Stuck In the Middle With You
- Isaac Gosling
- Jul 3, 2016
- 3 min read
So when I said it is just a Beginning, Middle, and End I think I may have made a massive miscalculation on quite how huge the middle was/is/will be. Having defined the Beginning as until we signed up in October, and with the End kind of defining itself as when we get there, I’ve left myself with the small matter of 11 months and 11,000 miles of Middle. That’s a lot of Middle as I see it. So I guess to start I’ll just do so far, and elaborate in other most likely slightly ranting posts about VISA’s and paperwork and all the things I hate.
The Middle
Even now, two weeks before we leave, I’m not sure I have quite come to terms with what exactly we are trying to do. So safe to say the first week or so after signing up I really had no idea! Where do you usually start with a holiday? Book some accommodation? Okay so that will be 2 months’ worth of campsites/hostels/hotels, each in a different place across more than 20 countries and we have no idea when exactly we will get to any of them. “Maybe we will do that another day.” Flights then? “Oh…”
So after being stumped for a while on how on earth to begin we figured we best start looking for a car; and as with anything once you get started things sort of just keep ticking over. Which they did, roughly in the order: car, charities, route, VISA’s, stuff. As I said more on all of these later but I guess a brief summary now makes sense. The car we bought is a 2003 Perodua Kenari 989cc GX Estate. Don’t be fooled into thinking it is relatively spacious by the term ‘Estate’; it seems in Malaysia there isn’t an advertising standards agency.
Now the important bit. The charities. As part of the event each team is obligated to raise for the official charity of the rally, but then can raise for as many other charities as they wish as long as they raise a minimum of £1000 total. The official charity is Cool Earth, a charity which works with indigenous tribes to protect rainforest regions across the globe. We’d never heard of them before but having read about their work they are obviously a great charity. On top of this we decided to raise for just one other charity; Cancer Research UK. Largely chosen by myself so again more on this later.
Okay getting towards long now so I’ll try and speed up. The route isn’t easy to speed up though. In short it’s over 11,000 miles of driving and passes through somewhere between 20-25 countries depending on how wiggly we feel in Europe. Unfortunately, 7 of these countries require VISA’s. This really was the most painful part of the Middle, and I will rant about this for sure at some point so bear with me whichever day that is.
So much effort for such a small bit of paper!
Lastly then, the other ‘stuff’. I guess that’s where we are at now. Trying to prepare for a million scenarios that could possibly happen, realising we don’t know what 999,999 of these are, realising that the one we do know (getting straight there with no complications) is basically impossible, and then giving up.
More to come on the Middle as it unfolds but don’t hold out for any true preparedness.
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