Travelling Native is a captivating story of extreme adventure and survival along some of the wildest and remotest rivers of South America. Travelling the Orinoco upriver in a large dugout canoe manned by mestizos working for the Venezuelan Ministry of Indian Affairs. Paul unintentionally learns the rudiments of basic jungle survival. Barred from travelling further upriver at the remote missionary outpost of Tama Tama, Paul purchases a small dugout canoe, including paddle from a local Maquiritare Indian, and decides to paddle down the largely unexplored Casiquiare River into the vast headwaters of the Rio Negro in northern Brazil. It is then he realises how totally unprepared he is for the journey through the Wilds of both countries. Sleeping in foxholes beside his fire at night he survives being stalked by mobs of alligators, hunted by a jaguar, traversing angry rapids, the poison and pain of a stingray, enduring tropical rainstorms, sleeping on rocks in the middle of the river, surviving tumultuous river squalls and collapsing in an Indian village before eventually arriving in Manaus. Returning to the Orinoco Delta, he becomes embroiled in a smuggling operation where common sense eventually prevails.

One of the unique travel memoirs of modern times, the Council of the Royal Geographical Society elected Paul as a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society for the success of his solo expedition.