Dubai: Sir Ranulph Fiennes, the 'world's greatest living explorer', drew a capacity crowd at his talk on Thursday night on Living Dangerously, taking the audience on his fascinating and impossibly gruelling accomplishments.

The adventurer, author and motivational speaker, made light of the immense challenges he and his teams underwent in being the first to reach both Poles by surface travel and the first to cross the Antarctic unsupported.

With his left hand in his jacket pocket, Sir Ranulph took the audience through his fascinating travels. In one his journeys through the vast icy desert with temperatures dropping to minus 122C, he lost the tips of his fingers to frostbite.

Sir Ranulph's talk is one of a series by top international writers, arranged during the Emirates Airline International Festival of Literature, which runs until Sunday at Dubai Festival City.

Asked what motivates people like him to do such crazy things, Sir Ranulph, just said it was a profession.

"Expedition leaders are thought to be a weird group of people," he said. "It helps pay the gas bill."

"You can teach people skills, but character, the way people behave under unusual circumstances, is inborn," said the adventurer.

Sir Ranulph served with the Royal Scots Greys before joining the SAS, the elite special forces regiment in the British Army. He joined the Sultan of Oman's army in 1970 and was awarded the Sultan's Bravery Medal.

Asked which culture impressed him the most during his travels around the world, Sir Ranulph pointed to the moments he shared with the Omani soldiers.

He has been described as the world's greatest living explorer by The Guinness Book of Records. One of his expeditions was the Ubar Expedition, which in 1991 he helped discover Ptolemy's long-lost Atlantis of the Sands, the frankincense centre of the world.

The lost city of Ubar, located on the ancient frankincense trade route in south-western Oman, was discovered in 1992. It is said that it was found using data from Space Shuttle imaging radar technology. But Sir Ranulph said the Nasa information was incorrect and that they found the city by chance.

Ubar or the mythical lost city in Arabian Nights Omanum Emporium, was first mentioned in about 200AD by Arabian geographers when it was described as a major market town in the Empty Quarter, the Rub Al Khali.

Another one of Sir Ranulph's accomplishments is raising over £13 million (Dh67.68m) for charity and he was honoured in 1993 with an MBE.