Ade Adepitan: “It’s important we understand climate change and acknowledge our part in it”

Has travel always been an interest?

Yeah, I’ve always had this wanderlust: a passion to travel, to see the world, to meet people. I guess it began at home, watching TV. I used to watch all the re-runs of Whicker’s World, and then later on, Michael Palin’s Around the World in 80 Days and Pole to Pole. I remember almost missing many a homework deadline because I would stay up watching those shows, and it just felt to me like I needed to be somewhere else.
I’d also look out of the window at planes flying past our house, imagining where they were going to and feeling really jealous. I think it’s just a natural, inquisitive passion that I’ve always had.

Did you have family holidays?

No, I think that’s probably what drove me even more to want to travel. My family didn’t really have much money, so holidays weren’t a thing. One of the things that I’m quite sad about is that my dad passed away before I started making enough money to be able to take him travelling, because he had never been on a holiday.

What would you say was your first real trip?

When I was eight or nine, we went to a place called Fairplay House with my school. It’s an adventure centre, and because I was a city boy going out to the country, seeing wide open spaces, trees and ravines; going out canoeing and being with nature; orienteering and staying in this big, stately house, it was just incredible. Even the coach drive there was eye-opening, as you suddenly went from city urban landscapes to these rural scenes. That was wonderful for me. I’ve been to so many incredible places around the world, but I still remember that trip with my school.

As a traveller with disabilities, how did your mobility impact you when you first started seeing the world?

I was lucky with my school, because they really wanted me to experience what the other kids experienced. They worked out that I was just this rough-and-tumble little boy that was playing sports, climbing trees and doing all sorts of things that kids do. And so they set everything up so it was ready for me.

Some of the trails were set so they were a little bit shorter and easier for me to go on. And I’d also been learning to swim before we went out there, practising how to do an ‘Eskimo roll’ in a swimming pool, which is like rolling the canoe and then bailing and getting yourself out. I thought, yeah, I’m an adventurer – now I can handle anything.

I think, as with anything, a lot of it is a learning process and you play it by ear. You don’t fully know whether you’re going to be able to do it or whether there’s going to be access issues, but you go along and you improvise. Some things work, some things don’t. Then, with the things that don’t, you sort of think out of the box to make them work. And that’s the motto and the mindset that I’ve always had: find a way to make it work for me.

You’ve been around the world for your TV work, particularly for last year’s Climate Change series where you visited countries being affected by global warming. Do you ever run into problems when filming in tricky locations?

For that series we went to Bangladesh, where these newly formed islands are popping up in the Bay of Bengal. They are made up of thick mud, and as soon as one would crop up, a team of conservationists would go out there and plant mangrove trees, because they’re really super resilient. And so they asked me if I’d like to come along on one of these trips, to see them being planted.

- Ade Adepitan 

We got on a speedboat, and as we arrived at the island, these guys all jumped off their boat, took one step and literally dropped about four feet into the mud – it rose up to their chests. I looked at my cameraman and at my director and thought: how the bloody hell am I going to get across that island? We decided to take a run up in the boat, going as fast as we could, and slide about 50 feet through the mud, as close to where the guys were planting the mangroves as possible.

Then, obviously, I couldn’t get out in my wheelchair, so we found a massive piece of tarpaulin, laid it out on top of the mud and I lay down on it. I spread my weight out so that it wouldn’t sink. We then had someone grab each corner of the tarpaulin and drag me to where the bemused guys were planting the mangroves. Even then, the piece of tarpaulin was slowly sinking into the mud as I interviewed them and planted some mangrove trees. Then they dragged me back onto the speedboat. You know: where there’s a will, there’s a way and you just improvise.

You’ve seen quite a few examples of climate change. Do you think it will alter the way we travel?

Yeah, we have to in all reality. I’ve been travelling non-stop for almost 20 years for various TV programmes, starting with a children’s show called Tiger Tiger, where I travelled the world telling the stories of endangered animals. And over the years, I’ve seen clear signs of climate change: countries getting hotter, droughts lasting longer, animals and humans coming into conflict because of these droughts and the lack of food.

And so it’s really important that we, first of all, understand this and acknowledge our part in it, and then we have to find a way to travel more sustainably because I don’t think there’s any way of stopping people travelling. We just have to find a way of doing it better.

Maybe taking fewer flights, finding alternative ways to travel, but also putting pressure on the travel industry, especially the aviation industry, to come up with new technology.

Let’s travel in a sustainable way. Let’s go out there and let’s acknowledge the indigenous people, the locals, and let’s make sure that they benefit from the travel industry. And then, when you travel, travel for a reason. Let’s make sure that’s its a special trip.

I’m no longer looking at travelling thousands of miles every month because, right now, it would be irresponsible to do that until the industry changes – and the industry has to change because we need to travel as human beings.

That’s what has made us into who we are. You know, we travelled out of Africa and spread to all parts of the globe, and it’s made us this incredible race of people. But what we now need to understand is that we can’t just take the planet for granted anymore.

We’ve got to get to carbon neutral or carbon negative as a race. And if we don’t reach that stage, then we go above 1.5 degrees Celsius global warming. If we get to that point, none of us are going to be travelling all that much in the future because the weather will become so unpredictable that it would be too dangerous.

So, it’s in our interest to get this right. And if you are a traveller, it’s in your interest to be responsible and to vote the right way and to put pressure on companies and make sure we live more in tune with our planet.

You touched on the travel industry. What are they doing for people with disabilities?

I don’t think the travel industry has properly embraced catering to people with disabilities. I still think it’s an untapped, uncharted section of the industry. And the starting point for doing this is to talk to people with disabilities. Stop making these decisions without including us, and stop looking at us as one homogenous group.

We’re all different, so they need to go out there and speak to a cross section of the disabled population and ask us what we want, so they can do this better, because we’ve got money to spend and they’d be foolish to keep neglecting us. I’m starting to see more disabled people setting up their own travel businesses, mainly because they are fed up of the treatment that they’re getting. But what it really needs is the big travel companies – Tui, Kuoni, British Airways, all of them – to start properly having a decent conversation and coming up with a game plan that makes travel inclusive for everybody.

What kind of things do you have to think about before travelling?

It’s sort of a trial-and-error process because there hasn’t been a blueprint for me. There hasn’t been someone else who I could look at and say: “Oh, yeah, I can learn from you.” I’ve had to work it all out by myself.
My main thing is making sure I’ve got a wheelchair that I know is going to function. And it’s got to last me through some remote countries, where they might not have the tyres that I need; where there might be a part of the wheelchair that falls off. I always make sure that I’ve got the right spares.

Understanding what sort of terrain I’m going to encounter is important: do I need to take my chunky tyres, or do I keep my skinny tyres? I’ve got various adaptations that I stick onto the chair to allow it to go through jungles and across rocks.

The current chair that I use is an RGK FX that folds flat when you take the wheels off, which means it can be put in the overhead compartment on the plane. The great thing is that when you arrive at your destination, your chair is there. There is nothing more frightening than when your chair is supposedly going in the hold and you arrive somewhere thousands of miles away from home and then it isn’t there. It’s happened to me twice. And I tell you that the blood runs cold in your body when you hear that your chair is back in the UK.

I also need to know if the accommodation is going be accessible. And if it isn’t, I want to know that they can make adjustments. I once went on holiday to Mauritius and stayed in a really nice bouji place, but it had five steps that went from the room down to the sand. The staff told me that they’d sort it out, then I heard this hammering and bashing. They’d built this beautiful ramp for me all the way down to the beach.

That was really nice, and it just shows what people in the accommodations can do if you push them. But I’ve found that if you have a disability, you have to really speak up for yourself to get people to understand and to do what’s necessary.

Where haven’t you been yet?

If I could pluck up the courage to see the Earth from space, it would be amazing. I think Argentina would also be incredible, and I‘d love to do more of the South Pacific, such as Samoa and Papua New Guinea.
The other thing is: before the end of my lifetime, I want to visit every single country in Africa. I think I’ve done 18 now, but there are 54 countries in total. It’s a massive continent, so I’ve still got a few more to get around.

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