Yahoo News BBC presenter and explorer Benedict Allen ‘goes missing in Papua New Guinea searching for headhunters’
A BBC presenter and explorer has gone missing after attempting to find an indigenous tribe in Papua New Guinea, it has been reported.
Benedict Allen, who has previously recorded series for the BBC and written books on exploration, was on a journey to rediscover the Yaifo tribe.
In a post on his website before setting off titled “I may be some time”, the 57-year-old said he was looking to meet the tribe 30 years after discovering them for the first time.
Marching off to Heathrow. I may be some time (don't try to rescue me, please – where I'm going in PNG you won't ever find me you know…) pic.twitter.com/BmH1DKdheS
— Benedict ALLEN (@benedictallen) October 11, 2017
He said: “No outsider has made the journey to visit them since the rather perilous journey I made as a young man three decades ago.
Most popular on Yahoo News UK
Search fails to identify man found dead in Kent field next to a suitcase and wedding catalogue
Man jailed for raping woman after being caught using her bank card in McDonald’s
‘I’m disgusted with myself’: Man who left angry note on ambulance apologises after neighbour dies
‘Transracial’ man born white in Florida now identifies as Filipino
Five little quirks which might mean you’re actually a psychopath
“This would make them the remotest people in Papua New Guinea, and one of the last people on the entire planet who are out-of-contact with our interconnected world.”
A helicopter dropped Mr Allen off at Bisorio without a satellite phone, GPS or companion and he was due back in the country’s capital Port Moresby on Sunday to travel to Hong Kong.
His agent Joanna Sarsby told the Daily Mail his wife Lenka was “very worried”.
She added: “He is a highly experienced explorer, very clever and resourceful and adept at surviving in the most hostile places on Earth, and he would never give up. He may not be a young man any more but he is very fit.
“He was trying to reach the Yaifo people, a very remote and reclusive tribe – possibly headhunters, quite a scary bunch. Goodness knows what has happened.
“I just imagine he might have been taken ill or is lying injured somewhere, perhaps with a broken leg, and maybe being helped by locals. He never takes a phone with him – he believes in living like the locals. For him not to come back is really odd.”
