How a near-death accident led Bear Grylls to become a famous adventurer

British adventurer, in town to launch Aldar’s latest development, speaks to The National about his passion for encouraging family time in the great outdoors

Bear Grylls has a passion for instilling in younger generations a love for the outdoors that he was given as a young boy. PA

“You don’t have to go to the end of the world for an adventure.” Coming from renowned British explorer, adventurer and survival expert Bear Grylls, 50, the ethos is reassuring.

In these overly scheduled, budget-conscious times, it’s a reminder that you don’t have to spend thousands on exotic holidays to find new and interesting ways to see the world. You should, says Grylls, start on your own doorstep.

“Nature heals us if we slow down enough to listen,” he tells The National. “Kids thrive best when they have space to explore, look at the stars and listen to the birds. It’s simple but it’s true.

“Make nature part of your life by finding your thing, whatever that is. It might be a hike, a barefoot walk along the beach, walking, cycling to school or work or wild swimming. The trick is to find your thing and create an environment around you where that thing is possible.”

Grylls is in Dubai for the launch of The Wilds, a new villa community by Abu Dhabi's Aldar Properties that is located along Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Road, opposite Global Village. The development where “nature is your neighbour” appealed to two of Grylls’ favourite passions: bringing together family and nature.

“I think you know in your heart when a partnership is right,” he says of his involvement. “I’ve been trying to encourage things that support families to live and love and explore the outdoors my whole life.”

The Wilds will have the largest and most diverse collection of wildlife within a residential community in Dubai, according to developer Aldar Properties. Photo: Aldar

Grylls’ relationship with the UAE is an enduring one. It is the location for the world's first Bear Grylls Explorers Camp, which opened in 2020 in the Jebel Jais mountains in Ras Al Khaimah.

“I’ve come to the UAE a lot over the years and every time I notice the pace of change and development along with an ever-increasing sense of positivity and people’s pride in how safe it is,” he says. “Those are the things that always strike me, along with a can-do attitude that gives you the feeling you’re in the beating heart of innovation and pioneering entrepreneurism.

“I think people aren’t aware of how much diversity there is here. When I go up to RAK and see the mountains and canyons and coasts, it’s all so beautiful.

Bear Grylls Explorers Camp opened in Ras Al Khaimah in 2020. Photo: Bear Grylls Explorers Camp

Nature and our connection to it has long been at the heart of Grylls’s message, along with a passion for instilling in younger generations a love for the outdoors that he was given as a young boy.

“My dad was a former Royal Marine’s commando who loved all the outdoors stuff, so that all came from him,” he says. “And from my mum, it was all about ‘go and get what you want in life’. Try, fail, get back up, go again, be tenacious. And in me is that combination of the outdoors and the go-getter, never-give-up spirit.”

Nicknamed Bear by his older sister Lara (his real name is Edward), Grylls was educated at Eton College, the British school established in 1440 by King Henry VI that counts Princes William and Harry as well as actors Tom Hiddleston and George Orwell, and countless global dignitaries and British Prime Ministers among its storied alumni. After leaving school he served with the British military regiment 21 SAS as a trooper from 1994 to 1997, a tenure that was cut short when his parachute failed to open during a free fall parachuting exercise in Kenya. He fell 16,000 feet, breaking three vertebrae.

Nature and our connection to it has long been at the heart of Grylls’ message. Photo: Bear Grylls Survival Academy

Undeterred, he climbed Mount Everest 18 months later, following up in 2003 by crossing the North Atlantic Ocean as part of a team of six. Two years after that, television came calling. To date, he has appeared in, produced and hosted 19 TV shows. Characteristically, he does not take credit for the success of his TV shows.

“Nature does the work for me,” he says of the likes of Man vs Wild, Bear's Wild Weekend and Bear Grylls Wild Adventure. “In Running Wild with Bear Grylls, the ‘wild’ is the star, it does my job for me,” he says. “On a chat show, it’s a three-minute performance, but when you go into the forest, make a fire, sit down, breathe and shut up for two seconds, it’s different.”

In Running Wild with Bear Grylls he has embarked on two-day trips into the jungle with the likes of Hollywood stars Zac Efron, Ben Stiller and Kate Winslet; Bollywood stars Akshay Kumar and Ranveer Singh, as well as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former US President Barack Obama.

Bear Grylls and actor Terry Crews in the Icelandic Highlands in season six of Running Wild with Bear Grylls. Photo: National Geographic.

“You’re together for 48 hours,” he says. “You’re scared together, cold and hungry together, doing your best together, failing and succeeding together and then you sit around the campfire and talk about life.”

For a man who has fallen 16,000 feet out of an aeroplane, paramotored over the Himalayas, broke his shoulder kite skiing at speeds of 50kmh across ice in Antarctica and, memorably, drank his own urine from a container fashioned from rattlesnake skin, is there anything he fears?

“I’m not a fearless person,” he says. “There are loads of things I’m scared of, including when I broke my back in the free fall accident.

“It’s OK to live with a bit of fear, it’s how you deal with the bigger stuff. I feel fear every day, but I know how to embrace it.”