UPDATE AT THE BOTTOM

On the list of places you don’t want to go missing in the world, Papua New Guinea might be near the top.

57-year-old Benedict Allen isn’t exactly some British backpacker on a journey to, like, find himself though.

The renowned explorer is the only person to have crossed the length of the 1 600 mile Gobi desert with camels alone, and made the first documented journey across the Namib desert.

That being said, he kind of dropped the ball on this one. Below via the Telegraph:

[He] had been due back in the capital, Port Moresby, on Sunday to take a flight to Hong Kong to deliver a talk to the Royal Geographical Society on Tuesday.

But his family are now desperate for news of his whereabouts after he failed to catch the flight and has not updated his Twitter account or his website, leading them to fear the worst…

Mr Allen had been trying to reach the Yaifo tribe, one of the last people on the planet to have no contact with the outside world.

The father of three was dropped by helicopter in the jungle at Bisorio, in PNG’s north-west Central Range three weeks ago and has not been heard from since.

Before his departure Mr Allen, 57, boased that –  “just like the good old days” – he would not be taking a mobile or satellite phone with him, writing on Twitter:  “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…)”

Let’s hope that last bit about not ever finding him isn’t prophetic.

Those in the know are hoping that it’s weather conditions that have led to his failure to arrive at the airport, with recent torrential rains one plausible explanation.

That would be far more palatable than another explanation some people are seizing on:

[Allen] wrote: “No outsider has made the journey to visit them [the Yaifo tribe] since the rather perilous journey I made as a young man three decades ago. 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.”

By virtue of their isolation and lack of contact with the outside world little is known about the Yaifo people, who are one of the indigenous tribes of Papua New Guinea…

It is popularly thought that they once engaged in the practice of headhunting; removing and preserving the heads of captured enemies to keep as trophies in a display of power and domination.

Headhunting has at one time or another been practised among most of the peoples of Melanesia, including New Guinea, indicated by the discovery of  10,000 skulls by a missionary in a community longhouse on Goaribari Island in 1901.

The practice was not motivated primarily by cannibalism, but the head’s fleshy parts were consumed in ceremonies following the capture and killing.

Despite the incursion of missionaries, some tribes in the remotest areas still have very little contact with the outside world.

The BBC’s security correspondent, Frank Gardner, who met up with Allen just before he left and who sought to publicise the 57-year-old’s disappearance after he missed a planned flight home, said his friend had been sighted.

Speaking on BBC Breakfast on Thursday, Gardner said: “He has been sighted alive and well near a remote airstrip in Papua New Guinea having trekked vast distances. He has requested rescue and efforts are under way to get him out. This is only a reported sighting, but it is the second sighting and it’s a tribal commission that has been looking for him and they have reported him in. So unless they have got it horribly wrong, and I’m not aware of any other lost British explorers in that part of Papua New Guinea, Benedict Allen is safe and well.”

A spokeswoman for Jo Sarsby Management, Allen’s agent, told the Guardian it is believed he was waiting at an airstrip in the country’s Hewa region.

She said it was understood the airstrip was not accessible by road and that it is hoped that a helicopter would be sent on Friday.

Later, Gardner reported that Allen was still at risk because he is “marooned” on an airstrip cut off by road after tribal fighting.

A happy ending, if all goes according to plan.