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Richard Meredith doet verslag (in het Engels)
PARIS
Earthquakes, epidemics and nuclear warheads may lie ahead for adventuring Brits Richard Meredith and Phil McNerney, but week one of their epic journey from the UK to South Korea found them in greatest danger from traffic chaos in Paris.
The week began with a send-off at Luton, Daewoo's UK HQ, followed by a stopover at Breda in Holland, where the pair were given donations for SOS Children's Villages and met top engineer Yves Fourdin, who prepared the car for its epic journey.
Then it was on to Paris, which has been grid-locked by state workers protesting over falling pension payouts. Here, in a city which in 1907 was the scene of the world's first-ever international rally, there was another reception attended by the press, and representatives from the South Korean Embassy and SOS Children's Villages.
Unexceptional week. We have now visited eight countries in 14 days attending stopover visits for publicity sessions| for GM Daewoo, or corporate sponsors, and SOS Children's Villages, our charity partners.
HONGARY
The statistics of the Daewoo Challenge, in which two British adventurers are
driving the 16,000km (10,000 miles) from the UK to South Korea to raise money
for SOS Childrens Villages, are beginning to make fascinating reading.
The intrepid pair
have so far covered 4,500 km (2,800 miles) since leaving England
nearly three weeks ago in their near-standard Daewoo Kalos family hatchback.
They have visited nine countries and four European capital cities, met hundreds
of press and thousands of well-wishers, and perhaps most important of all
raised 30,000 Euros (£21,000) for SOS, the international child welfare
organisation.
After fighting the gridlock of Paris, Richard and Phil visited their first SOS
village in Diessen, Bavaria, where a musical welcome awaited them, and then
Rome, where they were filmed by a national twice-weekly motoring show.
In what was undoubtedly the most nostalgic part of the journey so far, Richard
and Phil drove onward to Imst, an Alpine village near Innsbruck where Hermann
Gmeiner started SOS Childrens Villages more than 50 years ago. The money raised
by the challenge will go towards the construction of a new family house at an
SOS Village in Bharatpur, high up in the Himalayan mountains of Nepal, and at
Imst the pair were handed a message of support to take to the children of this
impoverished country.
Their Vienna stop-over completed, Richard and Phil drove to the Hungarian SOS
headquarters in Budapest, to be greeted by children dressed in traditional
bright floral costumes. Five personal computer and software kits were also
presented by GM Daewoo to give vital and warmly-received help towards the
education of the youngsters.
As they left the Hungarian capital the adventurers reflected on one more
statistic: just 11,500km (7,100 miles) to go..
ISLAND HOPPING
Daewoo challengers Richard Meredith and Phil McNerney have completed their most
gruelling day yet.
It began in the early hours of Friday (July 4) when their Kalos hatchback was
shipped by ferry from Athens to the Greek island of Chios. Then, after a rapid
quayside breakfast, the pair were on-board again as another ferry took them to
the Turkish mainland and they finally completed an all-day drive of more than
700km to the capital Ankara by nightfall.
Ankara is the eighth capital city they have visited during a whistle-stop tour
through Europe promoting the car for sponsors GM Daewoo and raising money for
charity partner SOS Childrens Villages, the international child welfare
organisation.
The second leg taking the two adventurous Brits through Turkey and some of the
countries of the former Soviet Union has now begun. Their marathon journey,
which was launched in Luton, UK, on June9, is expected to end around the middle
of next month in Seoul, South Korea.
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GEORGIAN POLICE GET A CAPITAL IDEA
The policeman scribbles his price in pencil on the scrap of paper he pulls from
his pocket: it will cost us $80 if we want a "safe" passage over the next 45kms
of our journey.
He doesnt have much English but he understands my protest that I think the
price far too high. "OK, well you pay me $20 now and " with a shrug of his
shoulders adds: " you can take your chances after that."
We have been driving in Georgia for precisely 25 minutes. Already we have been
stopped by the police three times; just one or two of them stepping out into
the road, blowing a whistle and waving us down. They want to look at our
papers, they want to look at the car, they want to pay their grocery bills.
We have done nothing wrong. Each time they want money but I have managed to
palm them off with cigarettes or some little knick-knack from the car. "We are
from England, you see. We dont pay wont pay bribes to policemen," I explain.
But the fourth time is different. The unmarked car pulls in front of us and a
man who says hes a cop asks for our passports. He is wearing what looks like an
official visitors badge and a gun. We hand over the passports, do as he
gestures, and follow his car at rapid speed for another half mile until he
deposits us into a clutch of three police cars and their occupants parked in a
lay-by.
One of them soon explains the facts of life to me. He lays our map on the
bonnet. "Where you going?"
I draw my finger up the line of the coast road.
"Police here. And here. And here," he says as he jabs his finger on the page.
"You get much trouble, pay much money."
"And what if we go this way?" I make him understand that we could actually
travel a different route.
"Ah, that way many Ali Babas. Boom, boom," he says cocking one hand like a gun
and putting the other over his face in the pretence of a robbers mask.
It seems we have little choice. In this part of the former Soviet Union a new
spirit of enterprise is flourishing the police are going in for the escort
agency business.
I negotiate the price down from $80 to $40, and as the cop climbs into our car
I do what they do in the films and pay half to his colleagues now, telling him
he gets the rest only when we get to where they say we will be safe from
further instant road blocks or Ali Baba bandits.
And I hand it over too after we have taken an hour to travel another 45kms and
passed through no fewer than six more roadside police stops, where our escort
uses his authority to wave aside all spurious claims of speeding or other
traffic misdemeanours.
It was, in all the circumstances, probably a bargain. But that seemed hardly
the point.
We had crossed into Georgia at the small border post of Sarpi after a good run
along the Black Sea coastline of newly-developing resorts in Turkey. The idea
was and still is - to make our way to Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, and then
through Azerbaijan, across the Caspian, and on to Uzbekistan and Kazakstan on a
leg roughly following Marco Polos legendary Silk Road.
But nothing we had read or heard prepared us for the piracy and that is surely
what it is of the police in this south-western corner of Georgia.
We found that tourists and residents alike are being relieved of their money in
a region stretching from Batumi to Poti - an area characterised by rutted and
pot-holed roads, empty tenement buildings and obviously high unemployment in
the post-Soviet economy.
Just as obviously, the police issue no receipts. In our case, they offered no
evidence of speeding or other accusations and appeared to have no technical
equipment at all.
Payment is demanded in US dollars, and since they are armed there is also the
fear of what could happen if we are tempted to ignore their signals to stop.
TEA-TIME DIPLOMACY IS THE KEY TO SEOUL
Old-fashioned tea and sympathy and the intervention of an Indian ambassador
have solved a crisis for the two Daewoo Challenge adventurers.
The duo was in Baku, Ajerbaijan - halfway through a driving marathon from
London to South Korea - investigating options to take north or south. The pair
was then thwarted first by new Russian entry restrictions which would have
taken weeks to process, and then by Iran, with a go-slow on visa requests.
But the problem was finally cracked by J.S.Pande, India's ambassador in
Ajerbaijan - itself a former state of the USSR - when he arranged for emergency
visa clearance to open up a southern route for the fund-raisers.
After listening to their difficulties, Mr Pande entertained the adventurers to
tea and biscuits in his office in Baku while asking for top-level approval from
Delhi, which allowed them to avoid Iran and continue on their way.
Pakistan helped the cause with a similar 24-hour clearance, and the pair now
plans to drive across Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Myanmar, Laos
and Vietnam, before completing their trip by ferry from Haiphong to South Korea.
The Daewoo Kalos has already travelled 10,000km (6,200 miles) of the extended
20,000km trip, surviving fast driving on pot-holed and unmade roads in Eastern
Europe and desert temperatures in the high 40s Centigrade. It has been checked
through 17 countries and visited 11 capital cities.
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