Mike Horn, the world’s most respected solo explorer, has travelled to the ends of the earth alone. Now he has set out on a different type of expedition: Pangaea, a four-year mission around the world to pass his message of respect for the planet onto a new generation. Darius Sanai caught up with him in between the poles

Not many people leave home for four years at a time. Spies do, perhaps, and the President of the United States moves away from the family home for the duration of his term; but they usually get to take their families with them.

At the end of last year, Mike Horn, a South Africanborn explorer, left his family home near Chateau d’Oex, in the Swiss Alps. He knew that he wouldn’t see his house again for four years, until the end of 2012 - if all went well. Horn was embarking on one of the most ambitious expeditions of modern times. Named Pangaea, it is an expedition to the most remote and remarkable points of all the world’s continents, by boat and land. He visited the South Pole in January, having spent Christmas in a tent in a blizzard, pulling his sled through the Antarctic ice. Other points on the expedition plan include the Arctic, the Himalayas, Mongolia, the Amazon, the fjords of New Zealand, the Indonesian jungle, and the African Rift Valley.

Horn has twice been awarded the prestigious Alternative Sportsman of the Year award by the Laureus Foundation for Sporting Excellence. He made his name as the world’s foremost solo explorer. Previous adventures have included being the first man to circumnavigate the equator solo and without any kind of motorised transport: ‘by windpower, manpower and willpower’, as he puts it. He more than a year on that expedition, hacking his way through the Amazon rainforest (eating whatever he could kill en route), sailing across oceans by himself, trekking across Africa, mountain biking the Andes, bashing his way through the Sumatran rainforest.

Nothing if not versatile, Horn then did the same kind of journey but in extreme cold: he became the first man to circumnavigate the Arctic circle, alone and with no motorised transport, in a journey that involved two years of lugging a sled heavier than him across snowdrifts and ice fields and kayaking across half-frozen oceans. Pangaea is a different sort of journey. Horn designed one of the most advanced sailing yachts in the world for his latest expedition: the Pangaea is made of aluminium (so as to be fully recyclable), sleeps 22, and has Mercedes-Benz BlueTec engines to help it plough through ice fields when wind power alone is not enough. He has a full crew, and an onboard waste compacting facility to help keep the waters he travels clean.

His main aim for Pangaea, though, is almost evangelical. He will be joined at various stages of the journey by groups of youngsters, chosen from applicants from around the world by his training team back in Switzerland, to whom he wants to show ‘the beauty of the planet’ - and to teach environmental responsibility.

“I came back from my trip around the Arctic and there was this guy Al Gore talking about how terrible the world was,” says Horn. “And I thought, that’s not the world I’ve seen. I want to show people the beauty of this planet, because only by seeing its beauty will we learn to respect it.”

He hopes the ‘Young Explorers’, as he calls them, will go away with memories so powerful that they will influence the next generation of world leaders to respect the world more. And the youngsters will certainly have lifechanging experiences: some members of the first group to join Horn, in Antarctica, actually joined him for the last stage of his trek to the South Pole, and raised a flag there.

The Young Explorers Program is open to anyone between the ages of 13 and 20 to apply for: all travel and exploring costs are taken care of by Pangaea and its sponsors, Mercedes-Benz and Panerai (who make his ultra-tough expedition watch). Those who pass muster from their initial applications are selected to join a gruelling outdoor training programme in Switzerland; out of those, a group of around 12 Young Explorers is chosen for each leg of the four-year expedition.

Horn’s own children, and his wife who is the expedition manager, will join him at various stages, so that even though he’s left home, home will come to him. His daughters are already the youngest people ever to reach the North Pole (on one of Dad’s previous expeditions). If they are anything like their father, they will be spreading his gospel - love for adventure, respect for the planet - for the next generation themselves.

Applications to join the expedition should be made online at: www.mercedes.com/pangaea