We can do so much more than we think we’re capable of. When you really want to do something, you’ll find a way - somehow
I’m excited to welcome Sarah Davis back to Sparta Chicks Radio this week!
Sarah joined me for the first time on the podcast almost two years ago this month to share her plans to become the first woman to paddle the length of the Nile.
A journey of 6,853km / 4,200mi from the source of the Nile in Rwanda, all the way to Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast in Egypt, at the time we first spoke Sarah had anticipated the expedition would start in January 2018 and take 7 months.
If you haven’t listened to that episode, I’d highly recommend you download it too.
In it, Sarah and I discuss her history, how she discovered paddling and how her career in risk management gave her the ideal skill set to plan an expedition of this magnitude.
Sarah returns to the podcast this week to share how it unfolded!
Spoiler alert!
Things didn’t all go according to plan and two key decisions meant that Sarah wasn’t able to achieve her original goal to paddle the length of the Nile.
However, she has become the first woman to lead an expedition along the Nile.
In this conversation, we discuss:
* her experience of representing Australia and winning Gold in her age group at the World Ocean Racing Championships, just 2 weeks after our first conversation,
* how she made the decision where to start her expedition; a harder decision with more options than you might think,
* what she felt visiting the source of the Nile in Rwanda after 3+ years of planning,
* what she was thinking while laying in bed the night before paddles hit the water for the first time,
* the very angry hippo tried to flip and then bite a hole in their inflatable raft just 6 days into the expedition,
* how she was arrested and detained for 3 days in Burundi,
* the point at which she (and her team) decided to catch a ferry on Lake Victoria which meant she wouldn’t achieve her original goal to paddle the entire length of the river (and how disconnecting from ego and exploring her ‘why’ made the decision somewhat easier),
* the water police escort she had for 1,200km through Egypt,
* how she ended up in hospital on what was supposed to be her last day on the river,
* why she cried in a hotel restaurant the day after she finished her expedition,
* why she credits her post-expedition plans with the reason she hasn’t struggled with the post-expedition ‘blues’,
* whether there was anything significant she hadn’t anticipated,
* if there was a moment when she thought to herself she had ‘bitten off more than she could chew’,
* whether the expedition feels like unfinished business, and
* the plans for her next expedition.
Click here to listen on iTunes.
Notes and resources:
To find out more about Sarah or to say hello, you can find her on Instagram and Facebook or via her website.