American television receiver presenter Josh Gates, who digs for subconscious treasures and ancient mysteries across the world in his popular bear witness Expedition Unknown, is often called a real-life Indiana Jones.

Gates doesn't listen the comparison to the Hollywood-created archaeologist and explorer played by Harrison Ford. "I am not going to fence with that," Gates told Whorl.in over the phone from Los Angeles. "Only so much of Expedition Unknown is actually about taking our globe to meet the real Indiana Joneses of the globe and the people who are on the front line and doing this work."

Gates's side by side trek is one of his most ambitious ones yet. Next week, Gates volition open an Egyptian sarcophagus (a stone coffin) and explore a network of ancient tombs in a two-hour live television event. In Expedition Unknown: Egypt Live, Gates will exist accompanied by Egyptologist Zahi Hawass and Mostafa Waziri, Secretarial assistant-General of the Supreme Quango of Antiquities of Egypt. The event volition exist premiered in India on Discovery Channel and Discovery Hd World on April 8 at 11 am, with a echo telecast at half-dozen pm.

The episode will highlight a new facet of Arab republic of egypt, which is famed for its well-preserved pyramids, mummies and other artifacts from its ancient Pharaonic period, Gates claimed. "A lot of tourists don't actually know virtually a office of the country, which contains a network of burial chambers that has not been fully explored," he explained. "It is an opportunity to get into new parts of the tomb and hopefully see a new mummy and sarcophagi that have not been seen before in the modern world."

The live format will make viewers a part of the risk, Gates said. "It is the next level because it is truly unpredictable," he elaborated. "That is i of the neat things well-nigh the alive format. This makes the audience a office of our team because they are with us in real time."

The format comes with its challenges, but for Gates, that only adds to the experience. "There are these chambers that are claustrophobic and so working there and trying to bring tv cameras in there is going to be heady," Gates added. "It makes information technology all the more than real to bring the viewers there in a very visceral manner."

The two-60 minutes upshot kicks off the show'south fifth flavour, which will see Gates tour Israel, Jordan, North America and Scotland. "We are going to be searching for a famous shipwreck in North America, a gunkhole chosen The Griffon, which was 1 of the very first to explore the Great Lakes, Gates said.

The vessel disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 1679 and many attempts have been fabricated to find information technology since. "It is the holy grail of lost shipwrecks," Gates observed. "Nosotros are as well going to be looking for rock gold in Scotland. It'southward a really exciting flavor."

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A prune from Expedition Unknown.

Gates started touring the world with Trek Unknown in 2015 and is a co-producer on the series. Through the serial, Gates seeks to show the smartphone generation that in that location's a globe beyond that which can be accessed through the click of a push.

"We kind of alive in an age where a lot of people think that the whole earth has been mapped in a smartphone on their maps," Gates observed. "A lot of immature viewers are surprised to know that there are places in the earth that are still unmapped. I think information technology'south important to reinforce in particularly immature people that there is so much of the world that nosotros withal don't know."

Gates explored 1 such untouched location in Mayan settlement of El Mirador in Guatemala, which he described to be his fondest moment from the series. "We used wide-arc scanners to exercise some mapping of the jungle and we managed to prototype an entire temple complex that has never been visited by the modern world," Gates added. "To exist able to stand out on the jungle in a platform that nobody laid eyes on in 2,000 years was simply the absolute thrill of a lifetime."

Some adventures also lead to infirmary visits. "We had a lot of hard episodes in the rain-forests of Ecuador [in flavor four], where we were exploring a really difficult cave with lot of snakes and spiders," Gates recalled. "Everybody in the coiffure including me got sick with a virus from the animals in the cave and we ended up in the infirmary."

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A clip from Expedition Unknown.

Gates's fascination for archaeology and chance surfaced at a very young age. "When I was a child, films like Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Goonies were huge inspirations to me," Gates said. "I grew up in a very pocket-sized town in Massachusetts and my father was a huge sea commercial diver. He had this very audacious career. He would ever come dorsum from the Due north Sea or Africa and would tell me interesting stories."

His credits also include the paranormal-themed reality exploration show Destination Truth (2007-12) and he was a recurring guest host on Ghost Hunters (2004-16)

Run a risk to Gates is less about adrenaline rushes and more near unraveling new stories. "I loved the stories of ancient cultures and lost pieces of history," he said. "That all kind of bubbled up inside of me and when I went to college, when I wanted to go a marine archeologist. I always had a fascination with the history of information technology all."

Josh Gates in Expedition Unknown. Courtesy Discovery Channel.