Real deal adventure

Expeditioner, writer and gung-ho traveller Levison James Woods is the real deal when it comes to hosting an adventure series.

Levison Wood, explorer and TV host.

Expeditioner, writer and gung-ho traveller Levison James Woods is the real deal when it comes to hosting an adventure series. He’s a former British army officer, Afghanistan war veteran and fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He’s walked the length of the Nile and many other fabled routes of discovery, and looks fetching in exotic flowing robes and headwraps, which fit the bill for his 8000km circumnavigation of 13 countries in the Arabian peninsula, from Syria to Lebanon, across five episodes.

It’s riveting to watch the entire series, tracking his near-misses with guerrilla fighters and ISIS operatives, but the best travel content is in Episode 2. With a basic film crew, he’s in the sultanate of Oman, one of the region’s most peaceful nations and arguably its most diversely beautiful. “A beacon of stability,” says Woods, and he’s right.

From the Musandam peninsula in the far north, he progresses aboard a dhow fishing boat, escorted by dolphins and mesmerised by the surreal beauty of white cliffs and clear sapphire water, to Muscat, the capital. I’ve twice visited Oman, but can’t claim to have climbed the Al Hajar mountains with a singing guide or walked with Bedouins across the wind-sculpted dunes of the Empty Quarter, the world’s largest stretch of sand, an area “bigger than France”. But Woods is ready for almost any challenge that comes his way and, aside from a propensity for platitudes of the ilk of “mix of old and new” and “region of contrasts”, he’s an agreeable and insightful companion.

Debilitating desert heat and cranky camels aside, Oman is a breeze to negotiate, as it transpires, compared to the chaotic civil war and savage poverty in bordering Yemen.

The episode ends with Woods and team being pursued by the Yemen intelligence service back into Oman and then onto the next lap, via the Gulf of Aden to Saudi Arabia in a dilapidated boat. More intrigue and dangers await. Woods’s explorer beard is getting bushier by the minute. He’s up for the lot.