JOHN PILKINGTON has been called “one of Britain’s greatest tellers of travellers’ tales”. In 1983, after journeys in Africa and Latin America, he completed a 500-mile solo crossing of the western Nepal Himalaya, and told the story in his first book, Into Thin Air. His interest in Asia grew further with the opening in 1986 of the border between Pakistan and China, making it possible – for the first time in forty years – to retrace virtually the whole of the Silk Road. John was one of the first modern travellers to do so, and he wrote about the journey in An Adventure on the Old Silk Road. This was followed in 1991 by An Englishman in Patagonia, recounting eight months spent exploring the southernmost tip of South America.

In 2000 he became one of only five people in modern times to walk the 1,600-mile Royal Road of the Incas in the Andes of Ecuador and Peru. In 2003 he explored the Mekong River and, with two Tibetans, reached and mapped its source at over 17,000 feet. In 2006 he turned his attention to the Sahara Desert, and joined a camel caravan carrying salt for 450 miles from the mines of Taoudenni to Timbuktu.

He is familiar as a broadcaster with the BBC World Service and with Radio 4, for whom he has made adventure travel documentaries such as The Uttermost Part of the Earth, Pilkington in Patagonia, Pilkington in Kyrgyzstan, Pilkington in Ladakh, and most recently On the Trail of Butch and Sundance, an investigation into the deaths in Bolivia of the most famous outlaws of the Wild West. He also contributes to From Our Own Correspondent and writes occasionally for The Sunday Times, The Independent and Geographical magazine. Since 2004 he has been a patron of the Southampton and Winchester Visitors Group, which works with and campaigns for refugees and asylum seekers in the UK, especially those based in Hampshire. In 2006 the Royal Geographical Society presented him with the Ness Award for his work in popularising geography and the wider understanding of the world.