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| Hero of Adventure Motorcyclists Everywhere. |
The Long Way Round is a motorcycle journey that begins in London and ends in New York. The two cyclists are Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman, both movie stars though McGregor is best known for Trainspotting and some silly scifi movie series. As novice motorcyclists and campers, they have a crew of people help them cross borders, carry emergency gear, and do most of the filming, though the man behind the camera riding another bike with them is Claudio Von Planta. They travel East across Europe, Russia, Kazakstan, Mongolia, Siberia, then fly from Eastern Siberia to Anchorage, Alaska, then take the Al-Can highway down to the Great Plains and finally cross the USA into New York City. The whole journey takes about 2-3 months. The scenery is fantastic, and the roads vary from normal paved highways to threaded dirt tracks through a muddy wasteland, sometimes disappearing entirely. I happen to think the motorcycles they chose were too heavy, and that they're carrying too much gear, and that they should have waited another month before leaving so water levels would be lower and they'd deal with less mud. That's how other people doing a similar trip do things. You can buy this BBC documentary series on most online retailer sites such as Amazon. Both this and Long Way Down are on Hulu.com in the lifestyle section, of all things. Its legal and commercial so you can watch it for free without risking jail. This is exactly the sort of thing which should be showing on the Travel Channel, as well. My favorite bit of this series begins in Kazakhstan and goes across Mongolia and Siberia on the Road of Bones to Magadan. It's about 3-4 episodes, the meat of the story.
The Long Way Down is a Motorcycle journey, same crew, that begins in the northernmost extent of Britain and goes to the southernmost tip of Africa. They cross the Channel by Chunnel Train, ride across France and down through Italy before taking the ferry to Tunisia. Motorcycling along the Mediterranean Coast and into Libya (Khadafiy's Libya!), they have to abandon some of their crew and meet them on the far side in Egypt. The travels through Africa are surprisingly calm and safe. Every country's border guards express amazement they survived crossing "that other guy's country. That place is lawless". As you'll see, most of the people are nice. And most of them seem glad for the visitors. Once again, their bikes are too heavy, and paranoia about lions provides some unintentional comedy. This is on Hulu.com. Watch it if you have time. It is very interesting. Clearly, Africa is the next Frontier. I hope that Americans will be involved with developing it, not just leaving it to the Chinese who tend to be both ruthless and genocidal based on their ONGOING ACTIONS in very recent history there. My country hasn't treated Africa very well either. One would think that higher standards would apply.
There is a box set available of Long Way Round and Long Way Down which also includes the Race to Dakar, which is interesting for serious race speed offroading and a laundry list of everything that can go wrong. I learned from that one that KTM motorcycles are amazing performers that require immense amounts of replacement parts and that they're not reliable for serious travel so I wouldn't own one. Boorman is the chief racer of this one and seeing him have to man up for the challenges of the Dakar Rally is quite amazing. The huge number of competitors and the behavior of some of the nations they cross eventually resulted in the Dakar Rally moving to South America, so it now crosses Argentina, Chile, and Peru instead of France, Spain, Portugal and Western Africa. It used to be called the Paris-Dakar Rally. The new Dakar rally has many videos on YouTube, samples shot in HD, edited together. It's really fascinating stuff. Our roads are going that direction. I think we'll be going slower, however.
The newer Boorman series of travel videos is called "By Any Means". The first is Ireland to Sydney: By Any Means and is the LWR crew, with fewer men and translators hired on the fly, using any type of typical local transportation, avoiding planes. While sometimes obsessed with timetables it's still very interesting. They take motorcycles to Northern Ireland, a fishing boat to Isle of Mann, a ferry to Liverpool, motorcycles and various other means across Britain, including train and double decker bus. They sail a small sailboat across the English Channel, which tips us off to Charley having troubles with boats, a curse he remains under long term. Traveling by train, boat, small bus, the back of a truck, even elephant is very interesting going and while the cameras are mostly focused on the countries they visit, you see the state of the people living there, and the roads tell their own story. India, Nepal, China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and finally Australia each have their own courage or hardships. Its a VERY long trip, covered in six one-hour episodes. I found it on YouTube but I'm hoping it will become available on Hulu.com soon so it can be part of the same series with Long Way Round etc.
The following year Charley and Co. go from Sydney to Tokyo, which is even more interesting because there's no agonizing over timetables and by now Charley is a serious traveler and largely unflappable, having witnessed all sorts of threats that are often just posturing for the camera. Australia is friendly and fun, New Guinea not so much. Parts of New Guinea were friendly and trying to be more tourist friendly, other parts need military presence and an ongoing war there meant that crossing into the Indonesian side was denied. This ends up a recurring problem. Indonesians themselves seemed reasonably friendly and civilized so long as you aren't crossing a border. It isn't until the show gets them to the Philippines that you see the truly friendly folks. I have worked extensively with Filipinos. They all speak English and their goals in life are similar to mine so they're friendly and easy to understand, culturally. Other than the Maoists, the rest of the Philippines is a place probably worth visiting, though its like a Mexico with even worse poverty but without the language barrier. Frequent typhoons probably don't help with their poverty problems, and a long series of Dictators (Marcos!) has been disastrous for stealing the funds from needed public works (sanitation, public transit, hospitals, schools). The remainder of the trip is through Taiwan and Japan, which I haven't seen yet but will soon. Both nations are good for motorcycling and have better roads than the more Southern countries.
In every country they hire a guide and translator and some of them offer very helpful warnings or illustrate important cultural differences. In New Guinea, there's a local culture that doesn't allow women to touch men's hair. In the highlands some farmers with machetes demand a road toll because they want money. They're bandits due to poverty. Another place sees drunken locals demanding the government pay them for a bridge that isn't there anymore to a government that long since vanished and has no representatives present anyway. People can get really stupid. In one part of New Guinea, a local tribe has decided they like the look of suburbs so are organizing their village that way, sort of like a cargo cult. They have no electricity, no doctor, no stores, no bridges, no serious sanitation. They want those things but all they can offer is hand built crafts. I wish them well. I'd want those things too, living as they do. One of the locations they visit in Indonesia has some amazing looking houses and bases its entire culture around funerals and the associated feasts. Their efforts go to raising the animals to sacrifice for the feast, pigs and cattle. Fascinating. In island nations ferries tend to be overcrowded, and when they sink hundreds die because there's only lifeboats for a hundred people. The roads are rarely paved, and when they are they're the main roads that tourists see or government officials use. Many of the people riding on motorcycles or underbone scooters tend to skip basic safety gear and end up in terrible accidents, known collectively as the "road tax", essentially meaning blood and death. Banditry in some countries is common, in others quite rare. If you plan to travel there, pay attention to the difference.
The most recent Charley Boorman trip is across Canada called Extreme Frontiers. I am looking forward to that, though ADVRider.com has a bunch of those pictorial trips, as Canada is the sort of place you won't likely run into kidnap gangs with AK-47's, RPGs, and ransoms in mind. I'm really not brave enough to do the kind of travel Charley has done in these video documentaries with the BBC.
There are other good travelogues worth seeing. No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain are entertaining food tourism which goes around the world eating various foods, seeing the touristy stuff. I enjoy the episodes he spends in Osaka, in South Korea, and in Malaysia. He's a cad, but he's pretty funny. That's available on Netflix Streaming and on Hulu and gets played on Travel channel and Food Network, of course.
Rick Steves was a good way to show off Europe back when there were only five network TV channels and one of those was PBS. I watched a lot of Rick Steves and while I don't agree with all of his methods, packing light is a good rule of thumb for traveling. These days Rick travels with his family and meanders around much of Europe, including the Eastern side. Someday, maybe, Turkey and Georgia will settle down into a nice tourist destination. We can keep our fingers crossed on that one. His show is also on Hulu.com.
While Central and South America are interesting, I'm not brave enough for Mexico's violence and I don't speak other languages (Spanish or Portuguese) so I can't just ask for help if they don't speak English. I'm glad that someone has gone to all these places so I can watch the travelogues from the comfort of my own home and be astonished at the things they see. America is big enough for me and holds plenty of vistas worth seeing in person. I would enjoy riding a dual sport bike through sections of the Rockies some day.
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| See why I like Bishop so much? |
I would like to climb up through the White Mountains that way in a few years. They're plenty tall and offer lots of challenges. I don't care that others have been there before. That's not the point. Discovery is about YOU, not someone else. Go see it for yourself, if you can. If you can't, well, the above videos are a feast you can enjoy. Watch them.
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