Benedict Allen

He crossed the steppe and Gobi desert in five and a half months, going 3,000 miles by horse and camel through Siberian drylands, Mongolian steppe (The Edge of Blue Heaven). In the Mato Grosso he investigated the Kalapalo Indians’ story of the disappearance of Colonel Fawcett (The Bones of Colonel Fawcett). He attempted to cross the Bering Straits. He travelled with dogs 2500 miles through Chukchi and Inuit peoples and beyond (Ice Dogs). He visited spiritual healers including Voodoo witchdoctors in Haiti, the Mentawai in Indonesia, the Huichol of Mexico and shamans in Siberia (Last of the Medicine Men).

On 15 November 2017, Allen was reported missing while undertaking an expedition in Papua New Guinea. However, he resurfaced on 16 November 2017, near an airstrip.

Allen joined Frank Gardner in the BBC Two two-part documentary Birds of Paradise: The Ultimate Quest. They sought the elusive birds-of-paradise in Papua New Guinea including the King of Saxony. It was broadcast on 3 February and 10 February 2017.

While still a student, Allen took part in scientific expeditions to a volcano in Costa Rica, to a remote forest in Brunei, and - as leader - to a glacier in Iceland. He went on to establish his reputation through a series of daring independent journeys to cross through the least known regions of the Amazon and New Guinea. He made first outside contact with two threatened indigenous peoples – the Obini and Yaifo.

In 2009, Allen was one of four stars of the reality epic Expedition Africa, airing on History. The eight-part series followed the team as they retraced the journey of Henry Morton Stanley in his quest to find David Livingstone, the journey which supposedly ended with the famous phrase, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"

He crossed the Amazon basin at its widest point, 1,200 miles from the Andes of Ecuador, through the lowland jungle to Mato Grosso in Brazil, helped by the Matses Indians (Through Jaguar Eyes). In the Cocha Brava he went in search of tigers (The Raiders of the Lost Lake). In the Namib Desert (1995), he spent three and a half months travelling with three reluctant camels, learning from the nomadic Himba tribe to survive with little food or water (The Skeleton Coast).

After publishing five books describing his various lone journeys across the least explored regions of the Amazon, New Guinea and Sumatra, in the mid 1990s Allen went on to develop the technique of self-filming with a camcorder, becoming the first (and for many years the only) television adventurer – through such programmes as The Skeleton Coast, which depicted a first full traverse by foot of the Namib Desert.

Allen crossed the northeast Amazon basin in 1983, going 600 miles on foot and by dug out canoe, facing an attempt on his life by renegade gold miners, starvation, and malaria along the way (a trip he described in his 1985 book, Mad White Giant). This incident is featured on the I Shouldn't Be Alive episode "Alone in the Amazon" and was aired in 2010. In West Papua and Papua New Guinea he flew from the Obini community in Irian Jaya. He participated in the six-week male initiation ceremony of the Niowra tribe (Into the Crocodile's Nest). In Siberut and Sumatra he investigated the "Orang pendek" ape man, via the Mentawai of Siberut and the Kubu of Sumatra ("Hunting the Gugu").

Benedict Colin Allen FRGS (born 1 March 1960) is an English writer, traveller and adventurer known for his technique of immersion among indigenous peoples from whom he acquires survival skills for hazardous journeys through unfamiliar terrain. In 2010, Allen was elected a Trustee of the Royal Geographical Society.