Nasty Monkey Bites! (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine January 2002

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Nasty Monkey Bites! (Cont.)

Blashford-Snell: Having said that, it's difficult when you're trying to find lost cities or strange animals. I remember the first year we went to look for what was thought to be a mammoth in west Nepal. I didn't really believe there was a mammoth alive—but all the local people said that there was, and that it was lumping around in this jungle. When we first got there, all I had found were these footprints, which were 22 and a half inches across. So whatever this thing was, it was enormous. The first year, we searched river valleys, brought whitewater boats down, we talked to the people, and we couldn't find anything, except these huge footprints. The second year, I took the precaution of offering a little incentive to the local people—a week's pay—to anyone who could actually show me the creature. And of course that worked to charm. Within days a man had come into our camp and said he knew just where this thing was, because it had just eaten his banana plantation. And we sent off a man who, as it happens, came from Marks & Spencer.

O: The UK department store.

Blashford-Snell: Yes, this guy was the manager of the big store in Belfast. And because he was the sort of guy who spent his life working out what size knickers women wore, I reckoned that he was an ideal chap to work out the size of a footprint. He went off into the jungle with this Nepalese man, and they found the footprints, and followed them. And these led into some thick jungle. So we mounted up and followed them.

We came to the outside edge of this forest. Suddenly my elephant, a dear old thing called Honey Blossom, put her ears forward, like parabolic reflectors, and she began to twitch. She could see something ahead in those trees that I couldn't see. As we watched, I saw what I thought was a rhinoceros coming out. Then this massive dome and gigantic curved tusk stuck its head round a tree and looked at us.

Into a slight clearing in the trees came not one but two absolutely enormous bull elephants. They did look like mammoths. But they weren't hairy. We tried to get them out into the open. And my secretary was behind me. She suggested we get all our females (our elephants were female) to trumpet, to give a few mating cries. It had no effect. And she said, "Oh, my God, we've got two gay elephants out there." But we did draw them out, and we got film, and CNN showed this film all over the world. Eventually we learned they're a type of Asian elephant. They'd been driven up into the foothills of the Himalayas by the pressure of mankind in India.

O: Do you think there's an element in your adventuring of...well, a glimmer of madness in it all? I'm not suggesting that you're clinically insane.

Blashford-Snell: Only those who attempt the ridiculous achieve the impossible! They say of the Royal Engineers that we're all "mad, married, and Methodist." I'm not Methodist, but I am married. Probably a bit mad. My great challenge has always been when someone says it can't be done; my curiosity is sparked as to why. And that's probably the main reason I go on these things. "You can't get a grand piano up the Essequibo!" "Well, why not?" Basically, I'm an engineer. Having been a Royal Engineer for most of my life, everything's always been a challenge. But I'm not like some guys who want to go walk to the North Pole on roller skates or whatever.

O: It's hard to connect the sickly boy that you were with the person who is driven to go anywhere in the world.

Blashford-Snell: If you're a bit seedy and you have to struggle, it makes you keener to live life to the full. What saved me was learning to dive, because my chest grew and expanded, and that helped me to get rid of the asthma. Part of the problem was that my mother had a great love of cats. She had 28 cats.

O: Your mother had a sort of menagerie.

Blashford-Snell: She had a monkey, cats, dogs, donkeys, guinea pigs, rats, you name it.

O: A monkey? Where'd that come from?

Blashford-Snell: From a regiment in Ireland. It was a South American monkey that had been a mascot. But unfortunately somebody had slammed a canteen door on its tail, which had given him a perpetual hatred of anyone in khaki! So it wasn't really an ideal animal to have.

O: It's a strange association for a monkey to make.

Blashford-Snell: Yeah. He was a grand chap. He was one of my great pets.

O: What was his name? Do you remember?

Blashford-Snell: Oh, with monkeys it's always the same: Jacko.

O: Oh, right. Of course. That's the law.

Blashford-Snell: He was funny—quite a vicious monkey. The trouble was, we couldn't get the right food for him during the war, and his fangs grew to enormous length. And I remember, one day when I was four or five, I was teasing him.

O: You musn't tease the monkey.

Blashford-Snell: And he bit me in the throat. Missed my jugular vein by half an inch.

O: Yikes. So, all in all, what do you think the future of exploration is?

Blashford-Snell: The battle goes on to help conservation. Sadly, as the rainforest is being destroyed, we're losing more and more plants. It's vital that we get the knowledge of what is there. I've seen the effects of herbal medicine on my colleagues who have been injured and had nothing else to use. That's one of the reasons why I feel passionately that we shouldn't destroy the rainforest, because we're destroying man's natural laboratory. I support any projects that are trying to save it. It's a question, really, of education.

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