Lanterna Rally

Author: Laura Tong

Publisher: Laura Tong

Published: 2014-06-07

Total Pages: 84

ISBN-13:

Please note this is a three part series - this is part one - London to Iran. This journey was undertaken in a time without mobile phones, without the Internet, without digital cameras and wireless connections. Without blue tooth and denture whitening, Skype, hype and liposuction. In a time when a blackberry was a fruit, an Apple a vegetable and a nasty rash and boils, incurable. Indeed without the aid of most of the critical inventions of the past 15 years. That such a monumental odyssey was possible at all in such primitive times may be the cause of disbelief but despite the catalog of disasters, bad decisions and wild swings from feeling like intrepid explorers to feeling like a luxury hotel with en suite everything we did set out from London one morning on a tandem and arrive eighteen months later in Sydney, almost in one piece. Our route took us across Western and what was then still Eastern Europe and over the Bosphorus into Asia and onto the Silk Route made famous by Marco Polo. Despite initially being refused a visa and the British Consulate warning us not to go, Iran followed Turkey and then Pakistan and the Himalayas into North China. Three months later we emerged to continue into Thailand, through Malaysia and Indonesia and then eventually across to Australia and down to Sydney, 32,248 kilometers of cycling later. In between were celebrity sponsorship, fifteen countries, a failed attempt to cross a war zone, the highest road pass in the world, two arrests, crashes, breakdowns, dengue fever, earth tremors, fires, an ambush and stoning in a remote Himalayan valley and a game of cat and mouse with the Chinese Public Security Bureau. Recognized by Guinness as a World Record, we’ve been trading on this ridiculous feat of deluded endeavor ever since and Wild Dogs and Nutters is on its way to being the silliest and most inspiring feel good account of resculpting one’s buttocks across 32,000 kilometers of some of the world’s most extreme landscapes. Please note this is a three part series - this is part one - London to Iran.