Discovery Channel Magazine India - March 2014

THE C-WORD 72 CURING CANCER

ACTION CAR 88

SECRET LIVES 36

WHY THE JEEP RULES

BECOME A SUPER SPY

UNUSUAL TRAVEL 58

EUROPE'S SMALLEST NATIONS

MARCH 2014 I `150 Invitation price `100

C H A N N E L M AG A Z I N E I N D I A

TO HELL AND BACK

BEAR GRYLLS LEADS US THROUGH EPIC STORIES OF REAL-LIFE SURVIVAL — INCLUDING HIS OWN PG 100

EDITOR'S LETTER

C H A N N E L M AG A Z I N E I N D I A Editor-in-Chief Aroon Purie Group Chief Executive Officer Ashish Bagga Group Synergy and Creative Officer Kalli Purie Editorial Director Jamal Shaikh Associate Editor Seetha Natesh Art Director Piyush Garg Asst Art Director Rahul Sharma Designer Kishore Rawat

Impact (Advertising)

Group Business Head Manoj Sharma Associate Publisher (Impact) Anil Fernandes Senior General Managers Kaustav Chatterjee (East), Jitendra Lad (West), Head (North) Subhashis Roy General Manager Shailender Nehru (Bangalore), General Manager Velu Balasubramaniam (Chennai)

Business

Head, CRM/CMS & Senior GM Vikas Malhotra Chief Manager, Operations GL Ravik Kumar Marketing Managers Kunal Bag, Anuradha Rana Production Anuj Jamdegni

News stand Sales

Chief General Manager DVS Rama Rao General Manager - National Deepak Bhatt Sr Manager - North Manish Shrivastava Sr Manager - East Joydeep Roy General Manager - West Rajesh Menon General Manager - Operations Rakesh Sharma

DISCOVERY NETWORKS ASIA-PACIFIC Editorial Board

President and Managing Director Arjan Hoekstra SVP Content Group Kevin Dickie SVP and CFO sh*tiz Jain SVP and GM, South Asia Rahul Johri VP, Marketing, South Asia Rajiv Bakshi VP, Communications Charles Yap VP, Programming Charmaine Kwan VP, Marketing Magdalene Ng

Editorial (Novus Media Solutions) Editor Luke Clark Design Director Richard MacLean Chief Subeditor Josephine Pang Staff Writer Daniel Seifert Photo Editor Haryati Mahmood Senior Designer Bessy Kim

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Email: [emailprotected] Phone: +91 120 246 9900 Mail: Discovery Channel Magazine India, A 61, Sector 57, Noida 201 301 VOLUME 1 NUMBER 2

Discovery Channel Magazine reserves all rights throughout the world. Reproduction in any manner, in whole or part, in English or other languages, is prohibited. Discovery Channel Magazine does not take responsibility for returning unsolicited publication material. • Published and distributed monthly by Living Media India Ltd. (Regd. Office: K-9, Connaught Circus, New Delhi – 110001) under license granted by Discovery Networks Asia-Pacific Pte Ltd., 21 Media Circle #8-01, Singapore 138562. • All Discovery Channel logos © 2014 Discovery Communications, LLC. Discovery Channel and the Discovery Channel logo are trademarks of Discovery Communications, LLC, used under licence. All rights reserved. • The views and opinions expressed or implied in Discovery Channel Magazine do not necessarily reflect those of Living Media India Ltd., MediaCorp Pte Ltd or Discovery Networks Asia-Pacific, including their directors and editorial staff. • All information is correct at the time of going to print. • All disputes are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of competent courts and forums in Delhi / New Delhi only. • Published & printed by Ashish Bagga on behalf of Living Media India Limited. Printed at Thomson Press India Limited 18 - 35, Milestone, Delhi Mathura Road, Faridabad - 121 007, (Haryana). Published at K - 9, Connaught Circus, New Delhi - 110 001. • Editor: Jamal Shaikh

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A QUESTION OF MULTIPLE ANSWERS As a student in high school, I liked Multiple Choice Questions the most. I was lazy and fairly bright, so it took me hardly any time to tick the boxes, I’d never bother rechecking, and plan my escape. That POA worked well until I started studying humanities and attempting papers that elicited ‘soft answers’; nothing here was black and white, what was right for one could be wrong for another. The tick and the cross in the multiple choice: why do we tick, while several others cross? Why are citizens of the USA the only ones in the world who “month their date” before the day—not even their Canadian cousins follow suit. And why do admirers rave about the Monalisa smile, while critics stare at the same face and call the shaved eyebrows—a fashion trend at that time—ugly? The fact is that questions with no clear answers are the most intriguing ones of them all. Yarns are spun and myths are invented to explain the inexplicable, and logic is often given a break. And while each tale has its share of magic and entertainment, in the end, it is the story that throws up even more intriguing questions that wins the day. The magazine you hold in your hands is a treasure trove of such trivia that will capture your imagination. Take, for instance, our travel feature through Europe. While every other magazine continues to rewrite tomes on where to go in Switzerland and Spain, we bring to you five of Europe’s smallest countries: Have you thought of exploring the ski slopes of Andorra wedged in the Pyrenees between France and Spain? Or, have you visited San Marino (population: 32,448!) land-locked by Italy, which is one of the few sovereign states in the world with no national debt? Wouldn’t

you want to visit Liechtenstein once we told you that this entire European country, until recently, could be rented for just US$70,000 per day, less than what you’d pay for a top end hotel room for a few days?! Those of us into spy thrillers and reruns of Homeland will enjoy the fast-paced story on ‘How to be an international super spy…’. And all of us who brave city traffic every morning will take in the photo feature on gridlocks in cities all over the world with curiosity and comparison. Last but not the least, you’ll meet Discovery Channel’s daredevil superstar Bear Grylls in a no-holds-barred interview on what allows him the courage to live through death-defying adventures that make up his hit show Escape from Hell. The rush is palpable through the story, which ultimately begets the question: is adrenaline or precaution a better route to survival? Again, that’s a question with multiple answers.

Jamal Shaikh Editorial Director

ISSUE 03/14

CONTENTS DEPARTMENTS

FRONTIERS

10-TONNE TRASH

Cleaning up whale carcasses is a far more explosive affair than you might expect

SO YOU WANT TO BE A

HACKER

Fancy hacking your way to infamy? First, choose your headgear. Second, shave a yak ADVENTURE

AFGHAN SKATER

Afghanistan is home to horrendous conflict, inequality — and the the highest ratio of female skaters in the world HISTORY

EGG ASTRONOMY

Think you know what the Moon really looks like? Think again. THE TWO SIDES OF

DANCING

Shake loose. Bust a move. Boogie down. Just exercise caution to avoid grave injury.

THE GRID 15 DANCING CROSSING GUARDS, PIRANHA ATTACKS AND THE UNLUCKIEST LOTTERY PLAYER IN RECENT HISTORY PRISON TECH 20 JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE IN JAIL DOESN'T MEAN YOU CAN'T MAKE YOUR OWN SHOTGUN

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QUOTE UNQUOTE 16 TERRIFIED OF SCORPIONS? WELL, UNLESS YOU'RE REALLY UNLUCKY, A SCORPION STING PROBABLY WON'T KILL YOU ICON! 24 THE TWO-MINUTE SOLUTION TO HUNGER AND SOME NOODLE FACTS

IN A TWIST 24 STEFANIE SHATTUCK-HUFNAGEL'S SNEAKY PLOT TO MAKE YOUR TONGUE EXPLODE TIMEFRAME 25 IT IS 8.13PM, AND THE MOST SUCCESSFUL SKYJACKER IN HISTORY IS MAKING HIS AWESOME GETAWAY

I FEEL NOTHING 16 WARNING: BOTOX WILL MAKE YOU PRETTY, YET ROBOTIC WHAT'S ON 118 JOURNEY THROUGH AFRICA, IMMERSE YOURSELF IN AN ALIEN WORLD, HUNT FOR GOLD, AND ESCAPE FROM HELL WITH BEAR GRYLLS

COVER ILLUSTRATION: RAY TOH

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE

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100

FEATURES ISSUE 03/14 PHOTO FEATURE

WORLDWIDE JAM

Feel like your morning commute is getting worse? You're not the only one. Even Russian millionaires are feeling the crush COVER STORY: ADVENTURE

A DATE WITH BEAR GRYLLS

100

With a new show set to launch, the global survival phenomenon speaks up exclusively on what makes his adrnaline rush, and want more... TRAVEL

SIZE ISN'T EVERYTHING

Five European micro-cities, four days, one rented Skoda. Will our intrepid correspondent complete his mission of visiting each obscure principality? CARS

BUILT FOR BATTLE

Why has the iconoic Jeep remained a chariot of choice for adventure lovers? SCIENCE

SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY

A cure for cancer may remain a distant hope. Yet, more people are living with cancer than dying from it! MYSTERY

SO YOU WANT TO BE AN INTERNATIONAL SPY?

They have secret jobs, gadgets and girls? What does it take to become a super spy? And can you?

11 FEBRUARY MARCH 2014

PHOTO: JONAS WOLFF

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WOW

THERE IS NO ESCAPE Spiders are famous for spinning webs to catch their prey, but many spider species have abandoned this strategy and instead seize their prey directly. So how do they do it? A team of biologists from the University of Kiel, in Germany, suggested that perhaps the secret lies in the hairy adhesive pads known as scopulae, which are found at the end of a spider's legs. As blogger Jyoti Madhusoodanan wrote on the PLOS ONE community blog: "The researchers used a phylogenetic analysis of spider family trees to correlate different species’ prey capture strategies with the presence or absence of adhesive pads on their legs." The study was published in the May 2013 issue of PLOS ONE scientific journal. She notes they found that most spiders known to science "either built webs or were free-ranging hunters — and that the latter were most often found to have adhesive hairs on their legs". In other words, scopulae (pictured) have helped many species switch from using webs to active hunting, by enabling them to grab and hold onto prey that are literally struggling for their lives. 13 MARCH 2014

ISSUE 03/14

ILLUSTRATION: CARLO GIAMBARRESI AT ILLUSTRATIONROOM.COM.AU

FRONTIERS

BEACHED WHALES BEG AFTER-LIFE PROTOCOL

A video clip making the rounds recently showed a beached whale corpse exploding as a museum worker tried to cut up the body. Gross, yes, but the incident highlighted a very real problem that authorities are faced with. How do you get rid of a multi-tonne corpse that deposits itself on your shore? Tow the body away and tides could send it back. Bury it, and the decomposing whale could leak substances that attract hungry sharks. Or, you can blow it up. In 1970, the US Oregon Department of Transportation tried to dispose of an eight-tonne sperm

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whale by wiring it with half a tonne of dynamite. Boom! Huge chunks of blubber rained down on the area, one of them flattening a car. Surveying his Buick, the owner sighed, “My insurance company is never going to believe this.” In short, removing a rotting animal the size of a bus is tricky. No doubt that’s why even the scientists who wrote the 2005 version of Marine Mammals Ashore: A Field Guide for Strandings noted, “The simplest way for a carcass to disappear is to turn your back on it and walk away.” Seriously...?

NEWS

THE GRID A S I A- PAC I F I C

POLICE

A CASE OF DRUGGING:

A gangster known as Vikram Paras escaped police custody at a Delhi railway station recently — by offering drug contaminated food to the policemen on duty. Paras was being escorted back to Delhi, after a court appearance when he and possibly diguised accomplices, offered the police tid bits laced with sedatives. Paras had previously fled police, after “luring his escorts into a store on the promise of buying them branded apparel”.

MIDDLE EAST/AFRICA MECHANICS WITH A BANG Yemen is the second

most heavily-armed country in the world per capita, with over 54 guns owned per 100 people (one report estimated it had 61 guns per 100 people). So it may not be surprising that guns are used as a range of tools, aside from shooting things. A video released late last year shows two Yemeni policemen using their AK-47s to link batteries between two cars, so as to jump-start the unreliable engine of one cruiser.

SUPERSTITION

BLACK MAGIC BILL

Months after one of its key campaigners was shot dead, a bill to curb superstitious practices was approved in the state of Maharashtra. Known as the anti-black magic bill, it has attracted fervent naysayers, as well as proponents. The bill aims to clamp down on holy men who claim to “cure” incurable diseases, or exploit their customers — nonetheless, the bill has made exemptions for astrologers, palm readers and other religious practices.

SOUND

HERE, KITTY! Cat owners

might be unsurprised by the findings of a research at the University of Tokyo, Japan. Cats recognise their owner’s voices — but many choose to ignore them. Researchers studied 20 housecats and noted their response to voice recordings calling their names. Comparing the response from an owner’s voice to a stranger’s, they found that cats show a greater response to the owner calling their name — though they still didn’t move.

STRANGE AND SERIOUS EVENTS FROM ACROSS THE WORLD EUROPE HONOUR AMONG THIEVES Spanish police say

BUST A MOVE Such is the

they received tapes from an old Super 8 camera from an unlikely source: a burglar. The criminal had broken into a house and found the tapes, which depicted scenes of graphic child abuse. Calling from a public phone, the thief directed police to an envelope with the stash. The authorities have since arrested the suspected molester, and are still looking for the burglar — “the one with the conscience,” said a police officer.

high level of safety in Canada that sometimes its local cops set off on some strange missions. Canadian police recently told a female crossing guard, well-known for her penchant for dancing on the job, to stop breaking out her rhythmic moves, for fear of distracting motorists leading to accidents. Spoilsports! Disappointed citizens urged the cops to “let her dance”. One netizen wrote dryly, “I’m surprised they didn’t taser her as well.”

LUCKY NUMBERS Last

THE AIDS TABOO While

WAVE BYE TO WIPERS

PIEZO POWER The roar of a jet engine is a bane to anyone who lives near an airport. But soon, that roar could be used to mute itself. Aerospace contractors in Alabama, in the US, have found that the 130-decibel noise can be harnessed using piezoelectrics. Piezoelectric materials use energy from movement — in this case, the vibration from sound waves — to generate electricity, which can power sensors that dampen engine noise by cancelling out certain frequencies.

December’s Friday the 13th proved to be an unlucky day indeed for one French lottery player. The pensioner, who played the same lucky number each week for the “Super Loto” national lottery decided, for once, to switch to another lottery game, the Euromillions, which had a US$58 million prize. Her number didn’t win the Euromillions — but it was the number picked for that week’s Super Loto, its top prize US$10.9 million.

KINKURU CURSES Paul Apowida, a British Army soldier born in Ghana, was branded a kinkuru, a child possessed by evil spirits after he survived two poisonings before age five. Eight of his relatives died of the same poisoning. The first time he was saved by a local nun. A soothsayer then told his stepmother to give him a lethal dose of herbs, which he also survived. It is thought his eight relatives succumbed to meningitis. Now 27 years old, Apowida works to have the practice banned.

AMERICAS

In a few years, your car could have a new way to wipe rain off the windshield: sound waves. Carmaker McLaren is designing a system adapted from fighter jets to repel water, insects and mud. High-frequency sound waves continually create a force field that cleans the glass. The technology is set to debut in McLaren’s P13 supercar. “The windscreen wiper,” the company’s design director tutted to press, “is an archaic piece of technology.”

there have been improvements in South Africa in the fight against AIDS, such as a huge campaign to deliver anti-retroviral drugs to 2.4 million people, the country is still mired in superstitions about the disease. Speaking to CBS News, Carol Diyani, an aid worker who runs a care centre in the country, noted, “Some people will take it as witchcraft. Believe it or not, some people will say, ‘No, no, there’s just somebody who’s actually killing our family.’”

Frightened of Fridays the 13th?

CHARMS OR RITUALS MAY BOOST CONFIDENCE, BUT AN “UNLUCKY” NUMBER CAN NIX IT. IN 1993, RESEARCHERS NEAR LONDON REPORTED THAT, OVER A THREE-YEAR PERIOD, HIGHWAY TRAFFIC WAS LIGHTER ON FRIDAY THE 13TH THAN ON FRIDAY THE 6TH. YET, INEXPLICABLY, ON THE 13TH, ROAD ACCIDENTS SENT 52 PERCENT MORE PEOPLE TO HOSPITALS.

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NEWS NEWS BRIGHT SIDE OF SMOG? NEWS OUTLETS IN CHINA RECENTLY DREW FLAK FOR SUGGESTING THAT COUNTRY’S SMOG PROBLEM HAD RESULTED IN FIVE BENEFITS

1 2 3 4 5 THE SMOG HAS UNITED THE CHINESE LIKE NEVER BEFORE

IN THE FACE OF SMOG, EVERYONE IS EQUAL

IT HAS MADE THE CHINESE PEOPLE MORE CLEARHEADED

THE SMOG HAS INDUCED A SENSE OF HUMOUR AMONG THE CHINESE

IT HAS ALSO MADE THEM MORE KNOWLEDGEABLE

ROBOTIC POST

Robots delivering goods to your doorstep might one day be a reality, with Amazon’s announcement about their “octocopter” plan. CEO Jeff Bezos described the idea to use small flying drones to deliver light packages to nearby customers within 30 minutes. Very exciting. Yet, Prime Air, as the plan is called, is not likely to see the light of day anytime soon. The announcement sparked many fears, including drones being shot down, malfunctioning units dropping items on children’s heads, drones hijacked to deliver bombs, bird strike, theft, and so on. Maybe we shouldn’t be too quick to dismiss the idea: Octocopters, says Bezos, can carry a little over two kilograms, “which covers 86 per cent of the items that we deliver”. While you might think it seems lazy to wait for a robot to fly a DVD to you, it’s environmentally sound; cleaner than driving your carbon monoxide-

spewing car; and fuelling traffic woes. Some research has also shown that you’re less likely to buy unneeded goods online than in real life. Maybe Amazon is onto something after all.

BEST REACTIONS TO PRIME AIR Owls

Book retailer Waterstones created their own spoof delivery system, the Ornithological Waterstones Landing Service where, like in Harry Potter, owls deliver your stuff. Although they admit, “Putting OWLS into commercial use will take a number of years as it takes ages to train owls and we only just thought of it this morning!”

MISSED DELIVERY Note

The Twitter jokester @QuantumPirate posted a note from a missed drone delivery. The package could not be dropped off because “drone reached sentience and defected to join the machines in the upcoming revolution against mankind”. As a result, “The worker who arranged this delivery will be punished.”(!)

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Museum of Science Fiction

Members of the 501st Legion, a Star Wars costuming organisation, dressed as stormtroopers for a promotional video publicising the world’s first comprehensive sci-fi museum at Seattle, Washington.

Quote Unquote "ALTHOUGH WE APPRECIATE THE SOCIETAL PRESSURES TO CONSUME ALCOHOL WHEN WORKING WITH INTERNATIONAL TERRORISTS AND HIGH STAKE GAMBLERS, WE WOULD ADVISE BOND TO BE REFERRED FOR FURTHER ASSESSMENT OF HIS ALCOHOL INTAKE"

DR PATRICK DAVIES AND COLLEAGUES

Never Say Never Again? It should’ve been “I’ll never drink again”, suggests Davies and colleagues at Nottingham University Hospitals, UK. The team analysed James Bond’s alcohol intake in 14 of

Ian Fleming’s novels. Unsurprisingly, the super-spy was found to be a boozehound. They found 007 drank 92 units of alcohol per week, four times the recommended amount in Britain. The research notes that Bond would have been crippled by his addiction, with memory problems, tremors, cirrhosis of the liver, and a high risk of heart attack or stroke. “Here is a man who drinks the equivalent of a bottle and a half of wine every day,” they wrote, “yet who is required to defuse nuclear bombs. You can do one of those things, but you can’t do both.”

PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES (STORM TROOPERS); LUCKYIRONFISH.COM (IRON KANTROPS)

DRONES: the new delivery boys

OCCUPATIONS

TECHNOLOGY

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BE A

HACKER

You’ve watched Tron, The Matrix, and the 1983 film WarGames, and decided this hacking lark is for you. What should you do...? Hacking conferences are being held everywhere, including at DEF CON, a Las Vegas annual, which in 2013 saw 13,000 people attend it. Incidentally, learning to hack isn’t necessarily easy, but the tools to access the skill aren’t esoteric either. Hackthissite.org is a legal site where users can learn and test their skills in a safe environment. Also, feel free to root around Facebook’s system — they encourage it, and, as their /whitehat/bounty page says, if you find a bug, “our minimum reward is US$500”, and “there is no maximum reward: each bug is awarded a bounty based on its severity and creativity”. Google does have a maximum reward for bug-finding, though, which is US$20,000.

2,600 hertz

In 1972, a hacker named John Draper found he could use the whistle toy from Cap’n Crunch cereal boxes to hack phone lines and make free calls. The whistle, pitched at 2,600 hertz, patched him through to the “operator” mode. Early phone hacking was known as “phreaking”

jargon Doxing: publishing documents (“dox”) of a hacked victim, such as emails, to reveal details of their personal life Hog: a program that eats up a system’s resources, slowing it down Social engineering: using non-technological ways to gain access to a system, such as pretending to be the IT guy, or simply reading the password off a victim’s notebook

TIME NEEDED TO HACK PASSWORDS

10 MINUTES SIX LOWERCASE LETTERS

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23 DAYS SEVEN LOWERCASE AND UPPERCASE LETTERS

463 YEARS CONTAINS EIGHT UPPERCASE AND LOWERCASE LETTERS, IN ADDITION TO NUMBERS AND SYMBOLS

HOWEVER, HACKERS ARE GETTING FASTER ALL THE TIME, WITH ONE MANAGING TO CRACK JUST OVER 2,700 PASSWORDS IN FIVE HOURS AND 12 MINUTES EARLY LAST YEAR

PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES ICON: THE NOUN PROJECT, RYZHKOV ANTON (BOX)

First up, do not do anything illegal. Note, that not all hackers are “bad guys”. The so-called white hats use their skills to protect companies and organisations from the devious black-hat hackers, who often work for illicit profits, or just to cause chaos. We’ll assume that you want to be a good guy, someone who sniffs out weaknesses in systems and helps design better protective software. Also don’t assume that you have to be like Keanu Reeves in The Matrix, living a solitary, friendless life. Most white-hat hackers are family guys with steady pay cheques, tied into a social community.

TECHNOLOGY THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX

INMATE INNOVATIONS Prisoners engineer more than just escapes Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention. So, if you give prisoners a lot of free time and incentive, they can come up with jaw dropping solutions

Shiv + Scoring Some prisoners cleverly score a glass or plastic blade so that it breaks off when they stab an enemy, allowing the perpetrator to escape without leaving fingerprints.

Chocolate = Pain By melting caramel chocolate bars, inmates have created a boiling weapon to throw into someone’s face. The sticky caramel makes it hard to wash off, and increases the risk of a deep burn.

Batteries + Needle Adding a bunch of needles to a small motor stolen from a vibrating console controller in the rec room resulting in a tattoo gun for some fashionable prison ink.

Fruit + Plastic Bag Pruno, or prison wine, is brewed by fermenting fruit and sugar in a plastic bag, sometimes with bread or ketchup, for about 72 hours. The resulting alcohol content is as high as 12 per cent. A blogger who tried it described it as “brushing your teeth, slamming a glass of grapefruit juice, throwing it up, then drinking it again”.

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“INFINITY” AND “LIGHT BULBS” AREN’T TWO WORDS YOU USUALLY HEAR IN THE SAME SENTENCE. UNLESS YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT GRAVITYLIGHT, A REVOLUTIONARY DEVICE THAT GENERATES LIGHT USING THE POWER OF GRAVITY. IT COSTS NOTHING TO POWER, AND WILL ESSENTIALLY RUN FOREVER. A BAG UNDER THE LIGHT IS FILLED WITH 10 KILOGRAMS OF ANY FOUND MATERIAL. THE WEIGHT THEN DRAGS THE BAG DOWN SLOWLY, TURNING GEARS — THIS POWERS THE LIGHT FOR AROUND 30 MINUTES. SELLING FOR AROUND US$10, GRAVITYLIGHT PAYS FOR ITSELF IN JUST A FEW MONTHS, AS USERS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES NO LONGER NEED TO BUY ENVIRONMENTALLY UNFRIENDLY, AND POTENTIALLY LUNG-DAMAGING KEROSENE FUEL. DCM QUITE LIKES THE IDEA OF USING SEETHROUGH BAGS AND FILLING THEM WITH WATER AND PYROSOMES, JELLYFISHLIKE BIOLUMINESCENT CREATURES THAT ARE CONSIDERED AMONG THE BRIGHTEST ORGANISMS IN THE OCEAN. HENCE THE NAME “PYRO” FROM “FIRE”. HEY PRESTO — YOU’VE GOT A GRAVITY-POWERED LAVA LAMP.

CROWDSOURCING LOVE Facebook’s

Force Remember where you were on New Year’s Eve, 2012? Reese McKee certainly does. He was partying in Hong Kong when he came across a crying American lass. Being a gentleman, he consoled her, they chatted, sparks flew — then she left. But not before whispering two words: “Find me.” All he had was a photo and her name: Katie. So he turned to social media, starting a Facebook campaign, sharing her photo in

the hope that someone would know her. “If nothing else, it would just be great to get in touch with her and say ‘thank you’,” he said. The campaign worked — perhaps too well. “We found the girl,” he told press, but she was apparently rather bemused by all the attention, and had taken down all her online profiles. Whether Katie will get in touch with McKee and understand the gesture remains to be seen, but it certainly attests to the power of the internet. It took

just a couple of days for McKee's page to be shared 8,700 times — and a week to find her. THE STALKING EFFORT SCALE 0 “SHE LEFT; I CAN’T FIND HER. GUESS I’LL GIVE UP” 4 “I’LL POST A ‘MISSED CONNECTION’ ON CRAIGSLIST” 6 “MAYBE I’LL POST HER PHOTO ALL OVER THE INTERNET” 9 “I SHOULD PROBABLY PRINT OUT SHOTS AND STICK THEM ON STREET LIGHTS, TOO” 10 “TOMORROW I WILL LOOK UP PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS IN THE YELLOW PAGES”

PHOTOS: SKATEISTAN ADVENTURE (SKATEISTAN) ICONS: THE NOUN PROJECT, JOE HARRISON (JAM), SIMON CHILD (FACE), GUILHERME ZAMARIOLI (ALCOHOL)

Labels + Surface Message notes can be conduited by sticking them to the back of sticky labels (from a deodorant can) and taped to the bottom of a table.

Bedposts + Match Heads In 1984, German prisoners improvised a shotgun and managed to escape. They used an iron bedpost for the stock, bullets from scavenged steel and match heads, and a firing mechanism triggered by batteries and a broken light bulb.

ADVENTURE NEWS LOOKS CAN BE DECEIVING

This Scorpion is Not Dangerous

It looks like evil on legs, the stuff nightmares are made of. So what are the chances that this critter would kill you? High, surely? Nope. Out of some 1,500 species of scorpion, a mere 50 have been identified as dangerous to humans — some say the number is as low as 20. So if one stings you, there’s a 3.33 per cent chance you’re in danger, and that's in the worst case scenario. "OW"

SOME SCORPION MOTHERS HAVE A GESTATION PERIOD AROUND THE SAME LENGTH AS HUMANS

"AWW"

THEY CAN GIVE BIRTH TO UP TO A HUNDRED BABIES, WHO CROWD AROUND THEIR MOTHER’S TAIL FOR PROTECTION

"ICK"

IF HUNGRY, THE MOTHER MAY CHOW DOWN ON SOME OF HER KIDS

"OOO"

ARE YOU AN ARACHNID COLLECTOR? FINDING SCORPIONS IS EASY. THEY’RE FLUORESCENT UNDER ULTRAVIOLET LIGHT. NO ONE KNOWS WHY, BUT COULD IT BE BECAUSE THEY LOVE RAVE MUSIC?

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SKATEBOARDING FOR PEACE Encouraged and motivated Afghan girls begin to prove their mettle In 2007, Australian skateboarder Oliver Percovich arrived in Afghanistan with his boards, and soon attracted dozens of street children who would shriek with excitement and beg for rides. So was born Skateistan, a charity in Afghanistan and Cambodia aiming to empower youth and street kids. Afghan girls aren’t allowed to ride bikes — but they can ride skateboards. Nearly half of Skateistan students are girls, giving Afghanistan the highest rate of female participation in skateboarding. So, why skateboarding? Their site explains, it’s a way to engage youngsters and direct them towards the charity’s education, community and leadership efforts. Most importantly, “All children deserve the right to play.” DCM spoke to Rhianon Bader, an instructor at Skateistan, about the power of high socks and skateboarding.

Is there a local twist to the burgeoning skater culture in Afghanistan? The kids have developed their own style, in clothing, slang, tricks and also music. It’s a mix of local youth cultures and adaptations

from YouTube. You also see the younger students emulating the styles of their teachers who become de facto trendsetters. Merza, our long-time skate teacher in Kabul, made rolled up pants and high socks popular for a while. The kids see the best skaters as idols and role models — and that’s really positive. What's been your greatest moment so far? I was very lucky and got to take the

students on their first trip to Europe, chaperoning four Afghan girls on a trip to Italy in 2011. They performed skate demos around the country, spoke to the media, participated in panel discussions and learned to breakdance. I was so proud of the girls and Skateistan for making it happen. Skateistan suffered great losses from bombings. How hard was it to keep going after the explosions in 2012 killed and injured your students for the second time? We are lucky to be doing something positive and important for a lot of young Afghans. Many feel helpless because there seems no light at the end of the tunnel. In contrast, we were able to get stronger because we actually help to prevent such losses, by taking kids off the streets and into a safe place, even if only for a few hours a week.

OBSESSIONS NEWS ICON: RAMEN

TONGUE TWISTERS

Is there anything to be gained from these mumbo-jumbos?

“Pad kid poured curd pulled cod.” Even reading that sentence gave you a bit of a headache, didn’t it? As well it should. That jumble of word mush was crafted by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in the United States, who were investigating the link between speech errors and brain functions. Yes, they created their own tongue-twister, one so difficult that not one of their test subjects could perfectly repeat it. True, it loses points because the sentence doesn’t actually make sense, which we think is cheating a little. But that fact actually added to its difficulty, meaning that many subjects just stopped talking altogether. And the study gains extra points because one of the lead researchers has a name just waiting to be used in a tongue-twister: Stefanie ShattuckHufnagel*. Why do tongue-twisters niggle at us like a piece of corn in a tooth? Partly because they’re the auditory

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equivalent of watching someone thread a needle: we always think we can do it better. But there’s also the cheekiness factor built into many twisters, where saying it incorrectly often leads to a lot of involuntary swearing. “I slit the sheet, the sheet I slit; and on the slitted sheet I sit,” is one very charming example. Such is the magnetic siren call of the tongue-twister that they even make it into fictional languages, such as Game of Thrones’s Dothraki. If a handsome barbarian ever tells you “Qafak qov kaffe qif qiya fini kaf fa*ggies fakaya”, you’ll know it means “the trembling questioner crushed the bleeding boar that squished a kicking corn bunting”. *Here’s DCM’s attempt: Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel’s short truck shot towards the six sitting ducks’ untucked shirts, though Shattuck’s truck swerved through swiftly. Say it thrice, quickly and with no errors, and you’ll earn our undying respect.

Noodle Boon

The two-minute solution to hunger Throughout the world, just today alone, people will eat an estimated 270 million servings of instant ramen noodles. Each serving costs just a few cents. Japanese businessman Momof*cku Ando would be proud — in 1958, he produced the first prototype of instant ramen noodles by frying them in hot palm oil, thus drying them out for future rehydration. In post-war Japan, where food supplies were still not plentiful, Ando’s goal was to create a cheap meal that could be stored near indefinitely. Having succeeded, his product has blossomed in popularity ever since. In 2000, the Japanese voted karaoke, and the Sony Walkman, as the second and third most important national inventions of the 20th century. No prizes for guessing what came in at number ichi (one). In creating a dish beloved by busy office workers and students everywhere, Ando was guided by a higher set of principles: “Peace will come when people have food,” he said wisely. The World Instant Noodles Association, WINA, agrees. WINA operates to ferry instant noodles to those who need them most. When a 7.0-magnitude earthquake devastated Sichuan, in China, WINA got around 240,000 packages of ramen into victims’ hands before you could say “cup noodle”. Yet ramen has a downside — at 49 percent saturated fat, palm oil is hardly healthy. Palm oil cultivation in Indonesia and Malaysia has led to the loss of habitats of endangered species, and farmers often clear plantations by burning them to the ground, creating acrid haze that pollutes the air and people’s lungs. When Singapore’s haze monitor hit a record high of 401 (above 100 is unhealthy), palm plantation fires were blamed.

PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES

LANGUAGE

HISTORY RUSSIAN ROULETTE

THIS WAS PRACTISED AS RECENTLY AS 2010, WHEN FIVE US POLICE MARKSMEN EXECUTED DEATH ROW INMATE RONNIE LEE GARDNER. EACH RECEIVED A SPECIAL COIN FOR CARRYING OUT HIS DUTY

TIMEFRAME

8:13pm November 24, 1971 The Case of the Elusive Skyjacker The quiet, middle-aged hijacker who called himself Dan Cooper wore a snazzy suit and a skinny tie with a mother-of-pearl clip. A few minutes into the US domestic flight from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle, he handed one of the stewardesses a note, which said he was hijacking the plane. Unfortunately, she thought it was a pickup attempt, and tucked it into her pocket unread. “You’d better read that, miss. I have a bomb,” he murmured. He gestured to his briefcase, filled with wires and what looked like sticks of dynamite.

The note demanded US$200,000 and two sets of parachutes, to be delivered by authorities upon landing. They considered giving Cooper fake parachutes, and hey presto — one dead hijacker. But what if he strapped a hostage into the second ‘chute? The plane soon landed, and the other passengers disembarked. Cooper got

1815

IN 1815, ONE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE’S CONDEMNED MARSHALS GAVE THE ORDER TO FIRE ON HIMSELF

A BAD TIME TO FLY

In 1968, there were 36 hijackings of aircraft in the United States. In 1969, that number had gone up to 71, and in 1970 to 69.

KILLER JAMES W RODGERS WAS NOT GRANTED HIS LAST REQUEST BEFORE BEING SHOT: A BULLETPROOF VEST

YOU SLEEP ONLY TWICE

Are you the kind of person who wakes up at 2am and can’t get back to sleep? You’re experiencing a bimodal sleep pattern, or segmented sleep. Many animals practise it, and we used to, as well, until the Industrial Revolution, after which light bulbs burnt all night, and our sleep rhythms went bananas. Prior to this, the terms “first sleep” and “second sleep” were used around the world. During the short periods of wakefulness, it was common to eat, pray, or even socialise. So, if you pop a pill to sleep (some of which have been linked to a 300 per cent to 500 per cent increased risk of early death), take note. You might not actually need one.

his demands, and the plane took off again with just Cooper and the crew. He ordered the pilots to fly at 10,000 feet (three kilometres) and 150 knots (close to 278 kilometres per hour), conditions favourable to a skydive.

At about 8:13 pm, he opened the aft stairway of the craft and jumped, with around 9.5 kilograms worth of US$20 bills strapped to him. He was never seen again, and to this day there are no clues to his identity. It is the only unsolved airplane hijacking case in US history — unlike the slew of copycats that Cooper inspired. Fifteen others tried to emulate Cooper in 1972. All failed.

1960

a fairly high suicide rate. Then, in just months, it plummeted by about 30 per cent, and hasn’t changed since. What happened? Ovens had been converted from coal gas, which contains deadly carbon monoxide, to natural gas. Just like that, the most common method of self-destruction had been removed from everyday life, and many people didn’t seek out another. Some 17,000 people end their lives with a firearm in the United States, about half of all national suicides. What would happen if civilian access to guns was removed? If similar studies are to be believed, you could save 17,000 lives.

SAVED BY AN OVEN Here’s a scary fact. In a 2001 study of suicide survivors, 13 per cent said that they had thought of killing themselves for longer than eight hours. Seventy per cent said they had thought about it for less than an hour. Nearly a quarter said the idea occurred to them just five minutes before the attempt. That’s the decision to end your own life, made in less time than it takes to cook a hard-boiled egg. Suicide, it turns out, is often highly opportunistic. A strange anecdote bears this out. Until the 1970s, England had

DON’T DO IT! 4 seconds Time it takes to drop into the water off the Golden Gate Bridge in the United States, one of the world’s most popular suicide destinations 1 regret Those who jump and survive often report an instant regret 93% Of those people who have attempted suicide, an estimated 93 per cent do not make a second attempt 25 MARCH 2014

TRADITIONALLY, WHEN A CONDEMNED MAN WAS TO DIE BY FIRING SQUAD, ONE BULLET WOULD BE MADE OF A HARMLESS MATERIAL, SO NO EXECUTOR WOULD KNOW WHO KILLED HIM

OPINION A 3-MINUTE PITCH BY IAN JARRETT

SO WHY SHOULD I CARE ABOUT... JOURNALISTS

48 HOURS

Life or Death Students at Northwestern University, United States, have an intriguing investigative journalism course. They split into teams, and see if they can unearth wrongful convictions in capital punishment cases. They have saved the lives of many innocent prisoners, even succeeding in helping secure a stay of execution for a man 48 hours away from death. Their further investigations later proved his innocence, and freed him from 17 years in jail.

“THE PRESS PROVIDES AN ESSENTIAL CHECK ON ALL ASPECTS OF PUBLIC LIFE. THAT IS WHY ANY FAILURE WITHIN THE MEDIA AFFECTS ALL OF US.” – LORD JUSTICE LEVESON, OPENING HIS ENQUIRY IN 2011 INTO THE ROLE OF THE UK PRESS AND POLICE IN THE COUNTRY’S PHONE HACKING SCANDAL

On any list of the world’s most admired professions, you will find journalists generally near the bottom of an increasingly murky barrel. Ahead of car salesmen, but behind lawyers. Fair enough, 2013 wasn’t a good year for journalists. The Leveson enquiry in the UK exposed dirty dealings by journalists, while the criminal trials of high-ranking News 26 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

Limited editors revealed the lurid world of phone hacking of celebrities, sports star and British royals. No wonder many have been questioning the value of journalists. But for every phone hacker, there are scores of investigative journalists shedding light on illegal, immoral, and highly suspect activities. Think Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's reporting on the Watergate break-in and other Nixon administrationrelated crimes for The Washington Post. Think of the reporters who have risked life and limb to bring stories from violent conflicts in the Middle East. Among them, Christiane Amanpour,

international reporter for CNN and ABC News; Kate Adie, the BBC's former chief news correspondent; and Marie Colvin, a Sunday Times journalist in the UK, who was killed in the besieged Syrian city of Homs. In 2010, Colvin spoke about the dangers of reporting on war zones. “Craters. Burned houses. Mutilated bodies. Women weeping for children and husbands. Men for their wives, mothers, children. Our mission is to report these horrors of war with accuracy and without prejudice,” she said. “We have to ask ourselves whether the level of risk is worth the story.” “Journalists covering combat shoulder great

responsibilities and face difficult choices. Sometimes they pay the ultimate price,” she added. Today, reporters are expected to do more — blog, tweet, and take pictures — to feed the 24-hour news cycle. There is less time for painstaking investigative journalism. But at a time of information overload, there is an even greater need for professionals who can sort the facts from the floss. We journalists can live with our poor popularity ratings. But the world would not be a better place if the likes of Woodward and Bernstein, Colvin, Adie and Amanpour, and others like them, had chosen a different profession.

HISTORY KICK HITLER!

SAFETY IN NUMBERS? Limitations of laws that presumably protect us

acceptable level of contamination. Same with “insect filth”, where anything under an average of 30 or more “insect fragments” per 100 grams is fine. Once you start thinking in terms of the sorites paradox, the world seems strange. In some places, if a male commits a murder aged 17 and 360 days and is caught, he cannot be executed as he is a “minor”. If he had murdered someone a week later, his execution by a court of law would be deemed legal. Small changes, yet big differences. Is “when is a heap not a heap” too deep for you? There are sillier philosophical questions out there, courtesy of the internet and its most thoughtful meme, Philosoraptor If a mime commits suicide, does he use a silencer? If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is a picture of a thousand words worth? If revenge is a dish best served cold, and revenge is sweet, is revenge ice cream?

Egg in the Sky

PICTURE THE MOON. ARE YOU IMAGINING A ROUND, SILVERY OBJECT? THOUSANDS OF ASTRONOMERS AROUND THE WORLD ARE TUTTING AT YOU. THE MOON ISN’T ROUND, IT’S EGG-SHAPED. AT NIGHT, WHEN YOU LOOK UP AT THE MOON, YOU’RE ACTUALLY LOOKING AT ONE END OF THE “EGG” POINTING AT YOU. IN NATURE, EGG SHAPES CONFER MANY ADVANTAGES. IT'S NO WONDER THEN, THAT BIRDS ARE SO FOND OF THEM. PERFECTLY ROUND EGGS WOULD ROLL OUT OF NESTS FAR EASIER, WHEREAS THEIR ASYMMETRY MEANS THAT A KNOCKED EGG WILL ROLL IN A TIGHT CIRCLE. CLIFF-DWELLING BIRDS, FOR EXAMPLE, LAY EVEN MORE OVAL-LIKE EGGS THAN BIRDS THAT LIVE ELSEWHERE. EITHER WAY, PERHAPS IT’S TIME WE STOPPED THE FANCIFUL MYTH THAT THE MOON IS MADE OF CHEESE — AND START REALISING THAT IT COULD MAKE POSSIBLY THE GREATEST OMELETTE IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM.

THE BOTOX EFFECT

We live in a crazy world, where the most toxic substance is also the most popular cosmetic enhancer. Just one kilo of the botulinum toxin is said to be enough to kill every single human being on Earth. With two teaspoons, you could eradicate the population of the United Kingdom. Yet, as Botox, it is injected into millions of faces each year, as it is

fantastic at smoothing out wrinkles, when delivered in doses of a few billionths of a gram dissolved in saline. But with a flat, expressionless face comes two potential problems. Botox users report a curtailed ability to express emotions facially— frowning, smiling, and so on. The other is that this blandness seems to transfer itself emotionally, too. By being unable to

mirror other people’s expressions, Botox users are also less able to empathise with their emotions. Turns out the “mirroring effect” we often engage in unconsciously isn’t just good etiquette.

BOTOX CAPITAL

The ‘Botox capital’ of the world is Westport, Ireland, producing nearly the entire planet’s supply in this single area, population 6,063.

T E S T Y O U R E M PAT H Y ! D O Y O U F E E L W H AT T H E S E E M O T I C O N S A R E E X P R E S S I N G ? (#^.^#)

(; _ ;)

Embarrassed. See the blushing cheeks?

Crying. Yes, you're right, there's the tears

( 8(|) Preoccupied Homer Simpson (look at it sideways) 27 MARCH 2014

PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES (JOURNALISTS)

One grain of sand is clearly not a heap. Neither is two, or even 20. But you keep adding grain upon grain until you get to 1,000, and think, “Yep, that is now a heap of sand.” What happens if you take away a single grain? Does it cease to be a heap? This isn’t as banal as you might think. It’s known as the sorites paradox, and has been debated by ancient Greek philosophers who were as wise as their beards were long. This way of measurement affects everything from criminal law right down to food safety. Let’s take rat hair in your peanut butter as an example. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will only take action to remove a certain peanut butter from the shelves if there is found to be “an average of one or more rodent hairs per 100 grams”. If the average is one hair per 150 grams, for example, they don’t have to take action, as it’s deemed an

THE TWO SIDES OF

DANCING

Shake loose. Cut a rug. Bust a move. Boogie down. Boys and girls, it’s time to hit the dance floor — just be cautious of head injuries, or any mention of Kevin Bacon

As one Japanese proverb puts it, “We’re fools whether we dance or not. So we might as well dance”

The moonwalk: a move so cool that even a type of bird (the red-capped manakin, Pipra mentalis) uses it to impress the ladies

To disguise the fact that their impressive moves were actually a ferocious martial art called capoeira, slaves in Brazil set their moves to music, so that it looked like an acrobatic dance

Watch Evolution of Dance, a YouTube video where a comedian discos through some of the most iconic moves of the past five decades. History has never been so funky

A Hollywood producer’s evaluation of Fred Astaire’s first screen test: “Can’t act. Can’t sing. Balding. Can dance a little.” We're not so certain we disagree

Various studies have found that dancing generally helps to improve physical health, boosts happiness, and increases cognitive function — as if we needed more reasons to enjoy it

At the risk of sounding like your mother (see left), metalheads take note: headbanging has been associated with neck pain, spasms, aneurysms and whiplash — although not much formal research has been conducted

Dancing and your high school prom will always be linked in your memory, causing nuclear levels of embarrassment A sustainable dance floor in Canada generates electricity from the energy of dancers’ feet. After its installation in 2010, in six days it generated enough juice to power 80 homes for a day

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The fact that your parents dance, ever, is a major reason to proceed with caution. Especially any time that Footloose is involved

In 1518, a “dancing plague” in the European city of Strasbourg saw 400 people dancing for weeks in what was thought to be an outbreak of mass hysteria. Many died from exhaustion. Historians still aren’t sure how it came about

FEATURES 36

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100

PAGE 72 HOW CLOSE ARE WE TO CURING CANCER?

PAGE 50 THE TRAFFIC TRIALS: A GLOBAL PHENOMENON

PAGE 100 LIVING ON THE EDGE: BEAR GRYLLS’ STORY

PAGE 88 THE MIGHT OF THE MIGHTY JEEP

PAGE 58 ON THE ROADS OF EUROPE’S TINY NATIONS

PAGE 36 THE SECRETS OF THE LEGENDARY SPIES

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They have secret jobs, and names, globetrotting assignments and mind blowing gadgetry. Just how does one become an international super spy? Cain Nunns meets international spies, who have lived the high voltage life through the glorious years of espionage 36 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

SO SO YOU YOU WAN WAN TO TO BE BE AN AN INTERNATION INTERNATIO SUPER SUPER SPY? SPY?

SPY GAMES

NT NT 37 MARCH 2014

PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES

NAL ONAL

There is no razor-cut sharp Savile Row suit. No Patek Philippe Celestial, with built-in lasers and sonic weapons implanted into its US$2,00,000 watch face. Nor did he leap out of a bullet-riddled Aston Martin, a leggy blonde Russian model in one hand and a briefcase in the other. He climbed out of a taxi, sporting a backpack, an ill-fitting Hawaiian shirt and comfy tracksuit pants. Heavyset, he is in his late 50s, with the sort of ruddy face formed by hard drinking sessions, and not by volcanic ash and tea tree oil spa treatments. In fact, there isn’t really anything out of the ordinary about the man that we’ll call Vincent, apart from his thick ginger beard, and imposing size. He is huge. A veritable manmountain, he has hands the size of dinner plates, and a back-slap that could almost knock the dents out of car panels. he only other thing out of the ordinary about Vincent is that he is an “asset”. That is, he passes on information to a controller, or field officer, of an Asian intelligence agency — he refuses to say which one — for cash or favours. Our man in Shanghai is a small cog in the everyday machine that keeps governments and civilisations running. It is the grey-area side of our bureaucracies that remains filled with mystery

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and intrigue — and where deception has been elevated to an art form. A realm where people are never who they say they are, and where slivers of information have the power to save an empire, or spark a global war. The agencies that run the show, the alphabet soup comprising the US-based CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) and NSA (National Security Agency); MI6 and MI5 in Britain; plus the KGB of the

former Soviet Union and FSB (Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation) of modern-day Russia, are just some of the headliners topping a bill that is supported by basically every government and their own intelligence agencies today. “I’ve done business in Asia for decades, and met a lot of people from a lot of different walks of life. I guess those connections are worth something,” says Vincent. He

SPY GAMES

refers to a Western friend as his introduction into life as an intelligence asset. “My father had worked for naval intelligence, and I thought it would be exciting to get involved,” he explains. “Not many people get to say they have done this type of work. The travel perks made it a really attractive option as well,” he adds, in between huge gulps of coffee and smatterings of nervous laughter. “I look at it like due

diligence or political risk work — both of which are standard in the corporate world I come from. I’m not stealing government or corporate secrets, and I don’t provide information if I suspect someone might be directly hurt by it. That is my number one rule,” he asserts. Vincent insists that he only collects targeted information, primarily about public figures including politicians, ambassadors, businessmen

and civic leaders. “It’s mainly personality traits or trends. Is this guy a womaniser? Is this group gaining or waning in popularity? Is this person corrupt? I’m not asking sources to sell me top-secret information,” he says. The first thing you need to know about spies is that you can’t believe everything you see in those James Bond movies. An average day for an international spy entails tedious, detailed

“I DON’T PROVIDE INFORMATION IF I SUSPECT SOMEONE MIGHT BE DIRECTLY HURT BY IT. THAT IS MY NUMBER ONE RULE”

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CASE OFFICERS NEED TO HAVE EXTREMELY ANALYTICAL MINDS, A GENEROUS SUPPLY OF STREET SMARTS, BE ABLE TO ASSIMILATE CONTACTS, AND ACUTE OBSERVATION SKILLS. MOST IMPORTANTLY, BE A MASTER MANIPULATOR In the United States for example, CIA operatives undergo intense training at a specially built facility called the “Farm”. Most of the training focuses on gathering intelligence, though paramilitary classes such as hand-to-hand combat, weapons training, defensive driving, amphibious landings, parachuting and extraction techniques also make up part of the curriculum. Sadly, the fun stuff is the exception rather than the norm. Lindsay Moran, a former CIA case officer and author of the book Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy, always wanted to be a spy. She 40 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

obsessed over the Harriet the Spy book series as a little girl — even fashioning her early life after the fictional character. So it wasn’t much of a leap for Moran to approach the agency after graduating from Harvard University, Massachusetts, US. “I envisaged myself in a black catsuit climbing walls. The reality is very different. It’s more like a glorified salesman — but what you’re selling is espionage,” she says. “You find people and assets that have information you want, and you essentially use them. Develop a friendship, and then the part that is very distasteful, find out what their weaknesses are.” According to Moran, case officers need to have extremely analytical minds, a generous supply of street smarts, be able to assimilate and generate contacts, and have acute observation skills. And most importantly, be a master manipulator. “People ask me all the time, ‘When did you fear for your life?’ Honestly, it was very rare that that happened, because the people who are actually taking the risks are the people you have recruited to give you the information.” Moran says that aside from real or imagined dangers, over time, other stresses of the job do take a massive toll on spies. “Personal relationships are very difficult. I was naive about the strain that it puts on you when you lead a double life. It’s so hard to establish any kind of relationship, because you can’t tell anyone what you do. Lying becomes your default rather than the exception.” Most operatives also work two jobs, a cover assignment, on top of their intelligence gig — which often results in a punishing workload that demands your attention 24 hours a day, seven days a week. “You’re out on the streets

meeting agents or looking for places to meet agents, or you are incessantly cultivating contacts — writing up every meeting you have, and everything you do,” she explains. “In addition to that, a lot of our lives are spent on surveillance detection routes, which means driving around for one to three hours at a time, to make sure you are not being followed.”

MESOPOTAMIAN SPOOKS

While Vincent claims that he isn’t actively looking for highly classified information, many others are, and have. In fact, they always have. The reality is, we have had espionage as long as we have had organised states and political organisations. According to Dr Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, a history professor at the University of Tennessee and the director of the Center for the Study of War and Society, in the United States, the earliest traces of intelligence work date back to about 2,000 BC Mesopotamia. “The Bible is full of espionage activities, especially in the capture of Jericho,” says Liulevicius, who teaches online on spies and spying. “The Greek historian Herodotus records that the Greeks sent spies to learn the size of the Persian army of King Xerxes,” he notes. “When these spies were captured, Xerxes did not have them executed, as was usual — but instead had them led about his camps, shown the power of his forces, and then set free to return to Greece. He explained to his shocked advisors that in this way, the Greeks would learn that he was even mightier than they had feared, and would not go to war. This was psychological warfare of a high order, using transparency as a weapon.” Centuries later, and by 1909, spy agencies in the West were being established on a

MAIN PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES

work, observation, and dry bureaucratic procedures. While propaganda and covert missions are part of the job description, the majority of a spy’s responsibilities centre on assessing and recruiting sources, who provide them information. Like a bureau chief, intelligence officers keep the information pipeline open, pay their sources, and then report everything back to their headquarters.

SPY GAMES

SHADOWS OF HISTORY FOUR FAMOUS SPY FIGURES, FROM THE FAMOUS TO THE FICTIONAL

UNKILLABLE HERO?

Over the course of a dozen novels, Agent 007 has consumed an alcoholic beverage every seven pages on average — 317 in total. He's also smoked up to 70 strong cigarettes a day, sometimes “cutting back” to 20 a day. So in real life, the super-spy would likely have been a cancerous wreck with a liver like an old sponge — assuming he survived the dangers inherent to the job and lived to tell the tale, of course. to play.

The Anti-007 Hailed as a far more realistic iteration of a spy than James Bond, George Smiley is the brainchild of author John le Carré. Small and owlish, Smiley might not have had much luck with the ladies, but his razorsharp memory and ability to blend into a crowd made him a force to be reckoned with. The MI6 intelligence officer first appeared in le Carré’s 1961 novel Call for the Dead, and has been portrayed in dozens of books, TV and movies.

The Sneaky Lover He’s justifiably famous for having bedded 122 women (by his count), but 18th century Italian adventurer Casanova was also a spy, who gathered intelligence for the French government. Known as a garrulous, party-loving ladies’ man, Casanova had a great many opportunities to obtain information. In his autobiography, he noted, “I often had no scruples about deceiving nitwits and scoundrels and fools when I found it necessary.”

The Criminal Turned Double Agent A British thief who was caught by the police, Eddie Chapman was in jail when the Germans invaded the island of Jersey in 1940. The Nazis trained him as a spy and parachuted him into England, where he promptly turned double agent, working for MI5. Appropriately named Agent Zigzag, he became one of the most important agents of the war, feeding the Germans reams of fake information. Chapman offered to undertake a suicide mission, and assassinate Hitler at one of his rallies.

The Chinese Tactician Although not a spy himself, Sun Tzu, author of the infamous military strategy manual The Art of War, was a strong proponent of espionage. To shorten a war, foreknowledge was vital, he wrote. “Foreknowledge cannot be gotten from ghosts and spirits, cannot be had by analogy, cannot be found out by calculation. It must be obtained from people,” he said. The Chinese strategist and philosopher wrote, “You must seek out enemy agents bribe them to stay with you and use them as reverse spies.” 41 MARCH 2014

permanent basis. Initially, most of these were set up before World War I as instruments of combat in anticipation of the horrific carnage that would soon tear Europe apart. It was not until the run up to, and conclusion of, World War II that major peacetime intelligence capabilities were initiated. The CIA and the United Kingdom’s code-breaking organisation, the GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters), were chief among these. “The CIA was formed in 1947 from the Office of Strategic Services,” says Peter Earnest, a 35-year CIA veteran and founding executive director of the International Spy Museum in Washington DC, in the United States. He says the agency was established very quickly. “Some recruits came from the FBI (US Federal Bureau of Investigation), some from the universities. It was heavily reliant on the Ivy League schools, because they were people much like themselves, who had travelled or knew another language.” And indeed, the agency needed to be quick. Soon after formal hostilities ended, the long chill of the Cold War began. The world’s two divergent superpowers, the United States and the former Soviet Union, along with their allies and proxies, squared off in a battle for global and

ideological supremacy. It was a battle that would only really start to wind down around the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

AGENTS BECAME KEY PLAYERS IN THE COLD WAR, WITH COVERT OPERATIONS BECOMING THE ORDER OF THE DAY INTELLIGENCE HEYDAY

From the outset, the Cold War was a time demanding the collection of critical information from the opposite ideological side of the fence. Agents became key players in this international drama, with counter-intelligence and covert operations becoming the order of the day, mostly driven by the nuclear arms race. Each side wanted to protect its secrets, while learning as much as possible about the enemy, in particular the pace of their nuclear weapons development. Winston Churchill described this as “the battle of the conjurors”, and intelligence officers as being those who were practised in the art of deception. While the US and the Soviet Union never formally engaged each other on the battlefield, proxy wars costing millions of lives and dollars sprouted all over the

THE INTERNATIONAL SPY MUSEUM PRESENTS: TOOLS OF THE TRADE SHOE WITH HEEL TRANSMITTER ROMANIAN SECRET SERVICE 1960S–1970S

SECRETLY OBTAINING AN AMERICAN DIPLOMAT’S SHOES, THE ROMANIANS OUTFITTED THEM WITH A HIDDEN MICROPHONE AND TRANSMITTER, THUS ENABLING THEM TO MONITOR THE CONVERSATIONS OF THE UNSUSPECTING TARGET

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CAMERA CONCEALED IN BRIEFCASE STASI 1970S–1980S

THIS CAMERA WAS DESIGNED TO USE INFRARED FILM AND ALLOW STASI AGENTS TO TAKE FLASH PHOTOGRAPHS WITHOUT USING ANY VISIBLE LIGHT

SPY GAMES

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planet, many backed and run by intelligence services. In terms of being potential spy material, Earnest says he was a young man who was in the right place at the right time. “I was approached by the CIA in 1957,” he remembers. “Just as I was getting out of the Marine Corps in Japan. They had heard about me through my then-fiancée, who was one of their field officers — and later became my wife. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Then it became a career.” During the Cold War, spies saw themselves as playing a leading role in a great historical drama, an ideological struggle that would eventually map out human destiny. “It’s a different world now. Our world was the Cold War,” remembers Earnest, who spent decades running covert operations in Europe and the Middle East. “The great concern was the rising might of the Soviet Union, and the spread of communism.” During this period, operations exploded globally in both size and scope, during what some have described as a golden age of espionage. “I coined the term the Golden Age in the 1980s — but it began to be used in a sense that I hadn’t intended. I actually meant it ironically,” says Dr Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, who teaches at the University of Edinburgh’s School of History, Classics and

SPECTACLES WITH CONCEALED CYANIDE PILLS CIA CIRCA 1975–1977

A POISON PELLET WAS HIDDEN IN THE ARM OF THIS PAIR OF GLASSES. CHOOSING DEATH OVER TORTURE, A CAPTIVE COULD CASUALLY BITE DOWN ON IT WITHOUT AROUSING SUSPICION, UNTIL IT WAS TOO LATE

FOUNTAIN PEN CAMERA CIA LATE 1970S

THIS FOUNTAIN PEN WAS ONE OF THREE CONCEALMENTS DESIGNED FOR A TROPEL CAMERA, THE OTHERS BEING A KEY CHAIN AND A CIGARETTE LIGHTER. SUCH EVERYDAY ITEMS WOULDN'T DRAW A SECOND GLANCE

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BECOMING A SPY IN TODAY’S WORLD COMES DOWN TO DRIVE AND INTELLECT. YOUR HEAD IS YOUR MOST VALUABLE GADGET Driven by Cold War angst and the financial fuel of the 1980s economic boom, the order of the day back then was double and even triple agents, with spies involved in everything from assassinations and propaganda, to bribery and the propping up or tearing down of political figures, who were often replaced by equally shady individuals. Jeffreys-Jones, who wrote the recently published In Spies We Trust: The Story of Western Intelligence, says the atmosphere was by now quite distinct from intelligence in the 1950s. “They were aggressive in

different ways. Yes, it was overthrowing regimes, but at the same time it was fulfilling an important intelligence function. You could say that it had a restraining influence on policy,” he explains. “The US military would say that the Soviets were building more missile bases and ballistic missiles — but the CIA as a civilian organisation would pour cold water on those claims.” However, he says there was a huge price to be paid by both sides for their covert operations, and their interference in the internal politics of foreign countries. For the CIA, he says, the agency’s reliance on the cloistered world of Ivy League graduates began to evolve, due to a series of embarrassing gaffes, as well as changes in the technology landscape. “First, the Bay of Pigs disaster discredited them,” Jeffreys-Jones notes. “And then technology came on in a big way. There were already massive computers employed by the NSA for code-breaking purposes, but intelligence became a lot more technical — with high-altitude flights, high-definition photography and satellite surveillance. So what they needed more than human intelligence and spies on the ground, were technocrats. And these technocrats weren’t coming from Harvard and Yale. They were coming from MIT and Stanford,” he says.

SPIES LIKE US

Earnest says the present-day environment for international spies is a reflection of the post-Cold War world — with many current relationships and conflicts a direct result of the new world order when the Wall came down. “Paraphrasing Jim Woolsey, who was my former director at the CIA, it’s as if we have slain a dragon and have found ourselves in a jungle full of poisonous snakes. And in many ways the snakes are harder to keep track of.” As for the spies themselves, one of the major changes is probably a social and demographic one. For Western intelligence agencies, the traditional Cold War spy was typically a younger white male, educated at an elite university. Today’s spy on the other hand is often older, comes from a growing number of ethnic and educational backgrounds, is more adept at using technology — and is increasingly female. Far from being the cloistered “old boys’ clubs” of yesteryear, agencies have moved with the recruitment times. Today, candidates can apply online, agencies hold recruitment drives at universities — and some even advertise in newspapers and magazines. It will likely continue to evolve this way. You only have to look at the change in the ethnic composition of countries. Soon the population of

MAIN PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES

Archaeology, in Scotland. “It was seen as a golden age by the fans of covert operations,” adds JeffreysJones. “People often say: things were great then. We were able to overthrow regimes and run things the way we wanted to,” he says. “And it’s all got very messy since.”

TOOLS OF THE TRADE UMBRELLA DART KGB 1978

IN 1978 THE KGB ALLEGEDLY USED AN UMBRELLA MODIFIED TO FIRE A TINY PELLET FILLED WITH POISON TO ASSASSINATE DISSIDENT GEORGI MARKOV ON THE STREETS OF LONDON

44 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

GLOVE PISTOL UNITED STATES NAVY CIRCA 1942–1945

ARMED WITH A GLOVE PISTOL, AN OPERATIVE STILL HAD BOTH HANDS FREE. TO FIRE THE PISTOL, THE WEARER PUSHED THE PLUNGER INTO AN ATTACKER’S BODY

DEAD DROP SPIKES CIA 1960S–1990S

THESE SPIKES COULD BE FILLED WITH ANYTHING FROM MONEY TO MICRODOT CAMERAS. THEY WERE HIDDEN BY PUSHING THEM INTO THE GROUND AT A PREARRANGED LOCATION

SPY GAMES

US citizens born of white European stock will be in the minority. Intelligence services were slow to cotton on to this, but they cannot continue to be effective if they do not represent the ethnic population of their own countries. The NSA, the US surveillance agency based in Maryland (and the organisation at the centre of whistle-blower Edward Snowden’s revelations about electronic surveillance abuses), is not shy about looking for recruits on its website. It says, “At the nation’s top cryptologic organisation, you can work with the best and brightest, using your intelligence to solve some of the nation’s most difficult challenges. Your solutions can play a major role in shaping the course of world history.” The agency suggests that anyone with interests in computer science, engineering, mathematics, languages, intelligence and signals analysis, logistics, business and security, is welcome to apply. Over in Britain, Londonbased intelligence agency MI6 welcomes online applications too, promising that a potential agent’s “roles planning, carrying out and reporting on covert intelligence gathering operations overseas will put you at the heart of exciting world events”. “The agencies are more overt now,” says Earnest.

COAL CAMOUFLAGE KIT AND EXPLOSIVE COAL OSS CIRCA 1942–1945

THE COAL-SHAPED DEVICE WAS HOLLOWED OUT TO CONCEAL EXPLOSIVES, PAINTED USING THE KIT, THEN HIDDEN IN A PILE OF LOCAL COAL. THE DEVICE DETONATED WHEN FED TO A BOILER

“When there’s an event like September 11, they get hundreds of thousands of applications within days, just like Pearl Harbour.” As he describes it, becoming a spy in today’s world comes down to drive and intellect. “Your head is your most valuable gadget. It’s more like being an investigative reporter. You’re trying to find out things that other people don’t want you to find out about.” Similar skills are needed in espionage today as in some more above-the-line careers, he continues. “A spy lives in a world of secrets. But there are other people in all walks of professional life — doctors, lawyers, journalists — where there is a need for secrecy. We all might have to deal with something like that.”

THE GREAT GADGETRY

Spies have long relied on cutting-edge technology to separate themselves from the pack. There were gamechanging advancements going all the way back to World War I, with devices ranging from signal interceptors and overhead reconnaissance from balloons, through to high-flying aircraft, U-2 spy planes, and the development of satellites. All saw espionage breakthroughs. Earnest says long before the internet, technology geeks were a critical component within any intelligence community. “We sent agents to the Soviet Union during

SECRET CIPHER ASHTRAY UNKNOWN ISSUER CIRCA 1930–1940

HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT AS AN ASHTRAY, THIS DEVICE COULD BE USED TO ENCIPHER AND DECIPHER MESSAGES

45 MARCH 2014

the Cold War. But it was the overhead reconnaissance, and being able to see into and count the submarine pens, that really paid off,” he explains. As such, agencies relied heavily on private sector research and development. “One of the defining benchmarks of that time was the matchup between the agencies and the private sector in developing tech. The intelligence community has strived to stay ahead of the curve,” he says. Indeed, for decades, unbeknown to the rest of us, intelligence agencies have stayed beyond the technology curve. If history is anything to go by, then whatever their research and development programmes are working on currently will likely not see commercial application for years to come. The imperatives of spy work often resulted in technology breakthroughs. For instance, high-definition photography and highaltitude air travel both came about as a result of espionage research, as indeed did the satellite. Similarly, the first large-scale computer and the first solid-state computer (the forerunner to modern laptops) were derived from cryptanalytic research. The NSA’s pioneering work in flexible storage capabilities eventually led to the invention of the cassette tape. It also contributed to huge leaps in

semiconductor technology, face-recognition technology and the development of the first optical transistor. And you should probably bear in mind that those are just some of the inventions that we actually know about.

FUTURE SPOOK

But where will it all lead? Some point to the furore over on-the-run whistleblower Edward Snowden’s claims of passive listening and detection programs used on millions of emails and phone calls as just the start of a new era of computerbased intelligence — which may even render most traditional intelligence jobs redundant. Then again, by that same logic, many more opportunities will open up for tech-savvy applicants. The CIA has been using game theory algorithms for decades, similar to ones used in complex high-finance formulas. Insiders say that for espionage, these will learn patterns by correlating electronic communications with breakings news stories, terrorist threats and events on the ground. New York University political science professor Dr Bruce Bueno de Mesquita has been credited with much of the theory used by the CIA. Writing in a Guardian article in June 2013, Christopher Steiner, author of Automate This: How Algorithms Came to Rule Our World,

FEMME FATALE When 28-year-old Anna Chapman was arrested as a spy in 2010 in the US, she understandably nabbed headlines. Press dubbed the beautiful Russian national “the Red Head”, and made much of the fact that her beauty didn't preclude having brains — a fact she made abundantly clear, with an IQ of 162. She was soon deported back to Russia, where she is something of a celebrity. Last July, she made headlines again when she tweeted “Snowden, will you marry me?!” to the NSA's secret-leaker. She later tweeted “@nsa will you look after our children?”

TOOLS OF THE TRADE STEINECK ABC WRISTWATCH CAMERA GERMANY CIRCA 1949

THIS SUBMINIATURE CAMERA ALLOWED AN AGENT TO TAKE PHOTOS, WHILE PRETENDING TO CHECK THE TIME. AN AGENT WOULD CAREFULLY AIM THE CAMERA — NO EASY FEAT SINCE THERE WAS NO VIEWFINDER — AND PRESS A BUTTON ON THE WATCH TO CAPTURE THE PHOTO. ITS FILM DISK COULD PRODUCE EIGHT EXPOSURES

46 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

TOBACCO PIPE PISTOL BRITISH SPECIAL FORCES CIRCA 1939–1945

THIS ORDINARY-LOOKING PIPE FIRED A SMALL PROJECTILE THAT COULD KILL A PERSON AT CLOSE RANGE. THOUGH IT MIGHT NOT HAVE BEEN A GOOD IDEA TO TRY AND USE IT TO SMOKE

SPY GAMES

MAIN PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES

noted Bueno de Mesquita contended that human intelligence was flawed, since we rely on “gossip, innuendo and backstories,” as well as preconceived notions about a source’s worth through shared relationships. In comparison, Steiner argued, all algorithms care about is finding data streams that are impossible for humans to detect. The added bonus is that they work 24 hours a day, seven days a week — and, unlike Snowden, are not prone to whistle-blowing or counterespionage. According to the article, a CIA study of more than 1,700 predictions of future intelligence events made by Bueno de Mesquita's algorithms were right twice as often as the agency’s own analysts. “It makes perfect sense — as our own lives are increasingly lived through technological media, so too intelligence work shifts in this direction,” says Liulevicius animatedly. “And it does so at a high level of abstraction, as experts sift through millions of electric communications, seeking metadata to interpret.” It's important, however, to note that this need not automatically mean the end of living, breathing flesh and blood spies. “To the extent that the interpretation of data will have as its ultimate goal an understanding of human decisions and plans, the

TESSINA CAMERA AND CIGARETTE CASE CONCEALMENT STASI 1960S

THE TESSINA CAMERA WAS EASILY CONCEALED IN A MODIFIED CIGARETTE PACK. THIS MODEL CONTAINS ALMOST 400 PARTS, INCLUDING RUBY CHIPS TO REDUCE FRICTION AND WEAR. TINY HOLES IN THE SIDE OF THE PACK ALIGNED WITH THE CAMERA LENS, WHICH MEANS A SPY COULD REACH IN TO GRAB A REAL CIGARETTE, ALSO STORED IN THE CASE, AND SIMULTANEOUSLY CAPTURE A PHOTO

human element will have to remain,” argues Liulevicius. “And that human element is as changeable and mysterious as it has been since the human race began.”

BOTH HIGHDEFINITION PHOTOGRAPHY AND HIGHALTITUDE AIR TRAVEL CAME ABOUT AS A RESULT OF ESPIONAGE RESEARCH, AS INDEED DID THE SATELLITE AND THE COMPUTERS. Moran too agrees that technology, however advanced, will never completely replace humans in intelligence roles, simply because we are so unpredictable. “To create algorithms that can completely predict human emotions and vulnerabilities, which are constantly changing and affected by a myriad of factors? I don’t think that’s possible.” People such as manmountain Vincent had better hope she’s correct. Otherwise he, like many of his ilk, might find themselves looking for a new job. Not to mention a smarter shirt.

LIPSTICK PISTOL KGB CIRCA 1965

USED BY KGB OPERATIVES DURING THE COLD WAR, THIS IS A 4.5-MILLIMETRE SINGLESHOT WEAPON. IT DELIVERED THE ULTIMATE “KISS OF DEATH”

47 MARCH 2014

NUMBER 853 / BY DANIEL L. SEIFERT / ILLUSTRATION BY MARK McCORMICK

FROM ZERO TO HERO: HOW TO BECOME A SUPER SPY YOU DO KNOW, THEY DON’T JUST HIRE ANYBODY TO JOIN THE US NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY OR MOSSAD. LIVING THE LIFE OF A SUPER SPY TAKES A WELL-HONED SET OF SKILLS, AND POSITIVELY A SHARP SET OF STEEL NERVES

1 TRAIN YOUR PERIPHERAL VISION 

Staring will be painfully obvious, whereas 180-degree vision is sneakily effective. And it’s not all down to biology — peripheral vision can be trained. Jugglers are great at it. Lady jugglers in particular, as some research says women have a wider angle of vision than men. Guys, meanwhile, seem to be better at spotting things from a distance

“THE POTATO SALAD IS SOUR”

3 TALK LIKE A SPY 

Reporting back to HQ? Don’t say, “I followed him and he called the police and they were like stop, and I was like aaaargh, and I ran away. It was really scary.” Instead say, “Project is blown. The ants have joined the picnic and the potato salad is sour”

2 GET GOOD AT EAVESDROPPING 

You’d be surprised how much cupping a hand over your ears can increase perceived volume (up to 12 decibels). But do it subtly GOOD A quick pretend earlobe scratch that allows you to catch the exact digits of the nuclear launch codes BAD Duct-taping traffic cones to the side of your head WORSE Tapping the shoulder of your target and sheepishly whispering, “Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that” 48 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

THE MANUAL

AYE T RANS LATE Serbia Ja samn bwaha dvostruki agent, haha!

I am a

doubleEnglish bwahaagent, haha!

Play a

udio

5 BE A SECRET-MAGNET 

Pick a random person to talk to during your evening commute. Your challenge is to glean three bits of personal information. If within 10 minutes you can uncover the name of this stranger’s pet parakeet, their thoughts on Mars bars versus Snickers, and if they’ve ever cheated on their wife (or husband), then you are well on your way to 007-ness. Good luck!

4 LEARN LANGUAGES 

There’s a job posting on the official US Central Intelligence Agency site for “Foreign Language Instructors of Arabic, Chinese/Mandarin, Dari/Pashto, French, German, Italian, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish and Turkish.” So get fluent, and you can “decode” transcripts that read, “Ja samdvostruki agent (Serbian for 'I am a double agent'), bwahahaha!”

6 MASTER THE ART OF DECEIT  Again, set yourself crazy tests and see how far you can go. Can you bluff your way in to the after-party at the Oscars, based purely on your passing resemblance to Jean-Claude van Damme? Well done. Especially if you are a woman

JEAN CLAUDE VAN DAMME

7 EVALUATE YOUR LOOKS 

Are you stunningly attractive? Then your forte might be seducing information out of unwitting assets. Is your face so bland that it is regularly mistaken for an emoticon? You’re probably better suited to tailing a suspected terrorist 49 MARCH 2014

8.30 A.M. PHOTOS: REUTERS

MUMBAI COMMUTERS DISEMBARK FROM CROWDED TRAINS DURING THE MORNING RUSH HOUR AT CHURCHGATE RAILWAY STATION IN MUMBAI.

50 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

CRUSH HOUR

PHOTOS: REUTERS

GRIDLOCK. IT’S A SITUATION WE’VE FACED FOR AS LONG AS THERE HAS BEEN TRAFFIC OF PEOPLE AND CARS. IRONICALLY, IT'S NOT GOING ANYWHERE ANYTIME SOON. DANIEL SEIFERT GETS STUCK IN A PHENOMENON THAT PLAGUES PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD

51 MARCH 2014

Relaxing in plush leather seats, sipping expensive champagne and savouring the unmistakeable flavour of premium caviar — now that’s the way to travel. And for some wealthy Russians, it’s the only way to effectively get abobut. Moscow’s jams are among the worst in the world, so an enterprising taxi service offered a novel solution: limos disguised as ambulances. For US$200 an hour, the city’s businessmen can nip to their destination in two shakes of a fake siren.

PHOTOS: REUTERS

EVERY MINUTE OF YOUR COMMUTE INCREASES THE CHANCE THAT YOU’LL DITCH A WELL-COOKED BREAKFAST OR DINNER IN FAVOUR OF FAST FOOD — WITH ALL THE HEALTH DISADVANTAGES This is par for the course for a city that, in December 2012, experienced a traffic jam that stretched 200 kilometres. It lasted for three days — but that’s small potatoes compared with other incidents, such as the 2010 jam outside Beijing, China that took 10 days to clear, or São Paulo snarls, which are regularly so lingering they stretch two-thirds the length of the Grand Canyon, in the United States. It’s rather ironic, really. As cars began to take off last century, they were envisioned as almost-magical timesavers, tools that would allow us to zip across cities with ease. Yet little has changed in practice. In the streets

52 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

of 18th-century London, England, the average horsedrawn carriage moved along at a stately 13 kilometres per hour. That’s the average speed of a London car today. Abandoning your car for public transport is another option, but not always a solution, as we can see from the “sardines in a can” conditions of many a megacity’s subway system. “Why do they call it rush hour when nothing moves?” comedian Robin Williams once quipped. But nobody’s laughing, and not just because rush hour is a daily annoyance. Its detrimental effects are as far-reaching as they are unexpected. Does a one-way commute take you longer than 45 minutes? If it does, be warned: a 2011 study published in 2011 notes that you’re 40 percent more likely to divorce your spouse, some say because more time in traffic jams means more stress and less time with your loved ones. Worse, every minute of your commute increases the chance that you’ll ditch a wellcooked breakfast or dinner in favour of fast food — with all the health disadvantages that entails. And, of course we know that driving to work is stressful, but an Australian survey of drivers found, depressingly, that a whopping 83 percent said the journey was more stressful than their job itself. Although this is perhaps not that surprising, considering the average driver around the world loses approximately eight days a year to congestion. On a larger scale, all those wasted man-hours add up too, with congestion estimated to eat up US$100 billion a year in the US alone. So what’s to be done? There are all sorts of

8.45 A.M. TAIPEI

8.00 A.M. SAO PAULO

CRUSH HOUR

WORLD'S 10 MOST CONGESTED CITIES INCREASE IN JOURNEY TIME DURING PEAK HOURS (AS COMPARED TO NONCONGESTED HOURS) IN THE SECOND QUARTER OF 2013, ACCORDING TO A REPORT BY GPS MANUFACTURER TOMTOM, WHICH EXAMINED 169 CITIES ACROSS SIX CONTINENTS

MOSCOW, RUSSIA JOURNEY TIME INCREASES BY 65 PERCENT

ISTANBUL, TURKEY JOURNEY TIME IS 57 PERCENT LONGER

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL JOURNEY TIME IS 50 PERCENT LONGER

WARSAW, POLAND JOURNEY TIME IS 44 PERCENT LONGER

PALERMO, ITALY JOURNEY TIME IS 40 PERCENT LONGER

MARSEILLE, FRANCE JOURNEY TIME IS 40 PERCENT LONGER ABOVE: MOTORISTS STOPPED AT A JUNCTION DURING RUSH HOUR IN TAIPEI, TAIWAN. THE MAJORITY OF TAIWAN'S VEHICLES AND RESIDENTS ARE CRAMMED INTO A SMALL PORTION OF THE ISLAND'S FULL AREA, CONTRIBUTING TO HIGH CONCENTRATIONS OF POLLUTANTS NEAR WHERE PEOPLE LIVE AND WORK LEFT: COMMUTERS WAIT FOR THE TRAIN AT A SUBWAY STATION IN DOWNTOWN SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL. THE CITY HAS SOME OF THE WORLD'S WORST TRAFFIC JAMS, WITH TRAVELLERS SOMETIMES NEEDING THREE HOURS TO TRAVERSE 14 KILOMETRES ACROSS THE CITY RIGHT: STATION WORKERS HELP A PASSENGER SQUEEZE INTO A CROWDED SUBWAY TRAIN CAR AT THE IKEBUKURO STATION DURING RUSH HOUR IN TOKYO, JAPAN

SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL JOURNEY TIME IS 39 PERCENT LONGER

ROME, ITALY JOURNEY TIME IS 36 PERCENT LONGER

PARIS, FRANCE JOURNEY TIME IS 36 PERCENT LONGER

8.15 A.M. TOKYO

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN JOURNEY TIME IS 36 PERCENT LONGER 53 MARCH 2014

7.45 A.M.

PHOTOS: REUTERS; AP (BOTTOM LEFT)

SHANGHAI

54 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

CRUSH HOUR

7.30 P.M. BEIJING

PERSONAL SPACE UNITED STATES A 1966 STUDY OF AMERICANS NOTED AVERAGE PROXEMICS ZONES PEOPLE FOUND COMFORTABLE

14–45 CM

INTIMATE DISTANCE

45–120 CM PERSONAL DISTANCE

1.2–3.5 M SOCIAL DISTANCE

LONDON

20–40 CM

AVERAGE PERSONAL SPACE BOUNDARY AROUND SUBJECTS TESTED IN THE CITY OF LONDON, ENGLAND. NOTE THAT THIS IS LIKELY TO VARY GREATLY DEPENDING ON THE COUNTRY OF STUDY

BEIJING

NUMBER OF PEOPLE PER SQUARE METRE OF SPACE ON BEIJING SUBWAYS DURING RUSH HOUR

ARTHUR BALFOUR,

FORMER PRIME MINISTER OF THE UNITED KINGDOM, SAID CIRCA 1910

“The motor car will help solve the congestion of traffic”

ABOVE: THE THIRD RING ROAD IN BEIJING, CHINA IS NOTORIOUS FOR ITS TERRIBLE TRAFFIC JAMS LEFT: COMMUTERS WITH BICYCLES, ELECTRIC BIKES AND MOPEDS MAKE THEIR WAY ACROSS THE STREET IN SHANGHAI, CHINA. WHILE CARS INCREASINGLY TAKE UP ROAD SPACE IN THE COUNTRY, THE BICYCLE IS FAR FROM DEAD. IN FACT, FOR MANY CHINESE, PEDAL POWER REMAINS A MAINSTAY FOR GETTING FROM PLACE TO PLACE RIGHT: IN MANY CITIES AND COUNTRIES WORLDWIDE, COMMUTERS ARE TURNING TO ALTERNATIVE FORMS OF TRANSPORT SUCH AS BICYCLES. CYCLING CAN GET YOU WHERE YOU NEED TO GO AND, AS A BONUS, HELPS YOU KEEP FIT

innovations and research that seem to offer tantalising solutions. For example, an analysis of drivers and traffic in Boston, in the United States, found that if you removed just one percent of people from the road, it would equate to an 18 percent improvement in traffic flow. Many also hold the opinion that driverless cars, which are very likely to start hitting roads in greater numbers by the end of the decade, will be a boon, what with their sensors and cold, computerised logic about road rules, braking times and average speed settings. It may be prudent to reserve judgement on that though. On roads with a vast majority of automated cars, such vehicles may indeed help smooth out traffic flow, but it remains to be seen if a mixture of old-fashioned cars and driverless ones just doubles the chaos. And as for getting that one percent of drivers off the roads, well, that’s tricky too. We often get attached to our automobiles, with some people thinking, “Hey, I paid money for it, I might as well use it.” Driving yourself also gives many people the world around a sense of independence, that we are in control of our travel — despite the fact that this is flagrantly untrue. Tom Vanderbilt, author of Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do, states the obvious: “The individual driver cannot hope to understand the larger traffic system.” How could we? You’re just a single salmon swimming upstream, after all. And even that metaphor might be the wrong way round. “You’re not driving into a traffic jam,” writes Vanderbilt. “A traffic jam is basically driving into you.”

Discouraging car purchases, incentivising the use of bicycles and public transport, structuring commute times and spaceage cars — these are all large-scale solutions that might work, given time and proper planning, though Russia is already trying out a few schemes. Last year, a few select machines in the Moscow metro would dispense free tickets — once users had completed 30 squats in under two minutes. Word is that Russian authorities also intend to introduce bicycles that charge your mobile phone while you ride.

DRIVERLESS CARS, WHICH ARE VERY LIKELY TO START HITTING ROADS IN GREATER NUMBERS BY THE END OF THE DECADE, WILL BE A BOON While these efforts were primarily a public relations move for the 2014 Winter Olympics, they display an innovative understanding of the incentives people might need to give up their cars for alternative modes of transport. And with auto ownership increasing around the world, the clock is ticking. In Beijing alone, more than 1,200 new sets of wheels hit the road every day — and this number is on the rise. Yet relatively recent figures show how far China would still have to go to match car ownership in the United States: there was one car for every 17.2 people in Beijing in 2011, compared to one car for every 1.3 people in the US at the time. 55 MARCH 2014

HIT THE ROAD

7.15 A.M.

2009

JAKARTA

THE YEAR TWO BICKERING MAYORS IN NEIGHBOURING SUBURBS OF PARIS DECLARED THE SAME ROAD ONE-WAY, IN DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS

ZERO NUMBER OF TRAFFIC LIGHTS IN THIMPU, BHUTAN'S CAPITAL

10%–70% UP TO 70 PERCENT OF PEOPLE DRIVING IN AMERICAN URBAN TRAFFIC ARE SIMPLY LOOKING FOR PARKING

1 IN 5 URBAN CRASHES ARE RELATED TO THE SEARCH FOR PARKING

80/10 MORE THAN 80 PERCENT OF TRAFFIC IN A TYPICAL CITY RUNS ON 10 PERCENT OF THE ROADS

For now at least, problemsolving as relating to traffic jams remains inventive, yet small-scale. In China, for example, there’s a special number you can call that will deliver an unusual service. Within minutes (hopefully) of your phone call, two men will zip to your location on a motorbike, nimbly navigating through the throngs of immobile vehicles to get to your trapped car. One man hops off, and takes your place in the jam, prepared to wait for as long as it takes before delivering your car home. Meanwhile, you hop onto the back of the motorbike — riding pillion — and are driven to your destination. If that doesn’t take your fancy, you could always seek out a counterfeit ambulance service. Which, we should point out, is patently illegal. 56 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

PHOTOS (CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT): CORBIS; GETTY IMAGES; REUTERS

CRUSH HOUR

7.15 A.M. JAKARTA

8.00 A.M. MOSCOW

ABOVE & FACING PAGE: MUCH OF INDONESIA IS PLAGUED BY TRANSPORT PROBLEMS, AND AS THE NUMBER OF TRAIN PASSENGERS OFTEN GREATLY EXCEEDS THE CAPACITY OF THE RAIL NETWORK, SO-CALLED "ROOF TRAVELLERS" (FAR RIGHT) ARE COMMON, DESPITE THE FACT THAT THIS METHOD OF TRAVEL IS BOTH DANGEROUS AND ILLEGAL. IN AN EQUALLY DANGEROUS MOVE, COMMUTERS SOMETIMES HANG ONTO AN ENTRANCE OF A COMMUTER TRAIN LEFT: AT PEAK PERIOD, MOSCOW'S PROSPEKT MIRA METRO STATION IS ALMOST LITERALLY A SEA OF PEOPLE

57 MARCH 2014

THE TINIEST NATIONS IN EUROPE ARE THE MOST COLOURFUL ONES AFTER ALL. ROAD REPORTER CHRIS WRIGHT HIGHLIGHTS THE CURIOUS LINKAGES THAT BRING TOGETHER THE CONTINENT’S MORE MYSTERIOUS STATES 58 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

ROAD TRIP

TRAVELS THROUGH

PHOTO: CORBIS

UNEXPLORED EUROPE

A LANDSCAPE SHOT OF THE TOWN OF VADUZ, LIECHTENSTEIN

59 MARCH 2014

VATICAN CITY

omething like a Persian rug is flapping beneath a top-floor window of the Vatican’s Papal Apartments, to the delight of atleast 5,000 people in St Peter’s Square below. There are people with flags, with banners, hoisted upon one another’s shoulders. It’s like a football cup final. Among the faithful stands a clutch of black-clad priests, in the best viewing spot in the shade. And then he appears: Papa Francesco, as they call the Pope locally, is at the window, waving gracefully. He speaks for a while in Italian, first about the Bible, then Syria, and then he is gone and the crowd disperses. This has been the home of every Pope, by and large, since 1377. I had not known Pope Francis would be speaking, and had come only to see the sights of the world’s smallest sovereign state, nestled into a northwest pocket of Rome. The glorious interior of St Peter’s Basilica, designed by Michelangelo among others, with every square inch of its vast interior ornately decorated; the trek to the mosaic-clad balcony and, through claustrophobic and tilting, stuffy stairs, to 60 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

the packed cupola at the very top of the dome; the Sistine Chapel and The Last Judgment; and St Peter’s Square itself, with its marblecolumned arms thrown out in a gesture of acceptance to the poor. Seeing the Pope is quite a bonus — and it seems a great omen for my trip. That’s because the Vatican is just the first stop on what I’m calling the Obscure Principality Road Trip. Western Europe boasts a cluster of these tiny places, of curious origin and still odder persistence as sovereign states, smaller than most big cities, yet sustained independently for centuries. The Vatican City, the smallest of them at just 44 hectares, is barely a corner of a map of central Rome and has a smaller population than many Singapore high schools. San Marino, Liechtenstein and Monaco are not much bigger, swallowed by Italy, Switzerland and France, respectively. And while Andorra is of a mighty size compared to the other four, it still only has two roads in and out of the entire country. And they are, being European, relatively close to one another — hence this road trip. My mission is to visit them all in four days.

SKODA MADNESS

When one is starting a road trip in an unfamiliar lefthand-drive manual vehicle — particularly after being upgraded, against my will, from a Volkswagen to a Skoda — it is best not to start the trip at Rome’s central station in the Monday morning rush hour. But needs must. u

ROAD TRIP

FAST FACT VATICAN CITY AS THE LEADER OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, THE POPE IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT FIGURES IN THE WORLD, PRESIDING OVER SOME 1.2 BILLION FOLLOWERS WORLDWIDE. THE TRADITIONAL TITLE OF THIS VATICAN CITY FIGURE BEFITS HIS STATURE: BISHOP OF ROME, VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST, SUCCESSOR OF THE PRINCE OF APOSTLES, SUPREME PONTIFF OF THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH, PRIMATE OF ITALY, ARCHBISHOP AND METROPOLITAN OF THE ROMAN PROVINCE, SOVEREIGN OF THE STATE OF VATICAN CITY AND SERVANT OF THE SERVANTS OF GOD.

TOP: VIEW OF SAINT PETER’S SQUARE AND ROME IN THE BACKGROUND, COVERED IN A LIGHT MIST. THE DREAMY LIGHT FOLLOWS VIA DELLA CONCILIAZIONE AS IT STRETCHES TOWARDS THE HORIZON

PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES (TOP), DREAMSTIME (BOTTOM)

BOTTOM FROM LEFT: PIETÀ STATUE BY MICHELANGELO, VATICAN CITY. VATICAN GUARD. THE DOME OF ST. PETER’S BASILICA

61 MARCH 2014

SAN MARINO

uAfter half an hour of

dodging the pushbikes and Vespas across intersections that no GPS could possibly articulate, I am spit out onto the Autostrada with a desperate craving for nicotine. And I haven’t been a smoker since 1998. But after that, the fourhour drive to San Marino is pleasant. Though most is motorway, it snakes across the beautiful undulations of Umbria and the foothills of the Apennine mountains that form Italy’s spine. Perugia marks a natural stopping point two hours in, as do countless Umbrian villages, their hilltop forts and Cypress trees visible from the road against the pink and yellow stucco of the houses. Sunflowers roll past. One thing that bonds most of these principalities is that they were built on the sides of mountains, and are accessed through challenging roads. Monaco is most famous for this, but it’s also true of San Marino, in which folds of switchbacks in the car are exchanged for several more on foot. Although the principality itself (the world’s fifth smallest) extends further than this, its focus is within a walled castle: one enters through huge semicircular horseshoes of stone beneath angular battlements. European sports fans know San Marino as the one football team their own national side is guaranteed to beat in a World Cup qualifier, though many English are scarred for life by the memory of San Marino scoring against them within 8.3 seconds of the kick-off in 1993. Guidebooks tell you it is the world’s oldest surviving sovereign state, dating back

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to a monastic community founded in 300 AD. Another commonality of many small principalities is they attract people for duty-free shopping. San Marino, like Andorra, is jammed to the gills with things to buy. But once you pass these stalls, you reach the true centrepiece of the state: two castles, the 11th-century Guaita and the 13th-century Cesta. There is a third too, but it’s not open to the public. From up here, it’s easier to realise that one is in a country governed by 16thcentury Latin textbooks, though a parliamentary democracy exists too. The views are extraordinary, with precipitous drops on one side down almost to sea level. It would be no surprise to find Shrek living in one of the precipitous drops hanging over the sea, berating pesky tourists.

GLAMOUR CENTRAL

Someone in less of a rush would stop in Bologna, Parma or Genoa, but I press on and arrive in Monaco in the dark. This is to be avoided. Most people’s first sight of Monaco and Monte Carlo (one is a municipality of the other) is from above, looking down at the bay through a sweep of high-rise opulence on every scrap of rock from the border to the Mediterranean. Having arrived late, I am just in time to be refused entry to Monaco’s ridiculously grand casino, for failing the dress code ( jacket after 8pm, please). The casino feels like the heart of Monte Carlo. Housed in a twintowered building that looks more like a palace than the u

ROAD TRIP

FAST FACT FAST FACT SAN MARINO

TOP: THE MAIN SQUARE IN FRONT OF THE PALAZZO PUBBLICO BOTTOM FROM LEFT: RED 1934 FIAT 508 BALILLA. SAN MARINO, A TRUE SHOPPING HAVEN

PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES (TOP AND BOTTOM RIGHT), DREAMSTIME (BOTTOM LEFT)

DESPITE, OR PERHAPS BECAUSE OF ITS DIMINUTIVE SIZE, THIS LANDLOCKED COUNTRY DOES PRETTY WELL FOR ITSELF. IT IS COMMONLY THOUGHT TO BE THE OLDEST SURVIVING SOVERIGN STATE IN THE WORLD. IT HAS NO NATIONAL DEBT — THE FIFTH HIGHEST LIFE EXPECTANCY IN THE WORLD, AND IT HAS NO MILITARY. CHARMINGLY, A MAJOR SOURCE OF THE COUNTRY’S REVENUE IS FROM SALES OF POSTAGE STAMPS AND COINS, WHICH ARE HIGHLY SOUGHT AFTER BY COLLECTORS FOR THEIR RARITY.

63 MARCH 2014

MONACO

PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES (TOP & BOTTOM LEFT), DREAMSTIME (BOTTOM RIGHT)

u actual palace does, it is

part of a beguiling complex, including a theatre and the headquarters of a ballet troupe. There are at least three James Bond movies that had scenes in this casino, and it’s surely the inspiration for the fictional resort featured in Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale, which shares its Belle Epoque architecture and aloof status. Still, I am wealthier for having failed to get in; it costs 10 euros (over US$13) for entry to the main room, and that is also the minimum bet. At night I dream of the various curves of the Milan-Genoa highway and eventually fall out of bed navigating a tricky turn, seasick. There is an absurd wealth on the harbour, clogged with the finest boats imaginable; one of the world’s best aquariums; and the Jardin Exotique de Monaco, an immaculate garden halfway up the hill. Plus of course, you can drive the route of the Formula One street circuit (Sebastian Vettel’s lap record: 1.16.577. Mine: about nine minutes. Turns out that when you’re not in the Grand Prix, you have to stop at pedestrian crossings). But the greatest joy of Monaco is driving in and out of it. The country is swept across by three corniches, each higher and grander than the last, with views down to the sea — one way to get a great view is to head for the French town of Eze. That said, I have brought my GPS along for its terrific sense of humour, and today it is in gallant form. It takes me an hour and a half to get

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out of the second smallest country on Earth. Had I listened to it, it would have sent me, in this order, into the harbour, the royal palace’s front garden, several brick walls, and off a cliff.

SKI CENTRAL

Having finally found a way out, it is time to head to Andorra, wedged between France and Spain in the Pyrenees. The driving is largely dull on French motorways, punctuated with pauses to pay tolls. On each of the first two days, these fees run to 50 euros (around US$69) and I waste a lot of time stopping and starting. Into France now, the roll call of places I pass is glamourous — Nice, Cannes, St Tropez — but on the highway there is only a fleeting glance of the Mediterranean, or a sandstone massif of the Gorges du Verdon as I pass beneath Provence, until the road heads south at Toulouse for the Pyrenees. Here, things get more interesting, passing through French villages, including Ax, famed among Tour de France fans, before another winding mountain road of precipitous drops and hairpin bends, navigated amid very low cloud. Aside from duty-free and tax haven benefits (most of these places have managed to preserve their independence largely through tax status), Andorra is chiefly famous as a ski resort, but there are good reasons to visit in summer when the snow yields to wonderful walks. Andorra is the biggest of the principalities by far and, although it has no airport, no railway, and precisely two u

ROAD TRIP

FAST FACT MONACO IF YOU’RE THINKING OF MOVING, MONACO MIGHT BE AN OPTION TO CONSIDER. THE CLIMATE’S GREAT, THERE ARE MORE YACHTS THAN YOU CAN SHAKE A STICK AT, AND THANKS TO MASSIVE TOURISM AND CASINO PROFITS, RESIDENTS DON’T PAY TAXES. JUST DON’T MOVE TO INDONESIA BY MISTAKE — THE COUNTRIES SHARE THE SAME FLAG DESIGN.

TOP: MONTE CARLO AT NIGHT FROM LEFT: LUXURY AUTOMOBILES PARKED OUTSIDE MONTE CARLO CASINO. SUNSET LANDSCAPE AT PRINCE’S PALACE IN MONACO

65 MARCH 2014

ANDORRA

FAST FACT ANDORRA FOR MUCH OF THE 1960S AND ‘70S, ANDORRA’S ENTIRE MILITARY BUDGET PER YEAR WAS US$4.50, A SUM JUST ENOUGH TO PURCHASE BLANK ROUNDS, FOR FIRING INTO THE AIR DURING NATIONAL CELEBRATIONS. IN 2003, THE PRESIDENT OF ANDORRA ADDRESSED THE UNITED NATIONS, NOTING THAT THOSE TIMES HAD CHANGED. “MANY THINGS HAVE HAPPENED SINCE THOSE DAYS AND ANDORRA DOESN’T EVEN PUT FOUR DOLLARS AND FIFTY CENTS TOWARDS ITS DEFENCE BUDGET. WE DON’T SPEND A CENT.”

France, one to Spain), it has room within for several towns as access points to its three valleys. Beyond the capital of Andorra la Vella, in which the shopping is concentrated, there are many smaller towns serving those valleys. An example is Canillo, filled with ski lodges that become bargains in the empty summer: where a modest room might cost 125 euros (US$172) in Monaco or Liechtenstein, one costs 49 euros (US$67) with breakfast and dinner when I drop in. From there, walks bring you swiftly away from civilisation, past farmhouses and barns, to lakes and mountains. Having turned up trying to speak in bad French, I find that’s really Andorra’s third language: first is Catalan, as spoken in Barcelona, and second Castillian Spanish.

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Unusually, Andorra is something of a job-share. It is a monarchy headed by two co-princes, one Spanish and one French. Moreover, the French one is the President of France, currently François Hollande — making him a reigning monarch whose dayjob is to rule a country that executed its own monarchy in the French Revolution.

TOP: SHOPPING MALL AT THE PAS DE LA CASA, ANDORRA BOTTOM: THE COUNTRY IS POPULAR AS A SKI DESTINATION

THE LUXE LIFE

After Andorra, the true obscure principality crusader might head 13 and a half driving hours to Luxembourg — but it’s a giant in this company, and not so obscure, hosting the European Court of Justice. Instead, I head to the proper obscurity of Liechtenstein, the sixth smallest state in the world and, oddly, leading manufacturer of false teeth. This is too far to reach in a u

PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES

u roads in and out (one to

LIECHTENSTEIN

FAST FACT LIECHTENSTEIN FOR A SHORT TIME IN 2011, IT WAS POSSIBLE TO RENT THE ENTIRE COUNTRY, MUCH AS YOU WOULD RENT A HOTEL ROOM FOR A FEW DAYS. AIR BNB, A RENTAL PLATFORM, PRICED THE THE DEAL AT US$70,000 PER NIGHT. THE ONLINE PROFILE, WHICH HAS NOW SADLY BEEN TAKEN DOWN, NOTED THAT THE COUNTRY HAS “500+ BATHROOMS”. THE YEAR BEFORE, RAPPER SNOOP DOGG HAD DECIDED HE WANTED TO SHOOT A MUSIC VIDEO AND ALSO RENT THE ENTIRE COUNTRY — THOUGH THIS FELL THROUGH.

so I backtrack across the width of France, pausing to admire bridges both new (Norman Foster’s seven-pier Millau Viaduct) and old (the Roman Pont du Gard), before stopping at Annecy, near the Swiss border, for the night. Entering Switzerland the next morning, I refuse to miss the chance to drive across a Swiss mountain pass, and divert to the stunning Furka pass between the towns of Gletsch and Andermatt. It is dizzying stuff, and as the Skoda grapples with the 180-degree bends, it’s hard not to look away from the road at the extraordinary rugged purity of the Swiss scenery. I’m aware from bitter experience though, that Swiss speed cameras are more belligerent than their counterparts elsewhere — and indeed, that ticket will find you when you go home. Besides, look at this scenery. Why rush? 68 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

I am 10 minutes from Liechtenstein before I see the first road sign for it, and its capital, Vaduz, whose focal point is a Gothic castle on the hill behind the town, where the ruling family still lives. The family has been here since buying the place — and, indeed, the whole of Vaduz — in 1712. It is believed to be the only sovereign state whose rulers came to power by buying their own capital city. The residence is private except for one day a year, but worth visiting for the view down into the valley. As in Andorra, the hiking is sublime, though most visitors to the country come here on a day trip for the passport stamp. Don’t count on this though: I didn’t even see a passport control booth. Dinner is a hearty Swiss rosti, a traditional dish made of potatoes, and a

TOP: VIEW OF THE RESTORED VADUZ CASTLE BOTTOM: AREAS OF INTEREST ABOUND ALONG THE DRIVE THROUGH THIS COUNTRY

PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES

u day,

A MISTY MORNING IN LIECHTENSTEIN

ACCORDING TO THE CIA WORLD FACTBOOK, THESE ARE THE POPULATION SIZES OF

VATICAN CITY

893

SAN MARINO

32,448 MONACO

30,500 ANDORRA

85,293 LIECHTENSTEIN

37,009

WHICH ADDS UP TO A TOTAL OF 186,143

1.5 CRIME

PER PERSON

WITH MILLIONS OF EUPHORIC VISITORS COME SOME SNEAKY ONES: PICKPOCKETS. THIS THIEVES’ PARADISE MEANS THAT THE VATICAN CITY HAS THE HIGHEST CRIME RATE IN THE WORLD

MARCH 2

2007

ON THIS DATE, A SWISS ARMY UNIT UNWITTINGLY CROSSED THE BORDER DURING MANOEUVRES AND ACCIDENTALLY INVADED LIECHTENSTEIN. AUTHORITIES ON BOTH SIDES DOWNPLAYED THE INCIDENT. “IT’S NOT LIKE THEY STORMED OVER HERE WITH ATTACK HELICOPTERS OR SOMETHING,” SAID A LIECHTENSTEIN OFFICIAL

MONÉGASQUE

A NATIVE OF MONACO

German dark beer. It being largely Swiss — Liechtenstein uses the Swiss franc — there is the linguistic multiplicity of that country here, which is just as well. Having floundered with bad Italian in the Vatican City and San Marino, and bad French in Monaco and Andorra, I think my German is even worse. I’m spared 70 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

by a waiter who speaks five languages, as people around here often do. Next morning, it is time to fly home, marvelling again at Europe’s smallness. Up in Liechtenstein at 5.45am, in Switzerland by 6am, Italy by 8.30am and landing back in England before lunchtime. As I pull into Milan’s Linate airport, the final reading on

the car is 3,422 kilometres. And nobody asked to see my passport once. What have I picked up from my ludicrous sprint across the region? Chiefly, an allergy to French and Italian motorways, and recognition that this should have been attempted over a week. But also, that good things do indeed come in small packages.

MONACOIAN

A RESIDENT IN THE CITY WHO WAS BORN IN ANOTHER COUNTRY

THREE FILMS

THREE JAMES BOND MOVIES HAVE FEATURED SCENES SET IN MONACO: NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN, GOLDENEYE AND DR. NO, IN WHICH SEAN CONNERY FIRST SAID THE IMMORTAL WORDS: “BOND. JAMES BOND”

PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES

u fabulous

SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY AN ARMY OF RESOURCES AND DECADES OF RESEARCH HAVE BEEN PUT INTO ACTION TO BATTLE CANCER. YET, ITS CURE REMAINS A DISTANT HOPE. AWARD-WINNING WRITER MAX GLASKIN REPORTS THE GOOD NEWS: NOW THAT WE KNOW MORE THAN EVER ABOUT THE DISEASE THERE ARE MORE OF US LIVING WITH IT THAN DYING FROM IT 72 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

CANCER

PHOTO: CORBIS

GOING INTO A MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING (MRI) SCANNER CAN BE INTIMIDATING — IT'S LOUD IN THERE, AND YOU MUST LIE VERY STILL. ENDURING MEDICAL LASERS PROBABLY DOESN'T HELP EITHER, BUT IT'S A NECESSARY PART OF DIAGNOSIS AND TREATMENT FOR MANY CANCERS

73 MARCH 2014

ancer is part of life. It is unwelcome, unkind, and unpredictable — but it is as much a part of being alive as any other physiological condition except that it can be lethal and how. Its reputation as an indiscriminate serial killer has loaded the word with terror, far more frightening than the name of any other illness. Its macabre status is justified. Cancer is the leading cause of mortality worldwide, accounting for around 13 per cent of all deaths — that’s 7.6 million people in a year. As the global population grows, there will be almost 22.2 million new cases diagnosed annually by 2030. Yet, there is an important shift in the way the disease is regarded. Better prevention, diagnosis, and cures are emerging, including some with spectacular results. The pace of research is faster than ever, with new drugs and therapies trialled ever more quickly. But the question remains “When will there be a cure for cancer?” 74 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

The answer, unfortunately, is not straightforward. The honest but simplistic response: “never.” The considered reply: “Never, but we are getting a lot better at preventing cancer, detecting it sooner, and treating it more effectively so it won't kill as many people, or as quickly as it does today.” You might think this sounds evasive, but let's get to know what cancer is and how it develops. Then we'll understand why the measured answer is genuinely uplifting.

All cancers begin when the genetic material of the body’s basic unit of life, the DNA of a cell, is damaged or changed so that it produces mutations that affect normal cell growth and division. When this happens, cells don’t die when they should and new cells form when the body doesn’t need them. The extra cells may form a mass of tissue called a tumour, which may be cancerous. Cancer cells can travel from their original site to other

CANCER

PHOTOS: CORBIS (MAIN); GETTY IMAGES

EVEN AS A DIGITAL ARTWORK, THIS LONE CANCER CELL LOOKS TERRIFYING, MUCH LESS A MORE ADVANCED CASE, SUCH AS THIS MALIGNANT MELANOMA (BELOW), A FORM OF SKIN CANCER

places in the body, a process called metastasis. No matter where they are, a sufficient number of cancer cells will disrupt the functions of that part of the body, upsetting the delicate balance of the fantastically complex and interdependent processes that keep us alive. “There are many cells in the human body dividing all the time, so the really amazing thing is that we do not get cancer more than we do,” says Dr Daniel G. Tenen, director of

the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore. Actually, the fact that we are living longer is one reason cancer has become so much more extensive. In ancient Rome, the average life expectancy was around 20 to 30 years — but in many countries it’s now 80 or more. This gives more time for cells to mutate and cause cancer. It’s a part of life; the longer we live, the bigger part it can play. “You are not healthy one day and have cancer the next,” says Tenen. “I am in my

“IT USED TO BE SAID THAT CANCER WAS 200 DIFFERENT DISEASES. NOW, THROUGH GENOMICS, WE ARE WELL ON OUR WAY TO IDENTIFYING 400 DIFFERENT CANCERS.” 75 MARCH 2014

NOW A DRUG CAN BE DESIGNED TO STARVE OR DISRUPT CHEMICAL SIGNALS TO MUTATED CELLS TO PREVENT THEM FROM DIVIDING FURTHER PROFILING CANCER

He’s not alone in that quest. Thousands of researchers globally are on the case, and they’ve all been aided by one of the most significant achievements of science — the sequencing of the human genome. Completed in April 2003, it revealed the genetic make-up of humans. This knowledge allows scientists to look at the causes of cancer in far greater detail.

We’ve known, for instance, that there are 200 different types of cell in the body. A mutation to any one of those types could lead to cancer. “It used to be said that cancer was 200 different diseases,” says Dr Gordon McVie, of the Istituto Europeo di Oncologia (or the European Institute of Oncology) in Milan, Italy, “But now we can see that there are 10 different kinds of breast cancer, maybe five lung cancers, at least two melanomas (skin cancer), and perhaps six or more colon cancers. Actually, through genomics, now we are well on our way to identifying 400 different cancers.” How do they do this? By comparing the genes of a healthy person with those of someone with cancer. Any differences are then examined to deduce if they are mutations that could be the cause of the disease. The next step is to identify how the changes enable the mutated cell to proliferate and, crucially, to find a way to interfere with its progress. For example, a drug could be designed to starve the mutated cell of the fuel it depends on. Or one could disrupt chemical signals that would otherwise trigger the mutated cell into dividing. Or it could prevent metastasis and so restrict the cancer to its initial site. The ability to work at the level of genes and molecules

PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES (MAIN, GINGER), TAGISHSIMON (STACKED CHIMNEYS)

60s. I feel healthy but I am sure I have four or five cancers in me, and they may or may not develop into something causing me symptoms before I die from some other cause. In that sense, you could say that the cure for cancer in older adults is to die young — but that is not what anybody wants. I am a scientist trying to learn enough about cancer to be able to help people live longer and healthier.”

CANCER MILESTONES The Ongoing Fight

The scientific study of cancer has gone through setbacks, gaffes, and victories over the past few centuries. Here are just some of the hundreds of cancer milestones in medical history

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1776 SOOT WART STUDYING THE HIGH INCIDENCE OF SCROTUM CANCER IN CHIMNEY SWEEPS, SIR PERCIVALL POTT LINKED EXPOSURE TO SOOT WITH CANCER, BECOMING THE FIRST TO POSIT AN OCCUPATIONAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL CAUSE OF CANCER. HE THEORISED THAT CHIMNEY SWEEPS WOULD SWEAT, CAUSING SOOT TO RUN DOWN THEIR BODIES AND COLLECT OVER THE SCROTUM. THIS WOULD LEAD TO PAINFUL SORES THAT WOULD DEVELOP INTO CANCER. THE AILMENT WAS KNOWN AS CHIMNEY SWEEPS’ CARCINOMA OR SOOT WART

CANCER

CURBING CHEMO'S FALLOUT

CHEMOTHERAPY

The term chemotherapy refers to the use of medication (chemicals) to treat disease, but it has most often been associated with cancer. Chemo can be in the form of tablets or administered intravenously. Some common side effects of this are nausea and vomiting, which half of all patients suffer; and hair loss which may not affect one’s physical health but can be bad for a patient’s psychological state.

Chemotherapy involves pumping cell-killing drugs into the body. So it's no wonder healthy cells can suffer as much as cancerous ones. And though you might know about the nausea, fatigue, and hair loss, other side effects of long-term chemo might surprise you. Alternating constipation and diarrhoea. Anaemia, a lack of red blood cells that can lead to shortness of breath. Mouth ulcers. Bleeding gums. Bruised skin. Short-term memory loss. Brittle nails. The list goes on. As such, chemotherapy can be the most painful time in a cancer patient’s ordeal. While doctors can and do prescribe medication to relieve these side effects, many patients now turn to more natural solutions, in an effort to minimise their drug intake.

Ginger, for example, has been used for centuries, if not millennia, to relieve nausea or the urge to vomit. It can be taken in pill form, or brewed into tea. Made into tisanes, fennel and peppermint are also said to ease stomach discomfort. In addition, some studies have found support for the idea that green tea assists in the prevention and treatment of cancer. And sometimes the most natural solution of all relies on brainpower. For those with the discipline and resolve to practice, meditation and guided willpower has become a popular way to make it through gruelling chemo sessions. Alternate healing practices include conjuring positive images whilst listening to relaxing music. This has helped many a patient endure some of their darkest sessions.

1779 THE FIRST CANCER HOSPITAL

1800S WEAPONS TO THE FIGHT

THE FIRST HOSPITAL DEDICATED PURELY TO CANCER PATIENTS WAS OPENED IN RIEMS, FRANCE, IN 1779. IT MARKED A HUGE STEP FORWARD IN FIGHTING THE DISEASE — EXCEPT THAT AT THE TIME, IT WAS WIDELY BELIEVED THAT CANCER WAS CONTAGIOUS. AS SUCH, THE HOSPITAL WAS PLACED SAFELY OUTSIDE THE CITY LIMITS FOR FEAR OF SPREADING TO HEALTHY PEOPLE

SCIENTIFIC ONCOLOGY WAS GIVEN A BOOST BY FOUR INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES OF THE 19TH CENTURY: THE MODERN MICROSCOPE (FOR EXAMINING MORE CLOSELY THAN EVER BEFORE THE CELL STRUCTURE OF CANCERS), MODERN ANAESTHETICS (FOR PAIN RELIEF OF PATIENTS DURING TREATMENT AND SURGERY), X-RAYS (FOR DIAGNOSING TUMOURS) AND RADIUM (FOR RADIOTHERAPY TREATMENT)

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DESIGNING MOLECULES THAT INHIBIT OR ERADICATE CANCEROUS CELLS IS ONE OF THE AMAZING CONSEQUENCES OF SEQUENCING THE HUMAN GENOME INDIVIDUAL TREATMENTS

It’s a certainty that genomics is going to play a major role in neutralising cancer. “The ability to read our own DNA in detail has accelerated from years to days, and the cost has fallen from millions to thousands

of dollars. I predict that one day you’ll be able to have your entire genome read in a day in a pharmacy,” asserts Dr Laurence Patterson, director of the Institute of Cancer Therapeutics in the United Kingdom. This means that it could soon be possible to identify precisely which damaged genes are causing the cancer, or may do so in the future, and so prescribe drugs to target them specifically. That should be great, but Patterson has reservations about the potential availability for individualised chemotherapy. “Pharmaceutical companies will invest in developing new treatments if there are enough people who need them. The problem is that personalised medicine could reduce the size of the market for each drug to one person or a handful of individuals. If that happens, the companies couldn't necessarily make enough money, so they wouldn't invest in developing the drug in the first place,” Patterson explains. Designing molecules that inhibit or eradicate cancerous cells is one of the amazing consequences of sequencing the human genome. Another is being able to identify the risks of developing cancer that a person may have inherited via the genes of their forebears. Only five to 10 per cent of cancers are linked to heredity, but people whose

families have suffered can now be tested to see if they carry the same faulty genes. Famously, actress Angelina Jolie inherited the faulty gene BRCA1, which led to the premature deaths of her mother and her aunt. So she opted for a double mastectomy as, she had an 87 per cent risk of developing breast cancer and a 50 per cent risk of ovarian cancer. The surgery reduced the chance of breast cancer for Jolie to less than five per cent.

ENTER THE ROBOTS

Surgery isn’t always needed, and other treatments are being refined and improved. This is the case with radiotherapy, where X-rays are used to damage the DNA of the mutated cells so they die. The problem has been that the cancer isn’t the only body region affected — tissues and organs nearby may be exposed to the X-rays. Fortunately, robotics is now helping. Before, patients may have had to undergo more than 30 treatment sessions with relatively high doses of radiation that had some impact on adjacent tissue and organs. The robot, though, is more accurate, so it doesn’t need to deliver such high doses and it’s quicker. The radiation source is fixed to the arm of a multi-axis industrial robot. The arm moves accurately to deliver

PHOTO: CORBIS (MAIN)

is making the most common forms of treatment appear as heavy-handed as using a steamroller to crack a nut. Traditional chemotherapy, the use of chemical drugs, can lead to distressing side effects. It stops cancer cells growing but the chemo is generalised, so it stops the growth of good cells too. That’s why it’s common for patients to lose their hair. But with genomics, it’s possible to design a drug whose molecules interfere only with the mutated cells, allowing all the good cells in the rest of the body to function largely as usual.

DOCTORS DEMONSTRATE THE USE OF A ROBOTIC SURGERY MACHINE AT KING CHULALONGKORN MEMORIAL HOSPITAL IN BANGKOK. ROBOTIC SURGERY ALLOWS SURGEONS TO PENETRATE THE MALE REPRODUCTIVE ORGANS AND URINARY TRACT AND CAN BE USED TO TREAT CONDITIONS SUCH AS PROSTATE, BLADDER AND KIDNEY CANCERS

CANCER MILESTONES 1918 PAUL SHEDS THE LIGHT

1943 SMEARING AWAY CASUALTIES

IN 1918, AUSTRALIAN DERMATOLOGIST SIR CHARLES NORMAN PAUL PUBLISHED THE INFLUENCE OF SUNLIGHT IN THE PRODUCTION OF CANCER OF THE SKIN, ONE OF THE FIRST TRACTS TO EXPOSE THE LINK. HIS BOOK CAME OUT JUST IN TIME FOR THE BIRTH OF THE BRONZING CRAZE OF THE 1920S, WHEN TANNED SKIN BECAME A STATUS SYMBOL OF THE WESTERN JET SET. COCO CHANEL HERSELF PURRED IN 1929, “A GIRL SIMPLY HAS TO BE TANNED”

GEORGE PAPANICOLAOU PIONEERED THE PAP TEST OR PAP SMEAR, A PROCEDURE USED TO DETECT CERVICAL CANCERS OR PRECANCEROUS STATES. IT IS THOUGHT THAT THE PROCEDURE, STILL IN WIDESPREAD USE TODAY, HAS HELPED REDUCE CERVICAL CANCER DEATHS BY 70 PER CENT IN THE UNITED STATES ALONE

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CANCER

1949 CHEMOTHERAPY’S BIRTH

1964 THE SMOKING GUN

IN THE 1940S, RESEARCHERS NOTED THAT NITROGEN MUSTARD (ALSO KNOWN AS MUSTARD GAS), A WEAPON STOCKPILED DURING WORLD WAR II, KILLED CANCER CELLS BY CHEMICALLY ALTERING THEIR DNA. BY 1949, THE UNITED STATES FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION HAD APPROVED NITROGEN MUSTARD FOR USE IN CHEMOTHERAPY AGAINST HODGKIN’S LYMPHOMA

A GERMAN STUDY IN 1939, AND AMERICAN STUDIES IN THE 1950S, LINKED CIGARETTE SMOKING TO INCREASED RISK OF CANCER (A 1950 BRITISH STUDY CONCLUDED THAT SMOKING WAS “A CAUSE, AND AN IMPORTANT CAUSE” OF LUNG CANCER). BUT IT WASN’T UNTIL 1964 THAT THE UNITED STATES SURGEON GENERAL RELEASED A REPORT NOTING: “CIGARETTE SMOKING IS CAUSALLY RELATED TO LUNG CANCER IN MEN; THE MAGNITUDE OF THE EFFECT OF CIGARETTE SMOKING FAR OUTWEIGHS ALL OTHER FACTORS”

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“IN FIVE OR TEN YEARS WE’LL BE CONTROLLING ADVANCED MELANOMA BUT I HAVE TO SAY I DON’T KNOW WHEN WE’LL BE ABLE TO HAVE LUNG CANCER UNDER LONG-TERM CONTROL FOR MOST PATIENTS” Physical surgery to remove cancers is also advancing. Instead of a human wielding the scalpel, the job can be done by instruments attached to mechanised arms that are actuated by electric motors.

They are steadier, and they don’t get tired. The machine is operated by a surgeon seated several metres away from the patient, using hand and foot controls and watching it all on a 3D screen that allows him or her to see more detail than with eyes alone. The equipment is said to make it easier to complete delicate procedures, such as removing a cancerous prostate gland, without making mistakes that would lead to other complications. However, to perform any kind of treatment, the cancer has to be detected in the first place. “That's another part of the revolution of the last few decades,” says McVie, who has been working with cancer for 40 years. “Imaging parts of the body is now very clever. Scans are very powerful and potent ways to find activity that is abnormal. MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and PET (positron emission tomography) scans mean we can identify different molecules within the body without needing to do any surgery for biopsies.”

CURE OR CONTROL?

So better detection and better treatments than ever before are becoming increasingly available. Extrapolating from these recent technological advances, it seems to make sense that there should soon be a cure for cancer. Yet, that’s not the right way of looking

PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES (MAIN); CORBIS (MRI MACHINE)

many low doses of X-rays in quick succession from many different positions around the patient, guided by an automatic vision system and following a digital model of the tumour. As few as three sessions may achieve the aim of eradicating the cancer. What’s more, the low doses mean that healthy tissue and organs located near the cancer are exposed to only a fraction of the X-rays.

CANCER MILESTONES 1970S PLANTING PROSTATE SEEDS

1991 WAVING AWAY NAUSEA

THE FIELD OF BRACHYTHERAPY WAS DEVELOPED, WHEREBY RADIOACTIVE “SEEDS” ARE IMPLANTED INTO CANCEROUS PROSTATE GLANDS. THE POWERFUL PELLETS DELIVER RADIOACTIVITY DIRECTLY INTO THE TUMOUR, HOPEFULLY LEAVING THE SURROUNDING AREA UNHARMED. BRACHYTHERAPY IS ALSO USEFUL AGAINST OTHER CANCERS AND REMAINS A PART OF SOME TREATMENTS TODAY

A DRUG CALLED ZOFRAN HIT THE MARKET AND QUICKLY BECAME A BOON FOR HORDES OF PATIENTS UNDERGOING CHEMOTHERAPY. ONE OF CHEMOTHERAPY’S STRONGEST SIDE EFFECTS IS VIOLENT NAUSEA. ZOFRAN AND SIMILAR DRUGS WORK BY NEUTRALISING THE NERVOUS SYSTEM’S TRIGGER FOR VOMITING. THE DRUGS OFFER CHEMO PATIENTS AN EFFECTIVE STEP TOWARDS MORE NORMAL LIVING AND REGULAR MEALS, WHICH HELPS BOOST THE MORALE

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CANCER

NEWER, BETTER TECHNOLOGY SUCH AS MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING (RIGHT) HAS ALLOWED FOR MORE SOPHISTICATED MEDICAL SCANS

at it, says Dr Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer at the American Cancer Society, in the United States. “The focus is on controlling cancer, less on cure, just as if cancer is a chronic disease, such as diabetes,” he says, “Even in patients with Hodgkin's lymphoma (cancer of the lymph tissue), we can treat it and it never comes back as a problem — but we know that there are still cancer cells in the body. The condition has been controlled, not cured,” he explains. “Likewise, the recent success of treating chronic myelogenous leukaemia

(a white blood cell cancer) has allowed people to have lives apparently free of cancer, yet, we can still find evidence of the disease,” continues Lichtenfeld. “So, is that a ‘cure’? It’s more like a ‘control’ and, for some other cancers, in the foreseeable future, we’ll be able to control them similarly,” he says. “Not all cancers, though. In five or 10 years we’ll be controlling advanced melanoma, but I have to say I don't know when we’ll be able to have lung cancer under long-term control for most patients.” “We've got a saying here at the American Cancer

2003 A BITE OUT OF OBESITY

2003 MICRO-BATTLE VICTORY

A STUDY FOUND SUPPORT FOR THE IDEA THAT WHAT WE EAT CAN INCREASE OUR RISK OF CANCER, AND DIET CAN ALTER GENES. RESEARCHERS FOLLOWED CLOSE TO A MILLION AMERICANS FOR 16 YEARS AND FOUND OBESITY COULD ACCOUNT FOR UP TO 20 PER CENT OF CANCER MORTALITIES IN THE COUNTRY. THEY WENT ON TO HYPOTHESISE 90,000 CANCER-RELATED DEATHS COULD BE PREVENTED PER YEAR BY MAINTAINING A HEALTHY WEIGHT

TREATMENT OF CANCER WENT SMALL-SCALE AS AN AMERICAN DOCTOR, BRIAN DRUKER, REPORTED SUCCESS IN THE TREATMENT OF CHRONIC MYELOID LEUKAEMIA. HIS COMPOUND, MARKETED AS GLIVEC, BLOCKS THE PROTEIN THAT SPARKS UNCONTROLLED REPRODUCTION OF WHITE BLOOD CELLS — AND IT TARGETS ONLY UNHEALTHY CELLS. IN 2003 HIS EFFORTS WON HIM THE 50,000EURO (US$56,700) BRAUNSCHWEIG PRIZE FOR RESEARCH INTO MOLECULAR CANCER THERAPY. “THE NAME BRIAN DRUKER HAS BECOME SYNONYMOUS WITH A BREAKTHROUGH IN CANCER THERAPY,” NOTED THE PRIZE-GIVERS

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PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES (MAIN)

RADIOACTIVE SOURCES FOR CANCER RADIOTHERAPY. THESE PACKETS CONTAIN SMALL "SEEDS" OF RADIOACTIVE IODINE, WHICH ARE USED FOR IRRADIATION OF CANCERS. THESE ARE TO BE USED TO TREAT PROSTATE CANCER

CANCER MILESTONES 2010 THE BOOK THAT MULTIPLIED WHEN ONCOLOGIST SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE PUBLISHED THE EMPEROR OF ALL MALADIES IN 2010, HE PROBABLY DIDN’T KNOW WHAT A WORLDWIDE SENSATION IT WOULD BECOME. BROAD IN SCOPE YET MANAGING TO PUT A HANDLE ON MANKIND’S 4,600-YEAROLD RELATIONSHIP WITH THE DISEASE, THE BOOK WON A SLEW OF ACCOLADES, FROM THE PULITZER TO TIME MAGAZINE’S COMMENDATION AS ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL 100 BOOKS IN THE PAST 100 YEARS

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A SMOKING QUOTE

“It remains an astonishing, disturbing fact that in America — a nation where nearly every new drug is subjected to rigorous scrutiny as a potential carcinogen […] one of the most potent and common carcinogens known to humans can be freely bought and sold at every corner store for a few dollars”

CANCER

Society: ‘We can win this fight and make this cancer’s final century,’” quotes Lichtenfeld. “Well, the end of this century is 87 years away, so it’s not sensible for me to make bold, short-term predictions.”

RESEARCH OVER 40 YEARS HAS SHOWN THAT THERE IS NO MAGIC BULLET, AND THERE’S NEVER LIKELY TO BE. TEMPERED OPTIMISM

MONSTROUS CHIMERA

Researchers carried out genetic analysis of kidney tumours from four different people and found that cell mutations can vary across the same tumour (“chimera” is used in biology to describe something that contains a mixture of genetically different tissues). The researchers noted this might be why drugs that target specific mutations aren’t always successful.

2012 AN ARMY OF SURVIVORS TARGETED RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENTS OF NEW TECHNIQUES AND A GROWING TREND FOR EARLY DIAGNOSIS AND HEALTHIER LIVING ARE BEGINNING TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE. IN 2012, IN THE UNITED STATES ALONE, THE NUMBER OF CANCER SURVIVORS REACHED 12 MILLION — FOUR TIMES THE NUMBER OF SURVIVORS IN 1971, AND 20 PER CENT HIGHER THAN THE 2001 FIGURE

Every specialist that Discovery Channel Magazine has spoken to has admitted to being excited about the rapid advances being made in their field. The survival rate among people with cancer has doubled in some countries since the 1970s, and 50 per cent are still alive five years since their treatments began. A number of cancers that were never before treatable, such as melanoma, can now be controlled in some cases. “All we need is time and funding,” says Dr Paul Workman, head of therapeutics at the Institute of Cancer Research in the United Kingdom. “There is a road block becoming evident — drug resistance. Cancer

cells have unstable DNA, which facilitates the ‘survival of the nastiest’. When they are hit by a drug, some [cancer cells] will change their DNA to resist it. Like HIV and tuberculosis, we need to be giving patients combination treatments that make it difficult for the cancer to find a way around it all.” Genomics is making that possible. “In the next five to 10 years we’ll have catalogued pretty much all of the cancer genes and how they interact with each other, and we’ll develop inhibitors against the majority of those,” predicts Workman. The enormous amount of research in the last 40 years has shown that there is no magic bullet, and there's never likely to be. Instead, we are on course to having an arsenal of many different weapons, each designed to be used for precise conditions in specific patients. Fact remains that we will still die, even when cancer is fully controlled, if not cured while the relentless fight will continue. And it’s likely that, as cancer declines in lethality, other conditions of old age will increase in frequency. There are very few things that are immortal — cancer cells have had that rare distinction. But today they are more vulnerable than they have ever been. They are still part of life — but that part is getting smaller by the day.

1971

2012

2001

2022 PROJECTION

30,00,000 1,20,00,000 96,00,000 1,8,000,000 83 MARCH 2014

FIGHTING BACK

IT USED TO BE THAT THE WORD "CANCER" WENT, IN HUSHED TONES, WITH THE WORD "VICTIM". FOR A NEW GENERATION OF SURVIVORS, KEEPING IT AT BAY AND ADVOCATING EARLY DETECTION IS A MISSION THAT'S BOTH LOUD AND PROUD. DANIEL SEIFERT SPEAKS WITH ONE GUTSY SURVIVOR

How do you think 20 years from now, people will look back at our current view of cancer? Maybe laugh at what a taboo it still was, and how many people tiptoed around the topic? Yes, sadly there are various subjects that we don’t like to talk about. Death, sex, money, and cancer are the obvious ones. Some people avoided me, as they didn’t know what to say. Loads of funny things happened while I was undergoing treatment. I was buying a sofa, and a sales assistant said that if I purchased it before the end of the month, I got a five-year guarantee. I was stickthin, pale, had arms wrapped in bandages, and had lost all my hair. The look on his face was priceless when I explained I’d only need it for three months. This incredibly common disease comes as a shock once it happens. Were there aspects that surprised you? Yes, even with statistics like one in three people 84 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

developing some form of cancer in their lifetime, it still comes as a shock. Everyone always thinks it happens to someone else, or only to old people. The type of treatment needed and the duration was my biggest surprise. I just ignorantly assumed I’d swallow a few pills and would be allowed to go home. I didn’t really know what cancer was. The image of the tumour squeezing your vocal chord nerves is harrowing — did that mean you spoke less and less? Nope, I was very talkative. But the best I could achieve was a faint whisper. I once called Directory Enquiries looking for a telephone number. I remember the operator asking why I was whispering; it was easier to say I had a sore throat. During treatment, doctors put you to sleep for a week. Why? Sadly, the first few chemotherapy regimes I was given hadn’t worked. My tumour was still growing. Due to its location and size, removing it by surgery wasn’t an option. Doctors wanted to try a new type of chemotherapy, but the side effects were known to be rather unpleasant. Therefore I was kept sedated during the week-long treatment. Each time I’d begin to wake, they’d simply give me another jab to send me off to sleep again. The upside, you say, is that the chemo “killed your lazy gene”, and gave you a new outlook on life. Did you start thinking of a bucket list for when you got better? Yes, I have loads. I physically carry a list with me. I don’t want to get old and have a list of regrets. I’ve ticked some things off, like running the London marathon, getting a Guinness World Record, winning an award for my writing and having The Cancer Survivors Club book published. But other items on my list include: sail the Atlantic, and make

PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES (MAIN)

Over two decades ago, Chris Geiger was your average happy, healthy go-getter. Then he was diagnosed with NonHodgkin Lymphoma, and given three months to live. He had a tumour in his chest that doctors said was “the size of a dinner plate”, which was strangling his lungs and vocal chords. After two gruelling years of chemotherapy, surgery, radiotherapy, and a bone marrow transplant, he was finally in remission. But as his story ended, Geiger decided he wanted to do something to help others. He founded The Cancer Survivors Club, where people tell their tales of leukaemia, testicular cancer, and more. On World Cancer Day in 2011, he penned a column on the illness, which was published in 400 newspapers worldwide. That earned him a Guinness World Record for “most published newspaper article in one day by the same author”. But Geiger still wanted to do more.

a TV documentary investigating the myths and merits of some of the 2,000 alleged cancer cures I’ve found; go on a dinner date with Keira Knightley, get the fiction book I wrote while having treatment published; make a TV documentary about how I follow and support people having treatment; living in Australia; and hope that one day cancer is just a zodiac sign! You write about watching cancer patients who had died in the night being transported out in makeshift coffins. It seems like the darker things got, the tougher you got. I guess you’re right, such incidents made me more determined to leave the hospital alive. If I was told I would be in hospital for three weeks I’d set myself a target to get out in two weeks.

CANCER

laughing at an incident helped me enormously. Its not without reason that laughter is said to be the best medicine. If you could change one thing about the way people view cancer, what would it be? Let me just focus on prevention for now. I appreciate that in the end, our mortality rate is 100 per cent. I’m sorry to break it to you like that, but we’re all going to die someday. Yet we can help reduce the number of lives lost to cancer. See, breast, bowel, lung, and prostate represent over half of all new cancers each year. By exercising for just 30 minutes a day, you may reduce some cancers by as much as 50 per cent. Think how significant that is: in the UK we could reduce breast cancer cases by 42 per cent, bowel cancer cases and prostate cases by 20 per cent, and lung cases by 18 per cent.

SADLY THERE ARE VARIOUS SUBJECTS THAT PEOPLE DON’T LIKE TO TALK ABOUT. DEATH, SEX, MONEY AND CANCER TOP THE FORBIDDEN LIST

As I mentioned earlier, it’s vital to set goals. I met people who gave up too soon. Since The Cancer Survivors Club has been published, I’ve had people write to me saying they are going to start treatment again. Having cancer treatment is as much about managing your mind as your body.

TOP: CANCER SURVIVORS HUG DURING THE SURVIVOR CELEBRATION CEREMONY AT THE END OF THE KOMEN DENVER RACE FOR THE CURE IN THE UNITED STATES ABOVE: CHRIS GEIGER HOLDING AN X-RAY SCAN OF HIS CHEST

It seems like many people still get quite uncomfortable using comedy against cancer, despite the fact that many survivors say it’s their number one weapon. Let’s face it, being in hospital and having cancer treatment isn’t the best of experiences. So if patients can make that time more tolerable by cracking the odd joke or having a laugh at their own expense, why not? I have experienced dozens of moments when

And early diagnosis can improve your chances immeasurably, right? Right now a third of all cancers can be cured through early diagnosis and treatment. It took me eight months before I was diagnosed — it took some of the survivors in this book many months before a diagnosis was made. Imagine if we can save a third of these 7.6 million deaths just by getting them diagnosed quicker. Finally, 80,000 deaths a year could be prevented from lifestyle changes, like reducing the amount of alcohol consumed, or reducing smoking and sun exposure. So we can all do something to dramatically decrease the chances of being ill — I read some interesting research recently that said over 169.3 million years of healthy life are lost each year due to the impact of cancer. I don’t want them to be my years! You can read more about Chris Geiger and his efforts to spread the stories of cancer survivors at www. TheCancerSurvivorsClub.com 85 MARCH 2014

THE C WORD THIS DREADED DISEASE IS ONE OF THE GREATEST FEARS OF OUR TIMES. BUT KNOWLEDGE, THEY SAY, IS POWER — SO READ ON FOR A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF THE MALADY AND HOW IT AFFECTS THE HUMAN BODY

326.1 326.1 1. Denmark 1. Denmark

Cancer is the leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for 7.6 million deaths in 2008, roughly 13 per cent of all deaths for that year

9. Canada 9. Canada

12.7% 12.7%

Breast Breast (F)(F)

Lung Lung

7.8% 7.8%

Stomach Stomach

306.8 306.8 5. Belgium 5. Belgium

300.2 300.2

7. United 7. United States States

HUMOURS

10.9% 10.9%

8. Norway 8. Norway

2. Ireland 2. Ireland

CAUSE OF DEATH

299.1 299.1

317 317

296.6 296.6

Hippocrates, known as the “Father of Medicine”, espoused the belief that humans are composed of four “humours” of bodily fluids: blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. His conviction that cancer is caused by an excess of black bile remained

7.1% 7.1%

Prostate Prostate (M) (M)

300.4 300.4 6. France 6. France

295 295

200

10. 10. Czech Czech Republic Republic

TYPES

There are over 200 different types of cancer, from acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (cancer of cells in bone marrow) to Wilms’ tumour (form of kidney cancer)

United United Kingdom Kingdom

9.8% 9.8%

Colorectal Colorectal Liver Liver

Canada Canada Stomach Stomach

FIVE MOST COMMON CANCERS

Based on 2008 estimates, the World Cancer Research Fund International says the five most common cancers are lung, breast, colorectal, stomach and prostate 86 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

GallGall bladder bladder Duodenum Duodenum

100 THOUSAND

Some cancer cells have the potential for as many as 100,000 random mutations per cell

Pancreas Pancreas

MONTHS Pancreatic cancer is one of the fastest-killing forms of the disease, with some studies noting a median survival rate of just three months after diagnosis

143 DAYS

In 1980, Canadian Terry Fox, with one leg amputated due to osteosarcoma, tried to run the length of his homeland to raise money for cancer research. He stopped after 143 days and 5,373 kilometres, suffering severe chest pains. The Terry Fox Foundation has since raised over US$500 million for research

BIG PICTURE

HIGHEST CANCER RATES PER COUNTRY IN 2010 (CASES PER 100,000 PEOPLE) Experts think that the high figures for these high-income countries may merely be due to more effective diagnosis, or may be partly because high-income countries have greater incidences of obesity and alcohol consumption, and lower levels of physical activity — factors that can contribute to cancer

SIX

WAYS CANCER SPREADS Locally: Cancer cells grow into nearby body tissues

TIMES LONGER

Blood circulation: Cells detach and are swept into the circulatory system

Britons now live nearly six times longer after being diagnosed with cancer than 40 years ago

314.1 314.1

CANCERPROOF YEARS

3. Australia 3. Australia

309.2 309.2

4. New 4. New Zealand Zealand

1,601 YEARS

The naked mole rat is a mammal that is immune to cancer. Once its cells start to multiply too much, the cells shut down. These animals can live for over 20 years

The notebooks and materials of Marie Curie, co-discoverer of radium and polonium, are still radioactive, and remain sealed in lead. Curie died of leukaemia in 1934, most likely from her exposure to radiation. The most common isotope of radium has a half-life of around 1,600 years

ILLUSTRATION: MARK MCCORMICK

ARMED ROBBERIES A British man was recently convicted of three violent robberies, but was given a reduced sentence because he was found to have a brain tumour, which, the judge said, meant he suffered “from an abnormality of mind”

Lymphatic system: Cells detach and circulate in lymph fluid

2 3 OF CANCERS

Two-thirds of all cancers in the US could be prevented simply by not smoking and maintaining an active, healthy lifestyle

AS LIKELY A 2005 study found that left-handed women are twice as likely to develop breast cancer than right-handed women

10%

LEFT BREAST

120

THOUSANDYEAR-OLD BONE The oldest evidence of cancer thus far was discovered in June 2013, in the bone of a Neanderthal from 120,000 years ago. It predates previous evidence of tumours by over 100,000 years

The left breast is five to 10 per cent more likely to develop cancer than the right — scientists are not sure why

10% LEFT SIDE

Melanoma — a type of skin cancer — is also 10 per cent more likely to develop in the left side of the human body 87 MARCH 2014

PHOTO: CORBIS

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THE JEEP

Why has the iconic Jeep remained the chariot of choice for the die-hard adventure lover? How does its square design fit into modern aerodynamic and aesthetic? Gearhead Jeremy Torr takes a look under the bonnet and rediscovers this masculine romance 89 MARCH 2014

o first off, why is it called a Jeep? Two legends circulate. First, Popeye’s superpowercapable sidekick of the 1940s was called Eugene the Jeep — and lent his name to a vehicle that could go anywhere, do anything, and achieve the impossible. Second, it was an acronym for the initials of "general purpose", which is exactly what the vehicle was. Take your choice, no one really knows — either way, the Jeep has to be one of the longest-standing and most recognisable brands worldwide. And it almost came about by accident. Around mid-1940, when the United States Army realised that its potential enemies (the German Army was swarming over Europe) had a vehicle known as the Kübelwagen, it panicked. At the time, the Kübelwagen dominated over American

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motor-cycles, bicycles, horses and small trucks that were used for light transport on the battlefield. The result was that nervous military commanders sent out an urgent demand for lightweight, fast and versatile designs that could outdo the German vehicle — instructing 135 carmakers to produce a working design in all of seven weeks. Perhaps sensibly, 132 manufacturers decided not to bother, and never even applied. The remaining three — American Bantam Car Company, Willys-Overland Motor Company and Ford Motor Company — were all keen for different reasons. Bantam was almost bankrupt, and was clutching at straws. Willys had a great engine, but no decent-selling cars to put it in. Ford was just Ford, and had to be in the game; although the company

TOUGH TENDER The requirements were a four-wheel drive with a frontdriven axle, a working speed of between five and 80 kilometres per hour, a 190- to 200-centimetre wheelbase, at least 16 centimetres of ground clearance, a minimum capacity of three passengers plus driver, a 300-kilogram payload, and an all-up weight of 590 kilograms (later changed to 980 kilograms). Plus, the vehicle had to allow for a .30-calibre machine gun to be mounted on it.

THE JEEP

RIDE DOWN MEMORY LANE THE QUIRKS THAT GAVE THE JEEP ITS ICONIC STATUS HAVE LIVED THROUGH ITS MANY AVATARS OVER THE YEARS

1941–1945 WILLYS MB

When it comes to the Willys MB, superlatives abound. The granddaddy of Jeeps. The Jeep that won the war. The vehicle that the famed New York Museum of Modern Art reportedly called “one of the very few genuine expressions of machine art”. The list goes on

1949–1953 CJ-3A

This post-war beauty was a popular recreation vehicle, and a revised 1951 model found work on many an American farm. Armed with a hydraulic lift, drawbar, heavy springs and rear power take-off, among other things, it put many plough horses and tractors out of work

1952–1971

M-38A1

Built when the Cold War started to heat up, the M-38A1 saw battle service both in Korea and Vietnam. And you wouldn’t want to get in the way of the M-38A1D, which was equipped with a Davy Crocket missile launcher that could fire a onekilotonne atomic projectile as far as two kilometres

ABOVE: AMIDST A CONVOY OF JEEPS, US TROOPS VENTURE DEEP INTO SICILY DURING WORLD WAR II RIGHT: JEEPS WERE FAMOUSLY TOUGH ON THE BACKSIDE. THIS POSTER READS, "THESE SOLDIERS GO UP IN THE AIR TO PROVE THEY CAN TAKE IT, CAMP HOOD, TEXAS"

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AMERICAN INTEREST

Unlike Europe with its posh, highly engineered cars that usually sold to aristocracy and the middle classes, America’s auto industry was built on two pillars: simplicity and toughness, as demanded by farmers. But the US Army specifications demanded something much lighter, faster and more agile than the norm at the time. Neither Bantam nor Willys had the cuttingedge designers required to come up with a radical solution, so Willys just fudged it, by submitting a sample time and cost estimate, while Bantam threw themselves on the generosity of a talented and patriotic auto designer named Karl Probst.

“I HAVE DRIVEN EVERY UNIT PURCHASED IN THE LAST 20 YEARS. I CAN JUDGE THEM IN 15 MINUTES. THIS VEHICLE IS GOING TO BE ABSOLUTELY OUTSTANDING” Commendably, Probst agreed to work for no pay, some think just to keep the United States ahead of the looming Nazi menace. He set to work with a clean sheet and within a couple of days had come up with an utterly unique design he called the BRC, which stood for Bantam Reconnaissance Car. The US Army approved the Bantam design, and awarded the company the prototype 92 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

contract. Both Probst and Bantam manager Harold Christ were ecstatic, because they knew their design was the best. What they didn’t know was that their design would change the entire automotive world — or that eventually, it wouldn’t be theirs. By September 21, 1940, the first-ever Jeep had been laboriously handmade at the Bantam works, and driven to an Army proving ground at the Holabird Quartermaster Depot, in Baltimore, in the US state of Maryland. Major Herbert J. Lawes, then the chief purchasing and contracting officer, gave it an initial punishing ride up steep hills and through gullies. He brought it back grinning, and is quoted as saying, “I have driven every unit… purchased in the last 20 years. I can judge them in 15 minutes. This vehicle is going to be absolutely outstanding; I believe it will make history!” He was right. Amongst others, General George Marshall, former US Army Chief of Staff, is reported to have described the Jeep as, “America's greatest contribution to modern warfare.” Not bad for a cobbled together panic response to looming bankruptcy. Sadly for Bantam and Probst, the US government was less generous about selflessly giving for the benefit of the nation. Although Bantam had obviously won the contract with a great design, the government awarded the manufacturing rights to Willys and Ford, as it had judged them to have better production capacity. Bantam complained, but to no avail. The blueprints were handed over to Ford and Willys, and assembly began in early 1941, at a princely sum of US$738.74 per vehicle. This did come with a plus side however, as the Willys engine, code-named the

told the Army to forget the deadline, as it was pulling out. Desperation meantime saw Willys and Bantam attempt the deadline — and with that, the Jeep had germinated.

THE JEEP

RIDE DOWN MEMORY LANE

1955 CJ-5

Developed as a direct improvement on the M-38A1, the CJ-5 boasted an increased wheelbase, more comfortable seats, and in 1965, a 155-horsepower V6 engine. Not surprising then that this model had the longest production of any Jeep, spanning a whopping 30 years

1967–1969 M715

What’s more useful than a Jeep? A Jeep crossed with a pick-up truck, of course. Although its top speed was only 88.5 kilometres per hour, the M715 proved adaptable. Forestry agents and fish and game departments picked them up, and the army modified them to use as an ambulance

1976–1987 ABOVE: TWO JEEPS WERE USED IN THE FILMING OF THE 1980 CLASSIC HORROR FILM FRIDAY THE 13TH, BOTH 1966 CJ-5S LEFT: WHETHER CARRYING RICE FARMERS IN ASIA OR TRAVELLERS ON THE KARAKORUM HIGHWAY, IN PAKISTAN (RIGHT), THE JEEP HAS BEEN AROUND THE WORLD AND BACK AGAIN

CJ-7

The seventh generation of Jeep vehicles needed something new, so the CJ-7 became the first major change in design in over two decades. There was a longer wheelbase, space for automatic transmission and, for the first time, optional steel doors. There was also an optional all-wheel drive system, with a funky name: Quadra-Trac

93 MARCH 2014

CAR VS. WILD HIGHLIGHTS NOT THE TOURIST TRAIL Bill Wu and Gary Humphrey attempt to take Ruby from San Felipe to the beach the hard way — across the harshest desert in Mexico. Temperatures can soar to more than 40 degrees and it gets so hot, Ruby catches fire. Only Humphrey's quick thinking saves her from a fiery death. SKY PLATFORM Wu, Humphrey and Ruby take on Mexico's Sierra Juárez mountains, 1,800 metres above sea level, following a Native American foot route to a sacred rock platform, never reached by car before. Their way is barred by a maze of granite boulders that threaten to topple, wedge or crush Ruby at every turn. UNEXPLORED VALLEY In Baja, Mexico the boys point Ruby towards a valley so remote it has no name and has never marked the presence of a vehicle. To get there they have to cross the fast-flowing and unpredictable Rio Hardy. CRATERS Humphrey, Wu and Ruby visit a massive crater that was used by NASA to train for the moon landings. Its central volcanic peak has never been climbed by car — with good reason. WATERFALLS Wu and Humphrey head towards a sacred lagoon that has never seen a car. To get there they must travel up the winding, dangerous rivers of the Los Tuxtla jungle, which local legends say are protected by spirits.

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THE JEEP

“Go Devil”, was much stronger than the Bantam power plant, and no doubt contributed much to the Jeep’s eventual overall success.

“IT DOES EVERYTHING. IT GOES EVERYWHERE. IT’S AS FAITHFUL AS A DOG, AS STRONG AS A MULE, AND AS AGILE AS A GOAT. IT CARRIES TWICE WHAT IT WAS DESIGNED FOR, AND KEEPS ON GOING” The engine’s name was pretty appropriate. The Go Devil used a much higher compression ratio than normal, at 6.48:1. Instead of the usual cast iron, it utilised plated aluminum pistons to keep weight down and make them less prone to heat, scoring and distortion problems. Precision bearings replaced scraper-fitted main bearings, and the crankshaft used counterweights to minimise wear-inducing vibration. Newly designed valve springs were made of stronger, lighter special-alloy steel, and the engine's cooling system was boosted to allow it to run at high revs and low speed when climbing hills. It produced around 105 footpounds of torque, and almost 60 horsepower; more than enough to power the vehicle's lightweight 2,000-pound (907-kilogram) body. Ford and Willys happily cloned the Bantam chassis and body design, retaining the

distinctive seven-bar grille, flat bonnet, and wheel-ateach-corner layout.

JEEP AND CHEERFUL

Stories abound of the Jeep’s ability to take on the most daunting of tasks and the biggest bullies, and still come out with the front grille and boss-eyed headlights grinning. Once, outside Manila in the Philippines, a Jeep pulled a 52-tonne train of railway wagons for over 30 kilometres, though exactly why this was required is not clear. Jeeps have been put to work as ambulances, machine gun carriers, cable layers, aircraft tugs and even ploughs. The Jeep was so versatile and tough, rumour has it that one was awarded a Purple Heart for its bravery. A Jeep could be wrapped in a tarpaulin and floated across a river, packed flat in the hold of an aircraft (even a D-Day glider), then driven out immediately on landing. Images and photographs of Jeeps splashing off landing craft and through rivers are common. The short wheelbase, nil overhangs and wide track meant it could tackle incredibly bumpy terrain. It could tow a gun carriage with ease — and was surprisingly economical due to its light weight. As for fixing it (as Car vs. Wild will again demonstrate), a hammer, a spanner and a piece of wire were usually enough in an emergency. Everything was easy to get at and maintain — and if the doors fell off, well, that just made it easier for people to get in and out of. As World War II journalist Ernie Pyle is quoted as saying, “It does everything. It goes everywhere. It’s as faithful as a dog, as strong as a mule, and as agile as a goat. It constantly carries twice what it was designed for, and keeps on going.”

RIDE DOWN MEMORY LANE

1981–1985

SCRAMBLER CJ-8

Despite being a favourite of former United States president Ronald Reagan, who drove his sporty blue Scrambler around his ranch, this model wasn’t a huge seller in its day. Now, however, the roomy Jeep is a collector favourite

1982–1986 CJ-7 LAREDO

With cherry-red colouring and a chrome grille, it almost seems a shame to sully the Laredo with mud and grit. Definitely one of the fanciest models, a Jeep fanatic once described it as “flashy without being outrageous”. But, like any Jeep, it could still handle most terrain thrown at it

1997–2006 WRANGLER TJ

The Wrangler tj represented a new era for Jeep. Although quite similar to the CJ-7 in terms of design, it was fitted with 80 percent newly designed parts. Its Quadra-Coil suspension, for example, made for a far smoother ride. But classic features still remained, such as a folddown windshield (which first appeared in the 1940s) and removable doors

95 MARCH 2014

THE JEEP

A JEEP LIBERTY ROLLS OFF THE LINE AT THE TOLEDO SOUTH ASSEMBLY COMPLEX ON NOVEMBER 16, 2011, IN THE US STATE OF OHIO

JEEP FOREBEARS

PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES (MAIN); CHARLES CHUA (BOTTOM)

In the early 1900s, car salesman Otto Zachow invented a flexible joint that allowed a car engine to drive all four wheels while the driver steered normally. With this, he and a partner founded the Four Wheel Drive Auto Company. An order for 50 trucks followed soon after and by 1917, nearly 400 FWD trucks were in use by the British and American armies. An impressive 18,000 of the vehicles were eventually produced.

It wasn’t all love though. The seating in a Jeep was basic; actually beyond basic. It was board-like. In fact, the original Jeep seats were so unforgiving on the buttocks that anal piles became known as “Jeep disease” in soldier slang. Parking Jeeps on anything but a flat area was a risk too; the handbrake was more for decoration than effect, and wheel chocks were an essential accessory. Jeeps also had a reputation for springing oil seal leaks. Unless these were regularly checked, horrible noises and grinding to a halt could follow. The brakes suffered heavily from corrosion problems, 96 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

especially if used in tough conditions while the sixvolt battery wasn’t the most predictable. Worst of all, the Jeep’s light weight and short wheelbase sacrificed stability for agility — meaning rollover deaths were not uncommon. Indeed, the amount of protection if one did roll was easy to describe: nil. But these were all part of the Jeep’s character, and the machine’s speed and low profile were used to good advantage in daring assaults against Rommel’s tanks and aircraft in the Western Desert of Africa, not to mention countless John Wayne movies. The Jeep lasted in much the

same format right through from 1941 to the end of the Korean War in 1953, and was still being used in various roles right up to the start of the Gulf War, when the Hummer took over its role with more beef.

CIVVY STREET JEEP

In 1945, the war-to-endall-wars finished. All of a sudden, the roughly 650,000 Jeeps that had rolled off the production lines were redundant. Willys was in a tough spot: if even a small percentage of these hit the secondhand market, their customer base would be decimated. The firm argued against selling the

JEEP TOYS, LIKE THIS TOY MODEL FROM CAR VS. WILD, ARE A PERENNIAL KIDS' FAVOURITE

THE JEEP

“Surfing is a physical representation of Jeep's values, and embodies the spirit of freedom which characterises each single model produced by the American brand. Experiencing a total sense of communion with nature and its forces, challenging the waves and the wind, with a desire to push your own limits: it’s the fascination of surfing that is also more than a dynamic sport, as it becomes a lifestyle. Jeep also shares with surf enthusiasts the attitude to live out emotions fully and in the most authentic and independent way.” — extract from new Jeep and Quicksilver Roxy Pro Series promotion

‘Legal Tender’ B-52'S

Walk into the bank, try to pass that trash. Teller sees and says, "Uh-huh, that's fresh as grass." See the street pass under your feet, In time to buy the latest model getaway Jeep

‘Sugar Magnolia’ GRATEFUL DEAD

Well, she can dance a Cajun rhythm, jump like a Willys in four-wheel drive. She’s a summer love for spring, fall and winter. She can make happy any man alive

‘Back Seat’ LL COOL J

I never knew a four-wheel drive could be so live, I'll put your numbers in the archives. So take 'em off and put them things on the mirror, girl, It's my Jeep and your world 98 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

bags of grass — plus cookpots, tents and anything that signified being part of the Swinging Generation. And yet, the old benefits of tough, easy-to-fix and practical still held true. The Jeep had moved on from being the soldier’s sidekick — to the American Dream Machine. Between 1946 and 1987, which is when Jeep was sold to Chrysler, a steady stream of ever more comfortable and larger aspirational vehicles kept the company’s coffers filling — but mainly in the United States. On the other side of the Pacific, Toyota had seen the four-wheel-drive light and produced a bigger, more efficient and possibly even tougher vehicle: the Land Cruiser. This pretty much eradicated Jeep’s export market, and models like the Cherokee became known as much for weight and poor fuel economy as anything else. Gas guzzlers were not cool any more. But even then, the original-style Jeep was still being made. After some serious up and downs in the 1980s and ‘90s, and a financial bailout or two, Chrysler, now allied to Italian company Fiat, is still selling the direct descendant of the

original Jeep, in the form of the Jeep Wrangler — which includes Ruby, one of the stars of Discovery Channel’s Car vs. Wild. Ruby still looks cool, still has the same grille

ON THE CIVVY STREET IT HAD THE RIGHT “JAMES DEAN ON FOUR WHEELS” KIND OF IMAGE. YOU CAN IMAGINE THE DRIVER THINKING, “I’M NOT KEEPING TO THE OLD WAYS. I GO MY OWN FOURWHEEL-DRIVE WAY AND BRING FRESH THINKING TO MY LIFE” and headlight arrangement — and as the show makes pretty clear, still goes almost anywhere. The Wrangler continues the tradition. After all, it’s a Jeep. THE JEEP WRANGLER UNLIMITED, PICTURED ON RACKS, READY FOR FINAL ASSEMBLY AT TOLEDO SOUTH ASSEMBLY PLANT

PHOTO: 2013 CHRYSLER GROUP LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVE

WAVES AND MUSIC

ex-Army vehicles to civilians, instead recommending that they be dumped off ships, used for target practice, blown up or scrapped. Sadly, that is what happened, and original World War II Jeeps are surprisingly rare and hard to locate. Willys, their market intact, began selling a modified, slightly less austere civilian Jeep, the CJ-2A, in late 1945. It came with a corny tagline of, “Gee wouldn’t it be swell to take a Jeep to the lake after the war?” They sold in thousands. The car not only appealed to farmers and practical rural types, but also to the post-war generation, which was beginning to have time, spare money and different ideas: like heading up-country with your girlfriend — alone! The Jeep was ideal for this. And even better, it had the right “James Dean on four wheels” kind of image. You can imagine the beatnik driver thinking, as he slipped behind the wheel, “I’m not keeping to the old ways, no sir. Look at me, I go my own four-wheel-drive way, and bring fresh thinking to my life.” So at weekends, Jeeps were seen flocking out of big cities stacked with surfboards, hang gliders, and

ILLUSTRATION: RAY TOH

BACK FROM

BEAR GRYLLS

WE ALL KNOW THE GLOBAL SURVIVAL PHENOMENON THAT IS BEAR GRYLLS. BUT DO WE KNOW THE PERSON AND THE TRIGGERS OF ADRENALIN RUSH FOR HIM AND HIS BAND OF BROTHERS TO PRODUCE DISCOVERY CHANNEL’S MOST EXTREME FOOTAGE? WITH A NEW SHOW BEAR GRYLLS: ESCAPE FROM HELL SET TO LAUNCH, LUKE CLARK SPOKE TO THOSE WHO WORK CLOSEST WITH GRYLLS AND PEEPED INTO HIS MIND THROUGH FIRST PERSON ACCOUNTS

M THE BRINK

Picture this. You are hanging from a rope at the edge of the world knowing that if you mess up, your next conscious move will certainly be your last. It’s like a scene straight out of a Wilbur Smith novel, except this blockbuster is somebody’s life, or what’s left of it. Bear Grylls recalls a scene on Mount Everest’s Khumbu Icefall, “I clutch frantically for the wall, but it is glassy smooth. I swing my ice axe at it wildly, but it doesn’t hold, and my crampons just screech across the ice. In desperation, I cling to the rope above me and look up. I am 23 years old and about to die. Again.”

t this stage in his autobiography, Mud, Sweat, and Tears, Grylls had already seen his life punctuated by the do-or-die Fight Clublike battlegrounds of Brecon Beacons in Wales, where he overcame months of extreme pain and stress-testing, to emerge with the ultimate prize: entry into Britain’s elite Special Forces division, the SAS. Then, in just a few pages, he had all but thrown that career away in the span of minutes above the sands of southern Africa — plunging to the earth and messing up standard safety protocols,

102 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

in a parachute accident that fractured his spine in three places and left him a broken man, in more ways than one. Yet, when Grylls takes a beating, he goes back for more. And what beatings — after a late-night read of his bestselling account, you can almost feel those bruises, fractures and lacerations. After surviving the neardeath parachuting accident, the adventurer’s response, upon recovering from the news that he could no longer serve in the SAS, was typically Grylls. It was time to climb Mount Everest. But of course.

BEAR GRYLLS

So now, as he hangs above this massive grey crevasse, with his heart in his mouth and a thin rope between him and an early grave, what thoughts flash through his young mind? What events would mould this raw, accident-prone talent into the one-man survivalist brand he is today? And beyond these TV moments — whether it’s being buried alive by an avalanche, stung by killer bees, or drinking water from a camel’s carcass — who exactly is Bear Grylls, and what’s driven him to hell and back? We aim to find out.

RIDING THE CUSP

In his early years, Grylls journeyed through his life head first and somewhat haphazardly, often with what a regular person might view as a cavalier disregard for safety. More accurately, Grylls was playing with danger; his was a life where risk and reward sat in the same deck of cards, as elements to be seduced, mastered, and embraced — part of the fabric of growing up and becoming a man. Yet one major obstacle would serve to define his pathway all the way to the top.

It is indicative of his outlook on life that the survivalist opens a section of his book with a quote by former British statesman Benjamin Disraeli: “There is no education like adversity.” Certainly, formal education didn’t promise a path to greatness — his GCE A-Level grades (A, C, D, C) were notable, he admits, only because “they spelled the name of a cool rock band”. Considering that nature had always provided Grylls with his own personal classroom, it was clear that the wilds would prove his ultimate finishing school.

103 MARCH 2014

“ADVENTURE FELT THE MOST NATURAL THING IN THE WORLD. IT WAS WHERE I CAME ALIVE. IT IS WHAT MADE ME FEEL, FOR THE FIRST TIME, REALLY MYSELF” Dave Pearce has been Grylls’ right-hand safety man for the past 15 years, and a regular on Man vs. Wild. An SAS veteran of 25 years in his own right, Pearce is as well positioned as anyone to know whether Grylls has lost any of his love for the wild. “I think adventure runs through his blood and always will,” he tells Discovery Channel Magazine, on a phone line from London, England. “He’s not someone to sit around and wait for things to happen. He takes the bull by the horns, and gets very excited by the adventures 104 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

and environments that he’s been in before, or by certain experiences. And he’s very open and up for new experiences, and learning new things in an adventurous situation. So yeah, he definitely still comes alive.” He cites a recent example. “Just the other day we had to do some scenes of power motoring. It was a bit touch and go as to whether the conditions were good to fly. It was dicey, which almost fuelled his interest. Yet, he’s not reckless; he’s a very sensible, savvy, careful character. He weighs everything up.” It is exactly that mastering of the cusp between the possible and the insane that has become the Bear Grylls formula for compelling television. In his capacity, Pearce is typically in charge of keeping everyone alive, from Grylls himself through to the film crew, who are often expected to perform the action scenes themselves while ensuring that viewers at home get every great picture. We asked Pearce to describe a typical session of action filming. “Well, Bear and I will discuss it at great lengths, mainly whether it’s feasible. He’s a very capable character, and he can get over, across, under and through things a lot easier than many people. So it’s sort of balancing the level of risk, that fine line between risk and adventure on one hand, and being reckless on the other,” Pearce explains. A key aspect to the filming formula is ensuring the best picture possible, within the realms of safety — especially when the shooting is literally up in the air. “There are some things we plan in some detail. Free-falling for instance: when we do any parachute jumps and aerial work, there’s a lot of planning,” says Pearce.

“The actual stunt itself is often okay, but to capture it on camera in the way we do — thanks to the talented camera operators we’ve had for years — is a different game. That requires a bit of planning, to get these operators in position to capture what we’re trying to do.” Equally important in wilderness filming is the ability to plan off the cuff, adjusting the execution plan with changes in conditions. “We might wake up one day and it’s just hammering it down with rain and there’s flash floods everywhere and a jungle river,” he describes. “We think, ‘Wow, this is great, you know, let’s use this. Let’s show the audience how tough it can be and how it can change, and capture that.’ We do ad lib a lot, very quickly,” he says. “And that’s where I come under a bit of pressure — to make it work and make sure everybody’s safe.” But more on that later.

HELL RIDE DOWN

While Grylls has taken many challenges during his television career, in terms of gravity and raw pain there have been few that compare to his darkest days. While it may not have the adrenalinecrazed quality of Man vs. Wild, the latest Bear Grylls show has the potential to take you somewhere even more powerful — to places that disaster can bring us to, and human determination delivers you from. Grylls is no stranger to hellish times, and one of his hardest began in the summer of 1996, during a month-long spell on a game farm in the northern Transvaal in South Africa. As executive producer of Bear Grylls: Escape From Hell Sarah Davies notes, that one day in Africa was an event he would refer to in the new show.

As he says of his early boyhood encounters with the outdoors, courtesy of an upbringing on Britain’s Isle of Wight, “Adventure felt the most natural thing in the world, and it was where I came alive. It is what made me feel, for the first time, really myself,” he writes. “As I got older, and the rest of my world got more complicated and unnatural, I sought more and more the identity and wholeness that adventure gave me.” Yet one wonders whether today, after the rigours of his early years, and a television career spanning more than 15 years of full-throttle filming in some of the world’s harshest conditions, does he still have that same appetite?

BEAR GRYLLS

SHOW BY SHOW

A QUICK LOOK AT THE ACTION IN STORE IN BEAR GRYLLS: ESCAPE FROM HELL EPISODE 1 Grylls enters the Guatemalan jungle to

relive the experiences of three groups of survivors. Mexican archaeologist Armando Anaya’s team was attacked by bandits during an excavation of Mayan ruins, stripped of belongings, and forced across a dangerous river. In Malaysia, British microbiologist John Gillat had set out on a short walk from his hotel and got lost in the jungle, where he would have to brave the wilds for the night. When Frenchmen Loic Pillois and Guilhem Nayral went on an expedition into the Amazon rainforest, it turned into a 52-day ordeal. Grylls experiences their challenges and demonstrates the survival skills they used — from river crossings, to tarantula hunting, and lighting signal fires.

EPISODE 2 Grylls heads to Canada’s snow-covered,

hostile Pacific Coast mountain range, where he throws himself into mini avalanches, jumps into freezing-cold rivers, and leaps from a cliff ledge into a tree top, retracing the steps of Sébastien Boucher, Eric LeMarque, and Charles Horton, who found themselves in the ultimate battle for survival.

EPISODE 3 In Morocco’s searing desert, Grylls recreates the brute force of a Saharan sandstorm, scales crumbling desert cliffs, drinks blood from a snake and his own urine for rehydration, as he retraces the steps of Mauro Prosperi, Ed Rosenthal, and Merritt Myers, were all stranded in the desert. EPISODE 4 Grylls experiences the terrifying climb

that four base jumpers, including Jace Ramsey and Johnny Strange, were forced to attempt after they jumped into the Grand Canyon in North Africa and realised there was no way back out. Then, Grylls plunges into fierce white water in Italy to relive the story of Polish explorer Maciej Tarasin, who lost his canoe, and paddling partner Tomek Jedrys in a remote river canyon in Colombia. Back in the scorching desert canyon in North Africa, Grylls relates to the trauma of Merritt Myers, who went through hell when he got trapped on a ledge under a beating sun and with no water.

SEEK WATER FIRST

“A common myth is that if you’re lost for any length of time‚ you’ve got to find food. That really isn’t true‚ and you can actually survive for weeks and weeks without it. Your priorities should be finding shelter and water‚ especially since in most places you’ll be dead in three days without water. Eating food will also dehydrate you faster‚ so focus on getting water before food‚” advises Bears.

EPISODE 5 Grylls introduces three youths who rescued themselves from mountain ranges and impenetrable forest. British backpacker Jamie Neale, who got lost in the mountains for a staggering 12 days, and had to learn how to make camp, stay alive, and finally walked out to safety unaided. Grylls then looks at William Parven's encounter with a black bear in California and negotiates a steep waterfall to illustrate the dangers that the teenager courted when he slipped and fell. He also demonstrates the skilled techniques of Eagle Scout Dan Stephens, who fell and knocked himself out in Quetico Provincial Park, Canada. EPISODE 6 In this special episode, Grylls examines

the most dramatic, entertaining, and surprising moments from the series to give viewers a complete picture of survival.

105 MARCH 2014

“I think that changed him, and he understood that he had to dig incredibly deep,” she says. “I think that was the hairiest thing in his life, bar none.”

“I KNEW THAT I HAD BLOWN IT. WE GET ONE SHOT AT LIFE, AND IN THOSE AGONISING MOMENTS I REALISED I HAD MESSED THIS UP BIG-TIME. I HAD THIS PIT-OFMY-STOMACH FEAR THAT LIFE WOULD NEVER BE THE SAME” As Grylls writes in his book, the adventure had started out idyllically, as some downtime from soldier work, and a skydiving adventure with friends over Zimbabwe on a clear African evening. Soon, the time came to jump. “I looked down, took that familiar deep breath, then slid off the step. As the wind moulded my body into an arch I could feel it respond to my movements,” he notes. “As I dropped a shoulder, the wind began to spin me, and the horizon moved before my eyes. The feeling is known simply as ‘the freedom of the

sky.’ I could just make out the small dots of the other others in free fall below me, then I lost them in the clouds. Seconds later I was falling through the clouds as well. They felt damp on my face. How I loved that feeling of falling through whiteout!” Yet this freedom would quickly become his prison. “Three thousand feet. Time to pull.’ I reached to my right hip and gripped the zip cord. I pulled strongly.” Initially, as he writes, it responded as normal. The canopy opened with a crack that interrupted the noise of the 209-kilometre-per-hour free fall. His descent rate slowed to 40 kilometres per hour. “Then I looked up and realised something was wrong — very wrong. Instead of a smooth rectangular shape above me, I had a very deformed-looking tangle, which meant the whole parachute would be a nightmare to control. I pulled hard on both steering toggles to see if that would help me. It didn’t. I started to panic.” Things were happening way too fast, and Grylls was not following the appropriate procedure. “I watched the desert floor becoming closer, and objects becoming more distinct. My descent was fast — far too fast. I’d have to try and land it like this. Before I knew it, I was too low to use my reserve chute. I was getting close to the ground now, and was coming

in at speed. I flared the chute too high and too hard out of fear. This jerked my body up horizontally — then I dropped away and smashed into the desert floor. My body bounced like a rag doll.” “The impact felt as if that rock-hard chute hard been driven clean through the central part of my spine. I couldn’t stand up; I could only roll over and moan in agony into the dusty ground. “I knew that I had blown it. We get one shot at life, and in those agonising moments I realised I had messed this up big-time. I had this pit-of-mystomach fear that life would never be the same again.” Fortunately, his surgeons in Great Britain decided not to operate immediately. Given that their patient was young and fit, with serious dedication to rehabilitation there was a chance he might recover naturally. Yet, strapped into a large metal brace, all Grylls could think about was the chance he’d lost. Whether he recovered or not, he was sure he no longer had the body of an SAS soldier. His self-assessment was damning, made worse by the fact that he’d been trained in exactly what to do in the event of a parachute malfunction.

ACTION MAN

For Davies, the new Discovery Channel show was a chance to be on set with the adventure icon, and to observe him

THE BEAR YEARS EARLY LIFE

OUTDOOR CHILDHOOD

BORN EDWARD MICHAEL GRYLLS IN DONAGHADEE IN NORTHERN IRELAND'S COUNTY DOWN, THE SON OF CONSERVATIVE PARTY POLITICIAN SIR MICHAEL GRYLLS AND SARAH GRYLLS. NICKNAMED 'BEAR' BY HIS OLDER SISTER, LARA FAWCETT, HE WAS ONE OF TWO CHILDREN

LIVING IN BEMBRIDGE, ISLE OF WIGHT, GRYLLS LEARNED SAILING AND CLIMBING. SENT TO BOARDING SCHOOL AT ETON COLLEGE, WHICH HE HATED, HE HELPED SET UP THE SCHOOL'S FIRST CLIMBING CLUB

NORTHERN IRELAND

1974–1978 106 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

ISLE OF WIGHT

1978–1988

BEAR GRYLLS

BEAR ESSENTIALS FROM HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY MUD, SWEAT, AND TEARS, GRYLLS REMEMBERS HIS EARLY YEARS AS A SURVIVOR SCHOOL BULLIES "I was learning very young that if

I were to survive this place, then I had to find some coping mechanisms. My way was to behave badly, and learn to scrap, to avoid bullies wanting to target me. It was also a way to avoid thinking about home. But not thinking about home is hard when all you secretly want is to be at home."

ENTHUSIASM "I’ve always given of myself with great

enthusiasm. In fact, my dad always told me that if I could be the most enthusiastic person I know, then I would do well. I never forgot that."

SPECIAL FORCES

IF IT AIN'T RAINING "The [drill sergeant] often told us, 'If it ain’t raining, it ain’t training.' And it rains a lot in the Brecon Beacons. Trust me. (I recently overheard our middle boy, Marmaduke, tell one of his friends this SAS mantra. The other child was complaining that he couldn’t go outside because it was raining. Marmaduke, age four, put him straight. Priceless.)" ENDURANCE "Endurance is the route march that has made the selection famous — it is also a march on which a soldier had died some years earlier from fatigue. It is a true leveller — and unifier to all who pass. The march would take us across the whole Brecon Beacons mountain range … and then back again. To drive the magnitude of the task home to us, we realised that we would need two 1:50,000 map sheets just to cover the route. Symbolically, it was also the last test of the mountain phase of selection." STRESS TESTING "I was half naked with my camouflage jacket pulled halfway down my back, and I was huddled over shivering. I must have looked a mess. I could taste the snot smeared down my face. For an hour, a psychiatrist debriefed me. He told me that I had done well and had resisted effectively. I felt just so relieved." COLONEL BRIEFS SAS RECRUITS "'But what makes our

work here extraordinary is that everyone here goes that little bit extra. When everyone else gives up, we give more. That is what sets us apart.' It is a speech I have never forgotten. I stood there, my boots worn, cracked, and muddy, my trousers ripped, and wearing a sweaty black t-shirt. I felt prouder than I had ever felt in my life."

PARACHUTE ACCIDENT

ARTISTS RIFLES, 21 SAS

ZIMBABWE

AFTER A TRULY EPIC SELECTION PROCESS, HE GAINED ENTRANCE INTO THE BRITISH SPECIAL FORCES. ONE OF HIS TRAINERS, SARGEANT TAFF, USED TO MEMORABLY THREATEN RECRUITS TO “RIP THAT FINGER OFF AND BEAT YOU TO DEATH WITH THE SOGGY END!”

LANDED HORRIFICALLY, AFTER NEITHER OF TWO PARACHUTES OPENED. WITH THREE FRACTURED VERTEBRAE, HE WAS "WITHIN A WHISKER" OF SEVERING HIS SPINAL CORD. IN HOSPITAL, HE WAS DUBBED THE "MIRACLE KID"

1993–1996

SUMMER 1996 107 MARCH 2014

and his team in action in the field. And whether it’s a result of all the Special Forces training, the years of TV experience, or having learned his lessons the hard way, one thing today is crystal clear. When he’s in action mode now, Grylls is about three things in particular: teamwork, trust and process. Pearce tells DCM that a lot of the confidence Grylls has while in the field comes from having kept essentially the same core team around him through his filming career and feeling safe in the knowledge that he and his band of brothers will provide the critical checks and balances needed to get them through the shoots safely — and to act to plan if and when something goes wrong. “It’s a very small crew. Bear certainly likes to think of it as like the Special Forces of TV,” says Pearce. “Bear leads the charge, and he and I work things out, and the guys capture it. They’re fit and strong, capable and agile, and used to operating in all environments.” In this case, more people would be an obstacle: “We wouldn’t be able to achieve what we do with anything bigger or more cumbersome.” There is also the benefit of having two former SAS soldiers in the field. So what exactly did the hallowed SAS selection process — about as gruelling and insanely competitive as it can get —

give a soldier in terms of training and aptitude? As Grylls writes, army secrecy means he cannot disclose the details of the missions he performed during his three years with his squadron. “But they included some of the most extraordinary training that any man can be lucky enough to receive. I went on to be trained in demolitions, air and maritime insertions, foreign weapons, jungle survival, trauma medicine, Arabic, signals, high-speed and evasive driving, winter warfare, as well as ‘escape and evasion’ survival for behind enemy lines.” “I went through an even more in-depth capture initiation programme as part of becoming a combatsurvival instructor, which was much longer and more intense than the hell we endured on selection. We became proficient in covert night parachuting and unarmed combat, among many other skills — and along the way we had a whole host of misadventures.” Yet as he describes, it was among the most exhilarating times of his life. “As a young man I was living my dream. I mean, find me a young man who isn’t going to love being trained in how to blow stuff up, climb cliffs, skydive at night, and practice evasive high-speed driving!” Having learned early on how disasters happen when procedures aren’t

followed, how does Team Bear Grylls successfully ride this cusp between high-octane adventure and carelessness? For Pearce, the key is to stay alert, and not get carried away. “I always say to the crew, let’s not be complacent. We might have done a free fall, we might have done a rappel, we might

“AS A YOUNG MAN I WAS LIVING MY DREAM. FIND ME A YOUNG MAN WHO ISN’T GOING TO LOVE BEING TRAINED IN HOW TO BLOW STUFF UP, CLIMB CLIFFS, SKYDIVE AND HIGH SPEED DRIVING” have done a river crossing a hundred times, but I’m often the first to say, ‘Let’s just stop for a second, let’s just check everything and make sure everything’s sorted. Is everyone completely clear what’s going on? This is the way we’re going to do it.’ You know, we all totally respect each other for what we do, and we all communicate exceedingly well, even in tough environments. And I think that’s really important.”

THE BEAR YEARS MEETS SHARA KNIGHT

MOUNT EVEREST

A SURE BET

TWO MONTHS BEFORE HIS EVEREST ATTEMPT, GRYLLS MEETS SHARA KNIGHT. HE LATER RECALLS, "SHE JUST SEEMED TO SHINE IN ALL SHE DID." THE TWO MARRIED IN 2000

AFTER HIS NEAR-DEATH SCRAPE ON THE KHUMBU ICEFALL, GRYLLS SUMMITS, "WITH TEARS STILL POURING DOWN MY FROZEN CHEEKS"

GRYLLS WAS FIRST SPOTTED BY DISCOVERY CHANNEL AFTER BEING IN A WORLDWIDE "SURE FOR MEN" DEODORANT CAMPAIGN. ITS TAGLINE: "WHATEVER MAKES YOU SWEAT"

SUTHERLAND, SCOTLAND

NEPAL

MAY 26, 1998 108 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

GREAT BRITAIN

2001

BEAR GRYLLS

ACTION GENERATION

Sarah Davies says Bear Grylls entered television when field cameras were getting lighter. “He was very much in a generation when suddenly TV wanted more experiential footage; they wanted the viewer to feel like they were right in the heart of it. Most of us are never going to do or experience the things that Bear does — but you feel that you are by watching him."

WHAT DOESN’T KILL US

As Davies notes, Escape from Hell offers die-hard fans a series of powerful portraits of real-life survival, narrated and re-enacted by the survivalist himself. “What sets this series apart is that you see him putting himself in positions that ordinary people have got themselves in,” she says. In taking us there, Grylls connects with the human stories too. “You see a more emotional side, and he talks about his own experiences in a way that I haven’t seen him do before,” she says. “It’s a special series. It’s a real survival show, because every single thing he’s doing, those guys did. And the ingenuity of those guys in some cases is remarkable,” she describes. “I mean, every single one of them really should be dead — but they all made it out, because they just wouldn’t give in and they were very, very clever.” “What I love about them is they’re all ages, shapes, and sizes. They’re not all hero types — some of them were just ordinary people who just got lost, you know,” she enthuses. And yet, in finding themselves in dire situations, each found unknown reserves of courage and intuition. “They had to find something that would get them through. And for every one of them, this was a transformational experience,” says Davies. Strangely, in some cases, the subjects seemed as if they

MAN VS. WILD

CHIEF SCOUT

GRYLLS STARS IN SEVEN SERIES OF THE EMMY-NOMINATED HIT SHOW. IN HIS BOOK, HE ATTRIBUTES HIS SUCCESS TO HIS "MAGIC THREE: GOOD FORTUNE, AN AMAZING TEAM, AND A WILLINGNESS TO RISK IT ALL"

BECOMES THE SCOUT ASSOCIATION'S YOUNGEST EVER CHIEF SCOUT, TO 28 MILLION SCOUTS WORLDWIDE. HE IS STILL CHIEF SCOUT TODAY

DISCOVERY CHANNEL

2006–2011

were somehow saved by their near-death experience. In one example, snowboarder Eric LeMarque took a wrong turn after a great powder run, and became lost in the Sierra Nevada range, carrying, according to the Los Angeles Times, four pieces of Bazooka bubblegum, an MP3 player, a mobile phone with a dead battery, keys to his home and some matches. Aside from being lost, LeMarque was nursing another affliction — a dangerous crack cocaine habit. Says Davies, “he didn’t care whether he lived or died, he was doing loads of drugs. He talks about it on the show — it was only when he nearly lost his life that he suddenly had that moment of clarity and realised, basically, ‘What the hell am I doing? Why am I doing this?’” “And he managed to give up crack, literally overnight — he had it on him in the mountains, and just poured it away. Ironically, it was the little ziplock bag that he had his crack in that helped save his life, because he was able to store water in there,” she says. Many survivors in the show went on to discover new meaning as a result of their ordeals. Davies was struck by the way that some were driven by love for their family. In one episode, one guy, realising he is lost and unlikely to survive, decides he’ll commit suicide. Yet, he’s determined that rescuers must eventually find

WORLDWIDE

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THE BEAR YEARS EXPECT MISTAKES "YOU HAVE TO GIVE YOURSELF A LARGE MARGIN OF ERROR, AT LEAST IN THE WILD. YOU’VE GOT TO ANTICIPATE THE WORST, AND CONSIDER THAT IF YOU OR SOMEONE ELSE GETS INJURED, YOU NEED TO BE ABLE TO STILL CARRY OUT YOUR DECISION. TAKE YOUR TIME TO MAKE THAT DECISION, BECAUSE THE REPERCUSSIONS OF YOUR CHOICES ARE ONES THAT YOU’LL BE LIVING WITH FOR A LONG TIME"

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BLIZZARD "CONCENTRATE ON MAKING YOURSELF SAFE AND GETTING OUT OF THE WIND; FIND SHELTER HOWEVER YOU CAN. IT’S THE SAME IN A DESERT SANDSTORM. PEOPLE PUSH ON IN SANDSTORMS THINKING THEY CAN FIND A WAY OUT WHEN IN REALITY THEY’RE NEVER GOING TO BEAT IT"

BEAR GRYLLS

his body — to ensure his wife can draw his state pension. “Can you imagine having that conversation with yourself in the middle of the desert after you’ve been lost for eight days? So he decided to do it,” says Davies. “And then, he’s got no water in his system, so his blood won’t bleed out. He wakes up in the morning, and then realises, ‘I’m not going to die, I’m going to get myself out of this.’ That’s really something, and Bear was moved by it too.”

“ALL MY BOTTOMLESS, CONFIDENCE WAS GONE. I HAD NO IDEA HOW MUCH I WAS GOING TO BE ABLE TO DO PHYSICALLY — AND SO MUCH OF MY IDENTITY WAS IN THE PHYSICAL” LOOKING UPWARDS

For many of us, it is only when we’ve come close to losing it all that we can see the most important things with true clarity. In the show’s desert episode, Grylls discusses how he empathises with the way two of the characters, Ed and Mauro, kept themselves going through hunger and exhaustion by thinking about

ALTITUDE "EVERYTHING IS WORSE AND MORE EXTREME AT HIGH ALTITUDE; YOU’RE FIGHTING DEHYDRATION, ALTITUDE SICKNESS, THE COLD, AND THE WIND. AN ACTION THAT’S TOTALLY STRAIGHTFORWARD TO PERFORM AT SEA LEVEL CAN BECOME IMPOSSIBLE AT HIGH ALTITUDE. HIGH UP IN THE MOUNTAINS I’VE SEEN PEOPLE — MYSELF INCLUDED — REDUCED TO CRAWLING ON THEIR HANDS AND KNEES ALONG SOMETHING YOU’D JUST RUN UP AT SEA LEVEL"

the things they had to get back home for. “In Ed’s case, he decided he wasn’t going to die because he hadn’t walked his daughter down the aisle yet,” says Davies. Grylls says in the show, he’s been through despair too. He knows what it’s like to nearly die and survive, describing his own experience of hitting rock bottom, of lying in hospital with his back broken in three places, unsure of what came next. “His dad had put a photo of Everest at the end of his bed,” says Davies. “And he said to Bear, ‘You have to get better, because you are going to climb Everest.” Reflecting again on that hospital bed in his book, Grylls writes that many people thought he must have been “so positive” to recover from his broken back, enough to take on the world again. To him, it was quite the opposite. “It was the darkest, most horrible time I can remember. I had lost my sparkle and spirit, and that is so much of who I am. And once you lose that spirit, it is hard to recover,” he writes. Uncertain whether he would even walk properly again, let alone climb or be a soldier, his life loomed before him as one big question mark. “All my bottomless, young confidence was gone. I had no idea how much I was going to be able to do physically — and that was so hard. So much of my identity was in the physical,”

he recalls poignantly. The team at Headley Court, his rehabilitation centre, were tireless, providing him with goals, with intense workouts of up to 10 hours a day that included stretching, hydrapool sessions, counselling, physio (“with the pretty nurses!” he writes), and movement classes. Some eight months after the accident, he was cleared to leave — but not before he sneaked out one night, setting off for a ride on his motorbike, wearing the cumbersome back brace, and jumping on a train homewards. Grylls, it seemed, was coming back. But taking on Mount Everest? For Grylls, this “do or die” mission was partly his typical spirit of adventure rearing its head again. And curiously, it was also partly a business decision. In his determination to be placed back among the realms of extraordinary outdoorsmen again, he figured that if successful, the exposure of being the youngest British climber to summit the mountain might give him a springboard from which to reconstruct his career. It was a hunch that ultimately proved correct. Even so, having cheated death once, was it not asking for trouble to roll the dice again so soon, on a mountain which at that time was claiming the lives of one in six climbers that reached the summit?

WATER "CLEAR, CLEANLOOKING FRESH WATER ISN’T NECESSARILY SAFE TO DRINK. YOU SHOULD ALWAYS BOIL WATER BEFORE YOU DRINK IT TO MAKE SURE YOU DON’T GET GIARDIASIS, WHICH CAN MAKE YOU THROW UP OR GIVE YOU DIARRHOEA”

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BEHIND THE SCENES SARAH DAVIES SHARES HER BITE-SIZED LOCATION EXPERIENCES WITH GRYLLS HEALTHY TERMITES "He was telling us that termites

have lots of citric acid in them — it’s a form of vitamin C, I think. That’s why it’s important to eat them, not because you get any calorific satisfaction, but they’re good for your body in survival situations."

MOBBED "When we’re around the public, they’re

either looking at him or they’re coming over to introduce themselves. In Guatemala [in Central America], where we filmed the jungle episode, he had thousands of children camping outside the hotel. He went out to do a circuit, say hello. Everywhere he went: Bear! Bear! Bear!"

CAMERAS ON BEAR "We put quite a lot of GoPro

cameras on him, so when he’s climbing trees or jumping down waterfalls, he’s filming a lot of it. He did this one where it starts to snow, he’s hanging under the helicopter and saying, ‘Sometimes in these amazing landscapes, as beautiful as they are, bad things just happen. It’s how you deal with it which determines whether you’re a survivor or not.’ That is all we told him to do, was to hold his arm out and film himself doing it. So he did that, and then — completely undirected by us — tilted the camera up so you could see the helicopter. That’s pure understanding of how to make TV." REAL SNOWSTORM "We got caught in a snowstorm

in Guatemala that was, frankly, terrifying. There’s one moment where I’m going: ‘Oh my God, this is awful.’ And Bear just turns to camera and goes, ‘Oh God, I love Discovery. Only they’d take us to a real snowstorm.’ It was brilliant."

MORNING DRINK "We were looking at the rushes of this pee-drinking thing, where Mauro saves himself because he remembered you can drink your own pee — but the important thing is, you’ve got to save the pee that you wee in the morning, when it’s most hydrated. Bear had to drink quite a lot, as they were filming it, completely fine about it." HEART-STOPPING "When this young banker, Sébastian, got lost in the mountains, he decided to leap off a cliff onto a tree, then climb down the tree. It was the only way he could get down this cliff. Bear had to do it — he wasn’t nervous, he was brilliant getting kitted up and doing it. But I was fairly terrified — and his heart was definitely pumping after he’d done it." CAN BEAR FOOT IT IN THE CITY? "I bet you if we

challenged Bear to go, like, two miles down Oxford Street without being picked up by surveillance cameras, I’ve got no doubt he could do it. Actually, maybe we should challenge him; it would be quite good fun. It could be a new series, Disappears; he can explain how he does it."

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REAL LOCATIONS

Davies says of the locations: "We had three days with Bear on location for every episode, and we had a couple of more days of doing the drama reconstruction. We did jungles in Guatemala, we did deserts in the sub-Saharan desert in Morocco, we did the snow and ice episode in Whistler in Canada, and then we did canyons in Morocco as well as mountains in Italy.

Perhaps not. As he writes, “Life has taught me to be very cautious of a man with a dream, especially a man who has teetered on the edge of life. It gives a fire and recklessness inside that is hard to quantify.” While it seems hard to believe now, Grylls had a tough time trying to gain sponsorship, aware that to the outside world, he was literally a nobody. “I had no suit, no track record, and certainly no promise of any media coverage. I was, in effect, taking on Goliath with a plastic fork,” he writes. “And I was about to get a crash course in dealing with rejection. This is summed up so well by that great Churchill quote: ‘Success

is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.’ It was time to get out there with all of my enthusiasm, and commit to fail ... until I succeeded.”

BEAR UP CLOSE

Grylls seems almost from another age — plucked from a time when old-fashioned quirks like brotherhood, and pitting oneself against nature, were more important to the big picture than being part of the in-crowd. This is, after all, the man who the Scout Association named their Chief Scout in 2009. Today, Grylls might be considered an outdoors geek. He admits that as a kid, he was never particularly hip. “When I was wet, muddy,

BEAR GRYLLS

that.” And how about fears? Grylls, oddly enough, is not great with heights. “I never saw evidence of this, but he referenced it in one of the films, he said, ‘Believe it or not, and I know you won’t, I am still slightly nervous about heights.’ And he means that he’s okay hanging onto helicopters and all the rest of it, but he doesn’t like looking down when he’s climbing up. He always says never, ever, ever look down.”

SOUVENIR BUMPS

and cold, I felt like a million dollars, and when I was with the lads, with everyone desperately trying to be ‘cool’, I felt more awkward and unsure of myself. I could do mud, but trying to be cool was never a success.” And what of the name? “Bear” is a nickname he’s had since he was a baby, courtesy of his sister Lara. Friends from school called him “Monkey” for his love of climbing buildings and trees as a kid. “I really didn’t like my real name of Edward — it felt so stuffy and boring. Monkey or Bear was okay by me — and they have both stuck into adult life.” Fortunately for his three sons Jesse, Marmaduke and Huckleberry, none of them

can complain of a stuffy name. Having spent an extended period of time filming with Grylls, Davies gained a greater appreciation of what motivates him. “He took me to one side and said, ‘You have to understand something about me before we make the series. My whole world is about empowering people to do something remarkable with their lives,” she recalls. As such, championing everyday heroes was a theme close to Grylls’s heart, she says. “He really wanted to get across that sense of, life is worth living. Sometimes you do take risks, sometimes bad things do happen — but you’ve just got to hold on to the sheer will to get through it. And he’s a big believer in

Focus on your feet, not the drop. It’s what he was telling himself that day in April 1998 on Everest’s Khumbu Icefall, when he heard the ice crack beneath him, and, he writes, was suddenly “falling down this lethal black scar in the glacier that had no visible bottom.” Now, hanging from the rope, all he can do is wonder if it will hold. “It was lightweight thin rope that got replaced every few days, as the ice tore it from its anchor point.” Thankfully, after an eternity, there is a tug on the rope, and he is pulled to safety. Later that day, he lies in bed, considering how for the second time in recent years, he knows he should have died. He describes in his diary how his elbow is sore where he’s smashed it against the crevasse, “and I can feel small bits of bone floating around inside a swollen sack of fluid beneath it, which is slightly disconcerting.” The diary entry continues, “I can’t get to sleep at the moment — I just keep having the vision of the crevasse beneath me — and it’s terrifying when I close my eyes. Falling is such a horrible, helpless feeling. It caused me the same terror that I felt during my parachute accident.

I don’t think I have ever felt so close to being killed as I did today. Yet I survived — again.” It is little wonder that two near-death falling experiences might give you an aversion to heights. Yet considering the feats he takes on in each series, including leaping out of planes, it seems like he’s coping okay.

HAVING CHEATED DEATH ONCE, WAS IT NOT ASKING FOR TROUBLE TO ROLL THE DICE AGAIN SO SOON, ON A MOUNTAIN WHICH WAS CLAIMING THE LIVES OF ONE IN SIX CLIMBERS THAT REACHED THE SUMMIT? For survivalist veterans like Grylls and Pearce though, a few breaks and knocks are just a part of the game. “A few new scars are always a good thing, you know. I think I wouldn’t want to get to the end of my days without some knocks and twists, and a few scars. They’re all fond memories, they’re like pictures for us, that we can get together and talk about. Which I suppose might be more of a blokey thing,” Pearce admits. Ultimately, for Pearce, testing their limits is well worth the knocks. “It’s like, yeah great, you know — let’s get amongst it and tear it up. Make sure we’re all safe and fine. But we know it’s probably going to hurt a little as well.” Bear Grylls: Escape From Hell Premieres Every Monday – Sunday 9 PM, starting 7 Mar.

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BEAR GRYLLS

KEEPING BEAR ALIVE BEAR GRYLLS REGULARLY RISKS LIFE AND LIMB ON TV, BUT SURELY THERE MUST BE SAFETY MEASURES IN PLACE? YES, AND YOU CAN THANK DAVE PEARCE AND THE REST OF GRYLLS’ TEAM FOR THAT. LUKE CLARK SPEAKS TO PEARCE ABOUT HOW HE WORKS TO KEEP GRYLLS AND THE FILM CREW AS SAFE AS POSSIBLE, AND WHY AT THE END OF THE DAY, A GOOD SHOT IS NOT WORTH LOSING YOUR LIFE OVER

Thanks for joining us. After a decade and a half of filming Bear Grylls, what were some occasions where you’ve thought, here perhaps we have gone too far, more than we should have? Gosh, yeah I think the sort of people we are, we probably do push it a bit. But I think the two inevitable situations are: moving water and glaciers.

Like that scene where he jumped from the glacier onto a boat? Yeah. The hull of the boat hit the iceberg and the ice broke — pretty heartstopping moments. But then, Bear’s a capable guy, and he is able to get out of it. Maybe somebody else would have struggled, and gone in and under the boat. A couple of times in fastflowing water, too. Rapids in particular have a habit of changing second by second. Hanging someone off a 120-metre cliff — I wouldn’t say it’s easy, but it’s controllable. With people in moving water, there comes to a point where you have to let go of the control. I put measures in place, but there were a couple of times when despite being super-careful, the situation got worrying. 114 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

The most dynamic elements are the scariest parts for me. And it’s not only Bear pulling the stunts; many times the cameramen do them too. We are a very small squad operating with Bear; we’re all great friends off-camera; we party hard together away from the field. That’s really important. The camera operators rely on Bear and I to be their eyes. They’re thinking creatively all the time, and I regard them as the best in the business. After some years, I’ve got an eye for what I think the cameraman will want out of the shot, so I kind of have an idea about where we can put cameras. Often with Dan, one of our main camera guys, I’ll be like, ‘Here you can be right in it, in his face filming, and I’ll have this rope on you, and another person beside you, so you can just totally focus on the shots.’ Or sometimes there’s something that worries all of us. It’s a good thing to be slightly — like being in a helicopter at 3,000 metres, when it’s never gone to that altitude before. There’s always that thing where one of us will say, ‘You know what? I’m a bit sort of nervous about this.’ That’s positive: complacency does kill. A big theme of Bear Grylls: Escape From Hell is that while the outdoors can get us into these scrapes, it often brings out the best in us too. Is that your personal experience as well? I am also a huge believer in the outdoors. Having a passion for something really

does bring you alive. It puts you in a different place mentally, gets rid of all the fluff in life. You get out there, and there are absolutely no mobile phone or wireless signals. You focus on what’s really important. Even when I have been most anxious outdoors, on a cliff face or a mountain, there’s a certain energy to it, and you come out of it thinking, ‘Wow, what an amazing experience.’ It fuels you for more. It is almost like you are a more real person, when you’ve got rid of all that fluff. Filming Man vs. Wild must be totally different to a film set, in terms of time pressure. How tough is that, when you’re in charge of safety? It’s the same old story: we either haven’t got enough money, or enough time. Our challenges increase when there is an avalanche risk, or a glacier is moving. That’s where it is pretty highoctane. We can still get the shots, but things have changed so much we usually need to up our game. Someone like Bear, you know, is very sensible, and totally understands it. But I treat these challenges the same as steady walking down a hillside slope, talking to camera. At the end of the day it’s only TV, you know; it’s not worth losing your life over. My own mantra is: come back alive, come back friends, come back successful — very much in that order. Crucial to the show is putting Bear under a lot of physical pressure. He eats crazy things, gets deforming bee

stings, yet delivers pieces to camera where most people would be freaking out. Is this the Special Forces training, that muscle memory? I think it’s a lot of practice. He’s a very skilled presenter these days, and very gymnastic and athletic. We both still train hard: when we’re together we’ll go for workouts. In the early days, Bear and I did a workout in Iceland I think, in minus-15 conditions, sleeping outdoors and doing sit-ups on the ice. Yeah, that’s a spin-off from the Special Forces days. You have to be self-motivated to do things; you don’t wait for people to tell you to do that, or to go to the gym. That’s a huge part of his DNA. One thing I always wanted for the show, was that the action is the action — and the pieces-to-camera come before and after the action. It’s very hard to deliver anything to camera during the action. So it’s about getting that reaction afterwards, to try and tell the audience, ‘Wow! This is what it felt like, this is what it smelt like — this is what it’s done to me.’ You mentioned earlier that a bigger crew can mean a less agile one. That’s a risk of success, I imagine. As the years have gone on, we’ve sometimes been on big productions, just by the nature of the way his career has gone. And it’s very clunky, slow-moving, and doesn’t really work as effectively as the Man vs. Wild shows — and Escape From Hell as well.

BEAR GRYLLS

FORM – IV Place of New Delhi Publication: Periodicity of its Publication: Monthly Printer’s Name: Ashish Bagga Nationality:

Indian

Address:

K – 9, Connaught Circus, New Delhi – 110 001

Publisher’s Name: Nationality: Address:

Ashish Bagga

Nationality: Address:

Indian K – 9, Connaught Circus, New Delhi – 110 001

Indian K – 9, Connaught Circus, New Delhi – 110 001 Editor’s Name: Jamal Shaikh

Names and Addresses of individuals who own the newspaper and partners or shareholders holding more than one percent of the total capital: Owner: M/s. Living Media India Limited, K – 9, Connaught Circus, New Delhi – 110 001

Shareholders holding more than one percent of the total capital of the owner company:

Was your 8,200-metre climb up Kangchenjunga your own most difficult challenge? In terms of adventure, yeah that was tough. We were up in the death zone, without supplementary oxygen, which was blooming hard, and painful. I was climbing with an amazing mountaineer, and we got pinned down high up, in a horrendous storm. We had to retreat, but the avalanche threat was so bad, I really thought it was curtains for us. We managed to get through it, and we left all our kit up there. We were almost buried alive in our tent, due to the amount of

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snow that was coming down, and couldn’t get our cooker going. It was pretty tense, and I really questioned myself then why I was doing all this, you know. It felt very selfish afterwards. So that was very tough mentally. I remember a colleague and great buddy, who was a bit of a mentor when I was serving. And we were talking about this, and he said, ‘You’ve got to realise that experience is the sum total of near misses.’ That’s always stuck in my mind. If you go out and tick all these sort of adventurous things, and sometimes you tick them a bit too hard, some are going

to bite you on the backside. It’s a far bigger thing than we will ever be, and that’s why you’ve got to respect it. I remember the captain of the All Blacks rugby team once describing preparing for a rugby test as like getting set for a car crash every weekend. Filming with Bear must be a little like that for you guys. Yeah, that's true, it certainly is and a big thing at. And yeah, the car crash can be a couple of dents or it can be, you know, a lot worse. Touch wood, you know, we have been lucky...we’ve not had any horrific accidents. Fingers crossed.

1. Mr. Aroon Purie, 6, Palam Marg, Vasant Vihar, New Delhi – 110057. 2. Mrs. Rekha Purie, 6, Palam Marg, Vasant Vihar, New Delhi – 110057. 3. Mr. Ankoor Purie, 6, Palam Marg, Vasant Vihar, New Delhi – 110057. 4. The All India Investment Corporation Private Limited, K – 9, Connaught Circus, New Delhi – 110 001 5. World Media Private Limited, K - 9, Connaught Circus, New Delhi – 110 001 6. IGH Holdings Private Limited, 1stFloor,Industry House, 159 Churchgate Reclamation, Mumbai- 400020 I, Ashish Bagga, hereby declare that the particulars given above are true to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Dt: 01.03.2014

Sd/Ashish Bagga Signature of Publisher

WHAT'S ON THIS MONTH ON DISCOVERY CHANNEL

AFRICA A journey through five diverse regions of an amazing continent, AFRICA will take you seamlessly from the wild terrain of extraordinary landscapes to intimate encounters with its mesmerising creatures. From the beauty and serenity of the soaring Atlas Mountains to the Cape of Good Hope, from the brooding jungles of the Congo to the raging Atlantic Ocean: experience unexplored rainforests, never-before-filmed mountain ranges and even snow-covered desert. AIRS EVERY THURSDAY 8 PM, STARTING 6 MAR

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WHAT'S ON

SEVEN WONDERS OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM Prepare to immerse yourself in an alien world as if you were standing there yourself. Giant ice fountains rising over 100km high; an ocean hidden beneath a frozen crust of ice; storms twice the size of Earth coloured blood red by a vortex of dust and gases; immense volcanoes that could rip a planet apart - this series reveals the true and awesome beauty of our solar system. Travelling from the Sun to the far-out reaches of Neptune, the series has at its heart the latest scientific knowledge beamed back from the fleet of probes, rovers and telescopes currently in space, and offers a vivid and unprecedented tour of the world beyond our planet. AIRS EVERY THURSDAY 8 PM, STARTING 6 MAR

BEAR GRYLLS ESCAPE FROM HELL BEAR GRYLLS: ESCAPE FROM HELL aims to bring to life real survival accounts of ordinary people with the world’s best survivalist experiencing some of the highs and lows that they had to go through. It sees Bear Grylls move on in his survivalist role, into the role of story teller – where he helps our audience experience, understand and appreciate just how incredible some human survival stories really are. The stories featured will be some of the world’s most extreme survival stories. Bear’s job is to own these stories and to bring the human emotion and personal perspective of how these incredible people felt. AIRS EVERY MONDAY – SUNDAY 9 PM, STARTING 7 MAR

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JUNGLE GOLD Four years ago, George Right and Scott Lomu were real estate highrollers. By the time he was 25 yearsold George was worth a million dollars, while 33-year-old Scott was turning over properties for a cool three million. But George and Scott were so intent on the next deal they ignored the warning signs - and lost everything in the 2008 property crash. With their houses and families' futures suddenly on the line, George and Scott had to come up with an answer. AIRS EVERY SATURDAY 10 PM, STARTING 1 MAR

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WHAT'S ON

INVISIBLE WORLDS The human eye is a remarkable piece of precision engineering, but all around us is an astonishing and beautiful world we cannot see. Wonders which are outside the visible spectrum, or too fast, too slow, too small or too remote for our eyes and brains to interpret, yet which touch every aspect of life on Earth and shape it in unseen ways. Now, for the first time, this hidden world is revealed - in action. Combining bold ideas with lucid scientific insights and stunning footage, the series is packed with surprising facts as well as phenomena never seen before on TV. Transported into the heart of the action, viewers are immersed in a breathtaking journey of discovery. AIRS EVERY MONDAY 8 PM, STARTING 3 MAR

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Discovery Channel Magazine India - March 2014 - PDF Free Download (2024)