Crossing Australia's DEADLIEST Desert Unsupported— Louis-Philippe Loncke

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In 2008, Louis-Philippe Loncke became the first person to walk the full length of Australia's Simpson Desert unsupported — 35 days, a 215kg cart, no water cache, no drops, no helicopter rescue within range. Last year, he tried again. He covered 75 kilometres in 13 days and turned back. Climate change, he believes, may have made this crossing permanently impossible.
 
The Belgian engineer turned explorer nicknamed The Mad Belgian first understood the scale of what he'd done when Jon Muir — who had been to both Poles — wrote that unsupported desert crossings make Mount Everest look like child's play. Louis-Philippe has catalogued 21 near-death experiences and is building a classification system to prove exactly why Everest barely makes a Class 2.
 
What You'll Learn:
• Why Australia has two million wild Afghan camels — and why eating them is an ecological good
• The frog that lies dormant in a salt crust for 30 years and revives when floodwater returns
• Why Mount Everest rates only Class 2 on the Mad Belgian's expedition scale
• How a 10-degree temperature rise may have closed the Simpson Desert to solo crossings forever
• What it's like to be chased by 14 wild camels with nowhere to run
 
LOUIS-PHILIPPE LONCKE | The Mad Belgian
www.louis-philippe-loncke.com
YouTube: Luffy Tests | Meet Explorers with Lou-Phi
Charity: Jane Goodall Institute — tree-planting events across Europe
Project: Expedition Database — global index of adventurers and expeditions
 
ABOUT LOUIS-PHILIPPE LONCKE
Belgian adventurer and Explorers Club Fellow known as The Mad Belgian. In 2008 he completed the
world's first unsupported north-to-south crossing of the Simpson Desert in 35 days. A former bank
IT engineer, he has completed 20-plus expeditions across Tasmania, Australia, Poland, and
Azerbaijan, surviving 21 documented near-death experiences. Currently building the Expedition
Database, a free global index designed to work like IMDB for the adventure community.
 
00:00 Louis-Philippe Loncke — who is The Mad Belgian Explorer?
01:49 Growing up in Belgium: from furniture makers to Boy Scouts
06:00 From ING Bank Singapore to hiking 2,000km across Australia
13:19 Why the Simpson Desert? Finding the world's most impossible walk
18:37 The 2008 world first: crossing the Simpson Desert unsupported
26:00 How to survive without resupply in the world's most arid desert
31:00 Wild camels, dingoes and the world's most venomous snake
41:00 Going back: the 2016 backpack attempt and 2024 cart failure
54:00 How to grade an expedition — the Class 1 to 6 adventure scale
1:04:00 The Expedition Database: IMDB for the world's adventurers
1:13:00 21 near-death experiences: barge cables, cliff falls and floods
1:19:00 What's next: Azerbaijan, the Tintin rocket and future films
1:31:00 Pay it forward, call to adventure and quick-fire questions
 
For full show notes and links, visit: adventurediaries.com/go

Transcript

[CHAPTER: Introduction — Louis-Philippe Loncke, The Mad Belgian — ~00:00]

CHRIS: And that's us live. Louis-Philippe Loncke, welcome to the Adventure Diaries. How are you?

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: I'm pretty good. I had a good day actually, so I'm happy to be here.

CHRIS: Excellent. I'm even happier for you to be here. Where do we start with your adventure and
exploration career? You're titled "The Mad Belgian" — 20-plus expeditions, crazy adventures across
some of the wildest, most inhospitable places on the planet over the past 20-plus years.
Louis-Philippe?

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: Yeah, 20 years next year, so I'm going to do some kind of birthday celebration or
whatever.

CHRIS: Excellent. Without foreshadowing too much, there are a couple of major expeditions throughout
your career that I want to touch on today: the Simpson Desert crossing — the successful crossing —
and then some of the more recent adventures. And then we'll come to some of the other activities and
work you're doing. I've got some questions around your classification project — classifying
expeditions on different scales — which we'll come to. But maybe bringing it back to build up the
story first: I'm keen to understand your earlier life. What was it like for younger Louis-Philippe?
Your formative years. I think you're from a family of furniture makers, so not necessarily grand
adventurers. What was life like as a youngster in Belgium?


[CHAPTER: Growing Up in Belgium — From Furniture Makers to Boy Scouts — ~01:49]

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: Yeah, definitely — no one in the family is from the outdoors, or even sports. My
father was an in-house architect for the family business. For five or six generations, they started
making roofs — the wood in the roofs where you put the tiles on — and then they started making
cabinets and carving. From there, my dad was into modern kitchens, living rooms and so on. My mum
was a primary school teacher, and after a few years she moved to work with my dad — he was
designing, she was selling sofas, curtains, carpets — everything you could put in the house. On
holiday, because they were working really, really hard, it was mainly relaxing, with the occasional
museum or arts visit. That was my background.

But I went to the Boy Scouts, and that is the first link to nature. When you're around 12 to 15,
you know how to make a little fire, how to stay with people, how to pitch a tent, tie a few knots —
and I enjoyed that. I then became a Scouts leader working with children between...

CHRIS: And you chose quite an academic path?

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: The connection was really, really slow. I studied engineering — electromechanics —
and then I moved into IT. I think some of the skills you learn in engineering are about breaking a
project down into different pieces and milestones.

Take climbing Mount Everest as an example — something everyone understands. If you say, "Okay, in
three months I'm climbing Mount Everest," how do you start if you don't know where to begin?
Obviously you say, "I'm going to first learn a little bit of climbing indoors, then rock climbing,
and from there move into mountaineering. Then I'll work with the ice axe and snow." And so on. You
can do it. You can go from day one to climbing Everest a year later. Some people have done it with
very little experience — only having done [FLAG 1: "Clem Angiaro" — likely Kilimanjaro? Please
verify] and Elbrus before attempting Everest. There was one man — I don't know him personally —
who lied on his CV and was quietly practising his ice axe technique behind rocks at Everest Base
Camp so nobody would see him.

That shows what we all know today: climbing Mount Everest whilst following the fixed ropes is not
very, very hard. It's more that you need to be very fit — trained for something a bit bigger than a
marathon, perhaps.

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: And then you need the money to do it. I'm pretty sure that if Mount Everest cost
$500 and you could climb it all year long, you'd have 50,000 people summiting every year.


[CHAPTER: The Catalyst — From ING Bank Singapore to Australian Adventure — ~06:00]

CHRIS: Can I roll us back a little bit, Lou-Phi? What I'm quite intrigued by is that you took the
corporate and academic path, but now you're a full-time adventurer and explorer. When did that
really catch you? What was the catalyst?

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: Of course, it's the most common question I get, and because the answer is very long
I wrote it out in full on my profile. But to summarise: I was working in a bank called ING — most
people know it in Europe — and I was supposed to go to New York. But because of the crisis in
2000–2001 and the 9/11 event, my six-month mission to New York got cancelled. They said, "Now you
go to Singapore instead."

In Singapore, I had the opportunity to learn scuba diving, and that became my first passion — one I
pursued for three or four years. I used all my holidays to go scuba diving. And of course, at a
certain point you ask, "Where is it great to go scuba diving?" — the Great Barrier Reef in
Australia. So one day you end up in Australia with your savings, you buy a car.

What I did for a year: I travelled all around Australia, New Zealand, and some Pacific islands —
scuba diving, but also between dives I did a great deal of hiking. Regular hiking. I bought the
Lonely Planet walking guide for Australia — in New Zealand they call it tramping. I did half the
book in Australia and half in New Zealand, and had cumulatively walked 2,000 kilometres in a year
over really different terrains.

I was still very fit — around 27 years old, a really good specimen for my age at that moment. I got
really, really fit because I was hiking three or four days a week. And of course I started to shrink
the times.

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: Because the guide says, "Okay, you walk six hours today, six hours tomorrow." I
said, "Yeah, I can do that in one day — I can do 12 hours." And then, if I'm only doing 12 hours, I
start to optimise: I don't need that much food, which means I'm lighter, which means I'm faster. And
some three-day hikes I started to do in a single day.

I was still walking very enjoyably, taking photographs, having stops — still very, very far from the
FKT world. Fastest Known Times didn't really exist back then. There weren't many people running up
a mountain and down again in the early 2000s — 2004, actually.

CHRIS: Were you gamifying the hikes? Were you attempting quicker times deliberately, or did you just
find you'd done it?

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: My real aim was to take photographs and see as much nature as possible. I thought,
"I'm only going to go down under once in my life — I'm going to take a full year and make the most
of it." If I do the hikes fast, I can see more. When I came back to Belgium after a year, I did a
photographic exhibition — 200 photos — at the Decathlon headquarters near my hometown. That's across
the border in France, in Lille. I did that, and I was then invited by someone who'd come to see the
exhibition. She was organising events with explorers and travellers who were making films about their
expeditions.

And I met Sylvain Tesson — a very famous French adventurer and author. He'd be somewhere between
Bear Grylls and Michael Palin: not extremely extreme, but a lot of travel, with some very demanding
journeys on foot, all human-powered.

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: I met him, and he'd seen my photos at Decathlon. We talked, and he said, "Come to
Paris." Two weeks later I was in Paris — October 2005, about 20 years ago now. We had a drink in
his apartment after one of his lectures, toasting with vodka because he'd done a lot of work in
Russia. We toasted to [CHECK: Régis Belleville — French desert explorer; please verify name and
spelling — FLAG 2], who is one of the best desert explorers in France. He went further than anyone
ever had with just a camel — 4,000 kilometres in the Sahara at around latitude 22, the hottest
latitude. He made an attempt to cross the entire Sahara unsupported — that's 6,000 kilometres — with
his only support being his camel and wells along the way, because you simply cannot carry enough
water for 6,000 kilometres.

The longest distance between two wells was done by him alone — a little over 1,000 kilometres. The
camels were nearly dead, he was nearly dead, and [CHECK: "2RX" — FLAG 3 — camel's name? person?
piece of equipment?] was nearly dead — and they still covered 1,000 kilometres in the heat of the
Sahara. Some people say, "Yeah, I know somebody who runs 1,000 kilometres" — but when you have a
support car, it's different. This was the hottest part of the Sahara: not where the Marathon des
Sables takes place, not where you do races. This is not fun.

And then, funnily enough, in 2008 I met him again. He became something of a teacher to me — the
person with the most desert experience, French-speaking, that I could ask my first questions about
what to take into the Simpson Desert in Australia.


[CHAPTER: Why the Simpson Desert? The Call of the Impossible — ~13:19]

CHRIS: That's a perfect bridge. Why the Simpson Desert?

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: During that first year in Australia I'd done so many hikes — including a long
multi-day trail called the Larapinta Trail, which is probably in the top five in Australia and in the
top 20 or 30 globally. I'd done part of it and decided that would become my first proper expedition:
to complete the full trail. But I found out that the highest summit of the outback — in the whole
centre of Australia — was about 30 kilometres from the end of the trail as the crow flies, at Mount
Zeil. The Australians had actually wanted to finish the trail there, but it was too remote: if anyone
broke their leg, they'd need a helicopter, and the authorities felt it would happen too often and
people could die. So they routed the finish to a different peak.

I found this out while preparing and said, "No — I'm going to cross the entire national park."
Starting from Mount Zeil on the west and finishing in Alice Springs. When I was dropped near Mount
Zeil, the people who'd driven me there had just crossed the Simpson Desert by car. I knew the map of
Australia and had seen the names of the deserts, so I asked, "How is the Simpson Desert? Are there
any good walking trails in there?" And they said, "It's the Simpson Desert." I said, "Yeah, I know
— but are there any good hiking trails?" They said, "It's the Simpson Desert. You don't walk. It's
forbidden." It was like asking, "Is it nice to go swimming in the oceans of the Moon?" No one walks
in the Simpson Desert — it isn't even a question.

So I looked for trails and found zero — which made it very appealing. Then in 2007, I made another
search and found accounts of people who'd attempted it supported — with camels, with carts, with air
drops. And a man called Lucas Trihey had done the width of the Simpson Desert in 2006. I contacted
him, and he agreed to help with advice because I already had enough experience. He said, "What
you've done is really crazy. You might die, but you might actually..." — he allowed me to make an
attempt.

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: I feel the same now when people ask me for advice. I can tell directly if they're
clueless. With so many people inspired by YouTube influencers, some of them can't even pitch a tent
correctly and they've never been in a tent. You're dreaming too big — you have to start small. So I
just ask them to pay me for my advice, they get angry, and then they either don't go, or they fail
early after one or two days and don't die. Because I don't want to help somebody who would end up in
the middle of a desert with no backup plan, no one knowing they're there, having not contacted the
authorities. And that's how I decided to give the Simpson Desert a go on its full length. By good
preparation — and for sure, a lot of luck — I made it.


[CHAPTER: The 2008 World First — Unsupported Simpson Desert Crossing — ~18:37]

CHRIS: Let's bring that into context for people who may not be aware. That was your north-to-south
expedition — a world first, approximately 350 kilometres in a straight line, unsupported. No drops,
no water caches — you took everything with you. Over 35 days. Bring that to life.

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: It's a big one. In Australia, for Australians, because they understand what the
Simpson Desert is — it's the most arid desert. Australia itself is hot, and here is this Belgian who
decides he's going to cross the full length of the Simpson Desert. As they say in French, "They
succeeded because they didn't know it was impossible." I actually had no clue it was impossible. I
made the calculations: I need this amount of water; I built a very strong desert cart that didn't
break — because half the people who attempt these things have a bad cart design, it breaks, and
they're forced to turn around.

Everything was aligned. I was strong enough. Perhaps it was also a cooler year than average — on
the more recent attempts where I failed, it was much warmer. I had no major incident, no broken
cart.

If I compare it to climbing Mount Everest: more people attempt it now, we know how to prepare, it's
well understood. But take any other new 7,000-metre mountain. You know the Piolet d'Or — given
every year in France, the prestigious mountaineering award; actually, only Americans won it this
year. Those peaks are around 6,000 to 7,000 metres, but they're very technical or very remote.
That's the dimension when you go beyond risk-taking adventure into genuine exploration — where you
just don't know, where you're truly a pioneer. It's a lot of ego to use that word, but I was a
pioneer. The desert length had only been done once before, in the 1970s, but that attempt included
two air drops of water and food — and they didn't complete a full crossing anyway. I started further
north and ended further south — roughly 100 kilometres more. I started where the dunes begin and
ended where the dunes end at the lake. A full crossing of the desert.

CHRIS: Did you have an evacuation plan if it went wrong?

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: Yes — and it's a dodgy one. On the east and west of the desert there are two towns:
Alice Springs, the famous big town; and a tiny one in Queensland called Birdsville. Birdsville has
an airport, but no helicopter. The only helicopter that could reach me would be from Alice Springs,
but it doesn't carry enough fuel to reach the central part of the Simpson Desert. So once I'm in the
centre, rescue by helicopter is not possible. If I broke a leg, it would take weeks for anyone to
reach me.

I sometimes compare the difficulty when I see it in the news — I have a Google Alert on the Simpson
Desert, so anything happening there I mostly know about. At least 20 times a year, some car maker
sends their SUV or four-wheel drive to the Simpson Desert to say, "This is our Everest." It's on a
dirt track. Some publicise the "first Porsche crossing" or the "first BMW crossing," each claiming
they've conquered the Simpson Desert. And here am I, walking it unsupported.

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: I had a few dirt tracks along the route where I could bail out if things went badly
wrong — if my cart broke, I could still carry a backpack with enough water for a week or two. But if
I was attacked by a dingo, or bitten by a snake — game over. It was the same for Magellan,
Christopher Columbus, Scott, Shackleton — they knew that dying was one of the possible outcomes.
And that's why people started calling me "the Crazy Belgian," which later became "the Mad Belgian."


[CHAPTER: Water Rationing and Mental Survival in Extreme Desert Heat — ~26:00]

CHRIS: Coming back to preparation: nutrition, dehydrated meals, water management — you didn't have a
cache, no wells. How does the psychology work when you're managing water against the needs of your
dehydrated meals, when you're already thirsty and rationing? What goes through your mind?

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: It worked in 2008, on the length. And that's why, later, we can come back to the
classification of expeditions — crossing deserts unsupported for a long distance is one of the most
extreme, hardest expeditions you can do.

Before I left, I got super frightened. Two weeks before departing for Australia, I read an article
by Jon Muir — Australia's greatest adventurer. He'd made the first solo unsupported crossing of
Australia, covering 2,500 kilometres in 128 days with a cart, finding his own water along the way.
And he deliberately avoided the Simpson Desert because it's too hot and has no water. In the
article, he compared desert trekking and polar trekking: similar in difficulty, but deserts are
slightly harder — and Mount Everest, he said, is child's play in comparison.

When someone who has been to the North Pole and the South Pole says Mount Everest is child's play,
and you're about to go into the most arid desert of the most arid continent, where even the
country's greatest adventurer has avoided it... it gets frightening. Now I know why. And after three
Simpson Desert attempts, I'm really not going back.

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: When you're out there, you have to focus on the walk. In polar conditions, if you
have to push through sastrugi — those little ridges and waves formed by wind in the snow — you push
with brute force. But if you use brute force in a desert, your heart rate climbs, you sweat more,
you consume more water — and you don't want to sweat. You're losing water and generating more heat.
It's about finding a balance.

I'm tall — about 1.81 metres, close to six foot — and not too heavy. So I have a lot of skin surface
relative to my weight, which means I can evacuate heat slightly better than a heavier build might.
Again, I also got lucky that I never had to press the emergency button.

CHRIS: It's such an undertaking on the body as well as the mind — expending double the calories you
were taking in, dealing with dehydration. It's a long journey. Did you suffer from hallucinations —
audio, visual?

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: Not on that expedition. I had hallucinations on the expedition before, in Tasmania
in 2007. But not in the Simpson. I was actually fairly calm most of the time — I had to be, to keep
my heart rate down. I was not calm the two times I got chased by camels. When you have 14 camels
coming at you angrily...


[CHAPTER: Wildlife Encounters — Camels, Dingoes and Snakes in the Simpson — ~31:00]

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: ...who do you tackle first? You don't want to fight them. When you first see an
animal the size of your hand in the distance and it keeps growing... I've seen videos where a camel
puts its entire mouth over a man's head — the man must be 1.65 to 1.70 metres — and just lifts him
clean off the ground and throws him through the air. The neck is so big and so strong. In my case it
was intimidation — I backed off and it went well. Very scary.

CHRIS: You weren't tempted to do a Bear Grylls and drink the camel... anything like that, were you?

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: No, that's television. Any wild animal in Australia — besides the occasional cat or
dog — you back off. You don't pick up a snake and say, "Look at this beautiful, most venomous snake
in the world." You don't do that. Some people have tried, but they only try once.

CHRIS: I didn't know Australia had camels at all.

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: Oh, absolutely. At one point, Australia had up to two million camels. When they
started building the railways about 200 years ago, they brought camels from Afghanistan instead of
horses, because horses suffer terribly in the heat. Now Australia has the purest-bred Afghan camel
in the world. They bred exponentially — like a pest. Authorities now cull them, using snipers in
helicopters. You can actually hire a helicopter and shoot them. They also eat them — camel pies and
so on. But there are so many camels that they're eating the small vegetation that protects small
marsupials. The tiny animals need that shelter. And eating the vegetation accelerates
desertification. So eating camel meat is actually a good thing for Australia. Even if you were
vegan, eating a camel is doing the ecosystem a service.

CHRIS: Wow — I had absolutely no idea. That's a topic for after the podcast. Any other wildlife
encounters — snakes, reptiles?

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: A few dingoes, but they were always alone — not very interested, mostly scared. I
have never seen a snake in the Simpson. On the eastern part lives what I believe is the inland
taipan — the most venomous snake in the world. It is said that one dose could kill a hundred men.
But not many people have encountered it, and it really doesn't want contact. So the three dangerous
animals: snakes, dingoes, and camels. Two would kill you to eat you — the snake doesn't do it for
pleasure.

CHRIS: I didn't know that about the camels.

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: And of course the other big aspect of the Simpson Desert is the dunes and the
vegetation. It's not just sand — there's a lot of vegetation to zigzag around, and it destroys
carts. If you go in with pneumatic tyres — air chambers — you'd get constant punctures. I bought
wheels with solid rubber tyres made in England, called "green tyres." They have micro-bubbles inside
the rubber so they're not completely rigid, still give a little. You could go at them with a knife
and there'd be no air to lose.

At the end of the 2008 length expedition, I took one rubber tyre and counted the little wooden
spikes from vegetation that had embedded themselves in the rubber — I had 200. Multiply by four
wheels: 800 spikes. Could I repair 800 punctures in the desert? Absolutely not.

CHRIS: Had you tested the cart before the expedition?

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: Yes. On asphalt, it worked fine. On the sand dunes at the North Sea in Belgium, it
worked fine — it's flat there. But once I hit the first dune in the Simpson, I thought, "My legs are
not strong enough." It was like — my legs are moving, but I'm just moving sand. The cart isn't going
anywhere.

What I did in the first week was offload half the weight, go from point A to point B with half the
load. Then during the night, go back from B to A. The next day, repeat. Three trips per stretch,
until the cart was lighter and the dunes got more manageable. Once I was properly conditioned —
three weeks in — and the cart was down to around 100 to 120 kilograms, I was flying. You stop
feeling the weight. But then you're getting thin, so you think, "I'm strong — but I'm also getting
weak."

CHRIS: Did you pick up pace as you got closer to the end?

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: The first day I did around 4 kilometres. Then 4, then 5. At some point I thought,
"Now I'm going to double that." I think one day near the end I did 32 kilometres when I was very
light. In the south, the terrain changes — the south part of the Simpson has many dry lake beds
until you reach the big lake: Lake Eyre. The biggest lake in Australia when it fills with water. It
actually filled for the first time in a century last year — full blossom of life. Because just
imagine: a lake the size of a small country, and when water arrives it's an explosion.

And there's a frog inside the lake that essentially desiccates when there's no water — a dried-up,
almost mummified frog in a salt crust, dormant for 20 or 30 years. Then when the water returns, its
heart starts beating again. Like a mummy frog. That's incredible.


[CHAPTER: Return to the Desert — The 2016 and 2024 Failed Attempts — ~41:00]

CHRIS: Wow — that's just insane. You've been back a couple of times and have had some unsuccessful
recent expeditions. Your most recent was 2024 — last year?

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: Yeah, exactly.

CHRIS: How had the environment changed from the previous time you were there? And what led to
bailing out?

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: The length was 2008. I went back eight years later, in 2016, without the cart —
just a backpack. The idea was to do the width of the Simpson with just a pack and see how far I
could go. I started with a very heavy pack — 60 kilograms.

I make this imaginary classification of backpack weight: between 0 and 20 kilograms is normal,
could be heavy for some. Between 20 and 40 is heavy. Above 40 kilograms is not "heavy" any more
— it's called constant pain. A completely different dimension. But it doesn't last that long because
you're losing the weight of water and food over the days.

I started with 40 litres of water and made two-thirds of the distance — the Northern Territory
portion. I couldn't complete the last section to Birdsville in Queensland.

Then last year, I decided I still hadn't made the film of the 2008 expedition. I bought a DJI drone
in Sydney to finally get aerial footage — it's a unique place and I needed to show it from above. I
wanted to do a diagonal crossing with my cart. But it failed completely. The cart was around 160
kilograms, and going east–west means climbing every single one of the 1,100 parallel dunes — not
following the valleys as I had on the north–south route.

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: And what changed in 2024 was the rainfall. In 2023 and early 2024, there had been
significant rain in the region, which meant there would potentially be water in pools — but also the
vegetation had exploded. The Simpson was alive and blooming. Every dune was a surprise — once you
crested one, you had no idea what was on the other side. Sometimes nothing; sometimes a carpet of
white flowers, or yellow, or pink, or all colours together. And suddenly — a dingo.

On day one, a dingo followed me for about two hours. He obviously fancied me as dinner. He got
bored — or gave up, I'm not sure. During the night, as I continued in the dark with my head torch,
I turned around and two eyes reflected the beam. He was still there. At some point he decided,
"Yeah, I've followed this person long enough — let me find a smaller prey."

CHRIS: When you describe the dunes — one after another, relentlessly — that must be tough on the
psychology of the trip.

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: It is relentless. Charles Sturt and the early European explorers who first reached
the Simpson Desert — after the Aboriginal peoples, who were obviously there first — described it as
"a frozen sea of dunes" and "the gate to hell." That's how they described it. And I understand why.

Last year I was older — 16 years older than in 2008. I was 47 compared to 31. And I was less
strong, physically and mentally. Strange: I'd have thought that with experience I'd be stronger, now
that I knew what the Simpson was. But the heat had a dramatic impact on my mental state.

In 2008, near the end, two nights I woke up and my tent was frozen — perhaps minus one or minus two
degrees. Last year, I remember waking up at 2am shivering — and I was in my underwear on my
mattress, not in my sleeping bag. It was so warm that until 2am I didn't need the sleeping bag at
all. In 2008 I was sleeping in a beanie and gloves. Between the two expeditions there may have been
as much as 10 degrees of temperature difference — which is enormous.

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: And I genuinely believe there's a trend. Climate change is a fact — whatever the
cause. If temperatures are rising, it may be that crossing the Simpson Desert unsupported is now
impossible. I wrote a piece on my blog about it, which is a shame, because I'd love to be able to
share the experience with someone who's been as stupid as I have.

CHRIS: Will you attempt it again?

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: No. For sure. In 13 days, I covered only 75 kilometres. On day two I got
tendinitis in my knee, which kept my daily distances shorter because I was hoping it would heal. It
stayed stable but never went away, and I didn't want to push hard enough to rupture a tendon. I
mean, if you asked a doctor: "I have knee pain, I'm in the desert, not enough water, it's 35 to 40
degrees in the centre, no shade, I'm pulling a 170-kilogram cart for 12 to 14 hours a day and I
have pain — should I rest a bit?" Every doctor would say, "Stop immediately and rest for two weeks."
But I continued for 13 days.

CHRIS: You've not exactly been resting since, though — you've been doing loads of other adventures.
Mountaineering and so on.

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: Yeah, I'm slowing down. I don't consider myself a mountaineer, but I like to climb
mountains. Of the Seven Summits, I'd like to do Elbrus and Kilimanjaro, but not Mount Everest, not
Carstensz Pyramid, not Aconcagua — too expensive. I can't justify the cost when Ojos del Salado is
free [CHECK: "for like 20" — metres' difference? euros? unclear — please clarify] — let's do the
free one, where there are perhaps five people instead of 300. The Seven Summits is for wealthy
people now. If someone really wants to do it and has the means, all good. But it's becoming a
tick-box exercise.


[CHAPTER: How to Classify an Expedition — The Adventure Scale Class 1–6 — ~54:00]

CHRIS: Switching lanes — let's talk about your expedition classification system. You're grading
adventures, expeditions, and exploration differently, and you've got your own formula. Do you want
to walk us through it?

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: Yes. For people familiar with white-water kayaking, you have river classifications
from class one to five — one is very easy, class five is for the Red Bull athletes. I use the same
system, from class one to five — but it's for classifying the expeditions, not the people.
Of course, if someone does many class five expeditions, we could consider them a class five
adventurer.

And there's an important distinction: adventure is taking risks, where the outcome is not certain —
you are never certain you'll succeed. Exploration is coming back with knowledge, with science. It
could be on a remote island studying butterflies and snakes, going back to your tent at night with
power, a fridge with beers, and almost all the comforts in the world. Of course, you can do
exploration and adventure simultaneously.

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: Class one and two are what most people who call themselves adventurous are doing.
That's why I put climbing Mount Everest — with guides and Sherpas — at class two. If you do it
alone or in a pair, proper mountaineering, that's class three. If you do Everest in winter, harder
— class four. Everest in winter without supplemental oxygen: class four or five.

And there's a "first ascent" factor — if you're the first to do something, you earn higher points.
After one, two, three others have done the same, the expedition gets a lower rating. Like my 2008
Simpson Desert crossing — I'd classify it class five. If someone does it again one day — though I
said perhaps never again, and I'm the only one who's done it — it would still be class five. But if
20 or 30 people had done it, it would drop to class four, because we'd have enough data: we'd know
what water supply is needed, where the easier sections are, and so on.

Climbing Mount Everest at the start was class four or five. Now it's decreased — well organised,
satellite imaging, drones for safety — so it's become class one or two.

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: Class three, four, and five are really for world firsts that are remarkable. And you
can have a class one that's unusual — like cycling around England on a pink bicycle. I wouldn't
even call that an adventure; that's a stunt, simply because the colour changed. But if something is
genuinely remarkable, the community would applaud. If you receive a congratulatory message from
Børge Ousland, Mike Horn, or Reinhold Messner, it means you've done something significant.

Class five is for iconic things that others have attempted and failed, that you succeeded at, and
that others have also attempted after you and failed. You become borderline legendary. I don't like
calling myself a legend — I've heard it four times, which is very good for the ego, but I'd prefer
the money, honestly.

Class four is also a remarkable world first — but perhaps not quite as iconic. If someone has
climbed Everest and rowed an ocean, they know that rowing an ocean is typically a little harder than
climbing Everest, because the numbers are there: numbers doing it, numbers dying or getting injured,
risk factors, permit difficulty, preparation required. So class one and two are accessible; from
class three you get noticed; class five is "wow."

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: And above class five — like in kayaking, there's technically a class six, even
though they say nothing exists above five. Some rivers are so dangerous that you'd probably die.
Similarly, in my system, the people I'd label class six adventurers are those who've done many class
five expeditions across multiple disciplines — sailing, desert trekking, polar, mountaineering.
That's why Mike Horn is definitely class six. And Jon Muir in Australia is class six as well. He's
far less internationally famous than Mike Horn, but when you look at his résumé, it's extraordinary.
He's done things no one else will even attempt.


[CHAPTER: The Expedition Database — Building an IMDB for Adventurers — ~1:04:00]

CHRIS: With this classification system — what's your hope or ambition? Is it acceptance by
organisations like the Explorers Club?

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: Two purposes. One: for journalists, so they can genuinely understand whether
something is a major expedition or a genuinely hard undertaking. And for the general public, to give
a sense of comparison. We have today many influencers who do really nice things, but some of what
they do I wouldn't even call adventure — I'd call it a good trip with a slightly adventurous
flavour. If someone says, "I climbed Mont Blanc, I'm an adventurer" — I wouldn't accept that, because
30,000 people climb Mont Blanc. There are children who've climbed Kilimanjaro at eight years old.
Do you really call an eight-year-old who's done Kilimanjaro an adventurer? It was adventurous for
them, perhaps. But the label means something.

People who want to make money from the label tend to self-apply it. I want people to have a real
sense of comparison — to understand that what I've done in a few expeditions, and what others who
are not famous have done in class three, four, and five expeditions, sometimes takes five to ten
years of preparation.

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: Walking is straightforward, somehow. Kayaking — white-water kayaking — is really,
really hard if you're doing it solo and exploratory. Like Nouria Newman — a French paddler, one of
the best in the world in white water, and she's a woman. The best sea kayaker in the world right now
is Freya Hoffmeister from Germany. She's absolutely incredible. She kayaked around Australia, around
the South Island of New Zealand, around all of South America — four years. She's now kayaking around
North America, including the Northwest Passage. Truly amazing. Freya Hoffmeister is class five, and
no one will redo what she's done. No one. Maybe someone will do part of it — North America alone,
perhaps — but South America, North America, Australia? No one in history will be that committed,
spending decades of their life doing only sea kayaking at that level. And she's a woman.

CHRIS: It's an interesting concept. I like the attempt to differentiate it from what some influencers
are pushing on people — because there are real dangers in that, and a lot of false claims. But where
I'm struggling: do you need to be class three to be called an adventurer?

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: No — it starts at class one. Class one is already genuinely hard. Do something new
and bold. It's like in kayaking: class one is an easy river, but it is a river. You're not in a pool
or on a pond. There's current, some little waves. You're an adventurer.

Actually, in Australia's hiking guides there are often levels from one to five — and there's one hike
rated class six. And I consider that the class one of adventure. It's in the Bungle Bungles, or
Purnululu in the Aboriginal language — a place called the Five Fingers.

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: You follow a river into five gorges. They're amazing and seriously difficult — no
trail, you have to problem-solve as you go. Many people reach the entrance of a gorge and stop. Very
few go to the end of any one of them. I made it to the end of one, and partway into four of the
others. I was there on the last day before the park closed for six months — the heat was already
extreme and they recommended one full day per gorge.

My French-Australian friend has made it to the end of four — it's like a puzzle. He's guided there;
I think only two or three guides go in at all.

And the Franklin River in Tasmania is similar — a really difficult river. You may have seen the
documentary last year about the man — I think he was Hungarian — whose leg got trapped between two
rocks and who had to be amputated in the water. Incredible, terrible documentary.

CHRIS: Some of what you've said there reminded me of a tragic story from Scotland last year — an
influencer who went into exposed mountain terrain without the proper experience, got toppled by the
weight of an overloaded backpack on a ridge, and it was fatal. That's what happens when people go
out for the Instagram moment without the preparation.

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: There's a story — I think she was from Japan or South Korea — called the "bikini
girl." She was known for taking summit photos in a bikini. And she died of hypothermia on the
mountain. Some people only try things like that once. And there are more people dying from selfies
every year now than from shark attacks — there's a website that tracks this. Ridiculous.

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: But in nature — I could have been dead 21 times. The most recent was in the Bungle
Bungles. It started to rain, everything went slippery, and I fell. While falling, somehow my foot
caught two centimetres of rock and I arrested the fall. If I'd hit those boulders below, had a
concussion in that heat, and been unable to call for help while alone — it could have been over.


[CHAPTER: Near-Death Experiences — 21 Close Calls Across 20 Years — ~1:13:00]

CHRIS: Is that the closest you've come to death?

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: No — that's just the most recent. Number 21. I don't remember them all, but
two-thirds were in Tasmania. Falling from cliffs, nearly drowning. One time I was almost cut in half
by the cable of a river barge — in Poland, going down the Vistula. The barge was crossing on its
cable — those flat-bottomed cable ferries. The cable came up out of the water about 20 to 25
centimetres as the barge pulled it taut. If my kayak had gone under that cable and the barge had
continued, the cable would have gone through the kayak and through my legs. I paddled backwards for
three or four minutes until the barge passed. If I'd missed one stroke, I'd have been in the water
— with scaffolding downstream at a bridge that would have been catastrophic under the current.

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: I have plenty of stories like that. They cannot be made up.

CHRIS: These are what make the adventure. You've been on for over an hour and there are so many
things I want to keep exploring — but what have you got coming up?


[CHAPTER: What's Next — Azerbaijan, the Tintin Rocket and Future Expeditions — ~1:19:00]

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: I'm slowing down. I'm not doing expeditions for the next two or three years —
though I said that a year ago, so perhaps it's now two. I always have a few things brewing in
parallel, almost always world firsts.

Next year, it's not going to be an expedition about me — it's going to be a film about someone else.
I went to Azerbaijan in April, intending just to climb the highest mountain there: 4,466 metres. But
you start from near the Caspian Sea at around minus 25 metres, so the total elevation gain from Baku
is about 4,500 metres — quite exciting. It's on the border with Russia, so you need special permits
and a certified guide.

We ended up climbing two other mountains because there was too much snow on the main peak. So I
decided to go back next year. And I suggested to my guide — whose first passion is actually mountain
biking — "Why don't you make this the first proper adventure in your country, and become
Azerbaijan's first adventure explorer?" The idea: he cycles from Baku, the capital, to the summit.
A sea-to-summit expedition by human power, weaving culture through the whole journey.

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: His name is Abu Zar — or just Abu, like I'm Lou-Phi. His English is excellent. He's
not just a mountain guide — he has one of the only three outdoor shops in the whole of Baku. Just
imagine: for a country of 10 million people, there are three outdoor shops. The outdoors scene there
is only beginning to grow. There's not even a single mountain hut in the Azerbaijani Caucasus.

I hope to make a proper film from this — the first adventure film shot entirely in Azerbaijan. I
think it could be very appealing for the Kendal Mountain Festival in the UK, Banff, and other
festival circuits. And I can apply to three types of festivals: adventure film festivals, mountain
film festivals, and bicycle film festivals.

CHRIS: I absolutely love that. Keep me posted on the crowdfunding — I'll share whatever I can.

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: And if the film does well, there's a follow-on project: building the first mountain
hut in Azerbaijan, at the foot of the highest mountain. Infrastructure is needed — if a severe storm
hit while tourists were in the field, people could die. With climate change bringing more extreme
weather, it's going to happen eventually. Any mountain hut designers from Australia or New Zealand —
please get in touch.

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: And then there's the Expedition Database — a lifelong project I started 15 years
ago. It works like IMDB for adventurers and explorers. I have data on more than 2,000 adventurers
around the globe. You can search for, say, Belgian adventurers, click a profile, see their
expedition list, click an expedition, see the route, the objectives, who was involved — including the
cameraman and the logistics team. And you can filter: if you need a cameraman who speaks Russian and
French and has high-altitude experience, the database can find them. Journalists can ask: "Give me a
list of all female horse-riding expeditions of the last 300 years." Answer: one minute.

It's free to consult, no account required. With a pro account you might see statistics — if a lot of
Germans are looking at your profile, perhaps there's a market to have your book translated into
German.

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: And another project: building the Tintin rocket at 1:1 scale — about 60 metres
high. The director of the Tintin Foundation is from my hometown, and he was sitting next to me at a
community dinner last September. The idea is to crowdfund it — get a location, build it so you can
go inside, see the beds where the characters sleep, the instruments. A five-to-ten-year project.

CHRIS: You've got a lot on your plate. Let's move to the closing traditions.


[CHAPTER: Pay It Forward, Call to Adventure and Quick-Fire Questions — ~1:31:00]

CHRIS: The "Pay It Forward" — your chance to raise awareness of a cause, project, or charity.

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: You may have seen that I'm an ambassador in Belgium for the Jane Goodall Institute.
Last weekend we were planting trees — including a special tree, one of Jane Goodall's favourites —
in the Arboretum near Brussels, about 7 kilometres from here. Hundreds of varieties of trees from
four continents. I added that tree to Google Maps and it was accepted within a few hours. I called
it the "Jane Goodall Tree Tribute." If you just search "Jane Goodall" in Google Maps, you should be
able to find it.

I plan to go camping there on the anniversary of her passing to pay tribute. And beyond that: there
are tree-planting events around the globe. Look up the Jane Goodall Institute — they organise events
in many countries across Western Europe. Planting trees is enjoyable, you're outdoors, it's
important, and no one — from any political background — will ever say planting a tree is dumb.

CHRIS: Fantastic. And the "Call to Adventure" — a suggested place or activity for listeners?

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: Climbing a mountain — there's always one in your neighbourhood, or close enough.
Your first 2,000-metre peak is a perfectly good starting point.

Specific recommendation: Mount Pico in the Azores. It's the highest peak in Portugal, on the island
of Pico — approximately 2,351 metres. It's an old volcano, and you can actually sleep in the crater
on the summit. You need to book in advance — numbers are limited, which keeps it from feeling
crowded. I climbed it twice — once in the afternoon, and once to catch the sunrise from the summit.
It's a genuine challenge on lava terrain without a marked trail, but very accessible for a strong
hiker. Spectacular reward.

CHRIS: Excellent. And now — the Quick-Fire Round. Ten questions, no advance warning. You can pass,
but I'd recommend against it.

CHRIS: Number one of ten: dinner party — two guests, dead or alive. Who?

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: Charlize Theron and Margot Robbie. I actually tweeted in Tasmania during a crossing,
when I was really low, "Send me Thanos — and after Thanos, please send me Margot Robbie with
pizzas." She never came. Still waiting.

CHRIS: Excellent. Number two — a hidden talent?

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: Nope. I cannot even touch my nose with my tongue. Nothing.

CHRIS: Number three — most underrated or surprising place you've ever visited?

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: Azerbaijan, right now actually — it wasn't on my list at all. I was invited and
discovered it completely. I visited Karabakh — the region where there was war between Azerbaijan and
Armenia — now accessible to tourists. And in general: all of Central Asia — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Azerbaijan. These countries are underrated. And for mountaineers looking for world firsts: there are
thousands of unclimbed peaks between 3,000 and 6,000 metres in the Caucasus and beyond. With the
budget of one Everest expedition, you could have ten world firsts.

CHRIS: Number four — favourite snack on expedition?

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: Chocolate. Chocolate with hazelnut. Obviously. Belgian. I had two kilograms of it
last year in the Simpson Desert.

CHRIS: I saw your Tasmania footage — you came in having lost an enormous amount of weight and went
straight for a strawberry tart.

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: I couldn't eat — my stomach had shrunk. I could only manage two tarts. When I saw
the table they'd laid out, it looked like three days of pleasure. I could manage about half of it.

CHRIS: Number five — favourite movie?

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: When I was a child there was a film — in French it's called L'Aventure Intérieure.
In English: Innerspace. From 1987. It's about a man in a miniaturised submarine who gets
accidentally injected into a human being, and a series of events follow as people try to steal the
technology. It's funny, it's adventurous — a bit like Mr Bean in some ways. I loved that film.

CHRIS: Number six — favourite book?

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: One I've finished that was wonderful, and was made into a film, is Tracks by Robyn
Davidson — the Australian woman who walked across Australia with camels from Alice Springs. It's
considered one of the top 10 or 20 adventure books. Really well written. And it's by a woman — I
don't care if it's a woman, a child, a man of any background. I care about the story.

I still want to read Into the Wild, and [CHECK: "John Cracker" — FLAG 5 — unable to identify this
author; is this a specific author you were referencing? Jan Cremer? Jack Kerouac?] and others. I
have a very heavy "brick" of a book I've been meaning to get through for a while.

CHRIS: You should see my office — National Geographics from 1942 all the way to the most recent
expedition books.

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: I'd love to have something like that in Brussels — a museum of Belgian exploration
with a library. We're not that many Belgian explorers, so one good building would cover it. Unlike
the UK, where you'd need an entire city.

CHRIS: Number seven — snap your fingers and be anywhere. Where?

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: The summit of Mont Blanc. Right now. But I want the return snap — I don't want to
be descending it in the dark in my T-shirt.

CHRIS: Number eight — what scares you?

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: In terms of terrain I haven't done: warm jungles. Because there are so many threats
you can't see — tiny animals, insects — and we've seen with COVID what a microscopic thing can do.
In Australia's dry heat, the threats are visible. In a jungle, a snake or spider could be anywhere.
I have nothing in warm jungles in my future plans. A gap I'm comfortable leaving.

CHRIS: Number nine — what makes you happy?

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: Many things. A good film that makes me laugh. Being with friends. And the purest
happiness — doing something with people you can genuinely share. If one day I climb Mont Blanc, I'd
want it to be with friends. Not alone for the ego — for the shared experience.

CHRIS: Number ten and finally — best advice you've ever received?

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: When I was a new member of the Explorers Club, there was a board meeting in Berlin
— the first one ever outside New York. I drove there from Belgium. I met Don Walsh — the man who
descended to the Mariana Trench in the bathyscaphe Trieste — among others. I had these business
cards I'd printed myself on regular A4 paper — not even card — and I was ashamed of them.

And he said: "Don't be ashamed of that." Don't be ashamed of being perhaps not well resourced.
What counts is what you want to bring to the table, your dreams, and that you dare to ask for help.
The Simpson Desert crossing relied on Lucas Trihey's advice, relied on Aboriginal knowledge — the
best survivors in the world, no doubt — and relied on daring to ask.

CHRIS: I love that. Sometimes we put up walls — preconceptions about who we can't ask, what we can't
do. Sometimes you just need to dare.

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: And being willing to appear weak will sometimes save your life. Don't do a handstand
on the summit of Everest for the likes — there's wind, you fall, and you're dead. One person did a
backflip on Everest a few years ago. Stop doing these stupid stunts. This is not adventure, not
exploration — it's dangerous vanity. Five seconds of fame, 3,000 likes. You have to make a choice
between short-term visibility and being respected by the adventure community. I chose respect.

CHRIS: Those things are flashes in the pan. They don't contribute to the greater good of adventure
and exploration.

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: And it encourages others to do even more idiotic things. I used to joke at a London
outdoor fair about ten years ago that I was going to create an award for silly stunts — the "Pink
Helmet Award." The whole audience started cracking up, because apparently "pink helmet" has an
additional meaning in English I wasn't fully aware of at the time. But the concept stands. Climbing
Everest with a pink helmet to say you were the "first with a pink helmet" — that is a stunt. The
achievement is climbing Everest. The colour of the helmet is irrelevant.

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: Some records — "first father and mother team," "first to send an SMS from the
summit" — they mean nothing. And perhaps the UK produces more of this than most. But that's maybe
because the UK has produced more great adventurers and explorers than almost any other nation in
history. I have a rough sense of the numbers because I'm building the Expedition Database. The UK
produces wonderful things — and sometimes people from it are inspired by the wrong people.

CHRIS: It's a generational thing. An Instagram thing.

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: Some influencers are good. But there are problems.

CHRIS: That's us! We've been going for nearly two hours. Can you believe that?

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: Yeah — I always go long. But I think I'm beating your record here.

CHRIS: You might well be. This has been wonderful. One of those conversations I came into genuinely
excited and wasn't disappointed. The Simpson Desert alone — I could talk about that all day. And
you've got a long list of stories. I highly encourage anyone listening or watching to go and check
out the website. Lou-Phi — where can people find you and follow what you're doing?

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: The best link is in my Instagram bio — it gives you access to everything: my two
YouTube channels; the main one, where I have a new show called Luffy Tests, where I test vehicles
and experiences. Just yesterday I went to the glaciology lab at the University of Brussels where we
melted ice cores from Greenland — drilled from 3,024 metres deep, over 800 years old — and
extracted the trapped gases. Near the bedrock, there was methane, which gives a strong indication
that at some point in history, Greenland was ice-free and supported life. Fascinating.

And on my Meet Explorers YouTube channel, I'll post my expedition films after their festival runs,
plus the upcoming series Meet Explorers with Lou-Phi — where I travel to interview other adventurers
on location. I've done 17 interviews in Australia. Season three — which I'm calling Legends — will
feature high-level class four and five adventurers. The last interview I did, in London about a
month ago, was with Pete [CHECK: please verify surname spelling — FLAG 4], who spent almost seven
years ascending the Amazon rivers. A class five expedition.

CHRIS: Pete's already been on this podcast and you'll both be on season five — you're in good
company.

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: Yeah — the gap between where he started in life and what he achieved is remarkable.

CHRIS: Exciting stuff. I'll get all the links in the show notes. And feel free to use any photos of
me you want for your social posts.

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: Yes — and in the Instagram link in bio you'll also find a Google Photos album of
high-quality images you can use freely.

CHRIS: Wonderful. Thank you, Louis-Philippe Loncke — the Mad Belgian — for joining us today. This
has been brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: There you go. The "Mad Belgian" — it started as "Crazy Belgian" after the Simpson
crossing, and when I said I was going back to Tasmania in winter someone said, "This guy is the Mad
Belgian." Then ABC Television picked it up, and it stuck.

CHRIS: Well, I hope everyone listening and watching enjoyed this epic interview with the Mad Belgian.
And with that, I'll bring it to a close.

LOUIS-PHILIPPE: There you go.