Who Is Ash Dykes? The Welsh Explorer's Life: The Documentary

From Colwyn Bay to a ten-pound bicycle

Ashley Dykes was born in 1990 and grew up in Colwyn Bay, on the north coast of Wales. He was the sporty one at school rather than the academic one. By his late teens he had a world map on his bedroom wall with the routes he wanted to take drawn across it. He worked several jobs, lifeguarding above all, and spent about two years saving roughly £10,000 before leaving home at 19.

The trip that set his course happened in Cambodia. He and a friend bought two old bicycles for about ten pounds each and rode across Cambodia and the length of Vietnam with no map or phone. The bikes broke down 17 times over more than a thousand miles. Years of smaller adventures followed, including two years in Thailand working as a scuba-diving instructor and fighting Muay Thai to pay the rent.

Mongolia and Madagascar

In 2010 a Royal Navy veteran, Ripley Davenport, tried to cross Mongolia alone and unsupported and was evacuated after 52 days. Ash, aged 23 and with just over £200 in his account, set out from Ölgii on 20 May 2014, dragging a mild-steel trailer a family friend had built in his back garden. In the Gobi he reached a dry well and spent four days walking to the next water, a hundred metres at a time. He finished on 5 August 2014 after 78 days and around 1,500 miles. Herders had a name for him: the lonely snow leopard.

Madagascar, which he walked with a series of local guides from September 2015, was harder. About a month in he fell ill with falciparum malaria, his temperature near 40°C. Roughly a week after treatment he went back to the exact spot where he had stopped. He reached the island's northern tip on 15 February 2016, after 155 days and about 1,600 miles, having climbed eight of its highest mountains.

The Yangtze, and what came next

Between expeditions came rejections, his book Mission: Possible in 2017, and campaigning as an ambassador for Malaria No More UK. Then he chose the Yangtze. Starting at its source on 26 August 2018, he walked through blizzards, wolves and police stops, and reached Shanghai on 12 August 2019, after 352 days and about 4,000 miles. Guinness World Records certified him as the first person to walk the length of the river.

An appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience followed in early 2020, then the pandemic stalled his television plans. Later came a Great Wall series made for Chinese television and, in 2024, a 37-day expedition in Suriname that climbed Julianatop and paddled the Coppename River to the Atlantic. In 2026 he announced Project 6, six expeditions in twelve months, beginning on 8 October 2026 with more than 700 km of the Sangha River by inflatable kayak.

A note on the records

Guinness World Records lists three of Ash's achievements: the Yangtze walk and two team records from Suriname. Ash himself describes five world firsts, counting Mongolia and Madagascar. When the film calls something a first, it means the record as Guinness recognises it, or the claim as Ash describes it. At the start of the Yangtze walk, the site Explorersweb questioned some of the publicity around it while still calling it a significant undertaking. When the film was finished in October 2026, he was still on the Sangha.