“It seems that most adventures rely on meat, cheese and lard…”
Absolutely, you can. Is it harder? I’d argue that food might be the easiest bit about big expeditions…
There are two vegan adventure cyclists, Marc Michel and Grete Strawberry, who are well-known for doing epic rides across places with no people or services.
Their most recent big adventure was an 86-day ride across the Changtang Nature Reserve in Tibet. They saw no other humans for the majority of their ride, instead, it was 1000+ yaks, 19 wolves, 6 bears, and lots of khiangs and chirus.
The terrain was insane. They had to push about 98% of the route due to heavy snow, mud and ice. The average elevation was 4900m/16000ft, and the coldest temperature was -30 degrees. They had 50+ days of strong headwinds and 101 days without washing their hair.
They brought 123kg worth of food rations along to share, which they calculated would last 92 days. Part of their food supplies was 37.5kg rice, 15kg Kozinak (sugar+sunflower seeds), 14kg peanuts, 10kg polenta, 8kg banana flakes, 3kg of soy protein, 3kg halva, 3kg candies…and 18 litres of sunflower oil.
At the end of the trip, they still had about a week of food left, but they had both lost 15kg from their bodies. According to Marc, “the time we spent out there was tough, but the beauty of nature compensated for a lot of the suffering”.
So yep, you can definitely do this crazy stuff on vegan calories!