Victor Englebert

As a photographer, writer, and self-educated anthropologist, I have lived the lives and hardships of tribal societies in the world's wildest corners, often for National Geographic,

always for several months at a time.

I started a life of adventures at 24, riding a 125 cc Vespa scooter from my native Brussels to Cape Town across the length of Africa. I went on to travel by camel with a Tuareg salt caravan; by horse around Morocco's High Atlas Mountains, the Peruvian Andes, and across Patagonia from coast to coast; and with pack donkeys in Kenya's Great Rift Valley. I joined another camel salt caravan between Ethiopia's high and low lands and a llama salt caravan in the Bolivian Altiplano. By houseboat, canoe, and on foot, with eight porters to carry my money (trade goods), I crossed Borneo's rain forest from end to end long before the first road there. I tramped through the Amazon many times, once in search of mysterious pyramids, and once spending a month among the Yanomami Indians. And more.

Not surprisingly, I faced many dangers. In Ethiopia, I fell in the hands of Eritrean guerillas that mistook me for an Israeli spy and put a revolver to my head. They were ready to shoot me when they spotted in my passport two admissions into Algeria. Israelis were not allowed into that Arab country.