Bruce Parry: Life after the 'Amazon'

The real world: where, precisely, is it? That is the faintly disconcerting puzzle that an encounter with Bruce Parry triggers. He is the explorer and television presenter who redefines the concept of suffering for his art.

We met on the most perfect autumn morning in Trafalgar Square, London, the hub of a nation that – judging by the news reports – stands on the brink of financial collapse. But as we discussed his latest enterprise, the television series and book entitled Amazon, it became clear that Bruce's priorities go deeper than the latest twists and turns of the Stock Exchange. After a journey that meandered for 6,000km from the source of the earth's greatest river in the Andes down to the Atlantic, he says Amazon is a metaphor for the problems of the planet.

"With everything we do – we're affecting, often negatively, other places in the world and often, a lot of people in the world are being affected by everything we touch, eat, drink. The Amazon is just the biggest example you can find to say, 'Listen! When you buy hardwood, you are doing this. When you buy oil, you are doing this. When you buy gold, you are doing this', and it's good for us to see that."

Bruce has crammed a remarkable amount into less than four decades: a Royal Marine for five years, an expedition leader, a location manager for pop videos and, for the past six years, TV presenter specialising in the raw edges of the world, with Tribe. This week he adds two more strings to his bow with his book, Amazon, and a CD of music commissioned to benefit the charity Survival International. "I've always felt that music is another way of delivering messages, whether it's subliminally or through emotion or lyrics. So I wanted to give back a little bit to the tribal people who have enabled my life to be so amazing yet still often are living in very harsh conditions." And for a man with Serious Desert, Serious Jungle and Serious Arctic to his name, he turns out to be seriously good fun, too, when talking about his extraordinary life and travelling times.

Bruce Parry: I earn my money – at times, anyway. I have an extraordinarily fortunate life at home in Ibiza and when I come to the UK it's lovely – the acclaim and all the wonderful things that come with it. But on location I sleep in a mud hut, picking off ticks all night long and I rarely get much kip on those days. I eat mundane food, when I'm living in a tribal community every day; it's abject misery sometimes, truly difficult. Of course, what we see in the programme is the beautiful and the interesting aspects of what I get up to. I have the most wonderful job, but often it's retrospective. I enjoy living with the family and meeting people, and all of the things you see on television are very real, it's not acting, but at the same time outside of that one hour of television programme there's another month's worth of stuff, a lot of which is actually quite painful. So I do find travel quite hard at times.

Simon Calder: I find time is a fantastic filter. Whether you've been to Blackpool or Bali, or gone backpacking somewhere extreme like the back end of Peru or Panama, when you return you find that soon memories of the bad times begin to peel away and you're left with the essential passion of travel. Is that the way it works for you?

BP: For me there's a massive difference between being on the move and being stationary. If I'm living in a tribal community day in, day out, doing the same thing as them, often it's really tough.

If you're on the move it's different. Even if I'm carrying a heavy rucksack, doing a long expedition and there are lots of difficult water crossings and mountains to climb, I feel much more at peace. I have the constant stimulation of turning the corner and seeing the new view.

So, for example, Amazon was much easier for me physically than Tribe – though, intellectually, it was much harder because we had to deal with much bigger subjects.

SC: Is Amazon adventure, is it anthropology or is it entertainment?

BP: It has to be a bit of all those things. One of the most stimulating moments of the whole trip was reaching the source of the Amazon, about 5,000m above sea level – it was very cold and quite hard to film. We were dragging a big crane up there to get these beautiful opening shots. That's a barren landscape; it's crisp and clear and pristine and beautiful with massive views and vistas, which, of course, as you come down into the basin itself are lost, unless you're flying. So it's arid to start with.

Then you come down the Apurimac Valley and what they call the Great Abyss, where the river gathers momentum and tumbles down the Andes at an extraordinary pace. That's where we did a bit of white-water rafting, and there are just the most awe-inspiring vistas of extreme cliffs and rocks and gorges and canyons – a beautiful, beautiful place. As you come down you go through the cloud forest on the Peruvian slopes of the Andes and then into the Lower Apurimac Valley, where the coca fields are, and that's, of course, when you're into the forest itself.

Now, geographically, the forest, to the discerning eye, still changes a lot, but really the biggest difference is between the mountains and the forest itself. We were coming into the cocaine regions and moving on to Iquitos and into Brazil at the beginning of the wet season.

As we were going down, the water level was rising and the river gets bigger and bigger, for obvious reasons, and the stories for us as well were getting bigger and bigger as we went towards the coast.

SC: The people who are living down at the mouth of the Amazon, at Belem in Brazil, are connected with the Peruvians in the high Andes by this river. Do they feel that at all?

BP: Most of the people that I came across were living in a microcosm of their own society and own place. Life is tough in many places and you have to look domestically and locally at your lives. Although everyone of course in the modern world is very aware of communication and what's going on globally and nationally for them, most of their attention is applied to their immediate surroundings and the feeding of their families. When I said that I had been to the source it brought a smile to everyone's face because they knew the Amazon, they knew how extraordinary the river was and they knew that they lived in one of the most interesting and important places in the world.

SC: Does it trouble you that you have to distil a month's travel into an hour's TV?

BP: Often in the Amazon show, for example, those episodes are being edited while I'm still in the field and it's physically impossible for me to be involved in all the edits. Luckily we go to a great deal of effort to find good directors whom I get on with, so by and large myself and the director on the ground at the time agree and discuss everything in the minutest detail all the time. Then, when we come back, he has my mind in his mind when he makes that edit. Normally I'm completely happy with the end result. But there are frustrations because sometimes there will be moments that I have that are really pure to me that never get captured.

And likewise with Tribe, some of the most profound emotions aren't very televisual. It's so funny, people come up to me and say, "My god, you've eaten all these bugs and grubs" and they think that's really bad, but the reality of it is that I'm eating sago or porridge or sorghum every day, which is the thing that really affects me; but boring stuff doesn't make good TV. Sometime I have a locust. Now locusts taste like prawns and are an absolute joy to eat. You can instantly see the dichotomy of how we do the programme. My experience is often about boredom and then this nice moment comes in and yet everyone sees it as the bad bit. It's funny how my experiences can at times be quite different from the programme.

SC: What excites me most is seeing the amazing encounters that you have in wild, remote landscapes. I'm surely just one of millions of people thinking, "I want to be there". Is that a good idea?

BP: Television is a medium whereby you're taken out of your living room and put somewhere a little bit more, dare I say it, exotic. Everyone sees that from the comfort of their chair and thinks, "Wow, wouldn't that be great?" But the reality, as we all know when you're travelling, is that sometimes it's a little bit harsher than that. I've been trekking through the Arctic in –40C and even though it looks really romantic, the reality is very different.

SC: Nevertheless you are going to inspire a lot of people. What words of caution or advice would you have for them if they decide "I want to do a bit of what Bruce did"?

BP: The biggest thing is being a responsible traveller. There's a big difference between taking a little bit of England and then sticking it on a beach somewhere and having egg and chips every morning and pretending to be at home, but sat on a beach. But if people want to get off the beaten track then they have to remember to respect the people, do the research and be responsible. The best bit of advice is to go with an open mind, without your own judgements, listen to the people and be ready for a proper experience that can potentially question any preconceptions.

It's not just about climbing a hill and seeing a new vista. For me, it's about looking at your own life and your own culture from a different perspective. When you look at your own life and culture from another perspective, often you can see it differently and you can sometimes question yourself and learn a bit more about yourself. Often you'll find that earlier views and judgements are based on things that aren't as stable as you might have thought. They're the biggest lessons that anyone should get from travel.

SC: Are you addicted to journeys, to adventure?

BP: I am addicted to journeys in a way. I don't know if that's necessarily healthy. One of the biggest lessons I've learnt from living with tribal people is to simplify life and to make it more local and to understand community. I think I need to wean myself off this extraordinary stimulation I get from this fast-moving life, always on the go.

SC: That terminology makes travel sound like a drug.

BP: I think that various forms of stimulation must do something inside. I must have endorphins that are kicking off whenever I see a beautiful new view or meet a new culture. Then I come back and my life is either very vibrant here in the middle of London, or in Ibiza, which is another very fast-moving environment. There is an element of addiction in that, but I think as I get older I realise that's not necessarily conducive to ultimate happiness in the long-term. I am going to get older and I need to slow that down. I want to do that gently.

SC: Can you define home?

BP: Yeah, it's a recent concept! I live in Ibiza. I do have a house; it's my first house, my only house and it's my love and I adore being there, but of course I am on the move a lot. Normally wherever I lay my hat, as they say, is a home.

SC: So, after Amazon, where does Bruce Parry go next?

BP: Home. If someone gave me a round-the-world ticket tomorrow, I'd hand it straight over to you. I have no desire to do anything right now except try and be at home for a little bit. I don't know how long that will last, maybe my itchy feet will come back again soon. But right now my desire is to try and be a little bit more wholesome, stay at home and grow things, fall in love, meet my neighbours, learn the language of the place I've chosen to live in and maybe be a bit more human.

SC: Is it fair to say that you live life on the edge?

BP: I enjoy extreme things; I enjoy the extremes. I like to be in the tranquillity of the desert and also the rush-hour of London – I enjoy both. I enjoy stimulation; I enjoy life; I enjoy everything that life has to offer; I enjoy whatever can come my way.

SC: Interesting phrase that – "whatever can come my way". Surely pretty much everything that you've done hasn't come your way; you've gone out and done it.

BP: There's an element of truth in that. I've been very fortunate; I don't think that all these wonderful things that have happened to me are without an element of luck and without an element of good fortune. I think that I have been shone upon in many ways. So I haven't gone out and found it all; I have been a fortunate person too.

Bruce Parry on the making of 'Amazon'

We had anthropologists and assistant producers and researchers scouring the Amazon, not only on the internet and maps but also on the ground. They find the contributors who I am then lucky enough to meet.

The reason that we sent people to various areas is because we have themes. There are so many gold mines in Brazil we could go to; there are so many different places where indigenous peoples are being affected by oil production. But we needed to formulate a journey that was roughly linear from source to sea, which also enabled me to keep these themes together. Coca was an obvious one because they have that in the Andes and then down in the Apurimac Valley.

We looked for groups that bring more than one ingredient to that episode. It's a very complex methodology that looks like just one hour of TV but is a year's hard work.

'Amazon' by Bruce Parry (Michael Joseph, £20) is out now. 'Bruce Parry presents: Amazon/Tribe - Songs for Survival' is released on Kensaltown Records next Tuesday, 13 October. All profits go to Survival International. Episode 5 of 'Amazon' will be shown on BBC2 at 9pm on Monday 13 October

Compare Travel Insurance - 5 day Euro cover from £4.33 and Annual worldwide policies from just £43.08