Bear Grylls, the survival expert, says he is "completely normal." This is true, assuming that your average 33-year-old guy knows how to: tie his shoelaces together to climb a 40-foot tree, build a fire in a swamp, nab an alligator with his bare hands, worm his way out of a sinkhole, devise a drinking straw from a trumpet flower, and prepare a nutritious meal of fresh-caught ptarmigan and a sheep's eyeball. That's the easy stuff, all performed in service of his day job hosting the television series Man vs. Wild, whose second season will air on the Discovery Channel in November. The show's premise—a winning blend of don't-try-this-at-home bravado and DIY practicality—is that each week Grylls parachutes into a remote locale that, whether by dint of extreme heat, unbearable cold, or just general inhospitality to human life, is very unpleasant. Then our robust host hacks his way back to civilization with only a knife, a flint, and a water bottle. "People always say, 'Oh, you must be really macho,'?" Grylls confides. "I'm not. This just happens to be what I'm good at."
[See a slideshow of Bear Grylls in Manhattan]
Grylls doesn't mention that, at the age of 23, he became the youngest Brit to summit Mount Everest and return alive. (Barely: He slipped into a crevasse and was rescued by a Sherpa and—as he emotionally recalled to Oprah—by the "strong, beautiful hands" of his best buddy and climbing companion, Mick Crosthwaite.) In May, Grylls trekked back to Nepal, and flew a paraglider over the frigid reaches of the Himalayas. "I suddenly found myself on my own at 29,000 feet," he says, "under these little strings and a bit of silk."
It is in a decidedly more earthbound setting—Le Parker Meridien's outdoor café in New York—that Grylls reminisces about the return expedition. "This had been a dream for a while, a big ambition," he says. "People said that we'd never even take off at that height. They said that at minus 60, the engine would freeze, and that even if it did take off, upon landing we'd break both our legs. The whole mountain felt stacked against us." He ended up soaring 12,000 feet higher than the previous record-holder. "I could see the curvature of the earth," recalls Grylls, who is wearing a T-shirt, patched jeans, and a green rubber wristband that says "Respect the Mountain." Clearly the passing Manhattan traffic is not his idea of awe-inspiring scenery. "I find cities terrifying," adds the man who once punched out a 16-foot tiger shark.
