Tag Long Way Round

The Long Way Round

We recently watched the series Long Way Round, where Charlie Boorman and Ewan McGregor ride their BMWs from London to New York– the long way around. They cover some 19,000 miles in around 3 months. This show was of interest to us because we recently completed the 2010 Mongol Rally, a charity ride from London to Ulaan Bataar, Mongolia. Ewan and Charlie did a strikingly similar route though much of the same territory, stopping at many of the same sites.

Charlie and Ewan set up an office in London several months prior to their departure and hired a small staff to help plan their route, get the necessary paperwork, consult with them on border crossings, and many more activities, like writing and disseminating sponsorship proposals and calling companies for donations. These were all activities we undertook for the Mongol Rally, and oh how nice it would have been to have an office and a support crew to do so!

To train them before the ride, they hired a personal trainer. We did sit-ups in the basement. To prepare themselves for harsh border crossings they hired an ex-military safety guru to teach them basic evasion, combat training, weapons use and how to best deal with a hostage situation. We watched Steven Segal movies. To prepare for any unforeseen medical problems, a doctor was brought on board. We had several boxes of band-aids and a suitcase of pepto. To learn Russian prior to departure they hired a Russian area consultant, a visa advisor and a language coach. We got an language book off Amazon and read the history of Russia. To fund the trip, they had a room full of women sending out proposals and a celebrity actor pleading for kit. We had a proposal we made ourselves and sent to everyone we could think of– and they promptly laughed in our faces. Needless to say, we’re jealous of their support crew.

They rode a nearly identical route from London to the Ukraine as we did, passing through the Czech Republic just as we did, and stopping at the Church of Bones, which we routed ourselves out of the way to see. Along the way they had various monuments and tours cleared for themselves and the support and video crews, and his two-van support team went ahead at most border crossings and at major sites to arrange visits, viewings and make for easy passage. A lot of what they saw would not have been possible without the support crews, and yet without Ewan on the team it wouldn’t have been a TV series at all.

The show itself is inspiring and lively, and gets me eager for our next self-guided adventure travel or rally. Its hard to watch a show like this one that makes travel look so dangerous, difficult and unattainable without a whole crew behind you and then realize that with a bit of real-world thinking and prior experience you could undertake the same trip as they did, and I’m sure people have.

diss I’m not trying to the Ewan-Charlie team, as I think they have something special and love what they are doing. I just think it is sad that it takes a celebrity on a team to get publicity for it. A lot of great travelers are doing equally amazing trips and because they arn’t A-listed stars they don’t get sponsorship, recognition or free gear, and the trips don’t get publicized so that most people think travel is this dangerous and relatively pointless activity.

We rolled into Odessa quite late in the evening, having been held up at the border a bit longer than anticipated. Odessa came highly recommended by our Ukrainian friends in Minnesota, as well as by a friend whose father lives in the Crimea. Apparently during the cold war, Odessa was infamous for its webs of spies from both sides fighting for information and control. I was intrigued and when doing the initial route planning from the States we simply could not imagine going any other way but through Odessa.

We spent the first hour and a half driving around looking for a place to spend the night. We checked several hostels found on hostel world only to discover they were abandoned apartment complexes or simply a field or parking lot. Eventually we found a cheap hotel, but the advertised prices were off by a dozen Euro so we simply didn’t want to pay it. We asked at the hotel if we could park our cars in their protected parking area for a Euro, they said “sure!” so we positioned are cars near several other rally cars in the parking lot and decided to sleep in the cars to save money. But first, it was time to meet the other ralliers and find out what the latest gossip was.

We found a nearby pub and, not surprisingly, about twenty ralliers. They had been in a caravan of eight cars, which meant extremely slow progress. Nevertheless, they had beat us there, which doesn’t say a lot for our speed. We introduced ourselves and soon were engulfed in great conversations with amazing people from all over the world.

As the night wore on people began to drift off to find a place to sleep. We all moved our cars towards the water a bit and several teams through up their tents right by the side of the road. Mike and I slept in the Face Race car while Bill reclined in our ATC car. The Face Race crew have an instant pop-up tent so they threw that up near the road. Surprisingly, the police did not kick us out.

In the morning we all felt a bit gross having spent the night drinking and then sleeping in hot, disgusting-smelling cars. Mike, Bill and I walked down to the Black Sea to take a quick dip. I decided not to get in, but once we had walked all the way down the hill to the water I changed my mind and jumped in fully clothed. It was the closest thing to a shower in several days, and it was wonderful. We swam out a ways and just enjoyed the feeling of being cool for a change rather than dripping sweat. When we had been in long enough, we walked back to the cars and brushed our teeth and got cleaned up (as well as one can on the side of the road).

Everyone was milling about, so we made plans to head to the Steps of Odessa, a famous and beautiful area a bit north of our current position. We set off, the Face Race team in tow, and a new car joined our mini convoy, the Mongol Schumachers. We hit the steps within the hour, and found all manner of strange sights before us.

One man had a pet alligator and parrot, another had an owl and a monkey. For a few bucks you could play with the exotic creatures and have your picture taken. We opted against it for sanitation reasons, and bounded up the steps to do the happy dance from Rocky. Classic.

Back at the cars, I met an amazing gentlemen who is friends with Charlie Boreman (who rides with Ewan McGregor and co-wrote Long Way Round, and several other books). This guy was extremely interesting, and was going on yet another round-the-world bike trip. You never know who you’ll meet in strange places, but you can guarantee they will be much more interesting than the folks you meet back home.

We chatted with the bikers for a while before hitting the road. The goal was to make it to the Russian border, but as the goal was entirely unrealistic we thought we’d see how far we could get.