Lonely Planet

Steve Backshall heads to the world’s least explored places.

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It takes a lot to faze Steve Backshall. Over his career, he’s got up close to all kinds of dangerous creatures, from bull elephants to great white sharks. But an encounter with a hungry polar bear for his latest series came close to making him lose his cool.

‘We had to scare it off with flares and guns fired above its head,’ says the adventurer, who heads for some of the planet’s least explored destinations in Undiscovered Worlds. Here, the 45-year-old tells us more about the four-part series that pushed him and his team of explorers to their limits…

What was the idea behind this series?