British adventurer Ash Dykes is back in contact and back on solid ground after completing a 700km expedition through the Congo Basin — a journey that included a nerve-racking communications blackout lasting nearly a full day.
The 35-year-old explorer from Old Colwyn in Wales lost contact with his UK support team towards the end of the trip when his portable satellite equipment ran out of power. Beneath the thick jungle canopy, it took him around 20 hours of trying before he could send a single message home. His parents and fiancée had been understandably worried. Once a signal came through, he got word out immediately.
The Congo crossing is stage one of Project 6, Dykes' plan to complete six consecutive expeditions in extreme environments. Travelling by kayak and rowing along rivers teeming with crocodiles and hippos, he was joined by local guide Obed Temba Tuyumvire and videographer Will Perez, who filed regular social media updates along the way. The trip wasn't short on wildlife drama: Dykes paddled past elephants and gorillas, and ran into swarms of aggressive bees. But he says the real enemy was the heat — long hours on open water with little or no shade.
A highlight was time spent with the Baka people, an Indigenous community with deep forest knowledge. They showed the team how they hunt, gather food and survive in the forest. In Sangha National Park, Dykes came within roughly five metres of a wild silverback gorilla.
The physical toll adds up: Dykes lost around 5kg during the trip, surviving largely on ration packs. He holds five world records and has form in this arena — a 6,437km trek along China's Yangtze River in 2019, and a 37-day kayak descent of Suriname's Coppename River from source to sea.
The blackout has changed his thinking, though. His live TikTok coverage has drawn a big following, but the Congo leg showed how hard constant connection is in remote places. Dykes says he's now weighing how much of his next expeditions to share in real time, balancing the audience's appetite with the practical realities of exploration.
Stage two of Project 6 will be announced soon, and the 35-year-old has hinted it's heading somewhere considerably colder than Central Africa.
For travellers, the story is a useful reminder of how demanding the Congo Basin really is — and how rewarding. This is one of the planet's most biodiverse regions, and operators offer guided trips into Sangha and neighbouring parks where gorilla encounters and time with forest communities are genuine possibilities. But as Dykes' experience shows, remoteness here isn't a marketing line: communications fail, conditions are brutal, and local knowledge is not optional. Go with experienced guides, follow their advice, and don't count on your phone working.
The next chapter of Project 6 promises a very different kind of extreme — pack a warm jacket.
