"In this process of discovery (disaster & recovery) we did manage to carry out some interesting work...." - The 1991 Rio Paute Headwaters expedition report

"You cannot acquire experience by making experiments. You cannot create experience. You must undergo it." - Albert Camus

Some of the experiences on your expedition will be unpleasant ones. It may be as minor as a toe nail splitting or as major as being denied access to your field area. The norm will be somewhere in the middle. Some things are out of your control no matter how well the project has been planned. The 1995 Montserrat Biodiversity Project found the day it arrived coincided with a dormant volcano deciding to break its 360 year sleep and destroy huge swathes of the island. Excrement happens, as they say.

You cannot prepare for the totally unexpected, by definition. But you can prepare for most setbacks by indulging in a really negative "what if" session before you set off. In the planning stages this is one of those occasions when it’s actually good to have a pessimistic misery guts on the team: someone who will always see what could go wrong. You will then be able to brainstorm as a team and decide how you will deal with that situation should it happen. It’s almost like going on a virtual expedition in your head but with your worst nightmares popping up:

• Freight can go astray. Solution: try and take as much with your personal luggage as possible and buy as much of the rest while in the host country (your reconnaissance will have shown you what is available).
• You might be denied access to your chosen field area (be it by volcano, bush fire or civil unrest). Solution: have a backup field area in mind that you have the maps for.
• You can’t get hold of maps. Even in developed countries it can be difficult getting maps. In less developed countries all sorts of levels of beaurocracy, suspicion and poor supply can prevail. You may find it additionally difficult in getting large scale maps. Solution: get your maps before you leave the UK (either by ordering or getting one of your host country counterparts onto the case).
• Seasonal problems. A Greenland ski based expedition couldn't get to its field area owing to an early thaw that made rivers impassable. A team investigating water erosion in Nepal went out in the dry season. Solution: think about how seasonality might affect your expedition.

You get the idea. Try going on a Zen expedition to prepare you for the real thing. But remember: the real thing will be a hundred times better and in practice few expeditions have bad setbacks…but that’s still no reason to be complacent.

To most people in the host country you will fit their definition of a tourist and they may treat you as such. The fact that you "know" yourselves to be above "mere" tourists does not give you the right to expect to be treated differently or with more respect. Be careful not to give yourself airs and graces because "we're different, we're an expedition".

You will have a higher profile though than individual tourists, particularly in the field, and your behaviour is crucial. Finding out about local mores for example is only good manners and could avoid embarrassing incidents. Just because you're an expedition on a "mission" does not mean you can go roughshod wherever you like. Bad conduct can easily result in all expeditions being judged harshly in the future. The taint from an irresponsible group can spread a long way and may tarnish others by association e.g. the university whose name you may be using, sponsors whose logos you are emblazoning, and any future visitors of your nationality.

A particular charge which has been levelled against some projects in the past is one of ‘Scientific colonialism’. That is, an expedition enters a host country, collects masses of data, takes it back home to analyse and then gains the kudos for the results with little or no involvement or credit to the host country. James Sidaway has suggested three guidelines projects should consider:

• "Make no false promises. More often than not, foreigners are at least seen as being relatively privileged. More often than not they are, particularly when the outsider is perceived as relatively powerful/rich (or even not), it is surprisingly easy for her/him to be drawn into commitments and promises that one may not be in a position to fulfil.
• Beware of unintended consequences of actions. Admittedly this is easier said than done. However it ought to be possible to cultivate a certain awareness.
• Share the results of the research. This is, of course, greatly facilitated by participation in collaborative work. It also means considering outlets beyond the margins of academic journals and ‘professional’ conferences."

By including host country counterparts on your team you will already be well on your way to tackling many of these issues. But even more so than tourists, you are guests in the host country and should act accordingly. You may come across rules or regulations that you don’t agree with, or inconvenient regulations that limit the goals your expedition can attain. Nevertheless, you do not have the right to assume any moral superiority and be selective about which regulations you choose to obey or disobey. An overseas team conducting an expedition in the UK would receive little sympathy or approval if it trespassed against our codes, both social and legal! I leave the last word to Robert Crittenden:

"…I would suggest that the rules should be followed for rapport to be developed between government and research institutions and individual researchers……it would appear to me that breaking rules because they are inconvenient simply reflects the sentiments of those that donned pith helmet and ventured forth carrying the bible and the rum bottle!" - Area 20, pp 372-3, 1988

If you want to get to know a community, travel alone. It is always easier to get to know local people because you have to talk to them if you want any conversation or insights into the country at all. They in turn perceive you as being approachable because you have not formed a little unit with other companions.

It is therefore very easy for any group, but particularly one which is designed to be self supporting and self sufficient, to be inward looking and exude an air of excluding others. This means that as an expedition you will have to actively work at being approachable and wanting to make contact with communities around you. You should not be operating in a vacuum with no interaction with local people.

You will of course already have host country counterparts on your team. They will be giving you constant insights into the country. When you are setting up in your field area you will of course have made yourselves known to the local decision makers, be they the chief of the village, local councillors, or the local police EVEN IF (maybe even especially if) you have written authority from the relevant government department. You may be carrying a document that gives you written permission to be there but it may have been issued by a government department many hundreds of miles from your field area and the local people may have no idea what you’re doing there. The local community may totally disagree with the way their affairs are run from the capital and see your arrival as yet another example of lack of consultation and suddenly your project becomes a casualty of politics. At the very least, it is a common courtesy to explain to people in the area why you are wandering all over their land and what you are hoping to achieve. This gets local people on to your side from the word go and avoids potentially unhelpful misunderstandings. Once they understand what you are about, most communities will then go out of their way to assist you and often feel proud that they are important enough that a team has come from so far away to study their area.

You can then also start tapping into the rich fund of local knowledge. An ornithology project spent weeks trying to find a particular bird with no success. One day one of their team got chatting with one of the local women who informed him that she saw the bird every day when she went to the river to wash clothes. They hadn’t previously spoken to the local women because the men had taken it upon themselves to provide advice to the expedition because women had little worth!

Another fruitful way to get the assistance and backing of the community is to appeal to the children. Offer to present a talk to the local school about what you are doing. The children will get excited about what you are doing and will relay that back to their parents and other family members.

Why do you want the data? What are you trying to prove? These questions need to have clear answers long before you step into the field. The answers will determine much of your field strategy, how you collect the data, how much, and where from.

There are a number of considerations when collecting data. From your studies of the subject area you are working in you will have analysed the methods of data collection others have used, and also ensured that you record data in a format suitable for later analysis. Data should be recorded clearly and in full. It is all too easy several weeks later when you are back in the UK and trying to make sense of your notes to have forgotten the little fiddles/assumptions you made in the field and find some of your notes totally inscrutable. The ultimate test would be: could someone else write up from your field data without you having to hover over their shoulder offering explanations?

There is a difference between what you can do and what you want to do. Do a little well, rather than over stretch and produce a poor product. No-one likes broken promises, particularly sponsors.

Laptops break down, disks get corrupted, rucsacs get lost or stolen, notebooks fall in rivers. Once you have collected your (expensive) data you need to ensure it gets home. I know at least two people who had rucsacs stolen at the end of their trips and lost all their data.... and their universities still expected a dissertation to be submitted.

One method of data protection is a duplicate notebook. This doesn’t have to be a word by word copy of your field notebook, but can be a summary log at the end of each day, as a result of basic analysis of that days data. This also has the advantage that you can spot errors while you still have the chance to correct them, and can also pick out trends that inform the next days collecting. You will also speed up your post expedition writing up and data analysis.

If you are using a laptop, and are not too remote then it is easy and cheap to take copies of your data on floppy and post them home on a regular basis.

Insurance cover cannot replace lost or stolen data.

Sampling can appear a very appealing strategy. Simply run around collecting items and then analyse at leisure back in the UK. There are many factors to consider however:

• Effective preservation of biological samples
• Obtain the necessary permissions and clearances, both for exporting from the host country and importing into the UK.
• The amount of samples you can physically carry back.
• Build in the time and commitment to perform the often tedious (and at the very least unglamorous) analysis of the samples on your return.
• If you require specialist help with identification ensure you have talked over your needs with the museum etc. you hope will help you. They can advise on sampling requirements and schedule the work to fit their resources.
• Ensure you have recorded the associated field data sufficiently well that you can place the samples in context and draw meaningful conclusions.
• By sampling, will you be aiding the destruction of the very environment you are hoping to help protect?
• By sampling for later analysis you are deferring your data gathering. What if your samples are lost or rendered unusable - will the expedition be able to retrieve anything?
• Sampling for later analysis does reduce the amount of equipment you have to take out
• Delaying analysis of samples until back in the UK may deny you insights which had you known them in the field would have modified your sampling and data recording strategy.

You have responsibilities to everyone who did anything to help you. You can start addressing these while you are on expedition.

• Return photos and feedback to sponsors who have provided equipment.
• Send postcards to other sponsors (address labels can be pre-written and taken out with you).
• Deliver promised gifts/equipment/books to organisations/people in the host country who helped in the planning stage.
• Collect information e.g. maps, contact names, journals to assist mountaineers, academics, future expeditions who have assisted you on this trip.