The Revenant – Best Survival Courses from Around the Globe

One of the biggest films of 2016 was The Revenant and provided the role in which Leonardo DiCaprio won an Oscar. The movie is based on the real-life character of Hugh Glass, a fur trapper and explorer who lived in the American Mid-West during the 1800s. On one trip he was mauled by a bear and left for dead by his companions. He somehow survived and went on to track down the men who abandoned him when he needed them the most.

I can’t say that I would have survived, well, If I’m honest I think I definitely wouldn’t have survived, Hugh Glass was as tough as nails and knew what he was doing.

We regularly talk here at Outdoor Revival HQ about going on adventures, the things we want to do and places we want to go, sometimes we change our minds because we don’t feel prepared and then we start thinking about survival courses and how they would help us in our adventuring.

So could you survive out there in the wilderness anywhere in the world? Do you have the grit and sheer determination needed?

Let us see what survival courses are available around the world for you to try:

Adastra Adventures

If you are looking for a place that’s visually stunning, as you learn survival skills, try the jungle and mountain tour or the jungle and coastal tour. Both start in the Colombian jungle and both courses will cost $3700 per person for the 14-day long adventure.

Before you are even let loose in the wilds with this survival course you need to pass the one-day pre-training test in Wales, UK, to make sure you are mentally strong and physically robust enough. Survival experts escort you into the jungle and start with teaching you how to find food. The highlight of this course is learning all you need to know to survive in that terrain, including picking up a few local recipes and watching the sunset from the cloud forests.

The second course is the jungle and coastal tour and again starts with a pre-training day in Wales. This tour travels through the jungle to the Caribbean coast where you will learn how to fish like the locals. As with the jungle and mountain course, you will learn how to create shelters, catch food, and be able to use your environment to help you survive.

With you being in jungle in both courses, you will also learn about first aid to deal with venomous bites, as you will be traveling through an area filled with insects and creatures that can strike before you have a chance to avoid them. The course managers claim that you will be mentally and physically challenged by their courses.

These courses are all sound, exciting, and challenging in their own ways. Head to their websites to find out more and book yourself a real adventure.

Bear Grylls Survival Academy

The course is “Survival in Africa” and the destination is Nakavango Conservation Centre Victoria Falls Zimbabwe. It will set you back $1,600 per person, not including flights. It is a five-day survival skill course. You will survive in the African bush by learning such skills as tracking, crossing difficult terrain, and skinning animals. You learn how to use a knife correctly and will be foraging for wild food, sometimes even tracking and stalking it. Drinking water is important in the desert so you learn how to purify and filter rancid water.

The evenings are times for building shelters, setting traps, and the all-important making of a fire. Just when you thought you could get some sleep, the guides then teach you how to navigate by the stars. A final lesson of knots, rope work, and making a stretcher and the students are finally left on their own – not just for 24 hours but for 36 hours – to see if they can survive on their own. I would imagine the first few hours are very scary and the skills you learned will seem inadequate. However, no one has been lost yet on the course, so take heart.

Another of the Bear Grylls Survival Academy courses takes you somewhere completely different, out into the Scottish Highlands. This course is $1,850 per person and will last for five days. On this course, you get two days intensive survival training. You will learn self-defense, self-preservation, wilderness navigation, and the necessary knife skills. Like with the other course there are lessons on food gathering, water purifying, and making fishing lines and snares to catch food. Building shelters and fire lighting are covered as well as river crossings. You learn how to make rescue signals and how to make knots and use ropes. Then you are assigned to escape the island they put you on, so do pay attention to the mountaineering, abseiling, and river bank jumps you are taught.

After two days of cramming your brain with everything you need to know, you are dropped off on the island. You will be there for 30 hours working with your team-mates on how to get off and back to where the survival team is sitting in comfort, drinking hot chocolate. Hopefully, you won’t need the self-defense skills – fingers crossed.

Bushmasters

This is a jungle survival course set in the lovely jungles of Guyana in South America. This two-week survival course will cost you $1,975 per person.

The Bushmasters claim that this course will be one of the most rewarding experiences of your life. Once in the jungle, you get to learn how to set up your own basha and hammock, since lying on the ground in a jungle is not a good idea.

From there you are taught the skills for collecting water, making shelters, lighting a fire, and finding food you can eat safely. Safe food to eat on this course includes bugs, and you get to fish for piranha and stalk wild game with a bow as soon as you have mastered it. Water vines are pointed out so you can recognize them, as they will become an important water supply for you. Once you have mastered everything you are left alone with no more than what is on your back, a machete, a belt kit, and the bow.

Another course by the Bushmasters is the venture/survival course set in the Arabian Desert of South Jordan. This course will cost you $1,975 and you are closely monitored throughout due to the dangers of little water combined with lack of sleep.

You will travel deep into the desert to learn how to travel across the sand on Arabian horses, 4-wheel drive vehicles, and trekking. You will learn to navigate and rappel and live in this harsh environment. Once the training has been mastered, you will be separated into small groups with only a little food, water, and a survival kit. You then have to find your way out at night to get to safety. The distance you will travel is equivalent to a marathon. It will be a very challenging course.

The Intrepid Expeditions Arctic-style Survival Challenge

Only 95 miles from the Arctic Circle, this is a seven-day event that will cost you between $462 to $1845.

Set in the stunning and freezing wilderness of Northern Sweden, this course combines a range of survival skills with snowmobiling, cross country skiing, and husky sledding. You get to spend three nights in a lovely traditional log cabin, as you get used to the extreme cold. Once able to cope with the snow skiing and sledding, it is on to the survival part of the course. Shelter building and making snow holes are at the top of the list, followed by activities centered around food hunting and preparation. You get to ice fish and learn what to look out for with cold weather injuries. If you are very lucky you will get to see the Northern Light display across the sky.

Woodsmoke Woodlander Bushcraft & Advanced Survival Skills Course.

A six-day wilderness bushcraft course in the woods of the Lake District, UK, will cost you $740 per person. This course attracts a wide range of people from many different backgrounds.

This bushcraft course will teach you how to use a knife safely, and cover the collection, transportation, and disinfecting of water. Food gathering methods are taught including fishing, identification of safe food plants, and hunting using traps and snares. You will learn about mountain safety, how to navigate using the stars, and how to move through the woods quickly and quietly. Fire making is in this course also, as well as being able to use local plants for medicinal purposes. It is a course for learning self-reliance in the bush.

By the end of the course, there is the standard survival test of shelter construction, fire making, and purification of your water. What is good about this course is that all of the above are done without any modern equipment, not even a bowl.

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We live in a beautiful world, get out there and enjoy it.

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