Human beings are good at surviving harsh environments, but how do they manage to endure in places where nature still reigns supreme, where the physical geography is so raw and unforgiving? In this book, Nick puts his mind and body to the test in an attempt to find the answer.

In northern Greenland, he joins a group of Inuits hunting for narwhal, crucial to the group’s survival, on the edge of fragile sea ice, while in the jungle he ventures into Congo’s tropical forest home of the Biaka pygmies and almost spoils the party with an ill-fated tin of sardines. He joins the annual crossing of the Ténéré Desert by the women of the Tubu tribe to collect dates and then travels to Papua, one of the least explored places on earth, to find the Kombai people, a remote group of tree-house dwellers above the Asmat region’s floodplain.