In the third century, thousands of Desert Fathers abandoned the cities on the Nile to seek out the paneremos – or inner desert. William Atkins contemplates the ancient Christians who founded the first monasteries.
A highly risky operation by the CIA to get information from an abandoned Russian drift station in the Arctic involved a helium balloon, an aircraft with horns protruding from its nose, and a flying pig.
Freediving on its own presents extraordinary technical challenges – which are inevitably added to when that diving takes place in sub-zero temperatures. Avaunt heads into the deep with Magali Côte.
Sylvia Cook tells the story of how she rowed across the Pacific with adventurer John Fairfax in 1971: surviving shark attacks, a cyclone, a broken rudder and being washed up on a coral reef.
Realising that cultural understanding was his ticket to staying alive, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Worsley looks back to his precarious time leading 15 soldiers through Helmand in the lead up to the war.
Avaunt meets one of the greatest living mountaineers, Jake Meyer, to discuss what motivated his return to K2, the infamous mountain that defeated him seven years ago.
Let us consider the companionship and hardiness of three men who, trekking through the pitch-black Antarctic winter, survived temperatures of -60°C,
crevasse falls and frostbite.
