 The machete incident, close calls, and finding his ikigai
58:30 Call to adventure: micro adventures, kayaking, bike touring
59:30 Pay It Forward: GiveDirectly

Today he runs Desert Island Survival, maroooning people on uninhabited tropical islands across Panama, the Philippines, Tonga, Indonesia, and now the Okavango Delta. His next project is a book about evolutionary mismatch — and why the happiest he's ever felt was when he was living exactly like a hunter-gatherer.

What You'll Learn:
• Why Tom believes the mind always quits before the body — and the mental training method  that helped him outlast everyone else in the Canadian wilderness
• What it actually tastes like to eat a roast duck you caught accidentally in a gill net after 25 days on nothing but pike
• How Tom sent a cold email to a superyacht owner he'd photographed on a dive — and ended up sailing from Vancouver to Chile
• The simple bushcraft formula behind Desert Island Survival — and why the most transformative guests are the ones who have never camped before
• What evolutionary mismatch is, why most intelligent zoo animals are on antidepressants, and what that means for how we live
• The science behind phytoncides — the chemicals trees release that kill cancer cells and make you feel good — and why aromatherapy is, actually, empirically legit

TOM WILLIAMS | Adventurer, Survival Expert & Founder of Desert Island Survival
Website: tomwilliams.tv
Desert Island Survival: desertislandsurvival.com
Instagram: @TomWilliamsAlone (instagram.com/tomwilliamsalone)
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/desertislandtom
Pay It Forward: GiveDirectly — givedirectly.org — direct cash transfers to the world's
poorest communities, prioritising women as recipients

ABOUT TOM WILLIAMS
Tom Williams grew up in Portsmouth — bottom of his class, bullied, and seemingly destined for nothing much. At 27, he signed up for a polar race on a whim over beers with a friend, walked 367 miles to the North Pole, and never really went back to normal life. He's since sailed 8,000 miles across the Pacific, mapped coral reefs in Honduras, and spent six months immersed in tropical island survival with one of the world's foremost bushcraft mentors. In 2023 he was crowned winner of Alone UK, surviving 35 days solo in the Canadian wilderness. He is the founder and CEO of Desert Island Survival, which runs immersive survival expeditions across
seven countries, and is writing his first book — You Are an Animal — about why living aligned to hunter-gatherer instincts may be the key to modern health and happiness.

For full show notes and links, visit: adventurediaries.com/go

Transcript

[CHAPTER: Peak Happiness in the Wild — ~00:00]

NARRATOR:
Like peak happiness. I was living this pure woodland existence, aligned to how we evolved as hunter-gatherers, and I felt amazing. I felt euphoric most of the time, because I had my food needs met. I felt just high. I honestly felt high and healthy, and I've had some substantial changes in my body as well — I used to have IBS, irritable bowel syndrome, that went away and it hasn't come back since.

I used to get anxiety; that seems to have been cured as well, which is just insane. I think I had enough food for another 20 days without catching another fish and without getting injured. It was minus six the day it finished, and it got down to minus 22 two weeks later. So I would have been dealing with a very different winter. I was desperate to see that place turn white with snow.

[CHAPTER: Introduction — Who Is Tom Williams? — ~01:00]

NARRATOR:
Welcome to the Adventure Diaries podcast, where we share tales of adventure, connection, and exploration. From the smallest of creators to the larger-than-life adventurers, we hope their stories inspire you to go and create your own extraordinary adventures. And now your host, Chris Watson.

CHRIS:
Welcome to another episode of The Adventure Diaries. Today we're joined by Tom Williams — an epic adventurer, entrepreneur, and public speaker. But it wasn't always like that for Tom. Growing up in Portsmouth, Tom faced academic struggles, bullying, and various personal adversities.

Yet he transformed those challenges into fuel for incredible adventures: mapping coral reefs in Honduras, where he first found his real passion for exploration, then winning the race to the North Pole. Tom's journey has been about pushing limits, degrees of self-discovery, and truly embracing the wilds.

He went on to found Desert Island Survival, a company offering transformative, real-world survival expeditions across the globe. More recently, Tom captured the public's imagination by surviving 35 days alone in the Canadian wilderness to be crowned the winner of Alone — the UK edition. Through his expeditions, talks, and writing, Tom continues to share his insights on the power of nature, optimism, and living with purpose. I loved this episode. What a story. What a guy. I really hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Settle in and enjoy this fantastic conversation with Tom Williams.

Tom Williams, welcome to the Adventure Diaries. How are you?

TOM:
I'm very well, thank you, Chris. Thank you ever so much for having me.

CHRIS:
No, thank you for your time. Excited for this. You are the third cast member from Alone that I've had on the show, so it's a particular passion and indulgence of mine. Albeit Alone UK, not the US version — which is a little different, but we'll come on to that.

So the frame for today: I want to talk about Alone, but I also want to step into your backstory, your formative years, how you came through to being cast for Alone, and also the fantastic work you're doing with Desert Island Survival. To start, I'd like to roll back a little. Your formative years — what was it like growing up in Portsmouth? Where did the adventurous side come from, and how did those earlier years influence you?

[CHAPTER: Portsmouth Upbringing and the Chip on His Shoulder — ~03:30]

TOM:
Honestly, I almost don't know how it happened. If you'd seen me as a kid, you wouldn't have picked me out and said, "That bloke's going to walk to the North Pole, take people to desert islands, and go on Alone."

I was the fattest kid in my school. Academically, I was at the bottom. All my teachers and my parents were desperately worried I wasn't going to amount to anything. I was pulled to one side: "If you don't really buck your ideas up, you're going to be flipping burgers in a fast-food restaurant." It wasn't looking good. I grew up in Portsmouth, in a city. I wasn't immersed in nature — did a bit of camping with my parents, a little sailing, but not really much. And I followed the traditional route: get a proper job. I studied my passion — geography and environmental management — then got a job selling software for a company in Maidenhead, and just found myself hitting depression. I used to enjoy life, and then suddenly there I was in a cubicle thinking, "God, is this it?"

Luckily I was so uncomfortable with that, I kicked out. Fast forward to 27-year-old Tom having a few pints with his mate Paul, and Paul said, "I've seen this thing about walking to the North Pole — would you be up for it?" And I was like, "Yeah. That's what I need."

[CHAPTER: The North Pole Race — Jumping Off a Cliff — ~07:00]

TOM:
I signed up for the Polar Challenge, which is an amateur race. We had to raise a load of money — 25 different fundraisers. Honestly, getting to the start line was the hardest part by far. Then we walked to the North Pole, and that was a big catalyst for change.

CHRIS:
Was that your first big expedition? Just sitting in the pub having a few beers and over-committing yourself?

TOM:
Completely. I'd never done anything close to an expedition. I just absolutely jumped off a cliff and found out if I had what it takes. I didn't know if I had a big appetite for adventure before then, but I had a point to prove. I always had a real chip on my shoulder — marked as stupid and a failure. "If I walk to the North Pole, what better way to prove them wrong?" The cheesy line is true: when you leave your comfort zone you grow as a person. And I didn't just leave mine. I ran further and further to the edge until I found whole new limits. When you come back, day-to-day challenges are much easier. You suddenly have some confidence — "Wait a minute, I could set up this company. I could do this." You believe the labels you're told, and then you do something like that and you're like, "Wait a minute — it is all possible."

CHRIS:
I think you've spoken a little bit about being called stupid, being bullied, even by a teacher. Do you think that was always in the back of your mind?

TOM:
Yeah, I definitely had a point to prove. I also think you need an element of resilience to do these things, and I think I was quite lucky to have just about the right amount of adversity growing up. Without trauma — I use the analogy of the Eden Project in Texas: those geometric domes with trees inside. After five years the trees all fell over, because they had no wind. We're the same. We need a bit of wind, a bit of gentle adversity. You don't want a hurricane to uproot you — that's trauma. But I'm an only child; my mum was loving but an alcoholic. I was bullied. I took my fair share of drugs and escapism. I think I just had the right amount of adversity that it worked out — but it could so easily have gone the other way.

CHRIS:
What was it like the day after you'd signed up? That hangover realisation?

TOM:
It doubles down on your hangover. I remember a reminder on my Nokia 3210 going off saying "Walk to North Pole," and I was blurry-eyed looking at this thing. "What?!" That mate Paul joined the army and dropped out, then I found another person who dropped out, who found another person, and eventually three of us went. Getting the team, raising the money, committing yourself for two years to make something like this happen — that's the hardest thing.

CHRIS:
It's a feat of endurance in itself. You actually won the race — 360-plus miles?

TOM:
Yeah, that's right. It was perpetual daylight in spring, so we pushed for 28 hours, sometimes 32. One session we did 55 hours without sleeping and were hallucinating. All of us sensed a fourth person in our presence. We saw a polar bear that wasn't there — we were edging closer, hitting our skis together at this bear. I've got a very convincing piece of ice in a photo. We did see real polar bears, but they were much further away. It was definitely the hardest thing I've ever done.

[CHAPTER: Training, Resilience, and the 40 Per Cent Rule — ~13:00]

CHRIS:
How did you train for that, being quite new to it?

TOM:
We went to Norway for the cold-weather environment — it was included in the ticket. We had to simulate falling through the ice: they cut a square out, you ski towards it, fall through, and it's like being punched in the chest. You have to wait for your diaphragm to stop spasming, say your name, sing a song, and pull yourself out. It took me three months to get feeling back in the tips of my fingers from just that controlled experience. We'd also walk Hadrian's Wall over a weekend, set our alarms for two hours later, get up in the rain at three in the morning and keep walking. The accountability of a team is everything — you don't want to let the others down.

Our personal trainer was brilliant at mental training too. He taught us that the mind always gives up before the body. "If you're hanging from a tree, you don't just let go — you wait until every sinew is screaming and your fingers slip." That really resonated with me.

CHRIS:
David Goggins has something similar — the 40 per cent rule?

TOM:
Yeah. He was also recently talking about parts of the brain that grow when you do things you don't want to do — you can build up this willpower bank. You need to continually challenge yourself. It doesn't need to be extremes — micro adventures will do. Just build that resilience, mentally and physically.

[CHAPTER: Fundraising, White-Collar Boxing, and Getting to the Start Line — ~18:00]

CHRIS:
Touching on the sponsorships — that comes up a lot with adventurers. Being fairly new to it, how difficult was it?

TOM:
Really difficult. We didn't get our final big sponsor until two weeks before the event, after two years. The most money came from a white-collar boxing tournament. We hired the Clapham Grand, put a ring in there, 24 fighters including ourselves — three rounds each in front of 400 people. That was honestly the most scary thing I've ever done. I hate fighting, and I hate public speaking — so this was some hideous hybrid of both fears. But we raised a lot of money.

CHRIS:
There's a real drive for this Type 2 behaviour, isn't there?

TOM:
I just have a rule with myself: if it's something I really don't want to do, it's probably what I need to do. I've just agreed to do a public-speaking event in front of 900 people. I'm terrified. And I've just agreed to do skeleton on the Cresta Run in Switzerland — head-first down at 80 miles an hour on ice. I don't know what I'm up to.

[CHAPTER: The Catalyst Year — North Pole, Sailing 8,000 Miles, and His Mother — ~23:00]

CHRIS:
So 2010 — quite an eventful year. You met your wife, sailed Canada to Chile, and had the sad passing of your mother. Was that the catalyst for getting into the survival business?

TOM:
Yeah. Walk to the North Pole, sail 8,000 miles across the Pacific, meet your wife, move to Chile — I'll never have a more vintage year. And my mum passing was undoubtedly the catalyst for setting up Desert Island Survival. It gives you a jolt of your own mortality. After the North Pole I'd left the software job, moved to Chile, started working in finance — the only job I could do without speaking Spanish. But again, I was miserable. And then my mum passed and it was just like: come on, life's not a dress rehearsal. You've got one go. What are you going to do?

CHRIS:
And the sailing — how did that come about?

TOM:
I was on a scuba dive in Panama in 2009 and saw this incredible superyacht. Took a photo with my dive camera. Five months later, back in rainy London, I Googled the name of the boat, found their website — this family on Nantucket who needed to deliver the yacht south. I dropped them an email: "Hi, my name's Tom. I'm walking to the North Pole." The guy happened to live near Portsmouth in the New Forest and said, "Let's go for coffee." He ended up flying me to Vancouver and we sailed for three months to the Galápagos, Easter Island, and back to Chile. It just shows — it never hurts to ask.

[CHAPTER: Coral Reefs in Honduras and the Seeds of Desert Island Survival — ~30:00]

CHRIS:
I think you were certified as a dive master as well. Was that where the desert island passion began?

TOM:
Way back when I was 20, in my first year of university, I found out about a project mapping coral in Honduras. I went, and that was the first time I left my hamster wheel of life. I became an expert on the project — longest there, had to learn every species of fish in the Caribbean, every invertebrate, every algae. I'd never dived before, but you dive twice a day, six times a week, for seven months, and you sleep on the seabed. That was a huge catalyst for change. If my son is ever in a rut, I think going off and doing something completely removed from your traditional labels is really good — be it collecting turtle eggs in Costa Rica or whatever it might be.

CHRIS:
So switching back to Desert Island Survival — tell us what that is for anyone who doesn't know.

TOM:
We're an adventure travel company that creates castaway experiences, designed for anyone who has an interest in disconnecting and spending time in nature or learning bushcraft — but also for people who have never done anything like this before. The first five days on the island is "survival light": sleeping in hammocks, cooking all food on a campfire, learning bushcraft skills. Friction fires, natural cordage from bark, weaving palms, different primitive cooking techniques. It's fun — we pass around a bottle of rum in the evening, go fishing, cook together as a tribe.

Then after five days, when people are having a little too much fun, we kick them out of the nest. They go to a new part of the island with just fishhooks and lines, a machete, a satellite phone, a medical kit, a ration of water — and they have to get their own shelter, water, and food. They do that either as a group or solo. Three days. Time is elastic in these situations: the first five days flies by and feels like three, and the final three days feels like five. Then a speedboat arrives over the horizon laden with cold beers and fresh fruit, and you're rescued and go back to what feels like a ten-star hotel. One person put it brilliantly — it's a reset.

[CHAPTER: Transformation Stories and the Island Effect — ~36:00]

CHRIS:
What type of people come on these trips?

TOM:
The full spectrum. Professional outdoorsmen with successful YouTube channels, right down to people who've never left their country before and only stay in nice hotels. The bigger the jump from their comfort zone, the more impactful it is. One woman — Sarah — brought her friend Helen from New Zealand. Helen had never done anything like this. We were in French Polynesia. She's our poster child for transformation: she was very overweight by her own admission, and she lost basically half her body weight, now runs marathons and does fell running, left her job, left her partner. We don't normally have quite such extreme examples, but many people talk about sleepwalking through life, and then getting into that environment they realise: I need so much less than I thought to be happy.

CHRIS:
Do you get people tapping out?

TOM:
Less than 5 per cent now. We used to run trips in wet season — sand flies, torrential thunderstorms — and probably 1 in 10 tapped out. Now we go in the most clement time of year. There's still enough to deal with from hunger and tiredness without being dive-bombed by insects. We also check in mentally, and for the final three days we're on the island ourselves. If someone's close to leaving, a pep talk and something sugary usually gets them back on. But that doesn't happen much.

[CHAPTER: Bushcraft Skills — Learning from Tom McElroy — ~41:00]

CHRIS:
In terms of your own bushcraft skills — how did you develop those?

TOM:
When I first went to Ian Craddock's Bushmasters experience in Belize, it was good, but not quite what I was looking for — not isolated enough, not focused enough on primitive bushcraft. So I found Tom McElroy, who is one of the OGs of the craft, trained at Tom Brown's Tracker School, one of the most talented bushcraft practitioners in the world. He became my mentor. I set up Desert Island Survival initially as basically the guy running the company while here's the expert, and I slowly learnt by shadowing him and spending six months on an island. By the 10,000-hours rule he's at 50,000–60,000 hours. I look at him and my instructors like Lucas Miller from season one of Alone and think they're still way better than me. I'm very niche — tropical bushcraft, fire, and fishing. Fishing served me well in Canada.

[CHAPTER: Getting Cast for Alone UK — ~46:00]

CHRIS:
Perfect segue into Alone UK — the first and only season, the winner. How does that feel when you hear that?

TOM:
Very surreal. Obviously I'm proud of it and it was a wonderful thing to do — honestly one of the happiest experiences of my life living out there in nature. Though I was very torn, because it ended after only 35 days. For those who know the American show, the shortest anyone ever won was 65 days, and I'd steeled myself mentally for that long. When it ended I was amazingly happy to win, but also quite sad not to go deeper and learn more about myself.

The beneficial side was that I left at peak happiness — living this pure woodland existence aligned to how we evolved as hunter-gatherers. I felt euphoric most of the time because I had my food needs met. I felt just high. I honestly felt high and healthy. The IBS I used to have went away and hasn't come back. The anxiety seems to have been cured as well. I left right in the honeymoon period, still feeling high and good. I'm very grateful for that.

CHRIS:
Were you a fan of the North American version?

TOM:
Massive fan. Always dreamt of doing it. I've watched all 11 seasons.

CHRIS:
I didn't even know the UK season had started until episode four — it wasn't really marketed very well.

TOM:
I'm not meant to be too outspoken about it, but others share my disappointment. I'm a real fan of the American show. The idea from the UK one was to focus more on drama and emotional backstories, targeting the middle of the bell curve of the British public — assuming they wouldn't be that interested in bushcraft and survival. But I think there is a huge market in the UK for that. And people also love relaxing TV — Gone Fishing, Countryfile, something more bucolic. There's still plenty of drama without just focusing on emotions. They've cancelled it, apparently, so no season two — which is a real shame.

[CHAPTER: Inside Alone — 35 Days Surviving in Canada — ~50:00]

CHRIS:
Back to the experience — your 10 items and how your bushcraft skills influenced your selection.

TOM:
I'm a tropical bushcraft guy — I'd never practised temperate bushcraft. I found out I was on the show only seven weeks before flying to Canada. My biggest focus was getting as fat as possible and learning the native flora through imagery. For the ten items: most US winners are proficient bow hunters, and you don't win without a bow. I'm not a bow hunter, so I quickly got to an archery school. I was okay, but I'd be kidding myself thinking I could get close enough to a deer for a kill shot. So I took a gill net instead. In hindsight I wish I'd taken a slingshot, because there were so many grouse — they were having dance parties on my roof, mocking me. I caught zero fish in the gill net, but I did catch a duck accidentally. That was the best meal of my life, ever. Roast duck, coals on top of the Dutch oven, slow-cooked for two and a half to three hours. I'd only eaten pike for 25 days beforehand. No triple-Michelin-star meal will ever come close. Hunger is the best sauce.

CHRIS:
What about that drop shock when the helicopter leaves and you're alone?

TOM:
This is another benefit of optimism. As the helicopter left, I felt this caring, nurturing kindness emanating from the land. I was like, "This place isn't foreboding — it's generous and it's going to sustain me." Perception is reality. That just reflected my optimistic lens. I wasn't anxious. That said, the very first night — with no proper shelter, completely open, bears having come through camp in the training phase — my brain was half awake all night in this new environment.

CHRIS:
The sensory side of it — the soundscape?

TOM:
On the island you've got cicadas, palm leaves rustling, waves. It sounds like a meditation track. In Canada it was much quieter. But it's amazing how the aperture of your senses opens up when you spend time in nature. We can't live with our senses so wide open in city life — it'd drive us crazy. Out there your body needs it. All those ancestral mechanisms that hunter-gatherers 70,000 years ago used identically to the ones we carry — you call upon them. You smell more, hear more, taste more, feel more. Coming back to the hotel, I was so overstimulated it was like being on amphetamines. I had to open the window, unplug the fridge, and it was 3 a.m. before I could sleep. Out there I was sleeping 11 hours unbroken every night.

[CHAPTER: Peak Health, Mental Clarity, and How Long He Could Have Lasted — ~55:00]

CHRIS:
How long do you think you could have survived out there?

TOM:
I think I had enough food for another 20 days without catching another fish. And then after that I'd have hoped to catch more — I was averaging a fish a day, though the catch was beginning to dwindle. They set it in late autumn because winter throttles the available calories. The berries were dribbling on every bush, the fish become less active as they go into torpor. It was minus six the day it finished, and two weeks later it got down to minus 22. I would have been dealing with a very different winter. Conservatively, three weeks more; if I'd caught a few more fish, maybe four or five at a push.

Mentally I felt really strong. I did a lot of work to keep myself there — very mindful. You only have one companion out there, and that's your inner voice, and I was really kind to myself. I called myself a nincompoop from time to time, but otherwise I was fairly encouraging and decent to myself. And that's important.

CHRIS:
You were certainly thriving throughout — it came across on screen.

TOM:
They didn't use much of my footage because I was often just smiling or speaking with a happy inflection. On the last episode they used footage from a few weeks before, when I was expressing some anxiety around fish — and used that right at the end. But the reality was a little different.

[CHAPTER: Reintegration, Health Changes, and the Book — ~58:00]

CHRIS:
How was your reintroduction when you came back?

TOM:
It definitely took a little time. I couldn't talk to people for more than five to ten minutes before it became exhausting and overwhelming. We had a week in a hotel — me, Naomi and Elise, the two girls who came second and third. We just hung out, played board games, watched films, and waited for the dinner bell. We were like dogs at feeding time. Then coming back to family was wonderful, but also anticlimactic in a way — this whole momentous thing was over.

It did change me. As I said — the IBS has gone, the anxiety has calmed, I've got a lot more respect for my body. I used to binge drink and I don't really do that anymore. I'm writing a book called You Are an Animal about why I felt the happiest I've ever felt living aligned to hunter-gatherer ways. The concept is evolutionary mismatch: 70 per cent of the ways we die now is because of unnatural lifestyles. No hunter-gatherer died of heart disease or diabetes. The most striking example: most intelligent animals in zoos are on anti-anxiety and antidepressant medication. Chimpanzees, gorillas, polar bears — most are on antipsychotic medication for their mismatched environments. We're the same. We're born into the captivity of modern society. But we are the zookeepers — we can play a part in what mental stimulation we get, what diet we eat, how much we move and sleep and socialise.

CHRIS:
Speaking of which — have you heard of ZOE? I went through that, had my bloods tested, microbiome analysis — it was a game changer.

TOM:
Amazing, isn't it? Because we look at food and it says "140 calories." It simply doesn't contain 140 calories for everyone. We all process food differently because of this four-trillion-strong army of bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites. And if you want to lose weight, it's entirely diet-driven — exercise does almost nothing to reduce weight loss, which is a huge misconception. I've also been learning about phytoncides — chemicals that trees release as part of their immune system. It turns out we breathe them in and they promote wellbeing — producing killer cells that can destroy cancers and make us feel happy. And it's not woo-woo. Aromatherapy is genuinely, scientifically and empirically good for your health. Forest bathing and physical time in nature obviously offer even stronger benefits, but it's a whole rabbit hole.

[CHAPTER: Desert Island Survival's New Adventures — Okavango and Sweden — ~01:01:00]

CHRIS:
I wanted to ask about the Okavango Delta experience I spotted on your website. Tell us about that.

TOM:
I love going to islands, but a lot of people love the way we produce adventures and want different environments. So I built this experience in the Okavango — a river in Angola that fails to reach the ocean and gets pushed back by a mountain chain, flooding an inland delta about the size of England. All the animals of the savanna congregate there: thousands of bird species, giraffes, elephants. We run a nine-day kayak safari, paddling deeper into the Okavango each day, about six hours on the water daily, setting up camp each night and learning bushcraft skills from local Bushmen guides. Then at the end, participants have to survive for two nights on an island in the middle of the delta — with a guard — putting their skills into practice. We collaborate with people who've done this for 25 years in the region.

We're also putting together a trip in Sweden — taking only four days off work because it spans a bank holiday. Four days of survival-light bushcraft in southern Sweden, taught by myself and Naomi Allsworth, then three days surviving solo on the lakeside. Essentially dipping your toe into the Alone experience. And in September we're doing our first trip to a new island in Indonesia — an expedition where things will go a little more wrong, by design, because we walk the tightrope between safety and adventure deliberately.

[CHAPTER: Close Calls, the Machete Incident, and Finding Purpose — ~04:30 (estimated at end)]

CHRIS:
What's the craziest thing that's happened across all the expeditions?

TOM:
We've had a scorpion bite, a centipede sting — which is more painful than the scorpion — a guy stand on a stingray, and a few nasty machete cuts over seven years. The worst thing happened to me on my third expedition. We were in wet season, I was cutting wood to reinforce the shelter, my freshly sharpened machete slipped in my rain-soaked hand, and cut straight through the flexor tendon in my finger. I had eight Danish entrepreneurs to look after, and I was alone on the expedition at that point — no second instructor. A very lonely night in my hammock popping codeine. I got stitched up at the clinic, then did a bow-drill demonstration a few days later and the stitches popped open and blood was dripping off my elbow, nearly putting the fire out. But I continued.

CHRIS:
Do you feel you've found your purpose now?

TOM:
Definitely. It gives me purpose and it's good for my head too. I live in Lisbon, and I'm able to live in a city because I go and get that yin and yang — my recharge time in nature, running these trips. I think the Japanese term is ikigai: something you love, something that helps others, something you're good at, and something that makes money. If you can hit that Venn diagram at the centre, that's ikigai.

CHRIS:
I've actually got that book right here. It's part of the reason I'm doing Adventure Diaries, being more accountable for living this way.

TOM:
Love that. And there's a book I'd recommend too — Tom Neely's An Island to Oneself. Very hard to get a copy of, but it's the same idea — this man who decides to leave society and live alone on an island in the middle of the Pacific for years. Many of his descriptions are beautiful.

[CHAPTER: Call to Adventure and Pay It Forward — ~58:30]

CHRIS:
Coming up on time. Two closing traditions. First — a call to adventure. Anything to suggest to get listeners away from a screen and out there doing something adventurous.

TOM:
Obviously I'm immensely biased and I'd say Desert Islands, but that would be crass. I'm a big believer in micro adventures. My favourite that Alastair Humphreys recommends is getting tractor tyres, inflating them, going down the Severn Estuary in a wetsuit with a dry bag and camping along the way. I also love kayak adventures — inflatable or folding kayaks, drive to a point, get a taxi back to where you started, and meander down a river for three days until you hit the sea. And I've just done bike touring for the first time — Bilbao to Valencia, wild camping at sunset, out at sunrise, smelling the oregano and thyme and rosemary. Meeting people with no barrier between you and the world. Already fantasising about cycling to China from here.

CHRIS:
Excellent. And pay it forward — a worthy cause or charity?

TOM:
GiveDirectly — givedirectly.org. It's about giving directly to the poorest people on the planet, those living on two dollars a day in sub-Saharan Africa, without the inefficiencies of large charity structures. Numerous studies show how much more efficient direct cash transfers are, particularly when the money is given to the matriarchs of the family. They look after the family — it all goes to a good cause efficiently.

CHRIS:
Brilliant. We'll get that listed and elevated. Where can viewers and listeners find everything about Tom Williams and Desert Island Survival?

TOM:
Desert Island Survival is desertislandsurvival.com, and I'm on Instagram at @TomWilliamsAlone.

CHRIS:
Brilliant. This has been fantastic. Thanks, Tom.

TOM:
It's been so good, Chris. Lovely to chat with you.

NARRATOR:
Thanks for tuning in to today's episode. For the show notes and further information, please visit adventurediaries.com/podcast. We hope to have inspired you to take action and plan your next adventure — big or small — because sometimes we all need a little adventure to cleanse that bitter taste of life from the soul. Until next time, have fun and keep paying it forward.