I spend about 300 days a year travelling to promote Roots and Shoots [an environmental education programme] and as a United Nations messenger of peace, so there really is no such thing as a typical day for me. I'm often rushed off to a dinner or a talk as soon as I step off the plane. Usually, when I get to a new place I'll do one main lecture, then maybe a visit to a school or attend a meeting with the head of a corporation and perhaps a small lunch.
I have a wonderful assistant, Mary Lewis, who organises all my international travel. She is amazing. She must handle more than 1,000 e-mails a day. The great value of all this travelling is you can put people around the world in touch with each other, and Mary's great at that.
I don't use e-mail, but I do try to write letters on planes - it's the only chance I get. Right now, I'm trying to do all my letters to North Korea, which have to be hand-carried.
When I lived in Gombe [in Tanzania] and I was studying chimpanzees, things were obviously very different. I would get up before 6am and watch the chimps come down from their nest, if I knew where they were, or otherwise, try to find them. Then I would follow them all day or until I lost them and get back in the evening to write up the notes. But now I'm only there about twice a year for a few days, I don't get up so early. I go out a little later. If I find chimps, great. If not, I'm still out in the forest and it's peaceful and it's green. I can recharge my batteries.
At a young age I was taught that animals have personalities, minds and feelings by my dog, Rusty. That's why, when my professors at Cambridge told me I'd done everything wrong by giving the chimps names and talking about their feelings in my studies, I didn't change a thing.
Before this trip, I hadn't been anywhere in Hong Kong outside the built-up areas, which, for someone who loves the forest as much as I do, are not my idea of heaven. This time, I went up to one of the monkey parks and it was beautiful to see all the butterflies, birds and some of the people working with the monkeys. Then I went to see the white dolphins and saw 16 or 17 of them. They are slightly increasing in numbers. This is one of my symbols of hope: however endangered a species is, there's always a chance if you have sufficient people to try and protect it.
I don't like zoos, but if you see a group of chimps in one of the really good ones, where they have a big enclosure, lots to do, where their minds are challenged and they have a decent social group, I'd probably rather be them than in the wild. [In the wild] they might be caught by poachers, shot for food or have their home destroyed.