OverlandSphere
Overland Travel, Expedition & Adventure Information for 4x4, motorcycle and truck overlanders
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If you’re reading this blog then chances already know the whole It’s on the Meter story… but just in case here’s a quick recap:In 2011 three friends, Johno, Paul and Leigh drove a 20 year-old black taxi called Hannah around the world. We spent 15 months travelling through over 50 countries and set two new World Records.Along the way we…
By Johno Ellison After nearly fifteen months, over 43,000 miles, 8000 litres of diesel, fifty countries and four continents the moment that we’ve been simultaneously looking forward to and dreading is finally nearly here! In few short hours we will be driving Hannah off the Eurotunnel train and back onto British soil after having driven all the way around the…
By Paul Archer Twitter @paul_k_archer Daytona Beach, Yeaaahhgh!Sorry, we are still really behind on our blogs. Sadly we are not still in America, in fact we are in Germany and will be finishing the expedition in 5 days time, back in London. We will catch up when we can though! Orlando, the home of the shiny plastic epitome of…
By Paul Archer Twitter: @Paul_K_Archer Apologies for the delay with the blogs. We’re actually in the Ukraine at the moment, but we will catch up with the blogs in a linear manner over the next few weeks… The expedition will come to an end in London on the 12th of May. If you’re about and would like to come down,…
This leg of the journey involved the worst roads, the worst weather, the worst driving and the most incredible scenery! India, Nepal, Tibet, China and Laos. All of this was filmed on little flip cameras, so it is quite shaky, but it gives a good taste of what it is like to drive across the Himalayas. This also contains the…
By Johno Ellison Johno Ellison has spent the last fourteen months driving a twenty year old Black Cab 40,000 miles around the world breaking World Records for both the longest ever and highest ever taxi journey. I’m not a huge fan of those list-style blogs that tell you in, in ten easy steps, how you too can quit your job,…
Here’s a video on the work we did on Hannah when we reached The States. It also introduces our new sponsor, Get Taxi, a lot. Check them out on www.gettaxi.com to get the app.There, that should pay our bills for a bit :) …Get Taxi.…
Caution:If you are about to eat anything remotely unhealthy then please skip toparagraph 8, it will put you off your food, trust me. After nothing happened in Vegas theprevious night, the obvious decision the morning after was to head to the‘Heart attack grill’. The main purpose of this restaurant is to compact as manycalories as humanly possible into a burger;…
By Drew (Woody) Wendeborn Drew is one of the two Texans joined the whole taxi trip for a short while. Here’s his take on a cab ride through the Western USA Blogger has again messed up our pictures so check out the back up complete with pictures here: http://itsonthemeter.posterous.com/a-texan-tag-along I was shaking like an epileptic when I was introduced to…
There’s a problem with the pictures in this blog, please see the mirrored version here: http://itsonthemeter.posterous.com/the-west-coast-stuck-in-san-fran-garage-surfi# By Johno “I’m afraid that Hefenweissen is a Premium Bottle and so isn’t available on our Happy Hour prices” the waitress solemnly told Matt. He mustered up his hammiest English accent, “Well, can you pour it into a glass for me and give me…
Things are incredibly exciting with us, we fly to the USA on Monday to carry out the next leg of the journey. This has all be enabled by Get Taxi, the company who came on board to sponsor the expedition to go the whole way around the World. Check them out here, they basically run a service which allows people…
London to London, via tip-ex We were at the end of a 10 month odyssey, only a few days drive from the finish line and we had just discovered that we were off to the USA on route to circumnavigating the globe. Avid followers of this blog may have got the impression that our final few weeks in Australia were…
Obama was in town, there were soldiers and police on every corner, our taxi was not technically road-legal and the windscreen was spider webbed with cracks. We tried desperately to look cool and not draw attention as the cab slowly pulled out of Darwin, catching the smallest glimpse of Air Force One in the tiny airport. It was like a…
By Johno The team met up back in Australia ready to be reunited with Hannah for the final leg… “Criiiikey!” yelled the leathery old man. I had been in Australia for less than fifteen minutes and `already ticked off half of my mental list of stereotypes. There were fully-grown men wearing baggy singlets and backwards baseball…
We made it to Sydney! But this isn’t it… We did it! We have driven a black cab from London to Sydney and broken the World Record for the longest ever taxi journey in 296 days. It has been the adventure of a lifetime, bloody hard work, scorching hot, freezing cold, thrilling, dirty, smelly, scary, funny, boring, exhilarating, and most…
By Johno After a sodden but stunning Ankor Wat the journey continued on to Thailand and her capital, Bangkok. Bangkok is lodged firmly in traveller folklore. The name conjures up visions of bustling, steamy backstreets where wizened old women sell fried insects on wooden skewers whilst in the smoky rooms above people of questionable gender do even more questionable things…
By Paul Archer Angkor Wat Since we had left Europe five months previously, we hadn’t really drunk alcohol nor had much contact with Westerners. Eastern Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan were dry countries, and aside for a small handful of evenings in random places in Nepal and China we hadn’t partied much all that time. Now we were entering the…
By Paul Archer Don’t forget, you can subscribe to get this blog straight into your inbox by putting your email address into the ‘Join It’s on the Meter’ box at the right hand side of our website. You can pretend you’re checking important work mails and actually read about Hannah’s adventures! It’s sods law. If you fill all the fuel…
By Johno It was raining as we approached the ancient and historic city of Xi’an after two hundred days on the road. It had been raining heavily for most of the day and the factors of good roads, bad drivers and water had combined with deadly consequences meaning we had seen more car accidents in this single day than in…
By Leigh. When people ask how we felt when we broke the world record, we give the usual ‘it was amazing’, ‘brilliant’ and ‘a great personal achievement’ but when we crossed the line in Qinghai province I felt a sense of anticlimax. We had been working to this moment for three years but when we reached this magic mileage there…
By Johno Following a bone-shaking all-dayer to Mount Everest Base Camp the team pushed further into Tibet to face the horror of the Chinese driving test.~ Capitalist Communism We had heard mixed things about the Chinese driving test, ranging from, “Don’t bother with it, just bribe your way out of any document checks” to “It’s a two-hour written test with…
By Johno After a short break in Pokhara to recharge our batteries and fuses the team regrouped in Kathmandu ready to brave the Tibetan Plateau ~ I’ve always been skinny. Even six months of intense military training when I was eighteen left me with the arms of a stick insect and the legs of a chicken. Now, after two months…
Nepal really is rather lovely. Once we reached Pokara, and after gorging ourselves on Buffalo Steaks to celebrate leaving India, we went our separate ways for a week. We had been stuck in that cab together for 5 months and this break was well over due! Johno climbed a hill Leigh rode a motorbike around for a bit and got…
By Paul Archer Bombay Mix I outlined in my last blog (in rather embarrassing and graphic detail) the events of one of the worst days of my life, but the next morning, as it always is with the expedition, we had to move on. So I curled up in a ball in the back of the cab underneath my…
By Paul Archer Bombay Mix I outlined in my last blog (in rather embarrassing and graphic detail) the events of one of the worst days of my life, but the next morning, as it always is with the expedition, we had to move on. So I curled up in a ball in the back of the cab underneath my…
By Paul Archer Kids in Jaipur I’m sitting in Singapore airport as a I write this, and the city’s clinical atmosphere bears stark contrast to the contents of this blog. Although muggy outside, my feet are cold thanks to the over zealous air-conditioning; next to me, a ‘Harrods’ mini-store sells over priced cookies and handbags and an attractive and well…
By Johno Following the trials of Southern Iran and Pakistan the team were looking forward to entering India and relaxing a bit… In the car we tend to read trashy Andy McNabb novels found at hostel book exchanges or old copies of The Economist brought out by visiting friends. They sound pretty dull but they actually provide a really good…
By Leigh Meeting Johno and Craig in the hotel room was a huge relief; the Iran/Pakistan visa problems that had been dogging the whole expedition since we had left in February and were finally resolved. We wouldn’t have to worry about the paperwork for the next country until China and its bureaucratic nightmare. Within a few minutes a detective from…
Whilst Johno was battling border guards, the last blog from Paul ended as he was being deported from Dubai… I was sat alone in my holding cell, with nothing but 400 bribery cigarettes for company, which is of little comfort to a non smoker. I had to wait five hours until my deportation flight back to Dubai, my phone had…
By Johno Apologies for spelling mistakes etc – this was written after a a very long stint without sleep [Now only two, Craig and Johno were left waiting to cross the Iran-Pakistan border after two days of trying...] We were woken at 6am by the blazing sun and the usual ear-splitting call to prayer from the mosque less than a…