Thread by @benedictallen

1/7. REPORTING BACK, following my off-grid expedition to Papua:

Since my return in December, quite a few friends have kindly asked - they often do! - how on earth I've again avoided succumbing to something terrible. Afterall, I always go alone and without GPS and other conventional backup from the Outside World.
A large part of the answer is that I do have backup - it's just that my backup is indigenous. Just one of the hundreds of kindly souls who've kept me alive is this man, Sawi, who's here indicating a possible (fairly impossible, as it turned out!) route over PNG's Central Range.
But next door, in (Indonesian) Papua, things were trickier - if only because on my first visit, in 1984-5, I was entering a place of nearly perpetual warfare. The indigenous people I was so dependant on were wary of others - and might soon be embroiled in the next fight, as I was about to find out the hard way.

2/7. At the tender age of 24 I thought I was immortal - we all do! - but even so, I was well aware of how badly things could end for me if I didn't have at least one sure ally on my expedition, which aimed to document threatened lowland forests and their communities to the east of Sumo, an isolated mission outpost. So, before I headed off through what was then unmapped terrain, I sought out the only other outsider down there - an evangelical preacher by the name of Taringen, whom American missionaries had brought in from his Dani community, up in the highlands. In this picture he's standing with a crowd of potential converts - the Momwina. Though by and large the only people who ever came to his 'church' hut were fascinated children and bemused ladies. The Momwina men stayed well away.
Frankly, Taringen took some persuading to come with me - he wasn't so sure that heading off with some of his disgruntled potential converts into somewhere that was uncharted, and not yet even visited by a single outsider, was such a healthy option. His wife was even less convinced. Yet he decided to come - whether just because he felt sorry for me, or out of a sense of Christian duty. It was an extraordinary act of generosity and bravery, it seems to me now, looking back.

3/7. One problem was that the two Momwina I recruited to come along with us weren't convinced that heading into unfamiliar forest, home to potential enemies, was such a good idea either - and insisted on bringing their friends. There were now nine of us and they came along fully armed. Furthermore, to give you an idea of how vulnerable Taringen and myself were, our Momwina companions had asked for salt by way of wages, and the entire load of these 'wages' were carried not by me but by them, in my blue rucksack. But showing this trust in the Momwina, it seemed to me, was vital. As I told Taringen, if things went wrong, our lives might depend on treating them not as guides or employees but as friends. (Taringin had never used a camera before, but with my guidance took this, the only photo of the expedition party.)

4/7. Taringen proved a marvel; helped along by his faith in Jesus - his bible was rarely out of sight when we made camp- and perhaps the faith I placed in him, that is Taringen, he adjusted to the Momwina diet (here a baked snake), and alongside me gradually gained the trust of the Momwina. Bearing in mind the forest was now being rapidly encroached, their cultures, trees, lives being assaulted, the key, it seemed, was to come here not like Indiana Jones - forceful and therefore a probable threat - but as visitors who were here to listen and learn, and were very obviously vulnerable. In Taringen's case, it had been crucial all along that he was a fellow Papuan and not Indonesian (in Papua they are regarded as occupiers) or another invading white missionary.

5/7. After a day or two, we were entirely reliant on the Momwina to help us navigate the forest - my map was the best available, but only a basic aeronautical chart for pilots, and even many airstrips were wrongly positioned on it. But in the Momwina's hands we made our way, and this meant we were not confidently marching along but quietly feeling our way.
That said, each day was very often hair-raising. There were terrible rivers to cross, swamps to wade - and I couldn't risk the slightest injury because we were already a long way from the only airfield, let alone the nearest hospital. But threats from nature are always exaggerated, not least by explorers with their stories of wild beasts - aggressive snakes, piranhas, jaguars and so on. Much more of a worry in our case was that we ourselves would be perceived as a threat. Very often, we'd find ourselves being monitored through the undergrowth by people wondering what the intentions of our Momwina companions were - and whether they, and perhaps us, should be done away with. That was how it was, back then.

6/7. Finally, we came to a people called the Obini. Again, I followed the same principle: I would approach in a spirit of vulnerability, as a guest here - and certainly never proceed into a community without being invited. We waited on the other side of a river, calling out to the Obini to see if we might cross. After a while - by now we'd made a fire to cook up some wild breadfruit tree nuts - the Obini answered. Carrying quite a few bows and arrows, a party of men and also one plucky boy, waded through the river to meet us. (Here's a quick photo I took upon their arrival - a confused and tense moment, the Obini suddenly aware of me and not sure who I was or what my camera was, their backs turned to me).

7/7. However, we shared the salt with them and after a while of talking things over with the Momwina they began to relax. Somehow, they had felt reassured that our intentions were good - and perhaps taking a better look at me, an ungainly six-foot-four-inch giant with huge, unwieldy German paratrooper boots they knew I was a long way from home. They gently helped me across the river like an old man, holding both my hands.

This was something very touching: a people with well-grounded fears - of the advancing missionaries and Indonesians but also neighbours (the Obini and Momwina had wiped out quite a few of each other only ten years before) - they had decided to repay the trust we were placing in them by trusting us in their small settlement. That said, there was still a guard with a semi-drawn bow trained on us as we arrived - I took this quick picture of him.

And I'll try to write tomorrow with a further instalment - describing how things very nearly went catastrophically wrong for us, all those years ago.
Such were the naïve attempts of an idealistic young 'explorer' trying his best to record our planet with the help of only indigenous people - and not always very much succeeding!