A Dangerous Russian Adventure - Charlie Walker

1. 0:00 – 0:25

   Intro

   1. CWCharlie Walker0:00

      They were accusing me of being a journalist, asking provocative questions about Ukraine, and photographing military sites. But you put all those together and you've essentially got, through the Russian state's perspective, a foreign journalist getting ready to spread stories about the Russian military that run counter to the state's official narrative. And they introduced in early March, about a week after the invasion of Ukraine, a new law with a sentence of up to 15 years for just that. (wind blows)

   2. CWChris Williamson0:24

      Talk

2. 0:25 – 5:05

   Motivation for Charlie’s Pursuits

   1. CWChris Williamson0:25

      to me about what drives somebody to do the things that you have chosen to do as pursuits.

   2. CWCharlie Walker0:34

      Uh, there's been a lot of different drivers at different points, I guess, over the course of my career. To start off with, I was ... I mean, I, I, I don't think it's too ... I don't think I'm too ashamed to say that at the beginning I was kind of quite keen to try and sort of, I don't know, stamp my mark on the world. A phrase I've used once before is, uh, "A young man wanting to slay dragons," but I kind of grew up in the post-dragon era. Um, and I, you know, I wanted to sort of get out there and see the world, but there was definitely quite a dose of, uh, I guess ego wound in, wrapped up in that. And I quite liked the sort of self-image of the, I guess, the kind of thoughtful, grizzled explorer plodding through the icy wastes, you know, with only his mad mind for company. But thankfully, as the, uh, as the last sort of, you know, 13 or so years have, have, have gone by, I've become a little bit more considered. And it's nowadays, uh, I would say roughly 50/50 between wanting to get out and sort of challenge myself, uh, physically, in wild places, you know, to be in the wilderness or lesser-known little, you know, seldom-visited people and get some insight into, into their lives and their worlds. Um, and I guess the thing that draws all that together is just a strong sense of curiosity, which, uh, has never waned.

   3. CWChris Williamson2:03

      It's interesting to think about what can drive people to do the things that they want to do when, in the beginning, some of it might have been recognition or status, or a desire for acclaim or respect from the people that you admire. Can take you a hell of a long way.

   4. CWCharlie Walker2:19

      Yeah. Well, I don't ... I, I think to be fair, my, my, my sort of, my world or my sphere that how I imagined things going didn't quite stretch to acclaim or recognition. It was, uh ... I mean, I wrote in my first book about going off during ... I, I studied up in, in Newcastle where I think you are from-

   5. CWChris Williamson2:39

      Correct.

   6. CWCharlie Walker2:39

      ... or have studied. Yeah. And in the summer holidays, I would scrape together the few pennies I had, and, you know, I'd work in bars or putting up marquees or whatever all summer. And then at the end, I would have a few weeks where I could go off to somewhere obscure. And I quite liked when I came back that everyone had been, you know, partying all summer, and I'd been this just sort of (laughs) absence. And, uh, coming back and suddenly having a story to tell and something interesting to say. I don't think I ever imagined that I would make a career out of any of this. And a career is, is a sort of, you know, in inverted commas type term when you do something like this because it's scraping together all sorts of different things. There's no kind of one single thing that I do. Um, so I, I guess it was (laughs) perhaps more vanity than a desire for recognition or anything else that, that sort of drove me to go out and, and sort of, you know, explore.

   7. CWChris Williamson3:36

      Yes. Given the dancing around of what it is that you do, people might not be familiar, w- how do you define what it is that you do? Are you an adventurer? Are you a, a global travels journalist? What are you?

   8. CWCharlie Walker3:50

      Um, I would say I'm an adventure travel writer, but that's three words, which is a lot.

   9. CWChris Williamson3:57

      (laughs)

   10. CWCharlie Walker3:57

       Uh ... (laughs)

   11. CWChris Williamson3:58

       Yeah.

   12. CWCharlie Walker3:58

       So I guess to ... I mean, I used to allow myself to get into long, drawn-out, you know, protracted conversations or debates about the different meanings of the two words adventurer and explorer, and I, uh, and I still believe, frankly, that the word explorer is something basically from a bygone age, with the exception of scientists, astronauts, uh, deep-sea, uh, submersibles.

   13. CWChris Williamson4:26

       Would that be breaking new ground for you, going to places that haven't yet been seen?

   14. CWCharlie Walker4:30

       Exactly. I mean, you ... There, there, there is a case to argue that we're all exploring in some sense, 'cause if you haven't been somewhere before, you are exploring it. But then I think that's just the verb rather than the adjective, the term explorer. That said, the other people who do similar things to me have, for quite a while, just used the word explorer. So (laughs) I decided to stop fighting it, and I don't tend to self-identify as that, but I no longer quibble about it when people describe me as that. Um, but, but in reality what I do is go to places, check things out, come back, write about it, speak about it, and work out what's next.

   15. CWChris Williamson5:04

       What was that

3. 5:05 – 12:26

   Charlie’s 4-Month Triathlon

   1. CWChris Williamson5:05

      triathlon thing that you did?

   2. CWCharlie Walker5:08

      The triathlon was, uh ... The, the concept behind that was to travel the length of the Europe-Asia border, or the perceived or supposed continental boundary between Europe and Asia, uh, to try and explore what that is, what that means, and if it has any relevance in the modern world, brackets, it doesn't. Um, we all, at school, learned that there are seven continents, and we kind of just grew up, you know, having taken that for granted. We just imbibed that information. "Yeah, there's seven continents," but there's not, clearly. (laughs) You look at a map and Antarctica's a continent, Australia's clearly a continent, big ... I think the dic- dictionary definition of continent is a large, contiguous landmass surrounded by a body of water. So Africa is arguably a continent, although it's connected to Arabia, which is connected to Eurasia, as I call it. So Eurasia is very clearly one big continent with this sort of-... this complicated wiggly line through the middle of it, and I started looking into what that line... where that line came from, how it was drawn. And the first person to, um, bifurcate Europe from Asia was Anaximander, I think a, uh, an ancient Greek geographer and philosopher, 2,600 years ago and he... Even back then it was this complicated medley of geographical features. Uh, it was, uh, the Azov Sea, the, the Manych Depression, the Caspian Sea, the Don River. It was this real, you know, dogleg of messy features to divide Europe from Asia and that became important to people predominantly west of that line. And over the, you know, ensuing 26 centuries, it meant different things to different people at different times, but often it was the divide between enlightenment and barbarism, or democracy and despotism, or Christianity and Islam, all these different things. But the, the, the line that is today the sort of commonly accepted geographical border between Europe and Asia is... It was, it was, uh, perceived by a, conceived rather, by a Swedish cartographer in the 17th century and it's the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the (laughs) the Caucasus Mountains, and then the Black Sea, so again, this weird combination of stuff. So I decided to travel the length of that border by human power, um, so skiing the length of the Ural mountain range. Uh, the Ural River rises in the southern foothills of the Ural Mountains, so paddle down the length of the Ural River, which flows into the Caspian after 1,509 miles, uh, and then cycle from the mouth of the Caspian, around the edge of the Caspian, across the Caucasus Mountains, along the Turkish Black Sea coast to Istanbul. And along the way, I wanted to ask people what they thought about this border, whether they were aware that they lived on a border, whether they... if they did, whether they identified as European or Asian or Eurasian or both or neither or just Kazakh or Russian or Turkish or Georgian or whatever. And, uh, it was 5,200 miles and took eight months and, uh, by the end, unsurprisingly, I found that very little people cared about this continental divide.

   3. CWChris Williamson8:24

      How many times did you cross backward and forward? Are you pretty, pretty close to being able to sit on that line and wiggle down it?

   4. CWCharlie Walker8:30

      Well, on the river it was very easy 'cause you're just on the river, you are on the border. You know, one night, uh, we would... I, I was doing this with a, with a, with a friend. One night we would camp in Europe, the next night we'd camp in Asia. It was just wherever we saw the first kind of decent sort of landing spot in this inflatable tandem kayak we bought in a Siberian village. Um, in the mountains, the technical border is the watershed of the Ural Mountains, so there we would pass back and forth across it, uh, you know, sometimes once a week, sometimes... Uh, that... We were three months in the mountains, uh, so I, I guess we passed back and forth over it maybe a dozen times during that three-month period. And then once we were cycling, we were always on, uh... Let me think. We were on the Asian side of the border until we got down and crossed into Azerbaijan-

   5. CWChris Williamson9:18

      Mm.

   6. CWCharlie Walker9:18

      ... and so everything north of the Ca- Ca- Caucasus is technically Europe, and then south of that you're into Asia, um, and that was kind of interesting. We passed... In, uh, within geographical Europe, we passed through this area in Russia called Kalmykia, which is a, um... It's one of many places that Russia calls an autonomous republic. Uh, it's not autonomous, of course, but this place, uh, a predominantly Buddhist, uh, sort of enclave within Russia, the people living there, the Kalmyks, uh, migrated from Mongolia about 450 years ago. Uh, they speak an archaic form of Mongolian, they are ethnically Mongolian, they speak... Uh, sorry, they, they practice Buddhism. It's just not something you'd expect to find in what we term Europe. Next to that you've got Dagestan, which is another part of Russia which is, um, predominantly, uh, Muslim and they've had a long sort of... Lo- lo- long-running low-level Islamist insurgency. There's been... You know, it's often touted as the most dangerous place in Europe and whenever someone goes through there on- you know, for TV, they say, "God, isn't this place edgy?" But of course, we found it to be the friendliest (laughs) place we visited on the, on the entire journey. Um, so, uh, it... Yeah. That's the long answer to your Europe-Asia crossing the border question. But, uh, from Azerbaijan onwards, we were then in the, in the Asian side of the border, uh, and Georgia was the only place really where people seemed to care about that concept of a border, um, but I, I-

   7. CWChris Williamson10:45

      What do you think that's due to?

   8. CWCharlie Walker10:48

      Quite a f- a few different reasons. I think historically, uh, Georgians have seen themselves as, um... It's... I mean, it's a very ancient place. It converted in about 350 as a ind- as a sort of, uh, independent kingdom. It converted to Christianity, so it was a very early convert to Christianity and it lies within the kind of the wider realm of Islam, for want of a better term. Uh, they are desperate to join the European Union, um, I should think that will never happen because they are too important a kind of, t- uh, meeting point between different powers. Uh, they... You know, they've got Turkey to one side, Russia to the north, Iran just across the border further south. They're in the Council of Europe, which has about 50 countries, and so every government building has a EU flag outside it 'cause the Council of Europe and the EU flag are the same. Um, and I think they just see themselves as kind of, uh, isolated. They... Even though much of s- a third or so of Russia is in Europe, they see Russia as being part of that kind of other block maybe following the Asian tradition and they want to be part of-... the, the European community. Um, so yeah, for qui- quite a few different reasons. It's, it's, it's not entirely clear and it's something I'm hoping to get back there at some point to look into further, but I think they just as- they also see themselves as, as, um, inheriting the Phoenician and then the Greek traditions from the ancient world. Uh, the, the Phoenician seafarers kind of settled the coast of Georgia and so they see that as, as part of their heritage.

   9. CWChris Williamson12:24

      If Dagestan was

4. 12:26 – 28:40

   Experiences into Dicey Places

   1. CWChris Williamson12:26

      one of the warmest places that you visited during that triathlon, which i- I mean, it's a triathlon where you skied and both paddled in a kayak, so I guess it's definitely a, an upgraded or amended triathlon. What was one of the more dicey places that you went to?

   2. CWCharlie Walker12:42

      Um, we... While in, uh, Georgia, we accidentally (laughs) crossed the border into South Ossetia, which is a region of Georgia that Russia annexed in 2008 in a short five-day war. They bombed, uh, I mean even the capital, Tbilisi, and strategic sites around the capital, and, uh, we... (laughs) We were following Google Maps on a phone, and it gave us this bit of advice, uh, to get to where we wanted to go. "You've arrived at this road down some mountain valley path. Uh, go up the road for about a mile, cross the river, and then head down the road on the other side, and then you'll soon be in this town." Uh, but at the bridge there were police and they said the bridge is closed, and they wouldn't explain why. They were Georgian police. And th- the, they g- they gave no reason. And during this journey, I'd been arrested in Russia probably f- three times, I think. Um, it's... In remote areas in Russian, in Russia, it's very hard not to get in trouble with the, the authorities, frankly, if you're a foreigner (laughs) . Uh, being in remote areas is automatically qualifying you for s- suspicion. Um-

   3. CWChris Williamson13:52

      Oh, they think that you're doing some sort of surveying, clandestine bullshit?

   4. CWCharlie Walker13:58

      E- exactly. As if you'd send a, a, a wanker on a pair of skis-

   5. CWChris Williamson14:01

      (laughs)

   6. CWCharlie Walker14:01

      ... rather than to use a, a satellite.

   7. CWChris Williamson14:03

      (laughs)

   8. CWCharlie Walker14:04

      But, um, the, yeah, we were kind of fed up with being stymied by the authorities, even though this time it was the Georgians. And so we just went half a mile back down the river, which was only ankle deep, pushed our bikes across, it was only f- 40 meters wide or something, got up the bank on the other side. It was the height of summer so the water was very low. Got up the bank on the other side, got onto the road we wanted to follow and started cycling, happy that we'd, you know, got it, got away with it, and we'll be in that town later that afternoon for a hostel and a shower and a good feed. And w- in less than a minute, a military jeep sped up behind us and this soldier jumped out, uh, and I noticed (laughs) first the Russian flag on his arm, and it confused me 'cause the Russian border was, uh, I think probably 30 or 50 miles north, and so I, you know, thought, "Why... What are you doing here?" And I asked him that, and he didn't like that as a question and asked me, "What are you doing here?"

   9. CWChris Williamson14:55

      "What are you doing here?" Yeah, precisely.

   10. CWCharlie Walker14:57

       Yeah. And then he said, "This is South Ossetia." And it turned out lon- on sort of a later, uh, review of maps that we had crossed... There's a tiny little... In the very southeast corner of South Ossetia, there's this tiny little promontory of land that sticks further south, and we had just, if it's a finger, we had just crossed the tip of the fingernail, just at this tiny little area, and the river was the border. And on, you know, the, the guy then pointed out that there (laughs) were guard towers around us and barbed wire and everything that we hadn't noticed. Um, and so we were, we were sort of, you know, taken in for the night, put in a cell, questioned, taken to court, everything like that, um, so that was a little bit sketchy. Um, the journey, the... After about five hours of interrogation from Russian security officials, they then drove us Tushkin Valley, the capital of South Ossetia, which is this sort of supposedly (laughs) standalone, um, state, but of course it's entirely run by Russia. Um, but the South Ossettians were, if anything, more angsty and they, uh... The, the journey in the night, we got stopped at one point. Some guy more or less tried to rob us while we were in police custody, which is quite (laughs) unusual. Um, and then in the capital we were put in this sort of... You know, the cell was fine. It was, it was nothing too bad. But then they hailed us, interrogated us for hours and hours and hours the next day, never fed us or anything like that, and then finally when we were in court, I complained when they said, "Is there anything you'd like to say?" I said, "Yeah, we haven't been fed," and the judge got angry at the police and forced them to feed us and we got a nice plate of, uh, sort of Uzbek plov, um, and then were, after paying our fine, handed back across the border to the Georgian authorities and carried on on our way. So that was probably the hairiest moment, uh, sort of politically. But the, the three-month ski through the Urals, we, we were starting about 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle on the arctic coast in February, which is really cold, um, so we had temperatures down to about -45, I think, um, during that ski. I- intense blizzards and winds, um, which pushes the wind chill down even further. Uh, there was a lot of flat light, it was hard to, to sort of gauge avalanche risks, risks at various points, um, on our way through the Ural Mountains, and the maps we were working off were these old Soviet, um, sort of military car- you know, cartographic survey maps from the 1950s, so we were working off these kind of slightly (laughs) approximated contour lines and suddenly, you know, we'd just find ourselves clawing our way up a 60-degree slope, uh, so that was all quite, um, sketchy as well, I guess.

   11. CWChris Williamson17:26

       What was that place that you went to that you said is the most sparsely populated, cold place on the planet? Was that part of the triathlon or was that the-

   12. CWCharlie Walker17:36

       No. That was some-

   13. CWChris Williamson17:37

       ... walking thing?

   14. CWCharlie Walker17:38

       That was this year. Um...

   15. CWChris Williamson17:39

       Oh, that was this year.

   16. CWCharlie Walker17:40

       So, that's an area called Yakutia. Um, so the, the most sparsely populated country on earth is Mongolia, and Mongolia has, um, let me get this right, uh, three people, I believe, per square kilometer.

   17. CWChris Williamson17:54

       (laughs)

   18. CWCharlie Walker17:56

       But Y- Yakutia-... has three square kilometers per person. Um-

   19. CWChris Williamson18:00

       No way. And what, so-

   20. CWCharlie Walker18:02

       So, it's-

   21. CWChris Williamson18:02

       ... what's Yakutia? Yakutia is a, a country all of its own?

   22. CWCharlie Walker18:05

       Y- Yakutia or, or as it's also known, Sakha Republic or Republic of Sakha is a, a m- an administrative region of Russia. Um, it's basically the same size as India. I think I worked out, it's 94% the size of India, but there's only one million people. Um, India has 1.4 billion, I think, 1.3 billion. Uh-

   23. CWChris Williamson18:25

       Yeah, so you've got an entire country nearly the size of India with the population of Newcastle city center.

   24. CWCharlie Walker18:30

       Yes. Yeah, on a Friday night. Um, (laughs) it's, it's ... And most of it is relatively uninhabitable. Um, about half of it sits north of the Arctic Circle.

   25. CWChris Williamson18:40

       Where would this be on a map? Let's say someone's looking at a map. Is it-

   26. CWCharlie Walker18:42

       It-

   27. CWChris Williamson18:42

       Does it run across the top of-

   28. CWCharlie Walker18:43

       You-

   29. CWChris Williamson18:43

       ... Russia?

   30. CWCharlie Walker18:44

       If you go to ... Yeah, if you go to Beijing and then go about 2,000 miles north, you're probably in the middle of Yakutia. Um, and it goes up to the north coast. But it's a huge, uh, area of Russia. It's- sort of heads right down sort of close to Lake Baikal, which is in the middle of Siberia. Um, it's, but it's absolutely, it's the size of India but it's up- tucked away in the northeast of Russia. There's only one more kind of district to the east of it, this place called Chukotka and that's the peninsula part that kind of reaches out towards, um, Alaska. Uh, so it's absolutely vast and up there the, you know, the, the coldest inhabited place on earth, this city called Verkhoyansk is in Yakutia just close to where I started this trek earlier this year. Um, and they had a temperature about 100 years ago recorded, it was minus ... I can't remember off the top of my head. I think it was -68.4 degrees Centigrade, Celsius. So really cold. Um, y- you know, you don't wanna be outdoors (laughs) in that much. Uh, but the average winter daily low temperatures in, in much of it are below -40. It's really, really cold. Um, and yeah, that was a very different experience earlier this year in Russia because when I was there in 2017 it was peacetime but three days after I arrived this year, uh, peacetime ended and, uh ... Well, to be fair to the Ukrainians they would say peacetime ended in 2014 when Crimea was annexed, but, uh, the rest of Ukraine was invaded, uh, three days after I arrived so the rest of the journey was a little bit dicey.
5. 28:40 – 35:52

   Finding Assistance in the Middle of Nowhere

   1. CWChris Williamson28:40

      Okay. So go, take me back. Like, you get, you get taken in. Who in their right mind, when Russia has just invaded the Ukraine, is helping a British journalist who was dicking about taking photos and writing stuff, uh, for a, a laugh and because that's what he likes to do. Who, who was prepared to give you any assistance? Why would they?

   2. CWCharlie Walker29:03

      Weren't able to do a great deal, frankly. There, there's not really many diplomatic levers remaining between Britain and Russia. Um, but they, they tried to help where they could. They were also six time zones away in Moscow, so that, there was that. Um, I had a local friend who, uh, you know, brought some books to the prison for me to read. That was, that was very kind of her or him. Um, and, uh, the, the lawyer that I hired was just a local lawyer who was prepared to do that for the several hundred dollars that he was paid to do it. But his job was basically just to take my case, present it to the court, have it rejected, and that was more or less the end of it. Um, I believe he did help-... or certainly tried to expedite the movement of papers from the court system up in this port city on the north, or port town on the north where I was arrested, down to the capital where I was being held, which, uh, sped things up a little bit. Any, uh, one further day of delay for the papers not getting there apparently would have led to me not being deported at that time. They only deport people at certain times. Uh, so I was deported in late May and the next window was gonna be late July so that would've been another two months already and had I been there for another two months as the situation continued to deteriorate in Ukraine, as the British and Russian relationship continued to disintegrate too, um, there's I think a good chance had I been there another two months that the, my case would have been sort of picked up by the authorities and-

   3. CWChris Williamson30:31

      They wouldn't have wanted to release you, you would have been more valuable to them.

   4. CWCharlie Walker30:34

      Exactly. I would have been retried with a criminal charge for either, uh, that, that, um, fake news charge that they brought in or just simply, uh, espionage 'cause they said I was creeping around in, in remote areas where, where you're not really meant to be, and they said I was photographing military sites.

   5. CWChris Williamson30:51

      So you're not gonna go back to Russia any time soon, I'm gonna guess?

   6. CWCharlie Walker30:53

      Well, I can't, I can't for the next five years. Uh, but I, I mean, I would love to go back to Russia. I, I, I have a lot of affection for the place and for the vast majority of the people I have met in Russia who, uh, and there are of course plenty of exceptions to this, people who are zealously in favor of everything that's happening, not just outwardly but also inwardly, um, but there are lots of people who are just essentially victims and prisoners of their own regime, and this doesn't mean that their lives are being torn a- and separated, but it does mean that they aren't free to, to speak, to say what they think, to write, to publish what they think, to protest or anything like that. So I do hope that Russia sees, uh, reform, or revolution frankly, in, in my lifetime and I do get to go back but until that day I, I wouldn't be sensible or safe to do so.

   7. CWChris Williamson31:41

      How culpable do you think citizens are for being complicit, convinced perhaps, by m- malicious ideas and ideologies as a part of a regime that they don't know anything else but that?

   8. CWCharlie Walker32:01

      It's a really good question. I think that's, um, one of the most i- interesting, difficult, and important questions that there is at the moment. And I've, I've wrestled with this quite a lot and I don't have any, uh, definitive answer for it. I go through phases of feeling and thinking different things, but broadly speaking, um, plenty of people in Russia are just completely sold on the propaganda they've been fed. They genuinely think that the Ukrainian, uh, leadership and governance is fascistic, that they are neo-Nazis. Um, you only have to watch, you know, 10, 20 minutes of state TV news in Russia to, to just get just the level of bullshit that they're being fed. Now, th- there is, um, there is censorship so it is hard to access, uh, external media or news. The, basically all the independent media has been shut down. There are a few remaining but they are only remaining because they are towing the government line. Um, but it is still possible, or at least it was when I left and I believe it is, it is still possible to get to visit quite a lot of foreign news sites. Um, but they might not be in Russian, so they probably aren't understandable to the vast majority of people outside Russia, and I, I, I think the censorship on external websites has been, uh, a lot more rigorous on, uh, Russian language outlets. So there are, there are plenty of people in Russia who know what they're being told is a lie but can't do anything about it, and frankly stand to gain nothing and really achieve nothing by speaking up. You know, all they'll do is endanger their, themselves, their families, um, and they'll just bring the wrath of the state down on them. Uh, there are people who are cynically exploiting the situation. You only have to see the little clips put onto Twitter from some of the main panel discussions on, uh, Russia 1, the main news channel, to see that some people are just, you know, tub thumping and are just happily, uh, repeating, parroting anything that Putin or his propaganda machine says. So it's, it's, it's tricky. The... This question I suppose is coming up most often with regard to int- you know, to international sports tournaments, so should Russian competitors be allowed to compete? Uh, they were banned from, uh, Russians and Bela- Belarusians I think were banned from Wimbledon but aren't from the Cincinnati Open in Ohio at the moment. Um, there was a story today, two Russian, I believe two Russian female tennis players were having a match and then a spectator who had a Ukrainian flag draped around her was, uh, ordered by the tournament to remove it because one of the players complained. Now people who seem to show an o- Russians abroad who seem to show an open prejudice against Ukraine, I think that's a problem, and I don't think that there's, uh, an excuse for that because they don't have to say anything.

   9. CWChris Williamson35:17

      Especially if you're in the middle of a tennis match.

   10. CWCharlie Walker35:20

       (laughs) Well, exactly. Um, and so there's that, there's, there's saying nothing is very different to saying something, and I don't think we should condemn people for an absence of protest where it's so dangerous to protest. That said, the longer the war goes on and the more it starts to feel like the only way for the war to end is through a vast popular uprising in Russia, for which there isn't the appetite. There-

   11. CWChris Williamson35:51

       You, that's what you

6. 35:52 – 42:00

   Conflict Within Russia

   1. CWChris Williamson35:52

      think...... one of the solutions or one of the routes out of this current conflict is, is for the war to be won from within Russia itself?

   2. CWCharlie Walker36:00

      Yeah. Well, I mean, there, there's only three, I suppose. One is, uh, some sort of, uh, treaty, essentially concessions from Ukraine giving Russia what it's taken and calling it a day. Politically, I don't see that happening, or at least not for a long while. There is still the appetite in Ukraine to carry on fighting. (clears throat) Zelenskyy does still seem to have the support of the majority of the country to not concede to Russia. Um, the other would be, well, the other two would be Ukraine winning or losing the war, i.e. Ukraine being entirely annexed by Russia or Russia being entirely repelled from Ukraine. But that would probably, as things stand at the moment, have to include the Crimean Peninsula as well. I don't see that happening, uh, or not f- a- again, not anytime soon. The saddest thing about this war is it looks set to grind on for months and potentially even years. But the only other option I, I see, short of things escalating to some sort of, you know, n- nuclear hellscape, is, is the people of Russia turning on their government, rising up. But... And there are- there are plenty of people in Russia who want that to happen but not enough, I, in my opinion. I think that lots of people in Russia, predominantly older people and people, uh, away from the more cosmopolitan urban centers where I think there's a little bit more awareness of and access to foreign media, um, people away from those places and older people support the war and support Putin. And Putin is still seen as the, essentially the savior who brought stability to Russia after the crazed kind of kleptocracy of the 1990s after the Soviet Union was, uh, dissolved. Um, there was just that crazy period where all the oligarchs, everything was just robbed, people grabbed whatever they could, they sold off whatever they could. And, uh, it was around about the time Putin came into power that that s- sort of lessened. That's not to say that Putin and his cronies haven't continued, you know, plundering the country as, as much as they can and various estimates of Putin's private wealth stretch up to about the $200 billion mark. Um, although he can't really take that away with him. The minute he's out of office, he's, he's (laughs) he's probably dead. Um, so that's a really long, rambling, and con- self-contradictory answer to your question, and the simple answer is I really, I just, I don't have a perfect answer to that question. But I, I do want people to think about it and discuss it more 'cause I think it's really important, and I do worry about the sort of rise and spread of Russophobia, um, because a lot of people aren't culpable. They don't have a say over what happens and the incredible crackdown on the early, um, sort of, uh, protests that were, went right across the country in the first few days of the war, but within a week, about 15,000 people have been arrested, many of whom were thrown in prison. So, protest in a, in a state that has quite such a huge police and military presence is nigh on impossible.

   3. CWChris Williamson38:49

      It's kind of the difference between the art and the artist thing, right? That you have a population and then you have populists and then you have the politicians that are controlling them, and I think that i- yeah, it, it does suck. It's, it's unfortunate that Russians are being tarred with a brush-

   4. CWCharlie Walker39:07

      (clears throat)

   5. CWChris Williamson39:07

      ... that they perhaps didn't choose, that their government has put in place for them. And yeah, it's kind of like what you were talking about to do with sports. Athletes have come before in the Russian, um, Athletics Federation, and they've been doping, which means that now, in future, you don't get to play anymore, even if you're clean. I don't think that any of the Russian athletes are clean. I think that this is the sort of thing that's going to be continuing in any case. My point being, there is something that feels unfair about that, but you have to draw a line at some point-

   6. CWCharlie Walker39:35

      (clears throat)

   7. CWChris Williamson39:35

      ... and you have to say, look, the difference between this being, uh, individual and this being systemic, and even if it means that out of 100 athletes, 10 of them might be clean, or out of 100 population people, 10 of them might be pro-Putin or whatever, um, i- it is very, very difficult, and I think that's where the, where the nuance sort of comes in.

   8. CWCharlie Walker39:57

      Sport, I think raises some really interesting different examples because, uh, so tennis is a good example because you don't really play tennis outside of the Olympics, I think. You don't really play tennis for your country. There's also that, uh, is it the Davis Cup Europe versus America? But you don't play tennis for your country, you play as an individual. It's the same with golf, predominantly, um, but a football team or a, uh, Olympic, uh, squad, that's a bit different. And I, you know, I think it's right that, for example, the, so the UEFA final was taken away from Russia pretty much as soon as the invasion happened. It also wasn't feasible from a security perspective to get all those many, probably tens of thousands of people into Russia for that game anyway, so it was a bit of a no-brainer. But if you are in a team that is flying the Russian flag and sort of, you know, the... I suppose if you're, if you're, uh, having the anthem played for you upon victory, I mean, the, the national anthems aren't played at the end of a tournament in Wimbledon, for example. Uh, when Nadal wins, they don't play the Spanish national anthem. On the once every 80 years that a Brit wins or an English or Scottish person wins, you don't get that anthem because it's individuals playing. But a football team is a very different idea, and the Olympics is the same 'cause the Olympics is all about, well, supposedly, (laughs) I, I guess international cohesion, but it's about countries competing with each other on the, on the global stage. Um, so sports does have those differing kind of examples. And, and again, it's, it's sometimes difficult to draw the line, but I suppose if you are a team wearing the flag, having the anthem, then you stand for that country, and to compete in international sport should be a privilege, and I don't think, uh, countries, for example, China, with its awful human rights record, I don't think they should have been allowed to host the Winter Olympics, let alone arguably compete at the Winter Olympics. Although if you start ticking off all the dictatorships and autocracies and people with bad human rights records, the Olympics is gonna start looking like, um...... well, kind of the, you know, EU games or something like that. (laughs)

   9. CWChris Williamson41:58

      Sparse. Sparse-

   10. CWCharlie Walker41:58

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson41:58

       ... to say the least, I think.

7. 42:00 – 46:37

   Re-adjusting to Normality

   1. CWChris Williamson42:00

      So given-

   2. CWCharlie Walker42:00

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson42:00

      Let's say that you're doing these long trips. I mean, you've done, uh, walking to the northernmost points of a bunch of different places, cycling around tons of places. How do you re-normalize coming back to everyday life after you've been away on these trips? You mentioned before that you, uh, during your time at uni or whatever, would come back and kind of have this new, uh, viewpoint that you would have been absent, that you would have done something that was different. But now, I mean, you've got family, you've got friends, you've got, uh, uh, I don't know. It, it's, you're coming back to a very different sort of world. You have changed an awful lot, and yet the world has continued the same. How do you re-normalize?

   4. CWCharlie Walker42:39

      Uh, it's, there's no sort of one way, I suppose. It's different every time. And frankly, broadly speaking, it gets easier every time I go back. And, and it depends a lot on how long you've been away. So my journeys have varied from two months to four and a half years. And coming back after four and a half years, that's odd because your life has become whatever it is that you're doing for four and a half years, you know, constantly moving, on the road for four and a half years. But going away for two or three months is, it's a fair old amount of time. The thing that's most different when I come back is not the fact that I'm back home or back in the UK, it's the fact that I'm no longer waking up in a tent each morning and, and, and hiking or cycling or kayaking or whatever it is. So it's the, I guess it's that change from, uh, movement to just... Well, no longer flux. You're just, you're in the same spot. It's that, uh, standing still, and that takes a little bit-

   5. CWChris Williamson43:32

      Do you feel uncomfortable doing that?

   6. CWCharlie Walker43:34

      At first, I get a bit sort of, you know, itchy. So when I got back from, uh, Russia, um, I arrived at, uh, about 6:00 in the morning at Heathrow. Um, my girlfriend and an uncle came to pick me up. Uh, we had breakfast, she went to work, I came home, and I just felt... I mean, I, I, I hadn't really slept, but I suddenly felt just kind of, you know, stir crazy in the flat. So I went out for a run, but I'd been in a prison cell for the last month so my, my... (laughs) I didn't have shit for legs. So I ran about three miles and then was limping, and just had to sort of sadly limp back home (laughs) and start unpacking. Um, so there is that sort of first sense of almost claustrophobia, but I do find that starts to wear off quicker and there's always plenty to be getting back on with. Normally coming back from a journey is so busy, I've got, uh, I mean, sadly, lots of emails to answer, lots of, you know, friends to catch up with. You just kind of, you rush back into normal life. And the first day might be a bit claustrophobic and a bit disorientating, um, and then that discombobulation dies away and for another couple of weeks, suddenly you might kind of go, "Oh, wow, I'm just that quickly back into a much more sedentary lifestyle." And that's when you start to think, "Right, well, what's next?" And then you start focusing your attention on whatever is next and, uh, and, um, that's a good distraction.

   7. CWChris Williamson44:51

      How do you commit to something which is going to take four and a half years to do?

   8. CWCharlie Walker44:57

      That was relatively straightforward, strangely straightforward, um, largely because I was 22 at the time. I was 21 when I decided to do it, I think, and I had no ties really. Um, I'd just had my first job and so I was saving a little bit of money, but it wasn't something that I wanted to do forever. And, um, I, I was a- I think... I mean, I was young and I was quite naive and I was able to just make that rash decision, and as I said earlier, it was that kind of, you know, w- almost wanting to... Essentially a Homeric boast, wanting to do something big and bold and, and brash and, and sort of, you know, (laughs) slay a dragon in my own metaphorical sense. So that was actually quite straightforward. I, I made the decision. I was drunk at the time admittedly on, uh, some Mongolian vodka in a forest in Siberia, um, by a little campfire. Uh, that's a longer story that I don't think we've got time for now. Um, but I made that decision, I drew some wiggly lines on a little, um... In the back of a Lonely Planet, they had those tiny little world maps and I kind of squiggled all over it. I woke up in the morning, looked at it and thought, "Right, let's do that." Um, and then just about a year later, set off and got going. And the main thing about that journey is I didn't really prepare anything. I didn't train. I just saved a bit of money, I got a tent, an old bicycle, and, uh, some pannier bags, saddle bags to carry everything, and when I was ready, I just set off and, uh, it was kind of as simple as that. I suppose giving yourself a, a start date and telling people about what you're gonna do is, is a bit of a hack because, um, if you're someone like me who will be embarrassed to back down from something they said they'll do, you're then in some sense committed, um, and that seemed to work for me on, on that occasion and on several since then.

   9. CWChris Williamson46:36

      Was

8. 46:37 – 55:04

   Travelling 43,000 Miles on a Standard Bicycle

   1. CWChris Williamson46:37

      the... Is it a specialist bike of some kind? Did it have any important attributes that helped you to survive for several thousand miles?

   2. CWCharlie Walker46:46

      Nope. Heavy steel frame. Um, no suspension. Uh, it would have cost I think about 300 or 400 pounds new. I got it second-hand on eBay for about 100 pounds. Um, I put on ra-

   3. CWChris Williamson46:59

      Big seat? Big seat? Comfortable seat?

   4. CWCharlie Walker47:01

      Uh, I wrote a, a letter, a handwritten letter (laughs) to a saddle maker called Brooks. Um, they make very beautiful leather saddles. They've been around for about 150 years. They're based in Oxford or Oxfordshire, I think, um, and they're really expensive. The... Well, I mean, they're not that expensive. They're about 150 pounds, but that's more than I had for even a bike. Um, and they, over time, they sort of contour and mold to your ass and so they fit, uh, 'cause I didn't have padded shorts. I, I cycled without padded shorts. I just wore, you know, boxer shorts and shorts or trousers. Uh, but I wrote them a letter saying, "I'm going off to do this thing. I'm gonna raise a bit of money for charity while I do it. I'm gonna cycle 40 odd thousand miles. It'll take about four years." Um, and at the end I said, "I honestly think I can say that I'm speaking from my ass when I say thank you very much." And they said they get hundreds of requests every month (laughs) , um, but due to that one little kind of throwaway cheeky line, they said, "Yeah, here you go. Here's a saddle." Um, so that was perhaps the most sort of specialist part of the bike was just a saddle. Um, and that bike was-

   5. CWChris Williamson47:59

      40, 40,000 miles?

   6. CWCharlie Walker48:02

      Yeah, 43 or 44, I think. Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson48:06

      You must be in the top thousand people on the planet in terms of how far you've traveled on a bicycle. It's you and it's professional cyclists and that's it.

   8. CWCharlie Walker48:17

      Mm. Uh, well, I mean, there are many thousands of professional cyclists, so-

   9. CWChris Williamson48:22

      Yeah. Fair point. Okay, top-

   10. CWCharlie Walker48:23

       I mean, I'm, I might come in the top sort of, you know, 50,000 times, maybe. (laughs)

   11. CWChris Williamson48:26

       Yeah, but that-

   12. CWCharlie Walker48:26

       Um-

   13. CWChris Williamson48:26

       ... but that's still an awful lot. And of non-professional cyclists, probably easily within the top thousand, people that aren't doing it for the pursuit of the sport, even the amateurs and stuff like that. Now who chooses to go and do that far just because adventure?

   14. CWCharlie Walker48:42

       Yeah, I mean, the bicycle is a, a really good means to an end when it comes to adventure, because you can travel for nothing, for free. All you need is, is food to fuel you. Um, because you, you're always in the places in between, you get to see, you get to really see a place in, in a, in a really good depth. Um, I suppose walking is, is one level further. Um, but you can still cover, comfortably, 60 to 100 miles a day and have time besides to m- see people, meet people, rather, see things, learn things, whatever. Uh, you can sleep for free in- anywhere, in a tent, you just pull over, find a little bit of woodland or in the desert or in the mountains, wherever you are, you just find some little space, put up your tent. So you can travel for basically nothing, um, for a really long distance at a pace that is really conducive to seeing the places that you are and, and sort of scratching that bit deeper beneath the surface. And you're not just jetting through places as you would on a train or a plane or a car or a motorbike even, uh, because you are traveling slowly enough to force you to stop in lots of places, the villages, uh, between the towns that other people might visit if they were just on a shorter tour.

   15. CWChris Williamson49:52

       But not so slowly-

   16. CWCharlie Walker49:53

       Mm-mm.

   17. CWChris Williamson49:53

       ... as if you were perhaps walking that you would never be able to get from one place to another quite so quickly and be able to see as much.

   18. CWCharlie Walker50:00

       Exactly. I mean, there was, there's a, a Scottish guy called Mark Beaumont who cycled 18,000 miles around the world in 78 and a half days, I think, a few years back, and he has the record for the... But, I mean, he was cycling (laughs) t- 280 odd miles a day, um, with, uh, you know, support crew. It's a very different type of experience to what I was aiming at. And, uh, the bi- the bike was just the means to the end for me. The end was to, was to, to experience things, to see, to do, to learn.

   19. CWChris Williamson50:28

       How did you find yourself changed after that?

   20. CWCharlie Walker50:31

       I was browner.

   21. CWChris Williamson50:34

       (laughs)

   22. CWCharlie Walker50:34

       Uh, mostly from sort of dirt and grime rather than actually a suntan. I was hairier. Um, I had a sort of beard down to my nipples pretty much by the end of it. Um, I was very, very comfortable in my own company. Potentially a little bit too much so at first, but I had spent just months and years by myself and had learnt to be really comfortable by myself. But that was a struggle. It took ages to kind of get that balance right between feeling, uh, happily alone and feeling lonely. Um, so I s- I think that was probably the biggest difference, I guess. Also, I've just seen a lot more of the world, and I, I mean, everyone is very changed between 22 and 27, which is the age I left and, and came back at. So, I was probably different in... That's a slightly evasive answer, I guess. (laughs)

   23. CWChris Williamson51:21

       I always wonder about... I've been thinking about this a lot recently, how much of the wisdom that we like to attribute to our own efforts and our personal development and the bits of the world that we've seen and the conversations we've had and the introspection we've done, how much of that just comes along for the ride as a byproduct of getting older? I often think-

   24. CWCharlie Walker51:36

       Well, that-

   25. CWChris Williamson51:36

       ... that a good chunk of it is, is maybe just you being, having been around for another year or two years or five years.

   26. CWCharlie Walker51:43

       Absolutely. And I think the, you know, for most people, thankfully, the longer they're around, the more confident they become within themselves. I mean, this can lead to problems. (laughs) You do get people who get a little bit too confident perhaps, and, uh, you know, with age, they're more likely to sort of, you know, a- attain positions of power with which they can, you know, cause problems. Um, but predominantly I think we get more confident as we get older, and confidence just kind of, I think, breeds a fuller understanding of your life's experience and the sum of your life's experiences. And that's gonna happen regardless of if you're cycling around the world for four years or you're working in an office having day-to-day experiences and interactions with lots of different or the same people. W- we all grow and sort of broaden our horizons throughout time and there's lots of different ways of doing that. And that's why I've, I've never been someone to preach the idea that, uh, everyone should travel and that travel is uniquely transformative. For me, it has proved to be very transformative. But again, as you suggest, potentially that's just the passage of time.

   27. CWChris Williamson52:48

       Mm. What places did you go to that were surprisingly enjoyable? You mentioned earlier on that Dagestan was a place that you went to that perhaps in advance you wouldn't have thought of as a, a-

   28. CWCharlie Walker53:02

       Mm.

   29. CWChris Williamson53:02

       ... bastion of fun, warm welcomeness. Uh-

   30. CWCharlie Walker53:05

       Well-
9. 55:04 – 58:37

   Lessons Taken from Charlie’s Travels

   1. CWChris Williamson55:04

      What about lessons that you've taken from this? I'm aware that it's always difficult to kind of synthesize something that you've been doing for a decade and a half, but if there was a bunch of insights that you think that you've gained, or the ones that you find most valuable that you think other people should really take to heart. Certainly seems like one of them is that most of the world is quite warm and welcoming and friendly and not hostile. I'm gonna guess that that might be might be something.

   2. CWCharlie Walker55:30

      Yeah, that's definitely, uh, pretty much the default wherever I've been in the world, is for people, normal people, authorities are often a slightly different case, but, um, normal people just want to help out, really. Um, I, it probably helps that I have often traveled in quite a vulnerable manner without, um, uh, sort of shows of visible wealth, for example. You know, I, I've basically never ha- had anything worth robbing, certainly not while traveling, traveling. Um, but, uh, I mean, the, I suppose the main thing which is really hard to, to phrase without sounding trite or cliche, but it's a cliche for a reason, is that you... (sighs) I mean, it makes you sound like some sort of, um, motivational speaker, but most people are a lot more capable than they think. They... I- if you set your sights a bit higher than you expect, then you will probably rise up to meet them. And if you don't, you will at least rise up to, you know, higher than you'd expect. And failing well, you know, giving something a go, not completing it, but, uh, having done better than you ever imagined you could is really, really valuable. Now, none of that is a secret, and there are many, many people who charge (laughs) many, many dollars or pounds out there to, uh, to tell you that. But it's quite a straightforward truth. Uh, and just making that first step, getting out your door, whether literally or metaphorically, is, is the simple key to that. Just doing something, starting something, and, uh, most people will be surprised by what they manage to, uh, to pull off.

   3. CWChris Williamson57:06

      It's strange because there's that, the Matthew Principle, "To those who have more, uh, th- those who have everything, more will be given. To those who have nothing, more will be taken." And you start to see in the world, people, uh, diverge into more of what it is that they're doing at the moment. And it's the inertia, it's the getting out of the door, it's the beginning, the first step, it's committing to doing the thing where almost everybody gets stuck. Because once you start to do the thing, not doing the thing takes more energy than continuing to do the thing. It's the change. I, I remember I was learning about this guy, I think he'd maybe swum somewhere to the Bahamas, some insane route that he'd done, and he had to go there and back, and he said that he wasn't emotional. He'd nearly died and there was all those swells and all sorts of chaos had ensued, and the only time that he ever really felt emotion, he said, was when he got to land, and it was because of the deceleration from what he'd felt to what he was feeling now. And I think that that's kind of true just generally for when we're trying to make changes. Changes, right? It's not continuing to do the thing. If you're getting up on time and going to the gym and you've got healthy relationships and your food is okay and you're not an alcoholic, it, that is what you tend to continue doing.

   4. CWCharlie Walker58:20

      Yeah, I mean, one way of putting it, I suppose, is that once you're pressurized, for want of a better term, uh, the only thing that's sort of shocking or jarring is depressurization, or decompression, rather. Um, you know, once you, once you've got those wheels rolling, stopping is harder than, than just rolling with it.

   5. CWChris Williamson58:36

      I agree. Charlie Walker,

10. 58:37 – 59:51

    Where to Find Charlie

    1. CWChris Williamson58:37

       ladies and gentlemen. If people want to keep up to date... Oh, actually, what are you doing next? Tell us what's-

    2. CWCharlie Walker58:42

       Um...

    3. CWChris Williamson58:42

       ... what's, what's up next for you.

    4. CWCharlie Walker58:43

       Well, I'm, I've just started work on a book about this experience in Russia, but, um, you know, don't hold your breath. Watch this space. It'll, that'll be a while. Uh, I've got a few ideas bouncing around at the moment for what journey will be next, but, uh, I haven't decided on anything yet, so I'm not gonna, uh, make any, um, loud boasts that I will then feel forced to, uh, to stick to (laughs) regardless of the viability of them. Um, so, uh, in the meantime, yeah, people can keep up with what I'm doing on, uh, Instagram, uh, @cwexplore. It's the same on Twitter, @cwexplore. My website, cwexplore.com. Uh, there's a couple of books I've written about my experiences which can be found on Kindle and Audible and, uh, my website, Amazon, wherever. Um, but, uh, yeah, that's me for the time being, and, uh, I'm sure there'll be another journey before long.

    5. CWChris Williamson59:29

       Charlie, I appreciate you. Thanks, mate.

    6. CWCharlie Walker59:31

       My pleasure. Cheers.

    7. CWChris Williamson59:32

       (upbeat music) What's happening, people? Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks. And don't forget to subscribe. Peace.

Episode duration: 59:51