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"My Podcast from Kyrgyzstan" - By Young Member Tom

By British Exploring Society,

Small Spontaneous Combustion: how small moments create lasting memories.

A podcast and blog by Young Member Tom

In the summer of 2022, Tom and his fellow Young Explorers embarked on a journey, hiking through the dizzying heights of Kyrgyzstan.

On the expedition, they recorded a soundscape of rolling experiences, from forging a pizza oven at basecamp and documenting the process to ecstatic mornings out in the wild waking to a tempest of horse’s hooves ripping through the valley.

This podcast seeks to retell those small quirky moments which make the day-to-day life of a British Exploring Society expedition so absurdly memorable. You’ll hear an untampered, raw experience of Young Explorers surviving in the wilderness.

All soundbites from the expedition are accompanied by context and heartfelt reflections from Tom, who captured the expedition in sound and who took the time to put this podcast together.

listen to the podcast here

“We felt free to express ourselves…”

“These visceral moments which might seem trivial are what bind us, and I believe returning to this playful state is essential in fostering strong relationships. Instead of feeling too confined to express myself, I felt personalities became amplified and could even bridge the divide between our differences.”

Dear Listener,

To me, modern life is cluttered with too many things to passively entertain us. Most of us can probably admit to arriving back from work, utterly exhausted and rummaging for the remote to stir you into a temporary state of numbness or trancelike intermission. Most interactions with others have a commodified social interface, whether that be shelling out for coffees or visiting attractions nearby – we simply need that excuse to meet. Well, for myself, expedition was complete immersion in this other kind of third space or place of recreation and relaxation.

I wasn’t surrounded by a flurry of advertising telling me what to think and feel or at the mercy of my phone shooting cheap memes to the group chat. Instead, I was present amongst the brilliant company of other explorers. Confronted by our new surroundings, I felt instead of just performing to how society wished me to act back home in the UK, we began exploring a new range of possibilities; people began shedding their social armour of conventional behaviours and just rolled with it. We became free to express ourselves. Suddenly it felt normal to prat around with big sticks and joust down the riverbanks, it was normal to huddle together in a tent that should only reasonably accommodate eight people with fourteen of us crowding around for tonight’s narrated chapter of ‘Andrew the Mouse’ and normal to conduct nighttime editorial ‘amendments’ to each other’s fire names (Tutun and Kamas fire) which lay inscribed by white stones on the hillside.

When you think to those you deeply trust and admire, how many of those close friends were involved in some memorable antics that you needn’t repeat to your superiors? These visceral moments which might seem trivial are what bind us, and I believe returning to this playful state is essential in fostering strong relationships.

Instead of feeling too confined to express myself, I felt personalities became amplified and could even bridge the divide between our differences. This third space, this bastion of shared creativity housed an incredible opportunity for pursuing our own interests. I felt at liberty to learn new things such as getting into audio production for producing soundscapes, attempting to get funky with pastels and cheffing up new camp cuisine which may have all proved grating back home. Instead we were met with encouragement and some good laughs – even when the cow you drew looked demonically disfigured or the honey glaze on the pizza began to burn.

So, to any future Young Explorers hoping to head out on expedition. This really is a golden opportunity to write and share your own stories and anecdotes with others rather than yielding to ones already jotted. Where you yourself have a role to play and no doubt will have some fun writing it. Think about the chance to escape passivity for a moment, to flourish in the here and now – when yes, you did that thing or saw that new sight!

If you ever need a fervent reminder – binge watch a Netflix series or hop on a long gaming session and then ask yourself this:

  • how did you feel immediately after?
  • Was there any real human connection made to open with others on a more personal level?
  • Is it likely to be a core memory that survives our inevitable ageing condition, or one that can be retold with a sense of passion, pride or purpose?

Go have a blast. Challenge your own autonomy and perhaps leave with just a few anecdotes for the treasure trove when you’ve returned.

– Tom, Kyrgyzstan 2022

A video tour of basecamp

On the 2022 Kyrgyzstan expedition, Tom and his fellow Young Explorers decided to create a quick video tour of their expedition home in the At-Bashi mountains to give you a glimpse of what day-to-day life looked like between their tours out into the wilderness.

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