Romain Mari (France)
I have not known Hendri a whole lot, but I have known him enough for him to greatly affect my vision of life and to be filled with admiration for him.
The first time I met him and within a few words exchanged, I had this amazing feeling of peace. As if all around him was an aura of peace which you entered automatically when you came close enough, and it was always the same every other time we met…. I felt so intrigued by this man, and this mysterious peace surrounding him. I knew something was going on, something powerful. He was the type of person you meet, and you just know that this person is worth spending much more time around, although you don’t know the first thing about him, you don’t know why. He made us open our eyes to our reality wide enough to see what we were doing and to question it all more deeply. He made us to enjoy the here and the now, and to impose this as a rule, as a life style!
…For me Henri was more a philosopher of travel and life than an extreme kayaker, this is the memory I keep of him.