Bear Grylls leads What's On into The Wilds: A new Dubai leisure mega project
What’s On vs The Wilds…
I lick my thumb and raise it into the air to gauge the breeze. There is none. I quickly scan the perimeter, “traffic” I note, this does not bode well. It’s 10 hundred hours with some loose change, and my Abu Dhabi deputy editor colleague, Dinesh, and I are running late. Late for an interview with one of our shared heroes, the British adventurer, survivalist, TV star and professional peril wrangler, Bear Grylls.
The Wilds
Leisure and nature, hand-in-hand
The Wilds
An upcoming urban living community that scores high on sustainability
The Wilds
With an extensive series of wellness, relaxation, and active living facilities woven into the fabric
The Wilds
A space to breathe
The Wilds
Allowing humans to live alongside wildlife
The Wilds
Where families can roam free
The Wilds
Designed to give children a life more in touch with the way they should be living
The Wilds
An emerald world of living art
The Wilds
With luxurious housing
The Wilds
And adventure around every corner
He’s in town because, in partnership with Aldar, he’s signed up to be an ambassador for a new Dubai residential project called, ‘The Wilds’. It’s a match made in collab heaven, a man who has spent most of the past two decades placing himself (and a list of celebrity companions that includes Zac Efron, Channing Tatum, Ben Stiller, Kate Winslet, Narendra Modi and the then sitting US President, Barak Obama) deep in the wilds of various regions across the globe. And then there’s this new Wild housing development project that has gone out of its way to integrate nature into urban living.
Into The Wilds
Scrolling through the digital prospectus in the back of our Careem, it appears that the headline promises of the community (units now on sale) are that it’s essentially a grand cohabitation sanctuary, conceived to create a space where humans and wildlife can live together in harmony. I think that was also my university flatmate’s response after being why he hadn’t cleaned his dirty dishes for a week, but this Aldar project has renders, mission statements, and its developer has an unimpeached track record in delivering AAA projects, so is infinitely more credible.
To be located in a site opposite Global Village, the nearly 1,700 homes are being constructed with a firm, legitimate focus on sustainability and wellbeing for those dwelling within them. Inside The Wilds, you’ll find woodland, ponds, lawns, streams, walking trails – a full 400,000 sqm of natural parkland, edible landscaping and expanses of green, all with their own introduced species networks. Communal facilities are set to include resort-style swimming pools, meditation spaces, cocoon hammocks, cycling tracks, state-of-the-art fitness zones, exercise decks; and tennis, padel, and basketball courts – sewn into the bio-fabric of the compound.
Men Vs Wilds
The great traffic spirit has blessed us, somehow we’ve arrived ahead of schedule and make our way into Aldar’s Dubai HQ. It’s all decked out in a jungle theme, “canape sir?”, I instinctively respond with a “no thanks”, that’s not what Bear would want. His canapes of choice are more of a rustic sort of tapas, bark-dwelling grubs, gunge-filled fish eyes and jowl du jour. “Bear’s here” our liaison tells us as she leads us into the lift. I must confess mild disappointment that we’re not abseiling up to the meeting room across the exterior of the modern low-rise.
Bear necessities
We sit down next to the tall, lean – and incredibly charming character. There’s a warmth in his eyes that belies the truly astonishing, physically demanding life he’s led. Or perhaps the glow comes from having surmounted all that. In addition to being a TV personality, Bear Grylls OBE is a former SAS Trooper; a man who at 23, summited Everest just 18 months after a parachuting accident (one of the highest ever survived) that broke three vertebrae in his spine; and he’s the second longest serving Chief Scout (beaten only by the organisation’s founder, Robert Baden-Powell). There are countless more merit badges on his arm, but if we listed all of the man’s many – often surreal – achievements, we’d have to head out and search for sustenance and shelter to a backdrop of a setting sun.
Running Wilds
Miles: This isn’t your first UAE rodeo, we’ve visited your Explorer’s Camp in Ras Al Khaimah and it’s incredible, how important do you feel experiences like that are for city dwellers?
Bear: It’s such a cool place. And the team are great. It’s simple stuff, isn’t it? You actually don’t need to climb Everest to bring families together and give kids an experience.
I think the more urban we become, the more our hearts kind of hunger for nature. It’s been in our DNA for millions of years. I find with city living, here or in New York or wherever – there’s an instinct for me to find a space, go out in the morning, get barefoot, get into the park, do my stretching, say my prayers, get ready for the day, and then into it again.
And you’re so lucky here, one of the best things you do is just swim in the sea. There’s so much research now for that – what the salt mixed with the air does for healing. Sometimes we just need to slow down enough to let nature heal us. It’s why things like The Wilds are so important, it’s so obvious that kids want safe fun outdoor spaces to grow and explore a little bit, and urban people typically don’t do that very much.
Society has become ever more urbanised. But actually the next step, the next evolution feels like what these guys [Aldar] are doing here. You’re in an urban space essentially. You’re creating space to do everything we know is great for this. With kids, with our families. I don’t get involved in many things like this. But I’m excited about it because I think it’s doing something new, doing something desperately needed. It’s almost like coming full circle.
Dinesh: What’s one survival hack you wish that everybody knew?
I would say that it’s adventure is a state of mind. You know, it doesn’t matter where you are, whether you’re up a mountain, in a jungle, in a city, in a room, in an interview, in a whatever, it’s how we live our lives. It’s how we approach relationships, how we approach business, how we approach bringing up our kids, family.
You’ve got to have that risk taking spirit. You’ve got to have a never give up spirit. You’ve got to have a collaborative – together we’re stronger – spirit. You’ve got to take a few, you know, steps into the unknown. So, I think it doesn’t matter where you are, you live with that, that compass of “you’ve got to seek it out”, there lies all the good stuff.
I feel like adventure is always kind of associated with youth. But in my opinion, I feel it’s super important that people carry it with their longevity. It doesn’t matter if you’re 40, 50, 60, as long as your body is able to support you. Health is a bit like a pension. Start early. You gotta put the building blocks in early on.
You can’t, you can’t expect to never move in life. And never do anything that’s gonna help your physical or mental health. And then, at 70 years old, start charging up mountains. It doesn’t work like that.
Miles: With The Wilds project, was it the big brush strokes as in that connection with nature, the sustainability that attracted you to the project? Or was it more of the kind of the details within it, some of the particular features of this community?
We get approached a lot for things, and we spend 99 per cent of our life saying “no.”
But I like this, because it’s about families, it’s about the outdoors, and it’s not things. It’s not like, you buy your kids this, and it’s going to be great. Because society and history has proven life doesn’t work like that. Does it? You’ve got to earn it.
I think of my role as chief scout. We’ve had 55 million young people around the world. That’s a worldwide force for good of young people who get this sort of thing. Yeah, they understand they might not be the superstars at school, but you go outside with friends and you get that spark in your eye and a kind of pride and a confidence that you can’t cheat your way there.
And I think anything that encourages that, especially how we live our lives in an ever more urban and techie world. If you can combine all of that, that’s the key. And, I love the sustainability part I think that a lot of people pay lip service to that but here, we’re actually seeing a development that is heavily alternative energy driven, everything, even the waste stuff and the water stuff. So I get I get excited because I see it’s about bringing families together and empowering young people to love the outdoors, and when they do that. They’re better at life.
Miles: Do you think that as we move towards this more tech heavy existence, we’re kind of plugged into the matrix, is there more of a pendulum swing in the opposite direction and people hunger for that connection with nature more?
Yeah. Do you feel that? Do you sense that? If you said that many years ago, that just sitting under a tree with your kids, listening, just being still for a moment on a busy day, everyone would think you’re kind of weird.
Now everyone’s going, well of course, but where do we do it or how do we do it? And I see it more and more, I’ve seen it so much with my kids growing up, we’ve been really lucky to bring our three boys up surrounded by mountains and sea for a big part of their life and that’s been an intentional family choice for us.
I look back now and I’m really pleased, the pressures for kids growing up in high octane, urban environments. It’s tough. And then you wonder why kids are riddled with anxiety. When actually, when you slow down a little bit. Life is fast enough as it is, but at home it’s so nice to just have things that slow us down a little bit.
I remember my grandpa used to have a thing by his bed, a little thing in a frame that said, there’s always music in the garden, but sometimes you’ve got to be still enough to hear it. And I like that. Life is so busy, but just at moments, whether it’s like you say you listen to your audiobooks in the car or, it takes many forms, but it’s just putting things in our life that slow us down and let nature do its work.
Dinesh: you’ve spent a lot of time with celebrities in the wild, one of your many TV shows, were there any that particularly surprised you?
We’re just about to start Season nine of Running Wild. So that has been a great privilege. I think, I noticed two things. One is that, whoever you are, whether you’re a massive Hollywood star or a sportsman or world leaders, the Obama’s or the Modi’s, whoever the guests are – everybody hungers for nature, for adventure. You know, they’re not doing the show for the money.
They’re not doing it for the fame. They want this. They want that ‘woohoo’ moment. You know, the excitement moment. Because we don’t get it enough in life. And I always feel the wild does my job for me. All I do is take them out there and I let the wild do it.
It challenges them. Gives them the fear, the adrenaline, but also the calm. And then a number of times they go, “I haven’t had a good sleep like this”. And I go, but you’re just on the rock with a blanket over you. And they go, “I know, it’s so weird. It’s like, I just haven’t.”
I loved the Modi one. You know that for me. India is such a beautiful country. I do so much work there still. I love that. I think I was really nervous for the Obama shoot.
And then there was Roger Federer. I loved the ping pong match. That was fun. I can’t believe I bottled it. I got the 9 0, but then I got the yips. I could feel my elbow getting heavy. The key was not letting him warm up. Just going straight in. I had a full lead on him. Then he started to get into it.
Miles: One of the probably most popular aspects of your long career, is the eating of interesting things when you’re out in the wild. To take that back to an urban setting, are there any flavours or foods that you strongly dislike?
In the wild, I definitely learned that sometimes you need to dig deep, physically and emotionally to survive. You’ve got to sometimes eat the horrible and drink the disgusting and you name it. We’ve done it. Most of the time it works out, sometimes it doesn’t.
Again, it’s a state of mind. You’ve got to take some risks and you’ve got to do difficult things in life. In terms of back home, I’m really into nutrition. I really try to eat naturally. I think that, I know it sounds kind of obvious, but I think people just don’t.
I’ve just learned to stay away from the processed stuff. I start my day with about six eggs and a big grass-fed rib-eye steak. And I end my day with six more eggs and another big grass-fed rib-eye steak. It keeps me strong. So, I try and listen to nature.
What I’ve also learned is that natural food is the most delicious food. I think for years I thought salads and stuff were healthy, and now I’m just, I’m just much more sceptical of that. And so therefore I was always hungry and crave junk food. Yeah. So now because I don’t have salads and stuff. I just have really good natural food. So, you know, if you have a steak covered in melted cheese and milkshakes made with raw milk and bananas and honey and Greek yogurt, all these things are much more delicious than the junk food.
And that’s what we’ve been eating for millions of years. It’s just education. All of us were probably being brought up by parents, who were busy, so it was like, just have some cereal. Cereal is not a good way to start your kid’s day. But we’re all coming out of this decades of sort of being told these things.
Dinesh: What sort of advice would you give to the average person, for what to do in extreme circumstances, to not let fear take over in these moments?
Life is scary. Not just in the ocean or wherever. Everyday stuff is scary. I think the people who thrive in life and those that thrive in the wild have figured out a way through fear.
I’m not fearless. I have so many fears. But I’ve learned how to confrontthem. And the answer is you’ve got to move towards it. You’ve got to not run away. Most people run from the things they’re scared of. They’re scared of public speaking, they will just never do it. Or they’re scared of open water, so they never go near the sea.
And all that happens is, the fear gets bigger. So I’ve learned you’ve got to do it. It’s a muscle inside, keep doing it. I swam in the sea yesterday. I came ashore, it was quite rough, and there was a guy standing on the shore, just watching. I thought, what’s he doing?
I got out and he goes, “Oh, I’m just, I’m so scared of going in” And I said, “just stay in the shallows, it’s going to be fine”. And he went in and I saw him the next day at breakfast. Eyes were lit up. Gave him a big hug.
Fear’s not a bad thing. You know, it’s to keep you alive. It’s just most people can’t deal with it and it becomes overwhelming. Whenever I’m scared, I just go, “great, good mental training.”
There’s a muscle inside. You’ve got to train it like your biceps. You’ve got to train it, treat fear like a training ground. Life is scary, but you gotta do it.
For more information on how you can find your place in The Wilds call 800-ALDAR (800-25327), or visit aldar.com/wilds
Images: Provided
