The Final Overland – Retracing Attenborough’s 19,000-Mile Journey

Now that the vacations are right here, many people are journeying by automobile to see household. Any highway journey that ends within the firm of family members (and loads of meals) is one thing price celebrating. And, actually, we’re in love with the highway as a lot because the autos that get us there — from the desolate panorama of the American Southwest, to the Pacific Coast Freeway, to all three Americas — North, Central, and South.

Even in the event you’re not road-tripping any time quickly, you may nonetheless catch a few of the pleasure by watching bits and items of “the mom of all highway journeys,” undertaken by a crew that wished to retrace Sir David Attenborough’s 19,000- mile overland journey from London to Singapore in a 1955 Land Rover Collection I.

As Expedition Portal notes, the highway journey depicted in each Attenborough’s documentary collection, Travellers’ Tales and Tim Slessor’s e-book The First Overland impressed the filmmakers of the upcoming collection to carry it full circle:

One such traveler was filmmaker Alex Bescoby. Watching a BBC tribute to mark the First Overland’s fiftieth anniversary in 2005, Sir David Attenborough regretfully remarked that the London to Singapore expedition was “a journey that I don’t assume could possibly be made once more in the present day.” The phrases sparked one thing in Alex, who contacted a then eighty-six-year-old Slessor to recreate the First Overland expedition, this time from Singapore to London in one of many unique 1955 Land Rover station wagons, “Oxford.”

[…]

The legacy of the Oxford and Cambridge Far Jap Expedition continues with the discharge of a brand new multi-part collection, The Final Overland, which chronicles the workforce’s journey throughout 13,000 miles and 23 nations, by which completely nothing went to plan from the beginning.

The vacationers within the new collection opted — both boldly or foolishly — to take the lengthy drive in one of many similar Land Rovers that initially carried Attenborough and his crew on their journey. You’ll be able to think about half the battle could be retaining the outdated Rover highwayworthy, however, hey, that’s a part of the romance of such a journey. The collection hasn’t been launched in full simply but, however reportedly it’s coming quickly. That offers us sufficient time to atone for the primary overland, earlier than taking up this final.