What drives someone who keeps his balance on two wheels even where others need all four extremities? Harald Philip calls it “flow” and means that state of consciousness in which he “is completely absorbed in what he is doing”. The 38-year-old finds moments of happiness when biking in alpine terrain. He cycles on exposed paths and climbs, at best where no one has been before, and that all over the world. What still drives him is to find new ways to discover new things. “It’s not just about the paths themselves, I’m also interested in their cultural backgrounds and the context in which everything takes place,” he explains.
He has therefore also called his series of lectures “path finder”, with which he will be a guest next week on the occasion of the “Everything canvas – travel and adventure days” in Upper Austria (details in the fact box on the right). Visitors can look forward to a multimedia and very personal journey, according to the Innsbruck resident: “I am in various places, and each one is ultra-exciting, but I do not present them as travel destinations, I tell them what I experienced there, and above all what I took with me from the respective trip. “
The lecture: Where the journey is going
For example, there was the trip to Nepal, which initially went “completely in the pants”, as he says, because the attitude was wrong. It took a rethinking of one’s own demands and attitudes. “We tried to learn from the equanimity of the local population to let things happen and to react to them, and as a result we experienced a great second expedition.”
But it doesn’t always wander into the distance; the mountains on the doorstep are also suitable as an adventure playground. “The Alps have become a home for me, they have shaped my life story and sporting passion,” says the German, who has lived in Austria for 20 years. He grew up in North Rhine-Westphalia but was born into a mountaineering family. The mountain bike was his first mountaineering device. At the age of eleven he worked it out for himself and even then felt: “This thing will determine my life from now on.”
Sometimes, however, even a passionate biker changes sports equipment. Nevertheless, it went high up. On skis and together with his mother, Harald Philipp attempted a first ascent of the highest volcano in Eurasia on the Russian peninsula of Kamchatka. The 38-year-old doesn’t want to reveal whether it was a success, just this much: “It is definitely the funniest segment of my lecture.”
The challenges on another trip were of a completely different nature. How do people live in a country without human rights? – That was one of the questions that prompted Philipp to break into the almost hermetically sealed North Korea. A country in which the population is encouraged to keep their distance from western tourists. “The mountain bike has completely broken through this distance, simply because you have never seen a bike like this,” says Philipp.
The obligatory guards became companions, and the journey became a shared adventure. “A great human experience” that he doesn’t want to miss, says the mountaineer, who is now on new paths.
He swapped his bike for an e-bike. The “absolutely perfect device” for his new home in the Ligurian Alps. “I’ve been dissatisfied with my ecological footprint for a long time, since the corona crisis I’ve managed to take action in this regard without losing fun in life.” But that’s another story that he wants to tell in the next series of lectures – its title: “Leaving traces”.
- Lecture dates: on January 11th in Lenzing (Lichtspiele), on January 12th in Kirchdorf / Krems (cinema) and on January 13th in the City Kino in Steyr at 7.30 p.m.
Source: Nachrichten
