Levison Wood will be bringing his show, An Evening with Levison Wood, to Cambridge on the 26th FebruaryYouTube: Telegraph Commercial Video

“Nothing can beat just having a conversation,” Levison Wood tells me.

I am starting to agree. I have spent precisely three minutes talking to him and I swear I have spent at least two of them laughing. I imagine that being this charming, this engaging and this eloquent probably makes life a lot easier as he travels around the world on record-breaking expeditions?

Wood laughs, before imparting some words of wisdom. “What I’ve learnt is that people pretty much everywhere are very similar. They all want the same thing: to be left in peace to get along with their own lives.”

“But,” he continues, “people will look after you all around the world. I think that gives you a sense of humility and gratitude, especially in communities where there is extreme poverty. It’s amazing: people generally don’t think twice about giving you their last morsel.”

Anecdotal evidence this may be, but Wood is as good an authority as they come. Having served as an Officer, and then a Captain, with the British Army in Afghanistan, he began his career as an explorer and travel journalist in April 2010 and has since visited over 80 countries. Indeed, a number of these expeditions have been the subject of TV documentaries and best-selling books, as well as being captured through his own incredible photography.

“I’ve enjoyed conversations with all sorts of people ranging from Maoist Communists in Nepal to some pretty staunch Trump supporters in America to the most right-wing people across Europe.”

Wood is emphatic that it has “always been about the people. That’s what I try get across on TV and in the narrative of my books: human stories make it interesting.” After all, he points out with a chuckle: “you can see great landscapes on TV any time you want, but you simply don’t get that [human] interaction.”

Noting that parallels between his expedition through Central America (the subject of his latest TV show and book, both entitled Walking the Americas) and the journeys of Che Guevara as documented in The Motorcycle Diaries, I enquire as to how Wood’s views, political or otherwise, have been shaped by his encounters with people from across the world.

“I think politics doesn’t really come into it when you travel,” he explains, lamenting how “everything’s become very polemicised these days” and how people “don’t seem to want to have any dialogue [and are] so entrenched in their own views that they can’t accept anyone else’s.”

Instead, Wood advocates getting “to know people beyond the politics. I’ve enjoyed conversations with all sorts of people ranging from Maoist Communists in Nepal to some pretty staunch Trump supporters in America to the most right-wing people across Europe. I’ve met people from across the whole spectrum and it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re bad.”

Referencing his experiences with the Army, he continues. “I hitch-hiked across Afghanistan when I was 22 – before I served in the Army – and grew a beard, wore the local garb, and stayed with Mujahideen: people who probably joined the Taliban. And we got on fine, it was an interesting experience! I don’t harbour any resentment to the people who were shooting at me whatsoever,” he says with a chuckle. “It’s just the nature of politics and war.”

Yet, after all these interactions, Wood is perhaps embarking on his toughest assignment yet – the British public. His one-man show, An Evening with Levison Wood, is touring 22 locations around the UK and is set to hit Cambridge on 26th February.

“It’s just a different way of telling the story of how I become an explorer, what exploring is all about, and what it means in the 21st century,” he tells me. “I’ll be talking about the three televised expeditions – the Nile, the Himalayas and, most recently, the Americas – and also a bit of background of how I got into this…” he pauses, trying to think of the right word. “Career, as it were,” he eventually says with a laugh.

But surely coming to Cambridge – a city full of the PlayStation generation for whom using Google Maps to find their way to supervisions at Girton College is the closest thing to exploring they will ever do – will present a different challenge for Wood in terms of engaging an audience?

“I think it’s for everyone,” he says. “What I’ve really enjoyed is having different formats through which I can tell my stories – through writing, through TV, through photography – and now I have a show whereby people can come and ask questions. If people really want to know the nitty-gritty, they can ask away: it’s warts and all really!”

“Exploring is probably a lot easier with TripAdvisor and Google Maps,” Wood admits with a laugh. Yet, he is quick to emphasise that young people can still be inspired into it. After all, he argues, “the idea is still the same: going to places that are different and coming back with new ideas.”

“I did everything from flipping burgers to stacking shelves. It doesn’t have to cost the earth, just have faith in humanity and that people will look after you.”

And how does he choose where he will next explore? “I’d always been fascinated by travel writing,” he tells me, noting that his dissertation (Wood studied history at the University of Nottingham) inspired his first big trip along the Silk Road in Asia. “History completely informs everything I do: it’s not just adventure for adventure’s sake. And while I don’t ram it down people’s throats, I feel it’s my duty to get some of the history and the background across. Particularly when you find out Scotland tried to set up a colony in Panama in 1698,” he adds with another laugh.

Wood is also keen to stress the accessibility of exploring, chuckling when I ask whether it is something only ‘Daddy-funded Gap Yah’ students can do. “I think anyone can do it”, he responds. “Anyone who says they can’t are just making excuses. I didn’t rely on my parents whatsoever – I did everything from flipping burgers to stacking shelves. It doesn’t have to cost the earth, just have faith in humanity and that people will look after you.”

Given Wood’s success, I wonder if some of the awe of exploring is lost by having to arrange a session of filming or note down some points for the next chapter at the end of a hard day. “That’s a really good question, actually,” he tells me. “It can do, yeah – when it becomes a job, it is a slightly different mindset. And I can’t remember the last proper holiday I had without a camera. It’s something I’ve got to do more of”, he says, starting to self-reflect. “Just backpacking for the sheer joy of it – that was my route in, and I do yearn for it.”

“But for now”, he concludes, returning back to Earth, “I’m taking the amazing opportunities I’ve got to share my stories and adventures as part of my work… if you can call it that.”

Levison Wood will be bringing his show, An Evening with Levison Wood, to the Cambridge Corn Exchange at 7:30pm on Sunday 26th February. Tickets cost £25.25 and are available here