Ash Dykes Walked China's 4,000-mile Yangtze River | Joe Rogan

This thing that you brought. So I thought if I'm the first Welsh person, I've got to bring... Try to keep this like a fifth from the other person. Sure. I've got to bring a Welsh dragon for you. A Welsh dragon. A Welsh dragon. So this is on our flag in Wales. Oh. Goes back a long time ago since we were like protecting ourselves and pride. Wow, it's cool. Don't really know the history, but there we go. So this is a classic Welsh dragon? Welsh dragon, yeah. I think it was named like one of the coolest flags in the world. She's got this big, big raging dragon on our flag. That is pretty cool. So I thought if I'm the first Welsh person, I've got to bring you a red dragon. Look at it right there. There's some images of it. There we go. Yeah. Have you been to Wales before? No. No? No. How badass is it? Should I go? Yeah, beautiful. It is a good place. Lots of mountains right on the coast there as well, of course. Forests, lakes. Good for training. That's why I do all my training. Yeah. Hardcore elements. Speaking of training, Ash, tell everybody what you've done. So I've recently, only five months ago, now five and a half months, came back from achieving my third world first record in walking the entire length of the Yangtze River in China. So it's the third longest river in the world. The longest to run through a single nation. So it's 4,000 miles. It took 352 days. And it's from the Tibetan Plateau in the west of China. So it took in 5,100 meters above sea level, which is equivalent to Everest Base Camp. And yeah, 4,000 miles later, 352 days, you end up near Shanghai, where it pours out into the east China Sea. You know what I thought when I heard that you did this? I thought two things. One, I thought, this guy's insane. Like what kind of willpower does it take to walk and hike 4,000 plus miles? But the other thing I thought is this kind of validates a lot of the ideas that people have always had about human beings migrating from Africa and through Siberia and through the Bering Strait. If you can do that, what you did, what you did is not dissimilar. That's it. Yeah. You've got trails all over the world. And you're just doing it for a world record. Imagine if you're doing it because you're trying to stay alive. You're trying to keep your family alive. Yeah. I tell you what. Yeah, we would have had, oh, there's so much history in journeys that mankind kind of taken on since. Wow. I'm reading Sapien at the minute. Oh, it's great. I only just started. But that's just mind boggling with the numbers. It takes right back. Whoa. Whoa. But yeah, so the source of the Yangtze, it was actually only discovered in 2009, the true and scientific source. Really? Yeah, that gives us, we had to do it to talk over two years of planning. So it was a case of working heavily in China, finding out whether this had ever been done before it talked. We had to get different teams involved globally. And then we discovered that I was always preparing to go from the traditional source, which is most famous for the source of the Yangtze River being there. But then we only discovered about a year into the planning that actually there's a true and scientific source found by the same guy who mapped the traditional source. Yet he partnered up with NASA, used all the satellite technology, was able to correct his wrong. It's slightly longer than the traditional source. And that was it. We're like, right, we've got to be the true and scientific source. How much longer is it? It's probably only a distance of 20 to 30 miles, which that's only really a day's trek. But it was more close to Tibet. It was more south, southwest of China. So it was closer to the Tibetan port, which means it's a little bit more sensitive. So it was tougher to go from the true and scientific source for sure. But it's the longer one. If you're going to walk that distance, you've got to do it the proper way. Yeah, I agree with you. I'm glad you think that way. But obviously a person that's willing to walk 4,000 miles would think that way. He wouldn't skip on 20 miles. Can you imagine if you skipped on 20 miles and everybody's like, well, you did a pretty good job. But actually, Mike over here just did the whole thing, the actual scientific one. He's the real one. Well, that happened towards the end as well. So coming up near Shanghai, there's an official point of where the Yangtze pours into the East China Sea. And they're like, you only have to go to this point. I'm like, no, I walk into where the land ends. So that took me an extra couple of days. But can you imagine finishing? You didn't quite make it, did you? You were close. But you didn't quite make it. So what was the feeling like when you know you only have two days left? Oh, well, we were hit by storm, storm Lekema. So it was one of the biggest storms they've had in the past 30 years. And that put me into hiding, you know, to shelter up after everything that I faced over 350 days, you know. And that stopped me only a couple of days before I crossed into the East China Sea before the finish. But at that point, it's almost I had visualized the completion over and over again in my head. I played it so many times of what it would be like, what it would feel like. It's everything to cross the finish line that almost when that day happened and I did cross the finish line, I almost over visualized. I didn't feel anything. Just like, well, it's about damn time, you know. Wow. Yeah. And I believe, you know, the law of attraction visualization, I've always been a big believer in that. Same with Mongolia and Madagascar, which were my previous expeditions. I almost lost my life on both of those trips. By the time that I'm suffering, I'm just constantly visualizing. You know, I was focusing on recovering, getting better, visualizing the finish, keep getting up, keep pushing on. I want to get to that. I want to get to those. But I want to ask you, when you decide to plan this trip, so how much had you learned from the first two crazy trips that you had? And how did you calculate like how much food you're going to need? Where are you going to meet? Need pit stops? Were you going to be able to like, how did you do it? So with that, we're always looking for communities along a long route. You know, if there's a community, there's food. And so and actually that brings me back to the traditional and the true scientific source. If we went from the traditional, we'd go maybe one week or one and a half weeks without coming across any locals. So we'd have to carry a week and a half worth of Russian packs in our backpack. But that's true in scientific source centers back. I think it was two or three weeks we couldn't find any community along the way via satellite and via the people that we were, they are my logistics managers. So that meant we'd need to carry. That is the craziest way to try to visit people. Find them through satellite as you're trekking through a forest. And then try to get food. That's it. And we're always maximizing it as well. So we're saying, okay, that's three weeks. So let's carry food for three and a half or four weeks because if that community is now empty or abandoned, then we're out of food. What what are you caring for food? I would carry Russian packs. So and the Russian packs were pretty good. We had like chicken tikka masala, spaghetti bolognese, carbon aura. And each Russian pack was around 800 kilocalories. And are you using like hot are these dehydrated? Yeah, that's it. So you just boil the water and pour it in there. You wait about 15 minutes. It's like a mountain house like that kind of a deal. Yeah, yeah, similar. That's it. So you must be so looking forward to regular food by the time that's over. Yeah. Oh, what's the first thing you ate? Oh, you know, the one that I was protein, the one I was craving was just protein. So I was thinking of peanut butter, I'm thinking of cheese on toast. Because you had just mostly carbohydrates. Yeah, exactly. So I was like chicken as well was a big thing. I was just craving all of this big time. But I don't know what the first thing I. So how your body knows what you need. Yeah, you've got to listen to your body. You've got to listen. It's hard to listen. It's hard to know. I'm not really sure what I hear. Yeah. You know, you had an odd craving. Sometimes I'm craving ice creams. I'm supposed to listen to some ice cream. Yeah, exactly. It seems weird. Yeah, yeah. Just listen to your cravings. That's ridiculous. Yeah. And I think, yeah, no, you know what it does. I think almost listening to you've got to be stripped of all the all of the protein and what not running for your body currently. I think if you're full, you're craving ice cream. You know, if you feel you want a dessert. But I think if you're now at the point of not starvation, but if you're really hungry and you know what's good, what's not good, you I think your body gives a good tale sign of what you can. At the last month of mission Yanksy, I was really bad. I was coming across cities every day because you can imagine like towards Shanghai, you come across cities, come across towns, communities. And so I was just craving protein. I was craving fats. And a lot of the time for that last month, I was just eating really unhealthily, just getting in stodgy foods, dodgy fats, protein. You know, there was fast food chains along the way. KFC, you know, that sort of. Really? Yes. I was out of the wild. The wilderness was like six months worth. Once I'd finished the first half, it was gradual for then another two or three months. But the last three months, you're going through city after city, all really built up high population there. And I found that my body was crazy. So I was listening to my body, scraping fats, craving protein. And yeah, you're right. It was ridiculous. I was going to these, you know, fast food and I, the translation, I could speak Chinese a little bit. I was just going to ask you that. I could get by. Don't you say Chinese, like which dialect? Oh, there's over a hundred dialects. Yeah. So that's where it got difficult. Oh no. So even, yeah, it was nails. It was nails. Really difficult. So do you speak Mandarin? What do you speak? Your basic Mandarin. Basic Mandarin. Yeah. Enough to just about get by. I skipped all of the basics and went straight into the sentences. Where are, where are there bears here? Are there bears here? Where are the wolves? Where are the wolves? Water, food, shelter. Oh God. So yeah, I skipped a lot of the basics, went straight into the... Dude, those are two questions I don't ever want to hear. Are there bears here? And where are the wolves? Not are there wolves here? Where are they? Where are they? Fuck man. And you're out there walking. Yeah. For a year. Yeah. That's it. I remember the first six months, especially. So the first six months is mostly hiking in the woods. It's hiking, yeah, in the wilderness on the Tibetan plateau. Are you carrying your camp on your back? Yeah. So you have a baby sack. Like what are you sleeping in? That's a tent. So we had this really lightweight sort of kylas tent. Just get it up storm proof. It's amazing how light they can get those damn things to now. Oh, it was great. It was incredible. Because I had to carry all of the, we were filming for a documentary. We started to carry electronics and got too heavy. Now do you, when you're in this tent, do you go with a double layer tent so you have provides more insulation and it's a little heavier? Or do you have like a really lightweight tent and just try to tough it out in the cold? We have, I had a double layer, but that's because the double layer was just so small and so light. Yeah. And it was a case of, yeah, you know, that's your comfort. That's your shelter. Right, right, right. And I'm going to be facing some big storms. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. You'd sacrifice probably the weight for just something that's going to keep you insulated in there. That's it. Do you have a pad that protects you from the ground? Yeah. So I had a mattress pad on top of that? Yeah, we've got the pad, like the waterproof pad on the ground from the tent. And then we've got a sleeping mat, maybe about this thick, about half an inch to an inch thickness. And then I had a minus 25 or minus 30 degree Celsius sleeping bag. And what that is in Fahrenheit. But that was, you know, you got toasty inside. It could be minus 20. What is the issue with the ground though? Like, do you have to have an insulated pad to make sure that the ground cold doesn't get to you? Yeah, for sure. That's what the sleeping mat is. So it's sort of, you can roll it down. It's really small, really tight, really lightweight as well. But once you roll it out, it's got like memory foam almost inside, something similar. And you have to blow in it, pump it up a little bit more. Oh, I see. 10, 20 breaths, easy to pack away as well. And it protects you from the cold of the ground. And it protects from that, because that's what you need, you know? The ground just... Dude, I've never been comfortable camping. It's always just like, it's always like you wake up like popping. Fuck. You're awake. You made it, but still you feel weird. Yeah, you can do. You do get used to it. But especially after the trekking, we were covering 50 kilometers some days. We were covering about 20, 25 miles, especially in the Tibetan Plateau. So after that day's trek, only two ration packs per day. So you're taking in 1,600 calories. That's not a lot. That's not a lot. And we were carrying 30... How much weight did you lose? I probably... And I've still lost weight now at about 13, 12 to 13 kilograms, I would say, in weight. Which over the years was, I lost the same amount in Mongolia. So like 32 pounds, something like that? It's about 32, is it? 32 pounds, yeah. So... Wow, that's a lot of weight to lose. You're not a big guy. Yeah, that's it. Fuck, man. That must have been, you must have been really drawn out at the end. Big time. Although it kind of worked itself out because towards the end I was coming across more food. Didn't need my ration packs, of course. So I was coming across more restaurants. I can collect food as I go. It's not a solo and unsupported journey. So I was just utilizing that. I was eating with the locals and I was taking as much calories down as I possibly could whilst I was tracking. Did you pick the type of meals based on calories? Did you like when, I'm talking about the Mountain House type deals or I don't know what company you used, what kind of... Oh, yeah, Expedition Foods, I think it was that I used. So they have different ones that are more nutrient rich and more calorie rich. Yeah, they have the smaller, lighter ones as well, which you get about 600 calories. They are smaller. They are lighter, easier to pack, but I needed as much as I could possibly get, you know, especially for... Healthy options now, because a lot of Crossfitters are out there camping these days. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it. I didn't want to get that healthy paleo food while they're out there in the mountain. But what's undeniable has got to be for you is that once you've made those steps, the first steps for the first day, you have this monumental thing in front of you. Yeah. What was that like knowing when you started? Like, ready? All right, bye, Ash. Bye. See you in the air. Oh, man. Yeah, it was exactly that. It was exactly that. It was daunting. It was... So before we got to the source of the Yangtze River, we lost, I think, four members. When I say lost, they survived, but they got altitude sickness. They were fearing for their lives because of the bears, because of the wolves. So before we reached day number one, before we reached the start line, we've already got four members of the film crew of guides evacuated, taken off the mountains, which brought me off the mountains as well, because I needed to regroup with a different team. So everyone was scared, and people also got altitude sickness. They got fucked up. How high are you up there? We are just over 5,000 meters at this point. Oh, my God. Yeah, so it's equivalent to Everest Base Camp, I'd say. Oh, my God. Which you can get altitude sickness from. One of the guys... That's really fucking high. That's 15,000 feet, right? It's about that, yeah. Oh. Yeah. And there's wolves up there? There's wolves. Yeah, there's bears. You can't even run. You got no air. Yeah. How helpless would you feel at 15,000 feet when you see a pack of wolves? Oh, man. Yeah. And they're looking at you like, hey, you don't look too good, buddy. It's the bears that scared me the most. Oh, they should scare you the most. You can't do anything against a bear, can you? You can't do anything against a wolf. Yeah, you can't do anything against a wolf. Especially at 15,000 feet, when you can barely tie your shoes. And a pack of them as well. Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah. And we can't carry any weaponry, so leave it there. No? Oh, great. Yeah. So, really, you can't carry any weaponry? Yeah. Yeah. You can't even have a knife? I tried. I took a knife out. Did I say, yeah, I took a knife out, but it was taken from me in security, flying out to the west. So I bought another one in Yushu. Yeah, I did have a knife for the first month or two. Yeah. But again, a pack of wolves. Yeah, you ain't going to do shit with a little baby-ass knife. Yeah, exactly. You're going to rip your ankles apart. That's it. That's it. You tear your legs apart. Yeah. You're going to be a nasty-ass hunter. Big time. And we had a close encounter as well with the pack. Yeah. There was a Tibetan. He was trying to warn us. He was trying to say, well, this is my angle. We were just talking to him. He looked a little bit worried, a little bit stressed. Well, high on the mountains, he keeps pointing down at a valley, talking to him into Tibetan. We didn't understand. We just sort of waved, oh, thank you. Bye. Big smile. Off we go. Say, well, it was me and my friend, also a videographer, Kyle. We cracked on, but Kyle filmed all of that conversation. And four months later, we found out that a girl from my editor team in Beijing who could speak Tibetan, that he was saying right ahead, right down that valley is a pack of wolves. And only yesterday that he'd killed a local lady. And they were trying to get us not to go down there, saying don't go. But we didn't know. So we were like, oh, yeah, well, the best. Thanks. See you. And we cracked on. And for the next two days, we were followed. We believe we were followed by or stalked by a pack of wolves. Oh, my God. And they cover a bigger distance than humans cover, you know. For two days, they were just howling. Same proximity, same distance away. Fuck it, fuck, fuck, fuck. How do you go to sleep at night? What's that like? Luckily, it was windy. The wind would pick up at nighttime. So it would rattle your tent so you couldn't hear the howling. You could only hear it during the day. But yeah, you still stood there, your knives, your torches, you constantly shouting over to your buddy. Aren't you worried that you're just going to become a burrito in the middle of the night? Tent burrito. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was scary. I felt vulnerable, really vulnerable up there. Fuck, bro. And the locals were doing this with the wolves. So it was two days that they were following us. But we were in sort of Wolf County, if you like, for the best part of two or three months, I would say. With the bears as well. And the bears became an issue because I sort of went out there with a healthy mindset. As long as I leave the bears alone, the bears are going to leave me alone. Right. But the locals were telling me otherwise. And they would start showing me photos, start showing me videos and sending me clips saying this happened only one, two kilometres away from you or from where you are now. People were killed by bears. People were killed just running into huts, killing families. And they were trying to say that they're coming off the mountains because it's too cold. They're looking for calories before they go into hibernation. So we were there in the wrong season. And it's that that terrified us the most. It was the stories of the locals. And, you know, if the locals panic, then you should definitely be panicking as well. There's a lot of parts of the world where you have to be really worried about wild animals all the time. Yeah. We here in America, for whatever reason, we've forgotten that. I think everybody that lives in a big city is basically kind of forgotten that. Yeah. But when you make that trek, you realize like, oh, there's no rules out here. They'll eat you. That's it. They'll eat everything. They'll eat a caribou. They'll eat a moose. Why wouldn't they eat you? Yeah. What do they think? You're special? They don't even know what the fuck you are. They've been eating a person lately. Yeah. And they take like you said, caribou, they can take the bears. They're going to just carry a moose. Yeah. Moose are huge as well. My friend watched a moose kill or excuse me, watched a bear kill a moose on a spotting scope. He was looking through a spotting scope and he saw a bear swat down the back of a moose just break its back. It's terrifying. He said the grizzly hit the moose so hard. It snapped its back. Jeez. I'm like, what? The power, the shit, the moose and a bear. And they are big on the moose. Moose are huge. Yeah. This bear swatted that thing and broke its back and he said he watched it go down. He watched this chase. There's like this altercation between this bear and the moose and he stayed on it and the bear gets a hold of the moose and just fucking swats it. The moose is like, I got to get the fuck out of here. And the bear's like, bitch, you're going nowhere. Yeah. Yeah. Those animals are up there in China too. They're a very similar type of bear, right? It's a type of brown bear, isn't it? That's it, type of brown bear. Yeah. Slightly. You've got the big ones here, haven't you? Ooh. They killed them all in California. Everything that they had that was here in California. It's on our flag. It's our state flag. If you look at the California state flag, there's a giant grizzly bear in the middle of the California state flag. No way. Yeah, because it used to be an issue here. Got you. They killed so many people that we just killed all the bears. Not we. I wasn't here. Got you. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I didn't know that. Yeah. They're nowhere near here. You've got to go up into like Vancouver. British Columbia has. So what's the British Columbia has a lot of. Yeah. Yeah. They have Montana has them. Montana has grizzlies. Wyoming has grizzlies. Colorado may or may not. My friend Adam saw them there. Yeah. But they're not in California anymore. And it's just because they killed them. There's actually a town named after the last guy who died. LaVette, California. The last guy who got killed by a grizzly bear. Just out hunting, was it? Just probably being a dude that was alive back then. Terrifying. So you experienced this in China. You're. Yeah. What are what are your precautions? Are you allowed to bring bear spray? So we had an air horn. We had a whistle. Oh, Jesus. So it was a whistle. Yeah. So they say that the boat, the biggest attacks happen from where Tibetans outforming doing their business in the mountains. They they're in the forest and they surprise. They come up the top of the hill. There's a bear there. And obviously the bears shocked. It's scared. And it just attacks. Yeah. That does happen with bears in America. That's it. Yeah. So they would say pretty much take a whistle, take an air horn, make yourself aware, well, make the bear aware that you're that you're present. You're approaching. And normally they would be they would scare off. They run away. But there was a local that told me that so they have these big Tibetors. Have you seen the Tibetors? I think the dogs that got the two. Plus pounds are huge. Terrifying. More of a problem than the wolves they were for me because they can scare away the wolves, scare away snow leopards. The bears. But this one local was telling me that he wasn't living in this girl, which is like a white felt tent, like a year. He was living in a concrete hut and he had a courtyard with a fence. The fence was open, but just outside the fence, it's the Tibetan mast have chained up and he said that this bear wasn't fazed about the Tibetan mast. If it walked straight past it into the courtyard and was scratching at a steel door whilst he was hiding in one of his empty covers, that lasted about 30, 40 minutes and he was telling me this story. Oh, I'm like, I'm in a tent. Oh my gosh. It's scratching against a steel door while I'm just in a tent in the world. And it's... Fuck man. They're monsters. If they were in a real thing, if grizzly bears or brown bears weren't real and then they were in a movie, you'd be like, what? Imagine that poor guy. And imagine you, like, you, someone would ask someone like you, like, why in the world, if you know they're there, would you going to want to walk for that long? Yeah. Bear country. Yeah. Well, that's, that's it. That's... How many people are with you? Towards the start, so it was myself, it was two guides that I had, Tibetan guide. So we can even communicate. Oh. But safety in numbers. And we took a horse for the film crew, but the film crew got altitude sickness and left us with the horse, which I named Castachoy. Have you ever seen the movie Face Off? Yes. The badass Castachoy. Oh, that's hilarious. I've got this thing where I name, like, my bicycles or, like, carried a chicken. We'll get to that, carried a chicken in Madagascar. I've been giving them old, crazy, ridiculous granny names. And I was like, this horse is the last one standing whilst my, my crew, my, my guides are suffering with altitude sickness and being taken off the mountains. You've got this horse, still suffering with altitude sickness. Never knew that, but apparently horses can, animals can suffer with altitude sickness. But he's there, like, a badass still going, such as me and him. And I'm like, I can't give you a granny's name, like Elder or Dort or Gertrude. I'm giving you Castachoy. I'm giving you Castachoy.