Sep 15, 2026 · 32 min · 11 segments
**At just 22 years old, British explorer Benedict Allen set out to travel 600 miles through the remote northeast Amazon. It was supposed to be an expedition. Instead, it became a fight for survival.**…
Benedict AllenGuestJack LaurenceHostThe continent spans nearly seven million square miles, much of it still ruled by nature rather than maps.
At its heart sits the Amazon rainforest, stretching across nine countries and covering roughly the size of the continental United States.
A significant portion of the Amazon rainforest remains unexplored, likely representing at least 20%, with some estimates reaching much higher.
This unexplored territory includes remote regions, deep forests, and subterranean ecosystems still unknown to science.
Its immense size, dense vegetation, and challenging terrain have historically hindered comprehensive exploration, leaving vast swathes largely unmapped and undocumented.
Dozens of uncontacted indigenous tribes are believed to live in remote regions of the Amazon.
For our young British explorer in the 1980s, this was the last true frontier, a place where you could disappear into the unknown, where rivers hadn't been mapped, tribes hadn't been contacted, and if you were brave enough or foolish enough, you could be the first.
I was naive in terms of how to tackle the world, but I did have, by now I, I was quite a passionate environmentalist.
Uh, and I, th- there were, I heard that there was- A, a road that was being constructed across the north of Brazil, called the, it was the Perimetral Norte, um, and it was gonna cut through something like four hundred miles of rainforest.
Um, and I knew by then, uh, that, that no one had actually got out there to see what was on [laughs] that road.
I mean, you couldn't walk the four hundred miles, surely, through that forest and bulldoze a road through.
There weren't many indigenous people there a- and essentially I thought, "What I'll do is go out there myself and do this journey.
I'll, I'll walk four hundred miles through that forest." Didn't look too bad on the map.
I had this sort of map of South America, a general map, and it had a dotted line, pink dotted line of where the proposed la- road was gonna be, and I thought I could just join up those dots and it'd be amazing.
The continent spans nearly seven million square miles, much of it still ruled by nature rather than maps.
At its heart sits the Amazon rainforest, stretching across nine countries and covering roughly the size of the continental United States.
A significant portion of the Amazon rainforest remains unexplored, likely representing at least 20%, with some estimates reaching much higher.
This unexplored territory includes remote regions, deep forests, and subterranean ecosystems still unknown to science.
Its immense size, dense vegetation, and challenging terrain have historically hindered comprehensive exploration, leaving vast swathes largely unmapped and undocumented.
Dozens of uncontacted indigenous tribes are believed to live in remote regions of the Amazon.
For our young British explorer in the 1980s, this was the last true frontier, a place where you could disappear into the unknown, where rivers hadn't been mapped, tribes hadn't been contacted, and if you were brave enough or foolish enough, you could be the first.
I was naive in terms of how to tackle the world, but I did have, by now I, I was quite a passionate environmentalist.
Uh, and I, th- there were, I heard that there was- A, a road that was being constructed across the north of Brazil, called the, it was the Perimetral Norte, um, and it was gonna cut through something like four hundred miles of rainforest.
Um, and I knew by then, uh, that, that no one had actually got out there to see what was on [laughs] that road.
I mean, you couldn't walk the four hundred miles, surely, through that forest and bulldoze a road through.
There weren't many indigenous people there a- and essentially I thought, "What I'll do is go out there myself and do this journey.
I'll, I'll walk four hundred miles through that forest." Didn't look too bad on the map.
I had this sort of map of South America, a general map, and it had a dotted line, pink dotted line of where the proposed la- road was gonna be, and I thought I could just join up those dots and it'd be amazing.
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