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Stagnated and Cultural Influence

•••••

We agreed to take him.

He would meet us in Jerez de la Frontera in southern Spain as soon as he completed arrangements with his publisher, and wound up his personal affairs, he said, winking at the girl still clutching his arm.

I was anxious to move on to Jerez where my old Jeep was stored, but we had to stay in Madrid over the weekend to claim the equipment our sponsors had air-freighted to us at Barajas Airport.

On Monday the bad news broke. Al returned from the airport to report that the Spanish customs agents wanted close to a thousand dollars to release our equipment.

In most European countries, when a tourist has something sent to him which he plans to take out of the country at the end of his visit, the customs officials will waive all duties and tariffs. But not the Spaniards. Spain is notorious for her huge import duties-often as high as 200 per cent, often twice the cost of the item-which she uses to curtail imports and conserve foreign exchange. Al had tried to explain that we were on an expedition around the world, that we were just using Spain as a trans-shipment point, that we’d be taking everything out of the country with us, that we should not have to pay any customs duty. It was too much for the bureaucrats, who couldn’t imagine anyone driving around the world. They were sure we planned to sell the shortwave radio, the expensive watches, the cases of condensed milk, and the camera lenses, and they were taxing us as if we were in the import business.

Al felt that if we could convince the customs agents that we were really on an expedition around the world, they might give us our stuff without duty; so we held a press conference that evening. Willy, with the help of some friends in the publicity business, had 40 journalists there, and the next morning all the wire services, every paper in Madrid, and half the papers in Spain carried our pictures and the story of our trip.

That afternoon, loaded with news clippings, Al left for the Barajas customs house; he returned three hours later, with neither clippings nor equipment. “They liked the stories, all right. Passed them all around. Said it sounded like a hell of a good trip. Even wished us luck. But they still wanted a thousand dollars.”

I appealed to the American Embassy; Willy pleaded with the Spanish Tourist Ministry; Al petitioned the American Chamber of Commerce; Manu tried his magazine.

We rendezvoused that afternoon at the American Express office, all with the same report: nobody could do anything. Yet we had to do something. We had to get to Jerez to put the Jeep in shape for the trip, and we had to get moving toward Africa before the deserts were blazing. The next day we hired a Madrid customs clearance agent-a strikingly attractive, tall, blonde Finnish girl who spoke six languages-to work on our problem while we moved on to Jerez to work on the equipment prepare for Africa.

The Spaniards are a very proud people. They have lost the great wealth and empire they had in the days when they were masters of the New World and its riches, and they’ve fallen so far behind under their Fascist regime that theirs is one of the most backward countries in Europe. But will the Spaniards admit they’re behind the times? Hardly! Look at their road maps, for example; that’s just what we made the mistake of doing. On these maps you will find, radiating from Madrid like beams from a star, six roads labeled “first-class highway,” and, crossing them, several dozen others labeled “second-class roads.” If the Spaniards were less proud or more honest they might admit that the only classification system in which their roads could be considered “first” would be an anthropological one, for they are aged, weathered, worn, and pocked. And those holy horrors they rate “second class” would make our most wretched farm tracks look like turnpikes.

Leaving Madrid, we decided to take a scenic second-class road that wandered down to Jerez by way of the historic cities of Toledo, Cordoba, and Seville. When we reached Toledo we drove through the gate into the city which so charmed us with its undisturbed medievality, looking much l day as it did when El Cid trod its cobbled streets, that we forgot that in those days two donkeys passing abreast would have constituted a traffic jam. We were inspired by Toledo’s churches, awed by its paintings, impressed by its craftsmen, and mauled to pieces by its streets.

Constructed in the days before sidewalks were the fashion, the streets of Toledo are so closely walled in by ancient stone houses that a Middle Ages housewife could easily have borrowed a cup of gruel from the lady across the street without leaving her pantry. The deeper we drove into the city, the narrower its streets became, but we were past the point of no return. We could only move forward and hope. Our hope and our forward progress ran out the same time our clearance did. We were stuck, wedged between the walls, with a raucous chorus of screaming school kids, braying donkeys, and ducking old crones jammed up behind us.

We had the choice of either trying to back up or pitching a permanent camp in the middle of one of the main alleys of Toledo. Even backing out was impossible with the trailer, and we scratched it so badly we were forced to unhitch it and, with the help of a dozen laughing Toledoanos, push it by hand all the way back to the town gate.

Near Ciudad Real, we saw a sign indicating the road to Cordoba that seemed, however, to point farther west than the route indicated on our map. We asked two local people, and they assured us it was the road to Cordoba. As we drove along it, at ever decreasing speeds, the road, if such it could be called, deteriorated from new asphalt to old asphalt, to old asphalt full of cracks and holes, to gravel, to dirt, and finally and principally, to dirt riddled with deep holes, layered with large rocks, covered with dust and twisted into washboard corrugations.

We found a farmer, and asked the way to Cordoba. He pointed us down the road. It had been our experience when asking for directions, that the average Spaniard just would not know, usually because he’d never been out of his own village; but being a proud Spaniard, he would never confess his ignorance, especially if some of his friends were near. His momentary look of mystification would quickly yield to a smile of enthusiastic knowledgeability, whereupon he would point us down the road, inevitably in the direction we were already headed. You can ask a Spaniard the way to Cordoba or Casablanca or Canarsie and he’ll nod and smile and point you down the road.

After having covered only 35 miles in three hours, we reached a sign, one of those interesting Spanish road signs so far off the side of the road and so faded and weathered you never know if it’s currently applicable. This particular sign informed us that this particular road to Cordoba was “not recommended.” What was recommended was that we retrace our route all the way back to Ciudad Real and start over again on another road.

Since the sign was so weathered, we hoped that it might be out of date, and since we couldn’t conceive of any European road getting worse than the one we’d come on, we decided to push ahead. As a safety check, for we still hadn’t learned our lesson completely, we asked the first peasants we saw if many other cars used this road to Cordoba and if there were many gasoline stations on it. They proudly assured us that this road on which they lived was quite important, that there were many gas stations on it, and that at least 50 cars a day passed this way.

Three terrible hours later we were still far from Cordoba, had not seen a single gas station, and had met only one other car, a Microbus driven by a Dutch tourist who was also obviously lost, having taken his instruction from some proud citizens on the other end of the line.

After ten hours, during which we covered 130 miles, we finally reached Cordoba, though not without penalty, for our camper was listing heavily to one side where the rough road had cracked the undercarriage in four places. The damage could not be repaired because it was Holy Week; so we pushed on for Seville where we planned to see the processions on Good Friday and Holy Saturday, the highlights of Semana  Santa in Spain.

Some travelers will tell you that the Sevillianos are coarse and rude, but we found them a delight. They are intense, energetic people who enjoy life to the fullest. They drink hard, dance hard, drive hard, play hard, sing loud, and eat like there’s no tomorrow. They live life to the hilt, perpetually in voice or motion, so much so that anyone with a spark of spirit is irresistibly swept along with them. With regard to its citizens as well as its architecture, it is well said that “He who has not visited Seville has not seen a marvel.”

The processions were also a marvel. For hours they flowed by: awesome religious floats of candle-lit saints carried by hundreds of sweating penitents; priests bearing huge gleaming crucifixes; Christ on the Cross, his crown of thorns half-hidden in the darkness; hundreds of hooded marchers, some in black, others in white, holding stately candles.

An old man explained the reason for the hoods: When the Moors were expelled from Spain in the 1490’s, after having held the country for 600 years, the devout Catholics, who had been practicing their faith in secret in cellars and caves, brought their religious symbols and services back to the churches; but many of them, fearful that the Saracen blade might strike again or that Moorish spies would report them, wore hoods and robes to conceal their identities. The custom survived the generations and is honored each year at Semana Santa.

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The Reins in Spain

•••••

The ride down the Pyrenees was lovely, a panorama of green-on-white peaks gleaming in the spring sun, a serenade of gurgling streams and thunder in the gorge from the melting snows. By afternoon we were in Spain.

We were almost out of gas when we reached the outskirts of the big city of Lerida, so Woodrow pulled into a service station. A few miles farther, in the heart of town, in the center of traffic, after a piston-shaking struggle, the engine stopped lead. The policeman directing traffic whistled and waved frantically. Cars and carts piled up behind us. A motorcycle trooper screeched to a stop beside us, shouting and waving. Limited though my Spanish is, I knew that he wasn’t inviting us to dinner. But the engine would only sputter.

A passerby concluded we’d mistakenly bought diesel fuel instead of gasoline. To get diesel oil you ask for “gas,” as indeed Woodrow had; to get gas you ask for “benzene.” Our Land Cruiser must have looked like a small truck to the attendant, so he’d put in diesel.

The next morning we were on the road early, driving through castle country where, on small arid hills above the winding road, mementos of the ancient glory and grandeur of Spain watched over the countryside. The land, though dry, was heavily farmed; olive and fig trees sent their roots deep in search of moisture, and shady cork oaks husbanded their water behind thick insulating bark; grape vines followed the laboriously terraced contour of the slopes. Here and there we saw dams and bridges being built, the only hints that Spain acknowledged the 20th century, that a country whose inhospitable climate and schismatic topography had long been its formidable enemies was at last beginning to fight back, that a few inches less rain would no longer mean ruin for the farmers, and that people who had long thought of themselves as Andalusians and Catalonians, Basques and Castilians, Asturians and Galicians were at last beginning to be united into a nation of Spaniards.

We camped at Osona, 20 minutes east of the heart of Madrid. And what a heart! Tapas and copas. The Echegaray and the caves in Madrid Viejo. What better treat after a lonely week on the road? What better send off for a journey across Africa!

The Echegaray is a street near the Puerta del Sol where every night is Mardi Gras, where the rich and poor alike go arm in arm from bar to bar sampling tapas and copas. Tapa and copa are a must in Spanish; in fact, it’s said a visitor can survive in Spain knowing no other words. A tapa is an appetizer, a tasty anything from fish to nuts and, to the Spanish mind, a good excuse for another copa. The Spaniards are masters at preparing tapas in unending varieties, each one an adventure in tastes. During the summer the accent is on barnacles, baby shrimp, mussels, crayfish, oysters, and prawns; in winter it’s sliced beef, chicken breasts, kidneys cooked in sherry, pickled eggs. You’re stuffed to contentment for less than what a ham sandwich costs back home.

Then it’s over to the caves of Old Madrid. There, centuries before, notorious figures of the underworld hid out in the subterranean caverns, linked by a network of tunnels to other parts of the city. Where once the caves rang with pistol shots, today they rock to the sound of a buleria; everybody is high and happy and clapping in time to guitars and castanets.

The best cognac is fifteen cents, and you warm it in your hands as you lean against moist brick walls deeply carved with names and dates. The tables and benches are dark wood, also carved and nicked. There are alcoves and balconies, all underground, all crammed with people. When you order a drink you can also order a guitar. You strum, and soon everyone joins in, the cave resounding with singing and clapping until the din reaches so feverish a pitch that men jump on the tables and stomp their heels in spirited flamencos.

Over the Saturday night roar of the cave of Luis Candela, Willy introduced us to Manu-Manu Angel Leguineche Bolar-a young Spanish journalist who wanted to join our expedition. As we approached his table he was deftly pouring wine down his throat from a bota, a Spanish flask held suspended over the head. The distance from which a man can pour wine into his mouth without spilling it is a mark of status in Spain. Six inches is considered good; Manu was doing eighteen, and I noticed his expensive London suit was spotless. A beautiful girl was clinging to his free arm as though it were already understood he was leaving soon for distant lands.

Manu leaped to his feet and embraced us, almost knocking over the table. He summoned the waiter with a clap of his hands and ordered sangria for everyone. He was of medium height and somewhat on the chubby side, and he was so good natured, with a deep laugh and infectious smile, that we liked him the minute we saw him.

“Have you spent much time outdoors?” I asked him.

“My father has an estate in the Basque country. You must meet my father. He is an excellent hunter. Doves, pheasants, everything. We Spanish from the Basque country all like outdoors.”

“How about mechanics, Manu, and automobiles, driving-“

“I am Spanish from the Basque,” he stopped me with a wave of his hand. “We can do anything.”

We found him quick-witted and quite knowledgeable about world affairs. His warm sense of humor broke through the language barrier, and his resounding voice set the tables aroar. Even as we walked back to our car through the silent streets of Madrid he occasionally broke into song. ”Africa,” he said, “I know it very good. They speak Spanish there.”

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Difficulty Leveled up

•••••

The 8,000-foot pass had been open for a week, it was true, but had been blocked again by a storm two days before, and more snow was forecast for the evening. He suggested we detour east by way of Perpignan and Barcelona on the Mediterranean, skirting the Pyrenees. But that would have meant bypassing Andorra, and Andorra was a must. It was still just about, as my idol Halliburton had found it 40 years before, “the oldest, the smallest, the highest, the quaintest, the most isolated republic on earth,” and I was determined to see it. It was too early in the trip to skip a country, too insignificant an obstacle. We headed into the Pyrenees.

We first met fog, then rain, then fog and rain again. The snow coated the ground at the 5,000-foot level, with spruce and pine standing in dark contrast against it. At 6,000 feet it was snowing hard and fogging thick. We had to get out to read the signposts. The narrow road was a winding blur, with a 600-foot drop off its side.

At 6,500 feet the road was deep with snow, the retaining fences were almost covered, and day had darkened into night. The pass was 1,000 or 2,000 feet higher, ten miles up ahead. We hadn’t seen another car all afternoon. Perhaps the pass was blocked? If we turned back it might be a week before it was open. If we pushed on we might spend the week stuck in a snowbank. We pushed on.

It was impossible to see. The thick screen of snow reflected our lights. The road and the ground were of one grayness, and the sheer drop filled with fog was only a shade away. The road snaked and twisted up toward the pass, and I could no longer guess which way it was going. Al got out with a lantern to lead us, but the howling storm drove him back.

There were five inches on the asphalt now and it was hard to hold the road. I regretted that we had had our special tires shipped directly to Spain.

Then it happened. I had turned slightly to the right, and the wheel clawed at space. It was over the edge. Before I could react, the car was going off the road, down the mountain slope, down toward certain destruction in the gorge 2,000 feet below. Now both front wheels were over the edge. The brakes locked. The rear wheels slid. The fog opened to bid us welcome.

It was the longest 14 inches I ever fell. That’s all it was, though it seemed to take forever. Our bumper lodged fast against a big spruce just down the slope. Below that tree, nothing.

We winched our way back onto the road, and two hours later plowed through the pass in four-wheel drive, up to the hubcaps in snow. There was not another tire track to be seen. An hour more and we had dropped 1,500 feet, below the danger zone. Ahead a faint light glimmered from a house half-buried in the snow. Our pounding was answered by a robust Andorran in a heavy sweater who explained that the building was his home, but also a restaurant where he served meals to skiers. We weren’t skiers, but we were famished, so we trooped in. The meal was delicious. His wife served and their round-cheeked daughter flirted with us from the corner. The owner sat with us and shared the wine. There was a problem with payment: we were out of French francs and hadn’t had a chance to buy any Spanish pesetas, either of which are acceptable in Andorra. We had traveler’s checks, but the owner had never seen them and wouldn’t accept them, all American Express advertisements to the contrary. After some friendly mutual embarrassment Al paid for our meals with a pair of ski boots from our 44-pair collection and a couple of rolls of Glad Wrap.

I explained to the owner that we needed a place to camp for the night, and he suggested we drive on to Andorra la Vella down in the valley. But we’d had enough of night driving in the snow. There was a flat spot off the other side of the road, a large ledge with a small wood tool shed on one edge, so we decided to make camp there. The man was nervous about it, but the ledge was flat enough to take the camper and wide enough so we wouldn’t be blown off the mountain.

The night was incredibly cold. The wind tore down from the mountain pass and rattled the camper. The ledge beneath us creaked and groaned. Tired as we were, it was several hours before the storm abated enough to let us sleep, and it was only a short while later that I awoke with a start on hearing someone or something walking in the snow around the camper. The steps circled us three times, stopping, listening.

I threw open the camper door and jumped out with my flashlight. No one was there, just two fresh sets of bootprints. What were people doing prowling around us high on a mountain, miles from the nearest town in the dead of night?

The morning broke clear and crisp, the sky a bluest blue, the snow a startling white, the dark fir trees a forest of exclamation points.

Woodrow couldn’t be roused, so Al and I dressed and headed to the house hoping for some hot coffee and perhaps an explanation of our nocturnal visitors. I got there first, Al having lagged behind to take some pictures of our campsite, and the owner greeted me nervously, giving me the feeling he wished we’d taken off I moved into the restaurant room where two strangers stood beside a potbellied stove that had obviously been burning much of the night. I was not introduced.

“My camp is on the ledge and I heard noises in the night. Could that have been you and your friend?” I asked one of them, first in French, then in broken Spanish when I got no answer. He saw me looking at his boots.

“Perhaps. We might have walked by your camp on the way up here to go skiing.”

When Al came in with his camera the two strangers jerked away as if they’d seen a snake, and when he started taking pictures of the innkeeper’s family they walked outside. l let it pass, but later, when we stood outside admiring the parkling day, Al took out the camera to put on a filter and the two men vanished back into the house.

What was going on? What were they afraid of? I had a theory: smuggling, though prohibited, was still an important activity in Andorra, and perhaps …. Or was I letting my imagination get the best of me? Here we were, barely a week on the road, and I was seeing smugglers popping up all over the place. In any case, we’d never know, for we had to push on.

But we couldn’t. Our wheels had sunken in deep during the night and a coating of ice held them fast. We unhitched the trailer and threw the Land Cruiser into four-wheel drive, but the tires spun hopelessly We shoveled away with our entrenching tools, but the wheels only dug in deeper.

We’d have to try to winch our way out, but there was nothing to anchor the winch wire to, except the little tool shed, about thirty yards from us. It was old and rickety, and I didn’t know if it would take the tremendous strain. Yet there was no alternative. It was either that or spend Easter in Andorra.

Al turned on the motor and released the winch lock while I grabbed the hook and cable and pulled them around the shed. As I knelt on the far side of the shed to fasten the hook, I saw something green through a hole in the wall. I looked closer: it was two huge backpacks, bulging with contraband American cigarettes, partly covered by paper and loose boards. Now all my questions were answered.

Except one: how do we get out? If we pulled the shed down and exposed their hideout, who knew what the smugglers would do to us on that lonely mountain? But there was no other way out. I decided to take the chance and signaled Al to start winding in on the winch. The shed creaked and groaned as the cable went taut, but the car was still stuck fast.

I looked back toward the house and saw the strangers running at me with a pick and shovel in their hands, obviously upset. Al revved up the winch again, the cable shuddered, the shed trembled and the car seemed to pull forward a fraction. The two men were up to me now, one of them stopping close beside me with an ugly pick in his hand and the other trying to undo the winch hook. But it was too late for that. With a painful rumble, the winch drum heaved in on the cable again. A board popped loose and the flimsy shed started to tilt and seemed about to collapse-when the car leaped forward, free.

As we drove away Al turned to me. “You know, Steve,” he said, “it just goes to show how wrong a person can be. I really misjudged those guys. Wasn’t it nice of them to come out with tools to help you?’

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Our Moveable Feast

•••••

• Caption of first photo on page 22 of the printed publication:
  After unloading the Land Cruiser, camper-trailer, and a half ton of supplies and equipment from the Queen Elizabeth in Cherbourg, France, we drove the first of the 42,000 land miles that would take us completely around the world.

• Caption of second photo on page 22 of the printed publication:
  Willy Mettler, who joined us in Cherbourg, France, was killed in Cambodia. From left: Woodrow, Willy, Al and Steve. Manu joined us later in Spain.

The French customs officer in Cherbourg smiled in welcome as we heaved our suitcases on the quayside counter.

Fifteen minutes later, though we could barely see his head behind our mound of duffle bags and cartons and luggage, we could tell he was no longer smiling. And thirty minutes after that, by which time we’d unloaded the last of our gear from the Queen Elizabeth onto the counter, making a small mountain braced by an intertangle of hunting bows and fishing rods, and capped by a big, round archery target, the officer was yelling for his chief.

The chief looked at our six cases of insect repellent, our seven flashlights, and our eight dozen arrows and asked, “Perhaps messieurs plan to open a sport shop in Boulevard des Capucines?”

When Willy Mettler met us outside the customs shed and saw the pile of equipment, he looked even more distressed than the customs man.

“It won’t work,” he exclaimed.

“Don’t worry, Willy, we’ll manage,” I assured him. “We can throw most of the stuff in the camper and the Land Cruiser, and we can put the rest in your car until we get to Paris and get squared away.”

“No, it just won’t work,” he muttered, kicking the straw target. “This spare tire will never hold up.”

Unable to reach Paris that first night, we had to camp in dark chaos in a field off the highway. Disorder reigned. When I groped for a flashlight I got a handful of shoe polish, and when I wearily crept into my sleeping bag it turned out to be Al’s laundry sack. It was a rough night. I woke up with a bottle of borscht under my neck; Woodrow had slept on and crushed a month’s supply of paper cups; Al smelled like gefilte fish.

We stretched, rubbed our aches, and opened the camper door to savor the first of what we hoped would be several hundred glorious mornings on the road. We were camped in a manure pit and were the objects of the rapt attention of some sixty cows who’d come to make their morning’s contributions, and two puzzled farm hands who’d come to supervise. We moved out for Paris.

April in Paris was for us a quiet campsite by the edge of the Seine in the Bois de Boulogne. Mornings we’d emerge from our camper and stop to watch the coal-laden river barges come ’round the bend through the mist, while farther down the river, almost lost in the haze, the haunting outline of the Eiffel Tower challenged the lightening Paris sky. Through the stillness of the park came the sound of polo ponies warming up on the green at Longchamps, and the air carried the moist caress of warming earth. In the evenings, with the campfire thwarting the not wholly vanquished chill of winter and its ally breeze off the Seine, we watched the sunset and ate from plates heaped with fresh mushroom omelette and great hunks of soft crusted French bread which we washed down with glass after glass of warming red wine. Other campers wandered over to say hello, compare equipment, and share a glass of wine or offer a wedge of cheese. There was a family of eight in a Microbus from Munich, a bearded Australian with only a sleeping bag, two newlyweds from Holland in a too-small puptent, four college students from Copenhagen, a British professor and his wife. As night falls, Paris elsewhere becomes the City of Light, but in the Boi she remained calm and dark, and we’d sit around the fire, passing the good red wine around, telling tales-haltingly-in a mixture of each other’s tongues, and singing the universal drinking songs. Such was the Trans World Record Expedition’s home in Paris.

• Caption of second photo on page 24 of the printed publication:
  Before leaving Paris, Steve filled the Land Cruiser’s radiator with our sponsor’s anti/freeze coolant and sealed it shut for the duration of our journey.

We spent five days in Paris, buying auto insurance for Europe, taking photos for the sponsors, beginning the movie of our trip, getting Algerian visas, repacking our equipment, and holding a press conference under the auspices of the French National Tourist Association. The start of our trip was so deceptively peaceful that when a wire service reporter asked if I expected any trouble, I answered, “Maybe a flat tire or two or a case of dysentery, but that’s about it. We should be able to handle any difficulty that comes up.” I’d have to eat those words in a few days.

It was the 5th of April when we dismantled our camp in the Bois, said good-bye to our friends, and headed south. We moved through a green, green land along a road lined to the horizon with stately trees, and the country passed in a charming blur of cobbled medieval towns, of great cathedral towers in the grayish distance, of Chartres, Orleans, Blois, Tours, Chateauroux, Limoges, Loches, Toulouse. The pace was unhurried, the living easy, the meals simple-dairy-fresh cheese, farm-fresh eggs, bakery-fresh bread, fish we caught in the misty Loire at morning, and lots of thick red wine. I drove, Woodrow slept, Al read from our guidebook about the famous cathedrals and the wars, sieges, and intrigues they had once looked upon.

Today they look down on prosperous farms, growing towns, elegant chateaux and, sadly, here and there, a monstrosity of paint and chrome exhorting the driver to METTEZ UN TIGRE DANS VOTRE MOTEUR.

There are few changes in the French countryside as obvious as those in Paris, and the gas station was the worst offender. These glaring bastions stand out in harsh contrast to the sculptured beauty of the chateaux-studded countryside, though we had to accept them as a necessary evil in a country whose traditional bicycles have succumbed to the Citroen and the 4CV The thing we refused to accept as necessary, albeit an evil, was the price of gasoline-90 cents a gallon-most of it for De Gaulle’s taxes.

• Caption of the photo on page 26 of the printed publication:
  As we drove into the Pyrenees, we encountered rain, mist, fog and snow, which often required us to look out the side window for the road’s center line.

We were gradually working into our camping routine, slowly getting organized. Willy had driven ahead with our load of extra equipment to Spain, where we planned to resurrect my old Jeep to serve as a storage vehicle. No more borscht for pillows, and no more manure pits. We stopped at the registered campsites along the road. They were clean, and guarded, and had the last hot showers we’d see for weeks. There would be regular campsites down through Spain and into Morocco, but after that we’d be strictly on our own. That’s the way we’d planned it: a month of easy camping to get ourselves in shape before plunging into the rough going east of Algiers.

• Caption of the photo on page 27 of the printed publication:
  When driving in the Pyrenees became too hazardous, we opened our camper-trailer on a ledge off the side of the road .

One day south of Carcassone, passing through rising land toward Axles-Thermes in the foothills of the Pyrenees, we celebrated our first thousand miles by land, the first of 42,000, and the easiest. We were now well on our way to Spain and the gateway to Africa, far away from the traditional, easy motor route to the Orient that ran from Paris through Italy on to Istanbul.

At the gas station in Quillan, before the long haul into the mountains, we mettezed un tigre in our tank with the last of our French francs. Woodrow asked the attendant about the road ahead, particularly the pass at Port d’Envalira which, since Paris, we’d been warned might still be closed with snow.

“Non, messieurs, c’est impossible,” he replied, explaining that it was too early in the tricky spring season.

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Final Preparation, Publicity and Commencement

•••••

The week before we left, Al dragged me around to picture agents who wanted to market our photos, magazine editors who wanted to buy our stories, and sponsors who wanted to discuss our assignments. Most of the sponsors were reasonable, but a few of them came up with some weird projects. The public relations man on the Sea and Ski account shoved 500 mimeographed questionnaires into my hand and told me to “make a survey of what the natives use for suntan oil along your route. Also what brand of sunglasses they wear.” The press agent for Creslan fibres asked us to take pictures (to illustrate the wash-and-wearability of the clothes she had given us) whenever we came to a photogenic waterhole. “Especially the ones with crocodiles and elephants and interesting things like that,” she added.

But perhaps the wildest ideas of all came from Jane Kohler, the cute young publicity director of the Elgin National Watch Company. Jane wanted us to submerge our hands in snow to show how well her watches resisted the cold, and later reach into our campfire to show how well they resisted the heat. Then she wanted us to get ourselves lost “in the middle of some big desert” and find our way out by using an Elgin wrist watch as a compass, employing a Girl Scout technique she said she’d show us.

Her last idea was for some photo of us in New Guinea (which wasn’t even on our route), getting some shrunken heads (which they don’t have there) from some savage natives (which they certainly do have there), in exchange for one of her watches. “Those savage tribesmen are fascinated by little mechanical things,” she assured us with the authority of a National Geographic regular. “We’d like some good meaty pictures and movies of them threatening you with their spears until you make friends by giving them your wrist watches and one of our nice dashboard alarm clocks. Then ask the savages to give you a shrunken head in return. And then ship the head back to us. It will make a real eye-catching display.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said to Al when Jane had left the room for a minute. “We can’t go through with that contract.”

“It does have weak points, doesn’t it?” he admitted. “I’m worried about that shrunken head bit. How do we figure out its declared value for import duties?”

“Shrunken heads, suntan surveys, crocodile holes-” I muttered.

“Bourbon,” Al said.

“Bourbon?” I said, forgetting the head hunters.

“That’s right. We have an appointment over at the Bourbon Institute. I’ve arranged for them to ship cases to us all around the world.”

Jim Beam in Paris Old Granddad in Madrid … I.W Harper in Singapore What a life!

The three days before departure were the most frantic, and no matter how thoroughly we thought we had planned, there remained things to be done: cables to be answered, addresses to be changed, bank accounts to be closed, bank accounts to be opened, more vaccinations, shipping forms filled out, tickets picked up, traveler’s checks bought, equipment boxed, forwarding addresses distributed, and, of course, sponsors to be humored. The hours were not long enough, and Al and I worked through the nights. On the morning of the day before our departure, I’d barely gotten to sleep when the phone rang. I fumbled for the receiver.

“Schistosomiasis,” the voice on the phone shouted. “You must have the wrong number,” I answered, and was about to hang up.

“No, no. Schistosomiasis. It’s me, Krinski.”

“Krinski? Good God, man, you know it’s six o’clock in the morning.”

“I know. I know. But I had to read this to you. I wrote the AMA and told them about your trip and they sent me a list of all the diseases you and Al can get. Just listen to this: schistosomiasis, trachoma, typhoid fever, malaria, phlebotomus fever, amebiasis, filariasis, fasciolopsiasis, encephalitis, smallpox, yellow fever, clonorchiasis-“

I hung up. I was asleep less than an hour when the doorbell rang. I stumbled to it and a Western Union boy shoved a yellow envelope in my hand. It was a cable from Madrid:

• MEET YOU ALL IN CHERBOURG
  BON VOYAGE WILLY

I was happy Willy Mettler had gotten my letter about our arrival date and could meet us, but I was even happier to get back to bed. I’d been there only a few minutes when Al came dashing in waving a special delivery letter.

“It came. It came,” he shouted. “Operation Termite is on the move.”

It was the first I’d heard of Operation Termite, Al’s plan for getting us into Burma. It seems Al had convinced a curator at the American Museum of Natural History that he was a proficient, although amateur, entomologist. The letter was from the curator, authorizing us to collect termites on our expedition around the world, and especially in Burma, where the museum’s collection was weak. In truth, Al didn’t know a termite from a piece of fried zucchini-and I hoped the Burmese didn’t either.

I also hoped I could get some sleep, but in ten minutes Al was poking me awake. He told me he had to run some last-minute errands, and he asked me to have the car polished and to meet him in front of the main library on Fifth Avenue at exactly 10:30.

“Be sure to wear one of those Creslan sheepskin jackets,” he said, “and your Dobbs safari hat. I want to show some friends our gear.”

As I was leaving to get the car waxed, I heard him on the phone with Bob Levy, a publicity man at Ruder and Finn: “What’s that, Bob, another sponsor? Manischevitz … Matzos? … pictures with Arabs in front of the pyramids … no problem . . . gefilte fish … right!”

As I headed toward the library, I thought back to December and my wish for the unencumbered freedom of the open road. Now Al was turning this almost carefree vagabond into a traveling salesman, but at least I talked him out of his more grandiose schemes, like holding a pre-departure press conference.

At 10:25 I turned down Fifth Avenue from 50th Street. A block from the library I spotted an enormous traffic jam ahead and slowed down. Two men came running up, followed by half a dozen others, all waving their hands frantically, shouting, “This way. This way. Over here!”

People crowded the front steps of the library. The street was jammed with trucks and station wagons from radio and TV stations and newspapers. The sidewalk was packed with news photographers. Radio interviewers shoved mikes through the window, reporters jumped on the running boards, newsreel cameramen shouted for me to move forward, and there, in the middle of everything, jumping up and down, directing the whole operation, was Al decked out in a Mexican serape.

What was the purpose of our trip? one reporter asked. How many countries would we visit? asked another. What did we carry? How would we cross the oceans? How long would the trip take? What languages did we speak? Was I married? Did I think this would be my toughest trip? How much would it cost? Was it true I was collecting termites? Would I mind holding my head up for a picture?

That afternoon, after Woodrow had flown in from Illinois, the three of us drove the Land Cruiser and camper to the Cunard pier and photographed them as they were put aboard the Queen Elizabeth. We’d packed everything we could into the camper, but we still had 47 boxes and cartons of equipment at Al’s apartment which we’d have to take to the ship by taxi caravan the next day.

The next day was March 24th, our sailing date, and the New York newspapers carried the story of our trip. But they also carried another story. On the front page was the headline: WILDCAT TAXI STRIKE HITS CITY. There wasn’t a taxi on the streets, nor could we rent a car at any price, and our ship sailed in a few hours. It looked for a while as if the Trans World Record Expedition would be stuck in the middle of Manhattan, a notably inauspicious beginning for a trans-world record expedition.

Unless ….

This time it was I who awoke Krinski. “Schistosomiasis,” I shouted. “You can’t win your bet if we never get out of New York. You have to drive us to the ship!” And so he did.

After the hectic sailing party, Woodrow and Al and I walked up on deck. I leaned against the rail and watched the massive towers of Manhattan slip by. How long before we’d see them again? We were bound for strange lands and exotic places. What adventures lay in store for us?

I waved a last, long farewell to grand old Lady Liberty as we headed toward the Atlantic.

I turned to look at Al, and he was talking to a young blonde oil heiress from Texas.

I looked at Woodrow, and he was seasick.

I looked at the deck steward, and he handed me a radiogram:

• DON’T DRINK THE WATER-KRINSKI

The Trans World Record Expedition had begun.

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Impediments, Interested and Disinterested

•••••

By the time I returned to New York, Al’s apartment looked like a warehouse. Where the thick carpets had been and where the colored lights once glowed, now crates and cartons and boxes were piled to the ceiling Where the palm trees once stood, now fishing poles and archery bows and my three-foot key to Manawa leaned against the walls. A striped awning stretched between the couch and the loaded-rocking chair. There wasn’t a seat in the place left for sitting, and when I went to hang my coat in the jam-packed closet, I got hit with forty-four pairs of Thom McAn’s-maybe even the brake shoes.

Al was busy in his living room testing out the Poptent and repacking the first aid kit. Thermos bottles floated in the bathtub beside the neglected palm trees. Lampettes were plugged into all the light sockets, and the shortwave set was picking up belly dance music from Baghdad. When I asked Al for a cup of coffee, he told me to use the gasoline stove he was testing in the bedroom. “Then come back here when you’re finished,” he said. “I want to try these inflatable splints on you.” All through this, the doorbell and phone never stopped ringing-sponsors; press agents, newspapermen, and people who wanted to join the expedition.

The building superintendent barged in without knocking and bore down on me. “You’ve blocked the entrance with that damn Jeep and that damn big whatever it is,” he said.

“Yes, yes, I was just going to move it.”

“And tell Mr. Podell that he’s blocked the incinerator chute again.”

When I got back from moving the car and camper, Sandy Krinski was climbing over a mound of boxes into the apartment. Krinski is a comedy writer and an old friend of Al’s, and when Al told him he was planning to drive around the world, he said it was the funniest thing he had ever heard all year. He rushed over to talk him out of it.

“Tell me,” he asked, “is Al really serious about this trip?”

“Why shouldn’t he be?”

“But you can’t go around the world.” “Magellan did it 400 years ago.”

“Yeah, and he died, didn’t he? Besides, look at this ridiculous itinerary of yours. How are you going to cross all those deserts? You’ll fry up. And what about the monsoons and snowstorms?”

I explained to Krinski that we’d taken all that into consideration, that by sailing at the end of March we should be through the Pyrenees as soon as the snows melted in the mountain passes, and across the deserts of Africa in early May before they got too hot, and through India just before the monsoon hit in June.

But Krinski was not convinced. “Listen, Al,” he said, “I’ve known you since we were kids. Don’t do it. You can’t drive around the world these days, and I’m too busy to attend a funeral in Lower Slobbovia.”

“That’s surprising; you always look like you’re dressed for one.”

”I’ll bet you never make it.”

“How about two steak dinners?” Al asked.

“OK. But if you guys try this, I’ll never collect.” “I know you won’t,” Al said. “We will.”

Two busy days passed before we saw Krinski again. He came into the apartment waving a sheet of paper and beaming victoriously. ”Ah ha!” he said, pointing to the bows in the corner. “A lot of good those will do you. You’ll need machine guns. A company of Marines! The whole U.S. Army! Just listen to this news.”

He tossed his coat over a carton of bug spray and unfolded his paper. “Yesterday there were big riots in Morocco, 25 killed and hundreds injured. Algeria has begun a new propaganda campaign against the United States. The rest of the Arab world is the worst since the Suez crisis. Why? Germany has announced plans to recognize Israel and everybody’s in an uproar. There were riots in Damascus, Yemen, Cairo, all over. Farther east, Pakistan’s president-remember, our old ally?-is now in Peking, making some sort of deal with the Reds. And Vietnam-shall I take the dinner now or go on?”

“Go on,” we said.

“Okay. Vietnam. We’ve already got 23,000 military advisers there. Another 3,000 shipping out this month. And there’s talk it may become a full-scale war. A lot of good your bow and arrows will do you. And Indonesia. Forget about wearing those straw hats on Bali-did you know that yesterday mobs in Jakarta sacked our embassy and broke into our ambassador’s house? And they burned the USIS library. At the same time Sukarno stepped up his campaign against Malaysia. You’re supposed to drive from Bangkok to Singapore? Well, Sukarno’s got guerrillas all over that road, blowing up bridges and shooting up cars.

“One of the papers totaled it all up. There’s open warfare in 35 countries in the world right now and 38 million men under arms. And, what’s more important, there are major disturbances in 29 of the 34 countries along your route. I’d like my steaks well-done.”

”And we’ll take ours rare, Sandy.”

Sandy Krinski wasn’t the only one who thought we’d never make it. When Al approached the photographers who worked for him at Argosy, looking for someone to join the expedition to take photos for our sponsors and magazine articles, none of them were willing to risk it.

We could be our own photographers, but to capture the real essence of the expedition, we needed someone whose only function would be to take pictures. On my trip across Russia, I’d picked up an energetic-alma t rambunctious-Swiss photographer, Willy Mettler. I knew Willy was now footloose in Madrid, and I knew he’d be interested in our expedition, so after weighing and balancing the alternatives, I cabled him. Three days later he accepted.

We had two weeks left. It was time to attend to one of the most important items on our list, and one we had deliberately left for last, obtaining visas. With the exception of the European countries, nearly every nation on our route required visas. Most of them have expiration dates, so if one gets them too far in advance they can expire before he ever reaches his destination. On the other hand, I knew that it was risky to wait until we were next to a country before applying, because neighboring nations were often enemies, and there might be no visa office in the country in which we found ourselves that represented the one to which we wanted to go.

Al, who is Jewish, was worried about getting visas for the Arab nations since the more fanatic ones absolutely forbid Jews to enter. He applied to the Arab consulates on Ash Wednesday, a smudge of charcoal prominent on his forehead. Not only did he get all his visas, but later that evening I found him at his apartment cuddled on the couch with the receptionist from the Jordanian legation.

The phone was ringing as I entered. It was Woodrow Keck, a reporter at a small Mid-Western paper. Two weeks before he’d driven through a snowstorm from Illinois to Washington to ask me if he could join the expedition. I’d told him then I didn’t really think we needed an extra man. He persisted. Though he didn’t look like the adventurous type, he was so sincere and eager that I’d agreed to let him call me later in New York to see if we had any openings. I hadn’t quite forgotten about him, for I had come to realize that with another person to handle the minor details we would have more freedom for our own duties. Despite a few misgivings, when I saw that he was still eager, I told him he could join the expedition.

“I only hope you know what you’re getting into,” I said.

He assured me he did, and agreed to join us in New York the day before departure.

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Needed Resources and Logistics

•••••

My proposed route would abandon the tourist shortcut through Greece and Turkey. Instead, we would drive across all of North Africa from Tangier to Cairo, through the Sinai Peninsula into the Middle East and India, all the way to Singapore. Then, instead of shipping to California as previous expeditions had done, we would continue our drive. We would cross Indonesia, hopefully as far as Bali, next ship to Australia and drive across it, then ship to Panama and from there back to New York through Central America. Our non-repetitive mileage would be approximately 24,000 miles, a new, clear, and unbreakable record. Optimistically, we decided to call ourselves the Trans World Record Expedition.

The opportunity to set a record particularly pleased Al, who, as an editor, was friendly with most of the major public relations agencies and was certain they’d be willing to help us if we had a good peg-as he told me they say on Madison Avenue-to hang the trip on. An attempt to set a record for the longest auto journey around the world was ideal. All I could do was hope that he was right and cross fingers, for we still needed a new car and a ton of equipment and thousands of dollars to make the trip.

The biggest problem was an automobile. I had an old Jeep in Spain but there was only a slim chance that it would make it around the world without breaking down. Nor could we rely on any standard automobile or truck. Because of the extremely rough terrain we planned to cross, we had to have a rugged four-wheel drive vehicle. From experience, I preferred the Toyota Land Cruiser. As it turned out, Al had worked on several projects with Chief Samuelson, Toyota’s public relations man, and was certain he’d lend us a receptive ear if anyone would. Al wrote Samuelson and offered to test one of his Land Cruisers on the world’s roughest roads, on the world’s longest auto trip, and to furnish him with performance reports and pictures that he could use in his publicity and advertising campaigns.

Samuelson bought our idea. It fitted perfectly with Toyota’s slogan that the Land Cruiser could “Go Anywhere.” Not only did his client agree to give us a new Land Cruiser and complete spare parts, but they also promised to ship us several thousand dollars’ worth of color movie film to record the trip.

In the meantime, I had approached Carl Dretzke, an old friend and president of Trade Wind Campers, a large camper-trailer manufacturer in Manawa, Wisconsin. A camper-trailer is a big box on wheels hauled behind a car. It can carry and store a thousand pounds of gear, and can be opened up in five minutes into a canvas house that sleeps about six. When I told Dretzke that we planned to circle the globe with a camper, something no one had ever done, he immediately agreed to give us one. I flew to the Trade Winds factory, where, with half of Manawa (pop. 1037) in attendance, Dretzke presented me with his biggest model right off the assembly line; then Manawa’s mayor, George Jensen, gave me a three-foot long, gold-painted plywood key to the city (which came in handy on a cold night in the Himalayas).

Once we had our car and trailer set, the rest of the sponsors came quickly. After writing 300 letters, making 500 phone calls, and planting several articles in industry trade papers, Al had 25 sponsors, all of whom gave us equipment we needed and publicity fees which ranged from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars.

Nearly all our requirements were filled: the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company offered to equip our Land Cruiser with a set of high-flotation tires especially designed for use in mud, snow, and on rough roads. The Thermos Division of King-Seeley loaded us up with picnic chests, gasoline stoves, lanterns, vacuum bottles and two fast-erecting Poptents. The Creslan Division of American Cyanamid agreed to outfit us with raincoats, jackets, sport shirts, knit shirts, insulated underwear, regular underwear, socks, gloves and trousers. Sandy Teller, the PR man for The Hat Corporation of America, insisted we take cowboy hats and tropical hats, safari hats and rain hats, cold weather hats and desert hats, even a top hat. The PR man for Thom McAn gave us 44 pairs of shoes, “everything but the brake shoes,” he joked.

Elgin weighed in with a dozen wrist watches, two auto clocks and a shortwave radio. Union Carbide supplied four cartons of Eveready batteries, seven flashlights and lanterns, eight cases of Glad Wrap, and 100 aerosol cans of everything from shave cream to dog repellent to an insultingly large supply of deodorant. The Ben Pearson Company sent five hunting bows and 100 arrows, plus quivers, repair kits, and a big straw target. Johnson’s Wax sent twenty cases of insect repellent, insecticide, disinfectant, car wax, and shoe polish.

Sea and Ski provided sunglasses and suntan oils; Lampette sent portable high-intensity lamps that worked from the auto cigarette lighter socket; Dow Chemical filled our Land Cruiser’s radiator with antifreeze and desert coolant; Dow-Corning gave special chemicals to keep the car engine dry and functioning in the monsoon climates; Globe Rubber furnished Boor mats and mudguards; and Macmillan Ring-Free Oil undercoated the car and agreed to supply us with motor oil, grease, and conditioners around the world; Niagara Company sent a portable automobile massager that could relax the driver or keep him awake, and Honeywell added three Pentax cameras. And there was more: a complete set of pots and pans, a year’s supply of paper cups and plates, four Scotchply fishing rods, six Zebco reels, an assortment of tapes from recording to electrical, and even cigarette lighters that worked from solar energy.

We had sponsors for almost everything we needed, although a few companies turned us down. The toilet tissue manufacturers, for example, rejected our proposal after they received Al’s form letter which offered to take pictures and movies of their products being used in a variety of exotic locations.

In the end, we had more than $10,000 worth of equipment and supplies, and $15 ,000 in cash from 25 sponsors, all in exchange for publicity rights to our names, pictures, and testimonials.

Several companies, declining sponsorship, still sent samples of their products. Upjohn, figuring that likely we wouldn’t be eating too well, sent three thousand vitamin pills. Johnson & Johnson, knowing we’d be doing some hard traveling, sent a first aid pouch and a snake- bite kit, and a note expressing the hope that we didn’t have to use either. Allied Chemical showed both its charity and pessimism with a set of inflatable splints. And Travelers Insurance Company, after rejecting our application for a policy, sent us a half dozen of their famous red umbrellas.

Between the corporate givings and misgivings, we were fully equipped and bankrolled. In fact, I’m sure that few private expeditions in history have been so completely outfitted.

After carefully studying the seasons and weather conditions along our route, I determined that we should sail before the end of March. I booked us on the Queen Elizabeth, which sailed for Cherbourg on March 24th. That left us less than a month to prepare.

While Al worked with the sponsors, I attended to the dozens of details necessary for getting a trans-world expedition on the road. On the front of the Land Cruiser, I installed a powerful Ramsey winch, in case we had to haul ourselves out of a ditch or up a cliff. I put locks on the hood and gas tank to prevent pilferage, and welded a ball hitch to the rear of the vehicle for connecting the camper. Bill Mitchell of Toyota helped me install Warn Hubs on the front wheels, special devices which would enable us to disengage the front axle on smooth roads to conserve gasoline. I then drove the Land Cruiser to Washington to break it in, and there attended to two important matters. At the American Automobile Association, after putting up a $2,000 bond, I was issued a carnet du passage, a document without which international automobile travel is almost impossible; it guarantees to foreign countries that the owner of the automobile entering that country will not attempt to sell that car there in violation of their import taxes. The other matter was Burma, the big question mark on our trip. Since its takeover by General Ne Win, Burma had severed her connections with the rest of the world, but so quietly that few are aware of it-the few who try to get in. She has forbidden travel and thwarted tourists, and she has not allowed anyone to drive across her in years. I applied for permission at the Burmese Embassy and was told they would process my request and give me an answer in New Delhi.

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The Beginning

•••••

It began on a gray December day in New York. I was sitting in the offices of Argosy, overlooking the dismal winter scene twenty floors below. The magazine was publishing the story of my trip across Russia, and Al Podell, the picture editor, had just finished going over the layout with me.

Al asked what I planned next.

“Another auto trip,” I said. “This time completely around the world.”

I saw him looking at me strangely.

“After Europe,” I remember explaining, ”I’ll cut across the top of Africa, camp in the desert, share meals with roving bands of nomads. Then Cairo. I’ll pitch camp in the shadow of the Pyramids, cooled by the evening breeze off the Nile … the Great Salt Desert of Persia … mosques and minarets … Baghdad … wilds of Afghanistan … the twists and bends of the Khyber Pass where the Mongols and British fought and where fierce Pathan warriors still roam unchallenged … two weeks later bathe in the Ganges … two more weeks and I’ll be climbing the Himalayas … then the jungles of Thailand, camp at the edge of a forest pool where elephant and tigers drink together …. “

I rambled on about Tangier and Tahiti, Calcutta and Kathmandu, Bangkok and Singapore, sights that I had seen and others that I longed to see. A faraway look came into Al’s eyes, a look I had seen many times on the faces of those to whom I spoke of my adventures. The words that followed were also familiar.

“I wish I could go with you.”

People had often asked if they could accompany me. There’s something magic about the name Tahiti or the vision of a white sail upon the sea. Call it romance or a dream, or anything you like, but it awakens in every man at the wail of a train in the night or the blast of an ocean liner leaving port. Somewhere beyond the horizon lies romance, and every heart yearns to find it.

The world opened to me when I was a young boy on a farm in Pennsylvania. It opened with books of adventure and travel, for those were the golden days when a young reporter named Lowell Thomas wrote about exotic places like Timbuktu and Kathmandu, and Richard Halliburton crossed the Alps on an elephant and swam the Bosporus. To me, these places and the lives these men led spelled romance. But when the real world came leaping at me, it was like the earth coming up to meet a skydiver. There was no casual introduction; it came up suddenly-with World War II.

I left high school to enlist in the Marines, and at seventeen sailed west to find romance. My ocean liner was a troop ship and my Shangri-La was the shell-torn island of Okinawa. When the fighting ended, the Marines sent me to Peking, and I discovered the cruel world that was postwar China. But somehow I couldn’t accept the idea that romance was dead. I went to Paris with the U.S. Naval Attaché and there decided upon a diplomatic career. I went to Washington, took my discharge, was graduated from Georgetown University, and spent the next few years in government service. But the dreams that colored my childhood could not be forgotten, and armed with nothing but the wish to discover the world’s ends, I set forth.

During the next decade the world became my backyard. When I had to, I taught school but I much preferred other kinds of work-surveying the Chocho Jungles of Colombia, culling the deer herd in the Ureweras of New Zealand, crewing on copra schooners across the Pacific. I crossed Afghanistan by camel caravan and hunted kangaroo for their hides in Australia. In a very deep sense, I got to know and love the world.

After circling the globe four times, I realized that no matter how I had traveled, whether by ship or bus or train or plane, there was always something lacking. I concluded that there was only one way to see the world, and that was to drive, to be free from flight schedules and familiar routes. I wanted to get to the world’s heart, far off the tourist track, to the untouched villages, the nomad camps, the jungle ruins.

I wanted to really get to know it, and if this meant following caravan routes long forgotten, traversing trackless deserts, crossing lofty mountain passes and fording unbridged rivers-I wanted to try it.

After driving a Jeep 18,000 miles across Europe and the Soviet Union, I knew I was right. I decided to drive completely around the world. The only thing standing in my way, as I was explaining to Al Podell, was $20,000.

“Twenty thousand dollars. Where you going to get it?” Al asked.

“You’re buying the story, aren’t you?” “What about the other $19,000?”

”I’ll try to work something out,” I said.

“I know some people who might be interested in helping you. I’ll call them and let you know.”

Al didn’t mention again that he wanted to go with me, and I once more realized it is not within the realm of possibility for all men to cast off their jobs and homes and fortunes-to- be-made and turn to adventure and the unknown, except in dreams. But dreams are what men are made of. Two weeks later in California I had a long distance call from New York. When I heard Al’s voice over the wire I knew he had passed beyond dreaming. “Steve, listen. I want to go with you.”

Now I hoped he hadn’t passed too far. I emphasized that the trip would have hardships as well as grandeur, that a breakdown in the desert could mean disaster, that bandits still roamed the mountain passes in Afghanistan, that there would be thirst and hunger and the possibility of epidemic and disease in India and the Far East. Al listened quietly, and after I finished, he said he still wanted to go. “You know, I’ve been at Argosy four years,” he said, “and I’ve met just about every adventurer in the business. They all come to me with their stories and plans. Guys want to go by bicycle from Capetown to Cairo, to dog-sled across Greenland, to go pogo-sticking up the Amazon, even to drive around the world. But I’ve never been tempted to go with any of them.”

In a sense I could understand why he never had been tempted. Al was the youngest picture editor of any major magazine in America, and ran several prosperous trade newspapers in his spare time. His apartment on East 55th Street was a luxurious four-room bachelor’s layout with palm trees and oil paintings and colored lights where he entertained some of the prettiest models and actresses in New York. You might say that Al had everything a young man could want, so why would he be tempted when I talked about the blazing heat of the Great Syrian Desert?

“It’s your enthusiasm, Steve. It’s contagious. You make the world sound more exciting than anyone I’ve ever met. You’ve convinced me that I’ve got to see what it’s really like. I want to go with you.”

“Well, I hope you like to drive.”

“Drive is right,” Al said. “Did you know your route would be the longest automobile trip ever made around the earth?” Later, back in New York, I studied the accounts that Al had gathered of past trans-world expeditions. He noted that they had traveled between 19,000 and 21,000 miles by land, and all had gone by one of two routes. The expeditions in the early part of the century, including the great race of 1908, had all crossed the width of the United States and driven through Manchuria, China and Russia to France. After World War II and the descent of the Iron and Bamboo Curtains, this route became impossible. In the twenty years since then, only two expeditions had been able to drive completely around the world: the Oxford-Cambridge group in 1955, and Peter Townsend the year after. They had angled down from France through Greece and Turkey, driven on to India and Southeast Asia, and from there shipped directly to the United States. In all cases, the non-repetitive mileage (eliminating sidetrips, backtracking, indirect routing and city travel) never exceeded 21,000. The route I had chosen would, Al pointed out, better all past marks by 3,000 miles and set a record for the longest non-repetitive automobile trip ever made around the earth.

• Photo caption on page 7 of the printed publication:
  Left, the 1908 New York to Paris race. Right, the Stars and Stripes that went around the world aboard the famous Thomas Flyer touring car.

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The End

•••••

We are in a cellar in Dacca. We know no one; we are strangers in the city. Air-raid sirens are howling. The skies echo with the drumming of approaching warplanes, and we listen for the bombs to fall. Outside, vigilantes are marching through the streets with sticks, beating on the gates. They have armed themselves to defend their sacred Pakistan, which has just gone to war with India. There is hysteria throughout the city. The people race through the streets, destroying alien property, pulling foreigners from their cars. A woman is dragged from her car and beaten. The USIS library is smashed.

We have entered the cellar by a narrow stairway from the house. Other steps lead to a door outside, but it is boarded up now and only admits the sounds from the street: “Americans are no longer our friends.” “You have armed India against us.” The walls are moist, and when we lean against them our clothes stick to the bricks. There are benches against the walls, and we sit on them, tense and disillusioned. The only light comes from a gas lantern hung from the rafters.

The cellar has become our refuge-and our prison. We cannot leave, for they know that we have come from their enemy, India. And they have seen us taking pictures inside their Defense Ministry. We have been interrogated twice already, and threatened. A car from the Pakistan secret police follows us wherever we go.

But even if we could leave, there is no place to go, for Dacca is cut off from the rest of East Pakistan, and East Pakistan is cut off from the world. No planes are flying-only warplanes-and the harbors are all blockaded. We have a car, a car that we have driven halfway around the world to Dacca, but the roads are flooded by the monsoon rains. There are no bridges across the swollen rivers of East Pakistan, only ferries, and the Army has confiscated them all. So even if we did escape the cellar and the city, we could not drive more than ten miles before being blocked by an uncrossable river. We have tried and we know. And if we could cross? There is still no escape, still no place to go, no near safe haven. To the east there is Burma, whose borders have been sealed for years; foreigners are forbidden to enter. To the south there is only the Bay of Bengal, blockaded. To the north, Red China-and Indian Assam where the border has become a battlefield. And to the west there is invading India, from which we have just come, but to which we cannot return. We can only listen to her bombers overhead as the air-raid sirens wail.

Is this, we wonder, the finish for us and our expedition that set out to challenge the world? Is this the end of the road?

Was our friend Lord Jim wrong when he said, “Who needs a road?” or was Krinski right, Krinski and the others who said it was impossible, a long time before, back when it all began ….

• Photo caption on page xiv of the printed publication.
  Albert Podell, co-leader and director of photography of the Trans World Record Expedition, filming in North Africa in the early months of our adventure. Al had been a nonfiction editor for Playboy, and then picture story editor of Argosy magazine, where he edited Steve’s travel-adventure articles. He left Argosy to join Steve on this epic motor journey around the world.

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Introduction to the 1999 Edition
We Find We Were Last Over Land
•••••

When Harold Stephens and I formed our expedition and set out in 1965 to drive around the world, we had two goals. First, we wanted to drive in a west-to-east direction wherever there was land on which to drive. And, second, by selecting a route that was closer to the Equator (where the Earth bulges) than the routes taken by the handful of expeditions that had previously driven around the Earth, we sought to set a record, an unbeatable record, for the longest such journey ever made. In quest of those goals, we crossed five continents, traversed six of the world’s most inhospitable deserts, and drove from the lowest place on Earth, at the Dead Sea, to within sight of the world’s highest, in Nepal. After many mishaps and adventures-bombings, burglaries, breakdowns, floods, fires, sandstorms, stonings, diseases, wars, and romantic entanglements-we achieved both those goals and lived to tell the tale.

Our story, Who Needs A Road?, was published in 1968 to unexpected critical acclaim; reviewers found it “enthralling,” “wonderfully adventurous,” and “rollicking,” although some said we were crazy to have done what we did. Who Needs A Road? became our publisher’s second best-selling book of the year behind The Joy of Cooking. It was a distant second, to be honest, but sales were strong enough that we were able to pay off our medical bills and reimburse the U. S. Air Force for rescuing us when we’d reached what seemed to be the end of the road. Steve (he doesn’t like to be called Harold) had enough left from royalties to return to Asia and build a 71-foot sailing schooner, and I had enough to take almost all of the tall blondes in Manhattan to dinner (at third-rate Chinese restaurants.)

Despite frequent requests through the years about republishing Who Needs A Road?-from travel/adventure fans who were reluctantly paying more than a hundred dollars a copy to rare book dealers, from librarians who lamented that collectors were swiping copies from their libraries, and from young explorers who wanted it as a guide for planning and financing their own expeditions-we didn’t consent because we regarded the trip as a past part of our lives and had each turned our attention to new pursuits.

But now, almost 35 years after our expedition ended, we have consented to the republication because we have been made aware that we have achieved another distinction, although not one we sought or desired: We are the last people to drive completely around the world.

Today’s cars and tires are stronger, and today’s adventurers are every bit as fit, resourceful, and determined as we were, but because of the international situation, it just can’t be done today. Political animosities, civil wars, virulent ultranationalism, militant religious fundamentalism, and several fanatical dictators have closed the borders, severed the roads, barred or trapped the car-borne travelers, and caused such severe and dangerous problems that none but the most death-defying daredevils would contemplate this journey today. And I believe even these intrepid dreamers would give it up as impossible.

Look at your morning newspaper, and then at the map of the route we took, and the reason we are the last ones over land becomes readily apparent: Algeria is in turmoil, with Islamic fundamentalists having killed 70,000 people since 1992, a disproportionate number of them foreigners. Libya, ruled by the xenophobic and unpredictable Mohamar Qaddafi, is off limits to Americans. Egypt is beset by religious extremists who recently slaughtered 58 tourists in the Valley of the Kings in 1997. Although Lebanon is recovering from its brutal religious civil war, it is only the invasive presence there of some 40,000 Syrian troops which maintains the uneasy calm. Iraq is ruled by Saddam Hussein, one of the most ruthless dictators in modern times, and his “Mother of All Wars” and his unwillingness to give up his weapons of mass destruction, has cut Iraq off from most trade with other nations, and certainly from tourist travel. The Iraq-Iran border is today an impassable maze of mine fields, bunkers, and barricades, remnants of the brutal 1980-1988 war between these two countries which killed more than one million people, a war which is far from resolved. Iran is still controlled by the type of zealots who imprisoned 52 of our diplomats for 444 days in contravention of all international rules. Moving on to Afghanistan-although you can’t readily move on to Afghanistan-that ruggedly beautiful country is riven by fighting between three warring armies, each headed by a strongman whose goals and philosophies are anathema to the other.

A bit further east, Pakistan and India regularly exchange artillery salvos and frequently close their land borders. At any minute the situation could become worse than we found it when we shuddered in an East Pakistani (now Bangladesh) cellar while Indian bombs exploded around us.

Burma is a dictatorship, isolated by the community of nations, ruled by a military junta which has changed its name to Myanmar and has closed all its land borders to foreigners.

Singapore withdrew from the Malaysian Confederation during our journey, and recently she and Malaysia have been feuding about trade, water rights, air rights, power supplies and alleged ethnic discrimination.

As this is written, an uneasy peace prevails along our route home in Nicaragua, in El Salvador, and in Guatemala.

Their recent civil wars are on hold, their guns silent, their death squads inactive, their ruthless exterminations halted. But the huge gap between the rich and the poor has created a tremendous increase in violent crime, making land travel problematic. Crime has also increased in Mexico-more in the last four years than in the previous 60-and an Indian insurrection in the state of Chiapas, which borders Guatemala, has caused many deaths and road closings.

Taken together, there are today a dozen countries along the route of the Trans-World-Record Expedition in which you either can’t drive at all, or do so at great personal risk. The journey we made simply cannot be made today.

Before anyone can make that drive, each of those situations will have to be resolved and those countries brought back into the community of nations truly at peace. That could be a very, very long time. Until then, we remain the last to have traveled around the world by land.

And for that reason-as a witness to the unreason in a supposedly modern and civilized world which makes travel by land far more dangerous and forbidding than Marco Polo found it seven hundred years ago, and in the hope that peace, tolerance, social justice and equality will prevail, and that around-the-world travel by land soon will resume-we have agreed to the republication of our book.

For this republication, we’ve included several corrections that were in the final page proofs of the original version, but were inadvertently omitted on publication, corrected some grammatical errors and clarified some ambiguous words. Other than that, we haven’t changed a word of the text; so you will find our hopes, opinions, phraseology, observations, and predictions (even when embarrassingly inaccurate, outmoded or politically incorrect) exactly as we expressed them 35 years ago. We have added an extensive Epilogue to provide an update on some of the people, places, and events we encountered.

We hope you enjoy traveling with us.

Albert Podell
New York, New York
February, 1999

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