Levison James Wood is a British Army officer and explorer. He is best known for his extended walking expeditions in Africa, Asia and Central America. Beginning in December 2013, over the course of nine months he undertook the first ever expedition to walk the entire length of the river Nile from the Nyungwe Forest in Rwanda. The expedition was commissioned as a four-part documentary series for Channel 4 in the UK. He also wrote a Sunday Timesbestselling book detailing the expedition, Walking the Nile. In 2015, he walked the length of the Himalayas, from Afghanistan in the west to Bhutan in the east. A year later he walked from the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, where the early Spanish conquistadors landed, to Colombia, a journey of following the spine of Central America, crossing the infamous Darién Gap. His book Walking the Americas became a bestseller in the UK and USA. From 2017 to the spring of 2018 he undertook another two journeys. Russia to Iran followed his early hitchhiking adventures as a student, retracing his steps from the Black Sea to the Caspian, following the Caucasus mountains through the North Caucasian republics, via Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia and Iran. In September 2017 he began his most ambitious challenge to date: a full circumnavigation of the Arabian Peninsula: travelling from Syria, through Iraq, the Gulf, crossing part of the Empty Quarter desert in Oman, traversing Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Holy Land to finish in Lebanon; an expedition totalling. During the course of the journey he was embedded with Iraqi troops fighting ISIS where he witnessed the liberation of Sharqat and also encountered Palestinian guerrillas and Hezbollah operatives. He visited the city ofPalmyra which was then under Russian control. He has also undertaken numerous other overland journeys, including a foot crossing of Madagascar and mountain climbing in Iraq. He documents his journeys through books, documentaries and photography.
The expedition to walk the length of the Nile was inspired by explorers John Hanning Speke, Richard Francis Burton, David Livingstone and Henry Morton Stanley. Wood was accompanied by numerous guides, journalists and friends along the different stages of the route. The expedition was commissioned into a television programme for Channel 4 that aired in January 2015, and Wood detailed the trip in his book Walking the Nile. Power died during the programme from severe heat stroke. Wood was forced to abandon a section in South Sudan due to heavy fighting caused by civil war. In 2015, Wood embarked on another challenge: to walk the length of the Himalayas from Afghanistan to Bhutan, filming a documentary series and writing another book about the experience, which was published in January 2016. Channel 4 broadcast Walking the Americas from January 2017, featuring an expedition from Mexico to Colombia. The channel then broadcast his journey along the Caucasus in the four-episode series From Russia to Iran: Crossing Wild Frontiers. In May 2020, Channel 4 commenced broadcasting Walking with Elephants, where Levison followed the 650-mile migration of elephants across Botswana.
