Hunting is the only means of survival in northern Greenland, there being no vegetation to speak of in the icy wilderness. The Inuit are the most permanently settled of the four groups I'd be looking into, but their forays into the untamed Arctic often last for weeks on end. Here,the most bountiful time for hunters comes in a short summer window of opportunity, when the sea ice melts and the narwhals arrive. In the Tenere, where neither hunting nor gathering yields enough sustenanceto survive the burning desert sands, the Tubu rely on trading to support their lifestyle. Like the Inuit's quest for their biggest prize, the Tubu'sannual trek across the dunes is carefully timed, to coincide with the date harvest in the northern oases.

Nick Middleton is off again to take a new look at the world"s most remote and inhospitable environments, where the physical geography is so raw and unforgiving that only the toughest survive. His mission is to learn how to cope with four horrendous habitats. The question is, can he pick up enough tips from the indigenous people to hack it at the very edge of human existence,or will his mid-latitude sensibilities forever let him down? Throughswamp, desert, jungle and arctic wasteland.

Acknowledgements

Introduction

ICE Greenland

JUNGLE Congo

SAND Niger

SWAMP Papua

Index