Long Way Round (2004) s01e01 Episode Script
Preparation
Got sun on my face
Sleeping rough on the road
I'll tell you all about it
When I get home
Comin' round to meet you
The long way round
I love success, I like being successful because that's a mark of my work.
But I wasn't driven towards being famous.
And I'm glad that's the case 'cause you can be satisfied with success,
but I don't think you'll ever be satisfied with fame,
'cause you'll never really be famous enough, you know?
Please welcome Ewan McGregor.
I want to ask you about this. What's this world bike tour?
Now Jude Law was here, and he said you're gonna bike around the world?
Yeah. It's been a plan of mine for a long time,
and my best mate in London, Charley Boorman.
And we were planning a trip on motorcycles.
We'd done a lot of biking together.
It's a tough life being somebody famous, isn't it?
It must be so hard.
I first met Charley a few years ago on a movie called The Serpent's Kiss.
Dear sir, you have told me of your fondness for amateur dramatics.
But do please keep your performance within the bounds of credibility.
I am yours, accept it--
Get out and spy on someone else.
One in five films you'll come out with someone
-who you talk to afterwards. -Pick up a mate, yeah.
And one in ten you'll pick up a mate
that you'll spend the rest of your life with.
And Ewan was the one in ten.
Thank you for that.
For a long time we always talked about doing a trip together.
Maybe to Spain or somewhere like that.
And then somehow Ewan then rang me up one night and said,
"Listen, Charley, I've got this idea. Instead of riding to Spain,
why don't we ride around the world?"
I just looked at the map, and the Bering Strait's a very narrow--
you know, that separates eastern Russia with America, with Alaska.
It didn't seem to be very far.
And I thought, "Look, there's a straight line around the world there."
So, we're gonna ride from London to New York,
going east, the long way round.
A holiday doesn't have to be lying on a beach, you know?
It can be exploration and adventure.
Of course, you want it to happen,
you want the adventure to take place and then there's an element of,
for me, of jealousy, of not being able to do something like this.
And then there's an element of sadness of, you know--
You know, it's like-- and happiness, it's like--
It's, like, all over. It's complex.
And it was just a huge adventure that sort of came up
and it was there, so you can't really--
For us, we couldn't question it. It was there, it was a possibility,
and we sort of went with it, really.
The passion in my life is motorcycles. There's no
You can't seem to get away from it either.
In all the years that I've been riding bikes, since I was six years old,
I've never not been able to not think about them.
It smells really nice too.
I started taking motorcycle trips at the end of movies,
and for me it was a way to get out on my own
and to gather back my own decision-making.
When you're flashing around on your bike, you know, with a helmet on,
you're just another geezer on the road.
If it weren't for motorcycles would you guys still be friends?
Probably not.
-No, we would be mates. I think we -Yeah.
-We talk about other things sometimes. -Because when-- Sometimes.
We thought that we would video it to have a memory of it.
And then we thought, "Well, if we're gonna bother videoing it ourselves,
why don't we just get someone else to video it?"
The idea of filming it in the first place was to have a record of it, firstly.
So when we're sitting at 60 years old with our children,
we can have a bit of a giggle at ourselves going around the world.
I'd met a producer called Russ Malkin
who has done a lot of sports television.
And I told him about the project, and he seemed really interested.
Now you're really seeing it.
When Ewan and Charley first came round to see me about the project,
I thought they were totally mad
to take on such an epic adventure, but when I knew they were serious,
I was certainly up for the challenge.
I could see the big, global nature of the production,
so I thought of a producer friend of mine who lives in LA
whose name is David Alexanian.
Soon as I heard about it, I was immediately turned on.
Russ and I are old friends, we've known each other for about 15 years.
But it wasn't until I met with Ewan and Charley
and realized just how legitimate their passion for motorcycles was
that I figured I had to do it.
We've come down to Australia 'cause Ewan's working on Star Wars.
The four of us wanted to get together to see if we could work together.
But more importantly, we've come down to ride bikes
to see how that goes and try a little bit of camping.
Ewan and I both have absolutely no idea what to expect.
And I think that's really
you know, there's always an element of fear.
Yeah, but isn't that one of those things where you have to confront your fears
-and conquer them? -No. Not in this case.
But I'll be there with you.
I mean, it's not, "Let's go around the world and confront our deepest fears."
What kind of trip is this?
We're not a-- It's not a Japanese television program.
-Here we are. -We missed it.
We missed it.
Sorry.
Charley, there was loads of bikers on there and everything.
It was my fault.
Half the journey's about Ewan and I going around on bikes around the world.
And the other half is about meeting people along the way.
Listen, how long have you been doing this?
-About 12 years. Yeah. -12 years?
You do this for 12 hours a day? 12 hours a day?
12 hours a day.
Can you imagine doing this 12 hours a day?
Mind you, can you imagine sitting on a motorcycle for 12 hours a day
for three months?
Some people might think we're the fucking ones who are nuts.
Snakes.
Snake pit.
I've got to get used to this camping out in the wild.
Ewan and I have a great relationship, and that seems to be working well.
I reckon it's a real strong possibility that this is gonna work.
We did enough miles, I think, today. It was quite hard going there.
'Cause
my bum got a bit sore.
There were no bears, thank God. Lots of snakes though.
-You know? -Yeah.
That's why people join the army.
It's not to see the world, and it's not to kill people,
it's just so they don't have to have a bath for a week.
I'm not all that experienced off-road on a bike.
So I'm kind of nervous about it
'cause I know that Charley did an awful lot of motocross
when he was a kid, which I never did.
And it's that terrible anxiety that you get in your stomach
when you're doing something with someone who can do it better than you, you know?
-Do you have a side? -Yeah. I sleep on the right.
Maybe we should change it round
so that we don't feel like we're in bed with our wives,
'cause you don't know what might happen.
Sleep well, Charley.
"Those aren't pillows."
It's been fantastic to kind of get cracking with Charley who makes me laugh.
He's my best mate.
There's no question that at some point we're bound to--
I'll get on his nerves, or vice versa.
But I think what's important is how you deal with that, you know what I mean?
I think maybe we should have two tents,
and, you know, some nights we sleep together
and other nights we don't.
Ewan and I have been talking about it, and we ring each other up
and stuff like that, and some days we're really, you know,
like, "Let's get going."
And then other days it's like I'm thinking,
"Oh, God, do I really want to do it?"
Now that we're back from Australia and everything went really well there,
we've got to find some office space, build a workshop and get it started.
There's gonna be a bike here and a bike here.
And then we'll probably have nothing here, just maybe some tools.
Maybe a Snap-on toolbox, I don't know.
And then here we're gonna have really big shelves, really wide ones,
coming out to about here.
So that all the camping equipment, tents
and anything sort of big and bulky can all go here.
Helmets and stuff for our daily use.
All a bit anal, but anyway, it's exciting.
My mother always told me never to be caught with dirty drawers.
So here I am cleaning my drawers.
You know, I remember walking into that room and it was just a shell.
And now it is the center of this obsession which is this world trip.
Got a lot here to do.
What are we doing now? We're just wandering around cleaning.
Should we let the door down so then that's done?
Yeah, let's do that. Yeah.
Seriously. I crunch it up, you can crunch it down.
-That it? -No, more-- That's it.
That was good, wasn't it?
Should we put it up again?
For me this is a huge part of the trip as well.
This preparation is like
like in Boy's Own stuff, isn't it, you know?
Down in the workshop with Charley, fucking around.
This is what our camp is gonna be like.
I'm not having any fucking messy shit.
Oops. Sorry.
I want you to know that Ewan did this.
This is a bit what I'm like.
It's a bit frightening,
but it gives me so much pleasure to have that all like that.
A lot of us spend our lives running away from who we really are, okay?
-And here it is. -I'm an office boy, clearly.
We want to film this, but we don't want to be surrounded
by loads of cameramen.
So we're just trying to figure out the best way to do it.
We're producing a television show as we go along,
but we wanted the opportunity to be able to record.
So if I'm behind Charley and a deer runs out or something,
-you've got that on. -Okay.
We can cut that in our film.
I just brought a few pictures
just to show you a bit of stuff of what we do and don't do.
We can fit the communications in the helmets.
-We fit a camera, so wherever you look -Yeah.
that's where the camera sees with a wide-angle lens.
So you got the shot of you riding the bike, the shot looking forward
and the shot from your lid, is that right?
Yeah, and is it possible to have this second lens
so somebody can have it pointing up here some of the time,
and then sometimes we can mount it down here
so we have it looking forward? So it's a double option--
-But you got one looking forward already. -Which is your helmet.
Are they voice activated, would you recommend? Or button operated?
Button operated.
Voice operated, if Ewan starts swearing and all the rest of it,
you don't want to record that, you know what I mean?
I don't know why it'd change. We got hours of that already.
No, no, I like the idea of that, button operated,
'cause then if you wanted to have a little sing to yourself,
you don't necessarily want you to hear it.
And if I want to go, "Fucking Charley's pissing me off today,"
-I don't want you to hear that either. -Yeah.
-Not that that would ever happen. -No!
We're gonna give these guys these little video cameras
to do their personal video diaries each evening.
So during preproduction
we're asking them to sort of give an update
as to how they think as it comes together,
and also, most importantly, during the event.
Have you been keeping a diary?
No. Have you?
No.
-Have you been doing a video diary? -No.
-Have you? -No.
It's been really difficult to do these video diaries,
and I've got to be much more disciplined.
I think that guy's coming in, I think, tomorrow.
-Keep talking. Move back. Thanks. -I think he-- Sorry.
-Ease back. Thank you. -Just ease back a bit further, a bit--
There we go. Perfect.
-Water hydro-- Oh, shit. -Look!
Water hydro pack.
I hate this filming. It's ruining our friendship.
It became clear that it's just too difficult to film each other,
so we've got to think of another alternative.
And the idea is that you guys are on your own for a while.
Then when the cameraman's ready,
either with a rider on the front and him shooting backwards off the front,
or him just riding on his own and he joins you for a period of time--
I think it'd be him riding on his own because that's what he'd be doing.
-No, you meet this guy-- -We can't--
Well, they can't hold us up.
What you need is somebody who can at least, like,
I don't know, tank it maybe five miles in front of you,
go up into the Rockies a bit, and actually get the shot of you coming through
without having to make you wait.
You really need--
It's gonna be hard to find someone that's--
-And that-- -So that's what I would--
-Be capable of doing all that stuff. -And is any good.
So why don't we do it like this?
There's a vehicle with our cameraman who we should decide on, I suppose.
The cameraman comes to the office, 25 Bulwer Street, on their bike
to meet you, you interview him--
Whoever does the biggest wheelie down the street gets the job.
We're taking so much camera equipment on this trip
that we decided to take two camera vehicles
driven by Russ and Dave, our producers.
We'll take Jimmy Simak with us as well,
and he can help with some camerawork.
Long Way Round.
It's great that we've set up this office,
but now we've got to figure out how we're gonna get round the world.
It'd be more interesting going that way, for instance.
A bit of motorway, a bit of road.
Yeah, a bit of motorway, a bit of road.
Then we go into the Ukraine up to Kiev.
-That's the national park. -That makes perfect sense to me.
-Do you speak English, you foreigner? -We're trying to get to New York.
I'd really, really love to see the Caspian Sea.
-Apparently it's full of oil fields -It's been recommended
-sturgeon and-- -by the Kazakhstan people.
-And it's just full of amazing -Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Up through here.
Look at that. That's like Mars. I'm so fucking excited.
What are these green-lined areas, do you think?
That's a national park.
We miss out on all this part of Russia--
We kind of hit China here. This is very dodgy.
-This is dodgy here? -Very dodgy.
When are we ever gonna be round there again?
-Never. -Well, don't say that. Never say never.
We might never wanna go there together again.
-Don't say that. -No, no, no.
That suddenly came alive for me, looking at a map
of a huge country like Kazakhstan and then going,
"So there's something interesting there, something there, there."
And suddenly this route unfolds in front of your eyes.
You just imagine yourself, you're sitting on the bike going across it.
Sing a song of sixpence A pocket full of rye
Sorry.
Yeah.
Four and twenty blackbirds Baked in a pie
The maid was in the garden She was hanging out the clothes
When down came a blackbird And pecked off her nose
No wonder I'm singing "Sing a Song of Sixpence."
It looks like Clara did them.
Two men, two bikes, 20,000 miles.
One hell of a fucking rally.
-It's -Dakar.
We're gonna ride 20,000 miles and travel through 13 countries.
And then we could just directly go east through Russia,
but we want to see Kazakhstan and Mongolia.
And then ride the Road of Bones in Far Eastern Russia to Magadan.
Then we're gonna fly to Alaska,
and go through Canada, America and New York.
This is longer than any bike ride I've ever done.
This isn't just going out for a ride-- "I'm just going for a ride on my bike."
This is a bit more than that, you know?
Now we've got the route, what we need to do is speak to people
who know a lot about the countries we're gonna pass through.
I'm sorry, Charley.
How embarrassing.
It's enormous.
-Therefore-- -If we can help on the way,
-we can draw some maps -Yeah.
-as we go, that will be very helpful. -That will be--
But I will try to-- Yeah.
-If we know where we're going -It's just a rough idea.
we can ask people and, you know, I'm sure we'll be--
-East. Which way is east? -Yeah. We're going east.
It's very important for us
to learn about the different rituals and customs in each of these countries.
Like in Mongolia, when we're driving our motorbikes,
how do you say no to vodka politely?
You don't have to drink any.
You just take it with your right hand, maybe put it to your lips
and then you give it back to the same person.
You don't have to try and spill it when they're not looking?
No, you don't have to do that. No, that's fine.
They might offer you snuff. It's all the etiquette.
-Yeah. -It's all because they want to give.
But sometimes it might actually be an empty snuff bottle.
-So in effect, you pretend. -You just pretend.
-But if there is snuff -If there's snuff, yeah.
you can take a little pinch of snuff.
But there's a whole way-- rigmarole, of which hand
Gets around the fact we both gave up smoking some time ago.
We'll be straight in there, "Any snuff?"
"Snuff, anyone?"
I hope not quite like that because then they might think--
Hello, we're from the BBC. Any snuff?
I'd say that entire area there is bear country.
There are more bears in that area than there are human beings.
So we go through Russia across here
-Yes. -and then through Kazakhstan
and back into Russia.
Across Mongolia and then up towards the Road of Bones.
-Then to Magadan. -Wow.
-Up to Magadan. -That seems so-- Yeah.
-Wow? -Yes.
The thing is that, you know--
You just probably don't realize it, you know?
Roads are very bad.
-We're talking about July. -It's the hottest month.
They're painting a very negative picture.
She said they used to send people here as a torture.
It's a part of the world that we want to go and see.
Do you know what I mean? You gotta get in the spirit of it.
And also, "I'm sure you have no idea how big Russia is."
Oh, no. That's why we've fucking scheduled nine, ten weeks to get across it
'cause we thought it was just a quick run to the shops.
We've scheduled about eight weeks to do this, haven't we?
-More than that, maybe. -More than, yeah.
We've got three weeks to come back
-Trans-Siberian comes through here. -from Alaska to thing.
Three out of 15, 12.
We've got 12 weeks to get from there to there.
-There. There. -Yeah.
Twelve weeks.
Whose idea was this?
-And then I remembered it was mine. -It was yours.
There's so many things that we've got to do.
Like we have to sort out the whole GPS thing.
That's great, having a map with a line.
But we're gonna have to have that in our panniers
and have the whole thing plotted into a GPS device.
So, we've got to do all that.
So that might take some time.
I'm sure that'll take some time.
The major routes.
What we had hoped was that if it told us where we were,
we could see on the map exactly where we were.
And to be able to say, "Okay, we want to go to this town which is there"
-Yeah. -punch in the coordinates to that town,
and then it could take us there, it could point us there.
There's no problem with Canada, Alaska, America, Europe.
But Russia and Kazakhstan, Mongolia have not yet been plotted
by any navigation company.
Bandidos and all through here.
-That's half the world. Right. -I mean, all through here.
-Half the world. -You know what the Russians are like--
Well, actually the most dangerous place
to pitch a tent on our journey,
the most dangerous part to pitch a tent on the side of the road
is the United States of America.
-Yeah, apparently-- -That's the most dangerous part.
Because of the potential dangers of this trip,
we've decided to do a hostile training course,
which covers everything from orienteering
to first aid and self-defense.
It's quite hard-core, it's quite worst-case scenario.
So that should include stuff like, you know, evading being kidnapped
and getting through dodgy, drunk border guards, you know what I mean?
The key thing about navigation is it is just a methodical process.
You just need to be sort of slightly pedantic about the way you approach it.
I'd say we're at 57
The one thing I would say right from the outset
is believe your compass.
No, no, we're 56
The compass actually, very, very boringly, never lies.
It's a real cliché to say that.
But even if the ground is absolutely bloody perfect
for what you want it to look like,
if the compass says it ain't there, it ain't there. You're in the wrong place.
-Fifty-four. -It's 55.
Are we up here or are we down here?
-Well, the church is to our south. -We're up here. We're here, Ewan.
-We're right there. -We're here? I thought we were down here.
No, we're right here.
I would be happier now knowing about map reading
and orienteering that you can actually easily get yourself out of trouble.
Who knows? We don't know what we're gonna come across.
So I feel responsible in that we're learning about all of it first.
We're not just leaving it up to chance.
One of the things about checkpoints,
whatever the checkpoint, they are not what they seem.
They are designed to get you to slow down,
come into what's called a killing ground, which is covered by fire,
and then the thing is initiated.
So what we're talking about here is a progression
from just how we get through checkpoints.
Moving then on out of the cuds,
and we'll look at the ambush stuff and anti-ambush drills.
Okay, so got my whiskey there. Wait a minute, that's--
Whiskey's there, and I've got the passports here.
-Don't offer the money-- -Booze or cigarettes.
What's absolutely key with bribes, and going through checkpoints,
is never, ever, ever offer them.
The thing to do is to say, "Absolutely, no problem at all.
Is there a, sort of, an official toll?
Do I have to go and pay it at the police station
or can I pay it straight to you?"
I go to pieces
But not just now
Thank you very much
You are the driver Where the hell have they gone?
Hang on. They're sort of behind that tree there.
Oh, look, it's a Serb in jeans.
It's a question of projecting the right image to these guys.
Slow down.
Unless they ask you to turn the engine off,
in which case you always do what you're told at these locations,
keep the engine running. Keep it in first gear.
We are trying to get through to the next village.
So if it does turn nasty, and I mean really nasty,
-You just blast away. -you can get out. Off you go.
please to Colonel Fahim,
he says to come, to come this way
and to go to the next village.
No, not this way. You go back
We need to pay a toll to pass?
I have some of your local currency.
It's good to pass?
Okay. This is for me?
-No problem. -You understand?
Yes, sir.
Okay, thank you very much. Very good to see you.
-Thank you. -Good luck.
All the way across central Asia shepherds--
any self-respecting householder will own one of these.
There are something like 400 million of these in the world or something.
It's just outrageous.
Well, what we're gonna look at now is where it is definitive
that you are coming under fire.
You need to know the best way of getting yourselves out of it on foot.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.
And 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15.
-Two breaths. -Two breaths.
Do 15 compressions and two breaths.
If you hum the song "Nellie the Elephant Packed His Trunk,"
you have got to have finished all 15 compressions,
done two breaths and be back to start again
by the time you've finished the song.
Nellie the Elephant packed her trunk And said goodbye to the circus
Off she went with a trumpety-trump Trump, trump, trump
I hear something.
I hope you brushed your teeth.
If you do have the misfortune of cutting your femoral artery,
which is running up in your groin,
I could stand here and I'd hit those bay windows.
The blood will squirt that far.
-Shit. -Don't worry, I'll be there.
You are not gonna be able to stop it with your hand.
Yeah?
I'm now terrified, of course, having watched Charley do his CPR business
because Charley's CPR is only gonna be done on me.
Twelve, 13, 14, 15.
-Two breaths. -Two breaths.
And of course we're talking about ABC's, but Charley's really dyslexic.
It doesn't really mean anything to Charley, ABC.
Can I try your
Absolutely. That's what they're there for. Tuck in.
You fucking bastards!
Gentlemen, I believe your backup team's just been hit.
There's your med kit. There's your torch. Get out there! Come on!
Your backup team's been hammered. Go out there. Come on!
But I might get shot.
Okay, here we go.
All right, you get the wound. Press the wound.
Where should we start? There's a cut on his shoulder.
You all right, mate?
You shouldn't play with guns. It's just-- This is what happens.
Shooting yourself. I mean, how silly--
Lift your arm for me, lift your arm for me. Come on.
There we are. Okay.
Is that a Rolex? Do you think we could take that?
Anywhere else? Are you hurt anywhere else?
There's an exit wound.
Is that an exit--
Your victim showed us where it was.
-I need some tape. -Tape.
-I don't have any tape. -If you haven't got tape,
-what are you gonna use? -Okay. I'm gonna use my initiative.
Yeah. I'll hold it.
Hang on.
Okay, let's get him inside. We're out of--
Okay. Yeah, we'd get him out of the way.
Do it first.
He can walk himself over.
Jesus!
-That only took about half an hour. -Pissed himself
That's some good stuff.
I'm glad to have learned all the medical stuff we learned today.
Being shot is probably something we'll try and avoid very much.
The things that could happen to us are: somebody could fall off
and break a leg, break an arm, crack a neck,
getting a land mine exploding in your face,
very hopefully not gonna, you know
not gonna happen to us.
I think you're always concerned about the dangers
of a trip on a motorbike.
If we do get a spout of diarrhea is just to take a 500 mil
-There's an antibiotic. -antibiotic and just--
It's one hit, one dose, gone. Done, finished.
-As soon as you get it, really. -Yeah.
I've had diarrhea in a tent when I was in Scotland when I was a kid.
I was 16, 17. Me and my mate went up to the Highland west coast,
and we didn't clean the pots or anything properly.
So while we were sleeping at night, flies are laying eggs in them,
mosquitoes are fucking in it and stuff.
You know, I wake up the next morning. I'm like, "Oh, God!"
I was literally just lying in the tent or running out to
-Shit. -purge myself in the bracken
for a day and a half. It was miserable. It's misery.
We needed the backing of a major motorcycle company
to get us around the world in three and a half months.
So we've narrowed it down to BMW and KTM.
I look good in orange, don't I?
We're gonna test the BMW first.
It feels to me very, first of all, really comfortable.
When we were out on the road, we did the road test first,
and when we were out there it felt really--
You could just eat up an awful lot of distance on them.
I fell off down there.
We were only doing-- It wasn't really a fall off.
It was a topple over while I was going around the corner.
But it was fine. It was really slow. It was a really slow one.
I think BMW's a really good bike, but I think the KTM is better.
KTM is an Austrian manufacturer
who build, specifically, motocross and enduro bikes
for exactly the trip that we want to do.
That's yours, Charley, and I'll take this one.
-No, I wanna go on this one. -No, you take that one.
No, no. I've dreamt about this all my life.
Wow. Look at that.
God, this morning was just so exciting.
I mean, I've been waiting quite a long time
to have a go at the old KTM.
It was just fantastic. It really was.
It's incredibly confidence-inspiring this bike on the loose stuff, you know?
Especially when you're going very slow as well.
-Did you go very slow at any point? -No.
No, listen, listen, in terms of a bike that's built for it
-there's only the one we've ridden so far. -And which one's that?
The Beemer.
My first reaction was the BMW.
It's the only bike for the trip.
It's the only bike that was made for this kind of thing.
Looks like the KTM then.
I think Ewan prefers the BMW,
but I reckon I can talk him round.
One of the biggest problems we've got at the moment
is trying to find a cameraman.
He's got to be a good rider, a good shooter,
and, more importantly, he's got to get on very well with the team,
particularly Ewan and Charley.
We don't have any helmets yet, we don't have any bikes.
We don't have any gear, we don't have any camping gear. We don't--
We know more or less what we want, but we're just waiting on everybody.
Yeah, I see, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I get it.
We've been here for weeks and nothing's arrived.
This is the only freebie we've had so far.
-That. -Very nice.
The only reason we did this trip was to get free kit,
and that's all we've got.
This is the kind of training that we're doing.
We know our journey's gonna be physically demanding,
and we need to do something about it.
You'll need to be seriously strong.
I haven't worked out in a gym for maybe a year or something.
So my arms have completely disappeared.
I did work out on that film Black Hawk Down, you know?
-Yeah. -I was in Morocco
and one of the American soldiers-- actors was sitting next to me
and he just went, "Look at your arms!"
Someone told me that adding a little bit of blubber onto your body
was a very good idea, just so that, you know
-What, to keep you warmer? -Well, no, so that in case you get ill
or, you know, as your fatigue goes along--
Thanks, yeah. As your fatigue
I've got less than two months. There's three things I want to focus on.
I want to get the boys aerobically fit, I want to build their strength
and I want to get their bodies accustomed to stress.
It's gonna be an incredibly tough journey, and I need them to be prepared.
One! Two. One! Two.
Okay. Two.
-Again. Four. -Nice one.
Imagine doing that and being hit all the time.
I don't want to go anymore. I don't want to go with you anymore.
What? What? What'd I do?
Well, half a bottle of port every lunchtime, he has.
Did you know that?
This is the bike that we're going on around the world.
It's really painful.
-Thanks. Lift it up. -Jesus.
-Ten, -This is hurting in places
-I didn't even know I had. -nine,
-All around my ass. -eight,
seven, six, five, four
three, two, and one.
Why do we need to work our arse like that?
No, see you later, mate.
The guys are gonna spend some time learning Russian
as it's the language spoken in most of the countries they'll travel through.
Good.
My wife's French. I mean, I don't speak French very well.
But realistically, how much Russian can I learn between now and April?
Good. One. Two.
Take one. Two. Back.
Two. Two.
Two. Good.
Come on. Three!
Quick one.
I'm just gonna be looking at you, Charley.
Take the pain away
That didn't hurt
Just relax. Think manly thoughts.
Just a couple of seconds.
Well done.
We all got jabbed up,
and funnily enough it made the trip even more of a reality, you know?
But the fact that we were getting injections was like, "Oh, yeah.
We're really going away," you know?
You can kind of get bogged down in the theory of it all here,
and the talking of it all, and
every now and again, you remember that you're actually gonna go off and do it,
sit on a motorbike for that length of time, you know?
It's just getting closer and closer and, you know,
time's kind of, sort of running out now.
And, you know, just a bit freaky, really,
when you think, "Fuck, I'm just about off."
It's kind of frightening.
Everyone's been really busy in the office.
And the equipment is finally coming through.
-Is this Rokker stuff? -Yeah.
Yes. This is the daddy gear.
They've just sent it to us just to try it out. No commitment.
-Let me see those leathers again. -Thermo Gloves.
-That's a nice combo. -That's a nice little combo.
That's just a little-- It's a very thin one.
-The same boots, isn't that? -Yeah, yeah.
What?
You're pulling it all towards you. I was, you know
One time I slept in a tent was in Canada.
And it rained and rained and rained.
And then it stopped for about 20 minutes,
so we could pitch our tents, and then it just rained.
And it rained and rained. Until 12:00 the next day, it rained.
And we packed up and went home.
And that was my camping.
See, and that closes the valve.
And then Yours isn't inflated.
If it's minus 18 and you're in a minus 10 sleeping bag,
-you'll be fucking freezing. -Yeah.
Now I'm thinking, if we get a minus 10, minus 15 sleeping bag
and then we got the bivvy bag as, like, a backup
-Well, yeah, a little-- -a little cover.
-If you're really serious about it. -And you can wear your clothes in there.
And then-- and you're in a tent and there's two of you sleeping in a tent,
and you can have the little gas burner going
-if it gets really, really cold. -What gas burner?
-The cooker. -No.
-No. -You can't.
-Burn wood. -To put the gas stove on, to heat you up.
No, you put it to heat the tent up.
Yeah, why not? You're cooking in there. If it's pissing with rain
This is what happened to my dad's--
When he was up at that mountain with those kids.
He changed-- The gas bottle leaked, went on fire, melted the zip,
and they were all caught in a fireball in the tent.
'Cause the zips are made of plastic,
so the first thing that happens is they melt together and you can't get out.
-So you don't ever -Serious brain surgery there.
Seriously don't ever stick the stove on to heat yourself up.
Okay.
Well, it was only a suggestion.
"Put the old stove on, would you, Charley?"
One of our biggest fears is to come off the bike
and hurt ourselves seriously, and we feel we need some more medical training.
You've got your upper airway.
The lower airway
is from this down to the base of your lungs. I've got some lungs here.
Pig lungs.
Yeah, pigs are the closest thing to humans, aren't they?
Don't we put pigs' hearts in humans?
Yeah, we do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Pigs' hearts in humans. Amazing.
So if you'd just like to blow them up, Charley,
just get your lip round of them
Well, I like a good pig, I must say.
That's where the air goes down.
-And is that quite hard there? -Yeah, it is.
It feels quite gristly. It's quite hard.
When you let the air out is it gonna make a noise?
-No, no. -Is it gonna go
I just want to show you the actual size of these.
-That's really insane. Wow. -So you can see how much,
you know, oxygenation gets in the hole.
-That's filling up. -Yeah.
-There's a lot of up and down. -Oh, my God.
Little bit-- That's incredible.
We need to feel a chest movement,
and we need to feel air on our cheek to see if they are breathing.
-Yeah. -I find the best way to do it
is just use your hand, okay. Use the inside of your wrist.
Lick it, and then you can feel your breath a lot easier.
Or a mirror.
I used to use a mirror on my daughter when she was first born,
see if she was still breathing.
-Did you? -Yeah. I used to get freaked out that--
-You got the little mirror, yeah. -Got the mirror.
-Just used to wake them up. -Yes, I did wake her up.
So we look inside the airway, what do you think we're looking for here?
-Any obstruction, really. -Okay.
-Do you want to come have a go? -Yeah.
To do the jaw first, we place the heels of our hands on their cheekbones.
Two fingers, put them under the corner of the jaw, the angle of the jaw,
and we lift up.
That's called the manual method.
-You have to hold it like that? -It's quite hard work.
It is hard work. It is hard work, yeah.
So then you decide to go for the airway you go
That's it. Now pull straight back.
-And down. -Jesus.
It goes in quite easily.
That's it.
It's just popped out.
If it pops out like that it hasn't gone in properly, right?
It's gotta be full penetration, all the way down.
God, I haven't fully penetrated a rubber dolly for a while.
I don't want you to do this in the middle of the night in the tent
just for practice, okay? Try wake up with one.
I'll go, "What the fuck are you doing again, Ewan?"
You wake up with a size 7 up your nostril.
Obviously you've got a helmet on so you've got quite a lot of weight on your head,
and your head is heavy in itself.
Having done this medical course,
we've decided that both Ewan and I are totally useless at first aid.
And that's what it would be.
So, I think we've decided to bring along a doctor with us.
In my experience, if I was on a movie and somebody hurt themselves
and there was no medic there, I would go fuckin' bananas.
And seeing as I'm a coproducer on this, I would be being bananas at myself.
I think it's irresponsible to go into dangerous territories
without somebody who can offer some medical help.
'Cause we're talking about something very important here,
-which is, you know, life or death. -Life and death.
And we're the four people that make this decision.
If someone has broken a bone or something like that,
there is only so much that you can do without a hospital.
And that's the idea we like the most.
-We have those two guys-- Okay. -You can put whoever you want in there.
I'm not sure, Charley, that I'm-- I think I want to know who's in the crew
because I think we do have a decision to make about it.
I don't think we should just say whatever you want.
The consensus is that a doctor should be on board, okay?
So a doctor that we can all get on with
from Russia to Russia.
-From Kazakhstan -From Kazakhstan--
From Russia, Astrakhan-- Yeah, okay, okay.
-To Magadan. -To Magadan.
Right, we need a three-month, multi-entry visa.
We still don't have any motorbikes.
KTM are coming on Wednesday with the big guns.
What they want to do is they want to bring this guy who's done it,
who's gone through Siberia.
And I think they want him to sort of look over our schedule.
I think we have to be very careful.
Rest assured we'll have all our necessary permits in place.
-You got them till now, still? -We will have it.
-Are you sure? -Yeah, of course we will.
We had a meeting with the Russian side,
and try to make sure that that coincides and that they talk with each other.
If you're stuck here, that's the end of your journey.
There's no way out again.
Main problem is you go short after winter.
That means there's the most water.
That's the most problems with the permafrost.
-You want to take 14 days for this. -Yeah.
I think we have more than 14 days, I think.
Eighteen days we've got there.
What do you think if I tell you now you need six weeks?
Hi, Russ. I've got the KTM guys on the line.
Do you want to take it? Okay.
-Well, hey, man. -Señor.
-I think it's in here. -Is it my hood?
Bad news.
Had a call from KTM this morning,
-from the "K" of KTM. -Yeah.
Mr. K-blah-blah-blah, whatever his name is.
-They don't want to give any of the bikes? -Correct.
I don't understand. What the--
For fuck's sake!
And what did this guy come and say? That we couldn't do it?
I mean, that it was not possible to do this?
I fucking knew that--
My first reaction was-- "Don't get that guy here," is what I said.
-No, of course. -I said that to everybody,
I said it's impossible. It was wrong to get that guy here.
That was the condition, unfortunately.
Because of what details?
It is an adventure after all, and
-And you're-- He's done it-- -the idea is that
we're going on an adventure, you know?
Okay. Well, thank you for your time.
Thank you. Bye-bye.
They think that we might fail.
Then we'll do it on the BMW and show 'em
what a great big mistake they .
What a . What a business.
Fucking
Get rid of this fucking--
"Fail." How dare they say that?
Sleeping rough on the road
I'll tell you all about it
When I get home
Comin' round to meet you
The long way round
I love success, I like being successful because that's a mark of my work.
But I wasn't driven towards being famous.
And I'm glad that's the case 'cause you can be satisfied with success,
but I don't think you'll ever be satisfied with fame,
'cause you'll never really be famous enough, you know?
Please welcome Ewan McGregor.
I want to ask you about this. What's this world bike tour?
Now Jude Law was here, and he said you're gonna bike around the world?
Yeah. It's been a plan of mine for a long time,
and my best mate in London, Charley Boorman.
And we were planning a trip on motorcycles.
We'd done a lot of biking together.
It's a tough life being somebody famous, isn't it?
It must be so hard.
I first met Charley a few years ago on a movie called The Serpent's Kiss.
Dear sir, you have told me of your fondness for amateur dramatics.
But do please keep your performance within the bounds of credibility.
I am yours, accept it--
Get out and spy on someone else.
One in five films you'll come out with someone
-who you talk to afterwards. -Pick up a mate, yeah.
And one in ten you'll pick up a mate
that you'll spend the rest of your life with.
And Ewan was the one in ten.
Thank you for that.
For a long time we always talked about doing a trip together.
Maybe to Spain or somewhere like that.
And then somehow Ewan then rang me up one night and said,
"Listen, Charley, I've got this idea. Instead of riding to Spain,
why don't we ride around the world?"
I just looked at the map, and the Bering Strait's a very narrow--
you know, that separates eastern Russia with America, with Alaska.
It didn't seem to be very far.
And I thought, "Look, there's a straight line around the world there."
So, we're gonna ride from London to New York,
going east, the long way round.
A holiday doesn't have to be lying on a beach, you know?
It can be exploration and adventure.
Of course, you want it to happen,
you want the adventure to take place and then there's an element of,
for me, of jealousy, of not being able to do something like this.
And then there's an element of sadness of, you know--
You know, it's like-- and happiness, it's like--
It's, like, all over. It's complex.
And it was just a huge adventure that sort of came up
and it was there, so you can't really--
For us, we couldn't question it. It was there, it was a possibility,
and we sort of went with it, really.
The passion in my life is motorcycles. There's no
You can't seem to get away from it either.
In all the years that I've been riding bikes, since I was six years old,
I've never not been able to not think about them.
It smells really nice too.
I started taking motorcycle trips at the end of movies,
and for me it was a way to get out on my own
and to gather back my own decision-making.
When you're flashing around on your bike, you know, with a helmet on,
you're just another geezer on the road.
If it weren't for motorcycles would you guys still be friends?
Probably not.
-No, we would be mates. I think we -Yeah.
-We talk about other things sometimes. -Because when-- Sometimes.
We thought that we would video it to have a memory of it.
And then we thought, "Well, if we're gonna bother videoing it ourselves,
why don't we just get someone else to video it?"
The idea of filming it in the first place was to have a record of it, firstly.
So when we're sitting at 60 years old with our children,
we can have a bit of a giggle at ourselves going around the world.
I'd met a producer called Russ Malkin
who has done a lot of sports television.
And I told him about the project, and he seemed really interested.
Now you're really seeing it.
When Ewan and Charley first came round to see me about the project,
I thought they were totally mad
to take on such an epic adventure, but when I knew they were serious,
I was certainly up for the challenge.
I could see the big, global nature of the production,
so I thought of a producer friend of mine who lives in LA
whose name is David Alexanian.
Soon as I heard about it, I was immediately turned on.
Russ and I are old friends, we've known each other for about 15 years.
But it wasn't until I met with Ewan and Charley
and realized just how legitimate their passion for motorcycles was
that I figured I had to do it.
We've come down to Australia 'cause Ewan's working on Star Wars.
The four of us wanted to get together to see if we could work together.
But more importantly, we've come down to ride bikes
to see how that goes and try a little bit of camping.
Ewan and I both have absolutely no idea what to expect.
And I think that's really
you know, there's always an element of fear.
Yeah, but isn't that one of those things where you have to confront your fears
-and conquer them? -No. Not in this case.
But I'll be there with you.
I mean, it's not, "Let's go around the world and confront our deepest fears."
What kind of trip is this?
We're not a-- It's not a Japanese television program.
-Here we are. -We missed it.
We missed it.
Sorry.
Charley, there was loads of bikers on there and everything.
It was my fault.
Half the journey's about Ewan and I going around on bikes around the world.
And the other half is about meeting people along the way.
Listen, how long have you been doing this?
-About 12 years. Yeah. -12 years?
You do this for 12 hours a day? 12 hours a day?
12 hours a day.
Can you imagine doing this 12 hours a day?
Mind you, can you imagine sitting on a motorcycle for 12 hours a day
for three months?
Some people might think we're the fucking ones who are nuts.
Snakes.
Snake pit.
I've got to get used to this camping out in the wild.
Ewan and I have a great relationship, and that seems to be working well.
I reckon it's a real strong possibility that this is gonna work.
We did enough miles, I think, today. It was quite hard going there.
'Cause
my bum got a bit sore.
There were no bears, thank God. Lots of snakes though.
-You know? -Yeah.
That's why people join the army.
It's not to see the world, and it's not to kill people,
it's just so they don't have to have a bath for a week.
I'm not all that experienced off-road on a bike.
So I'm kind of nervous about it
'cause I know that Charley did an awful lot of motocross
when he was a kid, which I never did.
And it's that terrible anxiety that you get in your stomach
when you're doing something with someone who can do it better than you, you know?
-Do you have a side? -Yeah. I sleep on the right.
Maybe we should change it round
so that we don't feel like we're in bed with our wives,
'cause you don't know what might happen.
Sleep well, Charley.
"Those aren't pillows."
It's been fantastic to kind of get cracking with Charley who makes me laugh.
He's my best mate.
There's no question that at some point we're bound to--
I'll get on his nerves, or vice versa.
But I think what's important is how you deal with that, you know what I mean?
I think maybe we should have two tents,
and, you know, some nights we sleep together
and other nights we don't.
Ewan and I have been talking about it, and we ring each other up
and stuff like that, and some days we're really, you know,
like, "Let's get going."
And then other days it's like I'm thinking,
"Oh, God, do I really want to do it?"
Now that we're back from Australia and everything went really well there,
we've got to find some office space, build a workshop and get it started.
There's gonna be a bike here and a bike here.
And then we'll probably have nothing here, just maybe some tools.
Maybe a Snap-on toolbox, I don't know.
And then here we're gonna have really big shelves, really wide ones,
coming out to about here.
So that all the camping equipment, tents
and anything sort of big and bulky can all go here.
Helmets and stuff for our daily use.
All a bit anal, but anyway, it's exciting.
My mother always told me never to be caught with dirty drawers.
So here I am cleaning my drawers.
You know, I remember walking into that room and it was just a shell.
And now it is the center of this obsession which is this world trip.
Got a lot here to do.
What are we doing now? We're just wandering around cleaning.
Should we let the door down so then that's done?
Yeah, let's do that. Yeah.
Seriously. I crunch it up, you can crunch it down.
-That it? -No, more-- That's it.
That was good, wasn't it?
Should we put it up again?
For me this is a huge part of the trip as well.
This preparation is like
like in Boy's Own stuff, isn't it, you know?
Down in the workshop with Charley, fucking around.
This is what our camp is gonna be like.
I'm not having any fucking messy shit.
Oops. Sorry.
I want you to know that Ewan did this.
This is a bit what I'm like.
It's a bit frightening,
but it gives me so much pleasure to have that all like that.
A lot of us spend our lives running away from who we really are, okay?
-And here it is. -I'm an office boy, clearly.
We want to film this, but we don't want to be surrounded
by loads of cameramen.
So we're just trying to figure out the best way to do it.
We're producing a television show as we go along,
but we wanted the opportunity to be able to record.
So if I'm behind Charley and a deer runs out or something,
-you've got that on. -Okay.
We can cut that in our film.
I just brought a few pictures
just to show you a bit of stuff of what we do and don't do.
We can fit the communications in the helmets.
-We fit a camera, so wherever you look -Yeah.
that's where the camera sees with a wide-angle lens.
So you got the shot of you riding the bike, the shot looking forward
and the shot from your lid, is that right?
Yeah, and is it possible to have this second lens
so somebody can have it pointing up here some of the time,
and then sometimes we can mount it down here
so we have it looking forward? So it's a double option--
-But you got one looking forward already. -Which is your helmet.
Are they voice activated, would you recommend? Or button operated?
Button operated.
Voice operated, if Ewan starts swearing and all the rest of it,
you don't want to record that, you know what I mean?
I don't know why it'd change. We got hours of that already.
No, no, I like the idea of that, button operated,
'cause then if you wanted to have a little sing to yourself,
you don't necessarily want you to hear it.
And if I want to go, "Fucking Charley's pissing me off today,"
-I don't want you to hear that either. -Yeah.
-Not that that would ever happen. -No!
We're gonna give these guys these little video cameras
to do their personal video diaries each evening.
So during preproduction
we're asking them to sort of give an update
as to how they think as it comes together,
and also, most importantly, during the event.
Have you been keeping a diary?
No. Have you?
No.
-Have you been doing a video diary? -No.
-Have you? -No.
It's been really difficult to do these video diaries,
and I've got to be much more disciplined.
I think that guy's coming in, I think, tomorrow.
-Keep talking. Move back. Thanks. -I think he-- Sorry.
-Ease back. Thank you. -Just ease back a bit further, a bit--
There we go. Perfect.
-Water hydro-- Oh, shit. -Look!
Water hydro pack.
I hate this filming. It's ruining our friendship.
It became clear that it's just too difficult to film each other,
so we've got to think of another alternative.
And the idea is that you guys are on your own for a while.
Then when the cameraman's ready,
either with a rider on the front and him shooting backwards off the front,
or him just riding on his own and he joins you for a period of time--
I think it'd be him riding on his own because that's what he'd be doing.
-No, you meet this guy-- -We can't--
Well, they can't hold us up.
What you need is somebody who can at least, like,
I don't know, tank it maybe five miles in front of you,
go up into the Rockies a bit, and actually get the shot of you coming through
without having to make you wait.
You really need--
It's gonna be hard to find someone that's--
-And that-- -So that's what I would--
-Be capable of doing all that stuff. -And is any good.
So why don't we do it like this?
There's a vehicle with our cameraman who we should decide on, I suppose.
The cameraman comes to the office, 25 Bulwer Street, on their bike
to meet you, you interview him--
Whoever does the biggest wheelie down the street gets the job.
We're taking so much camera equipment on this trip
that we decided to take two camera vehicles
driven by Russ and Dave, our producers.
We'll take Jimmy Simak with us as well,
and he can help with some camerawork.
Long Way Round.
It's great that we've set up this office,
but now we've got to figure out how we're gonna get round the world.
It'd be more interesting going that way, for instance.
A bit of motorway, a bit of road.
Yeah, a bit of motorway, a bit of road.
Then we go into the Ukraine up to Kiev.
-That's the national park. -That makes perfect sense to me.
-Do you speak English, you foreigner? -We're trying to get to New York.
I'd really, really love to see the Caspian Sea.
-Apparently it's full of oil fields -It's been recommended
-sturgeon and-- -by the Kazakhstan people.
-And it's just full of amazing -Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Up through here.
Look at that. That's like Mars. I'm so fucking excited.
What are these green-lined areas, do you think?
That's a national park.
We miss out on all this part of Russia--
We kind of hit China here. This is very dodgy.
-This is dodgy here? -Very dodgy.
When are we ever gonna be round there again?
-Never. -Well, don't say that. Never say never.
We might never wanna go there together again.
-Don't say that. -No, no, no.
That suddenly came alive for me, looking at a map
of a huge country like Kazakhstan and then going,
"So there's something interesting there, something there, there."
And suddenly this route unfolds in front of your eyes.
You just imagine yourself, you're sitting on the bike going across it.
Sing a song of sixpence A pocket full of rye
Sorry.
Yeah.
Four and twenty blackbirds Baked in a pie
The maid was in the garden She was hanging out the clothes
When down came a blackbird And pecked off her nose
No wonder I'm singing "Sing a Song of Sixpence."
It looks like Clara did them.
Two men, two bikes, 20,000 miles.
One hell of a fucking rally.
-It's -Dakar.
We're gonna ride 20,000 miles and travel through 13 countries.
And then we could just directly go east through Russia,
but we want to see Kazakhstan and Mongolia.
And then ride the Road of Bones in Far Eastern Russia to Magadan.
Then we're gonna fly to Alaska,
and go through Canada, America and New York.
This is longer than any bike ride I've ever done.
This isn't just going out for a ride-- "I'm just going for a ride on my bike."
This is a bit more than that, you know?
Now we've got the route, what we need to do is speak to people
who know a lot about the countries we're gonna pass through.
I'm sorry, Charley.
How embarrassing.
It's enormous.
-Therefore-- -If we can help on the way,
-we can draw some maps -Yeah.
-as we go, that will be very helpful. -That will be--
But I will try to-- Yeah.
-If we know where we're going -It's just a rough idea.
we can ask people and, you know, I'm sure we'll be--
-East. Which way is east? -Yeah. We're going east.
It's very important for us
to learn about the different rituals and customs in each of these countries.
Like in Mongolia, when we're driving our motorbikes,
how do you say no to vodka politely?
You don't have to drink any.
You just take it with your right hand, maybe put it to your lips
and then you give it back to the same person.
You don't have to try and spill it when they're not looking?
No, you don't have to do that. No, that's fine.
They might offer you snuff. It's all the etiquette.
-Yeah. -It's all because they want to give.
But sometimes it might actually be an empty snuff bottle.
-So in effect, you pretend. -You just pretend.
-But if there is snuff -If there's snuff, yeah.
you can take a little pinch of snuff.
But there's a whole way-- rigmarole, of which hand
Gets around the fact we both gave up smoking some time ago.
We'll be straight in there, "Any snuff?"
"Snuff, anyone?"
I hope not quite like that because then they might think--
Hello, we're from the BBC. Any snuff?
I'd say that entire area there is bear country.
There are more bears in that area than there are human beings.
So we go through Russia across here
-Yes. -and then through Kazakhstan
and back into Russia.
Across Mongolia and then up towards the Road of Bones.
-Then to Magadan. -Wow.
-Up to Magadan. -That seems so-- Yeah.
-Wow? -Yes.
The thing is that, you know--
You just probably don't realize it, you know?
Roads are very bad.
-We're talking about July. -It's the hottest month.
They're painting a very negative picture.
She said they used to send people here as a torture.
It's a part of the world that we want to go and see.
Do you know what I mean? You gotta get in the spirit of it.
And also, "I'm sure you have no idea how big Russia is."
Oh, no. That's why we've fucking scheduled nine, ten weeks to get across it
'cause we thought it was just a quick run to the shops.
We've scheduled about eight weeks to do this, haven't we?
-More than that, maybe. -More than, yeah.
We've got three weeks to come back
-Trans-Siberian comes through here. -from Alaska to thing.
Three out of 15, 12.
We've got 12 weeks to get from there to there.
-There. There. -Yeah.
Twelve weeks.
Whose idea was this?
-And then I remembered it was mine. -It was yours.
There's so many things that we've got to do.
Like we have to sort out the whole GPS thing.
That's great, having a map with a line.
But we're gonna have to have that in our panniers
and have the whole thing plotted into a GPS device.
So, we've got to do all that.
So that might take some time.
I'm sure that'll take some time.
The major routes.
What we had hoped was that if it told us where we were,
we could see on the map exactly where we were.
And to be able to say, "Okay, we want to go to this town which is there"
-Yeah. -punch in the coordinates to that town,
and then it could take us there, it could point us there.
There's no problem with Canada, Alaska, America, Europe.
But Russia and Kazakhstan, Mongolia have not yet been plotted
by any navigation company.
Bandidos and all through here.
-That's half the world. Right. -I mean, all through here.
-Half the world. -You know what the Russians are like--
Well, actually the most dangerous place
to pitch a tent on our journey,
the most dangerous part to pitch a tent on the side of the road
is the United States of America.
-Yeah, apparently-- -That's the most dangerous part.
Because of the potential dangers of this trip,
we've decided to do a hostile training course,
which covers everything from orienteering
to first aid and self-defense.
It's quite hard-core, it's quite worst-case scenario.
So that should include stuff like, you know, evading being kidnapped
and getting through dodgy, drunk border guards, you know what I mean?
The key thing about navigation is it is just a methodical process.
You just need to be sort of slightly pedantic about the way you approach it.
I'd say we're at 57
The one thing I would say right from the outset
is believe your compass.
No, no, we're 56
The compass actually, very, very boringly, never lies.
It's a real cliché to say that.
But even if the ground is absolutely bloody perfect
for what you want it to look like,
if the compass says it ain't there, it ain't there. You're in the wrong place.
-Fifty-four. -It's 55.
Are we up here or are we down here?
-Well, the church is to our south. -We're up here. We're here, Ewan.
-We're right there. -We're here? I thought we were down here.
No, we're right here.
I would be happier now knowing about map reading
and orienteering that you can actually easily get yourself out of trouble.
Who knows? We don't know what we're gonna come across.
So I feel responsible in that we're learning about all of it first.
We're not just leaving it up to chance.
One of the things about checkpoints,
whatever the checkpoint, they are not what they seem.
They are designed to get you to slow down,
come into what's called a killing ground, which is covered by fire,
and then the thing is initiated.
So what we're talking about here is a progression
from just how we get through checkpoints.
Moving then on out of the cuds,
and we'll look at the ambush stuff and anti-ambush drills.
Okay, so got my whiskey there. Wait a minute, that's--
Whiskey's there, and I've got the passports here.
-Don't offer the money-- -Booze or cigarettes.
What's absolutely key with bribes, and going through checkpoints,
is never, ever, ever offer them.
The thing to do is to say, "Absolutely, no problem at all.
Is there a, sort of, an official toll?
Do I have to go and pay it at the police station
or can I pay it straight to you?"
I go to pieces
But not just now
Thank you very much
You are the driver Where the hell have they gone?
Hang on. They're sort of behind that tree there.
Oh, look, it's a Serb in jeans.
It's a question of projecting the right image to these guys.
Slow down.
Unless they ask you to turn the engine off,
in which case you always do what you're told at these locations,
keep the engine running. Keep it in first gear.
We are trying to get through to the next village.
So if it does turn nasty, and I mean really nasty,
-You just blast away. -you can get out. Off you go.
please to Colonel Fahim,
he says to come, to come this way
and to go to the next village.
No, not this way. You go back
We need to pay a toll to pass?
I have some of your local currency.
It's good to pass?
Okay. This is for me?
-No problem. -You understand?
Yes, sir.
Okay, thank you very much. Very good to see you.
-Thank you. -Good luck.
All the way across central Asia shepherds--
any self-respecting householder will own one of these.
There are something like 400 million of these in the world or something.
It's just outrageous.
Well, what we're gonna look at now is where it is definitive
that you are coming under fire.
You need to know the best way of getting yourselves out of it on foot.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.
And 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15.
-Two breaths. -Two breaths.
Do 15 compressions and two breaths.
If you hum the song "Nellie the Elephant Packed His Trunk,"
you have got to have finished all 15 compressions,
done two breaths and be back to start again
by the time you've finished the song.
Nellie the Elephant packed her trunk And said goodbye to the circus
Off she went with a trumpety-trump Trump, trump, trump
I hear something.
I hope you brushed your teeth.
If you do have the misfortune of cutting your femoral artery,
which is running up in your groin,
I could stand here and I'd hit those bay windows.
The blood will squirt that far.
-Shit. -Don't worry, I'll be there.
You are not gonna be able to stop it with your hand.
Yeah?
I'm now terrified, of course, having watched Charley do his CPR business
because Charley's CPR is only gonna be done on me.
Twelve, 13, 14, 15.
-Two breaths. -Two breaths.
And of course we're talking about ABC's, but Charley's really dyslexic.
It doesn't really mean anything to Charley, ABC.
Can I try your
Absolutely. That's what they're there for. Tuck in.
You fucking bastards!
Gentlemen, I believe your backup team's just been hit.
There's your med kit. There's your torch. Get out there! Come on!
Your backup team's been hammered. Go out there. Come on!
But I might get shot.
Okay, here we go.
All right, you get the wound. Press the wound.
Where should we start? There's a cut on his shoulder.
You all right, mate?
You shouldn't play with guns. It's just-- This is what happens.
Shooting yourself. I mean, how silly--
Lift your arm for me, lift your arm for me. Come on.
There we are. Okay.
Is that a Rolex? Do you think we could take that?
Anywhere else? Are you hurt anywhere else?
There's an exit wound.
Is that an exit--
Your victim showed us where it was.
-I need some tape. -Tape.
-I don't have any tape. -If you haven't got tape,
-what are you gonna use? -Okay. I'm gonna use my initiative.
Yeah. I'll hold it.
Hang on.
Okay, let's get him inside. We're out of--
Okay. Yeah, we'd get him out of the way.
Do it first.
He can walk himself over.
Jesus!
-That only took about half an hour. -Pissed himself
That's some good stuff.
I'm glad to have learned all the medical stuff we learned today.
Being shot is probably something we'll try and avoid very much.
The things that could happen to us are: somebody could fall off
and break a leg, break an arm, crack a neck,
getting a land mine exploding in your face,
very hopefully not gonna, you know
not gonna happen to us.
I think you're always concerned about the dangers
of a trip on a motorbike.
If we do get a spout of diarrhea is just to take a 500 mil
-There's an antibiotic. -antibiotic and just--
It's one hit, one dose, gone. Done, finished.
-As soon as you get it, really. -Yeah.
I've had diarrhea in a tent when I was in Scotland when I was a kid.
I was 16, 17. Me and my mate went up to the Highland west coast,
and we didn't clean the pots or anything properly.
So while we were sleeping at night, flies are laying eggs in them,
mosquitoes are fucking in it and stuff.
You know, I wake up the next morning. I'm like, "Oh, God!"
I was literally just lying in the tent or running out to
-Shit. -purge myself in the bracken
for a day and a half. It was miserable. It's misery.
We needed the backing of a major motorcycle company
to get us around the world in three and a half months.
So we've narrowed it down to BMW and KTM.
I look good in orange, don't I?
We're gonna test the BMW first.
It feels to me very, first of all, really comfortable.
When we were out on the road, we did the road test first,
and when we were out there it felt really--
You could just eat up an awful lot of distance on them.
I fell off down there.
We were only doing-- It wasn't really a fall off.
It was a topple over while I was going around the corner.
But it was fine. It was really slow. It was a really slow one.
I think BMW's a really good bike, but I think the KTM is better.
KTM is an Austrian manufacturer
who build, specifically, motocross and enduro bikes
for exactly the trip that we want to do.
That's yours, Charley, and I'll take this one.
-No, I wanna go on this one. -No, you take that one.
No, no. I've dreamt about this all my life.
Wow. Look at that.
God, this morning was just so exciting.
I mean, I've been waiting quite a long time
to have a go at the old KTM.
It was just fantastic. It really was.
It's incredibly confidence-inspiring this bike on the loose stuff, you know?
Especially when you're going very slow as well.
-Did you go very slow at any point? -No.
No, listen, listen, in terms of a bike that's built for it
-there's only the one we've ridden so far. -And which one's that?
The Beemer.
My first reaction was the BMW.
It's the only bike for the trip.
It's the only bike that was made for this kind of thing.
Looks like the KTM then.
I think Ewan prefers the BMW,
but I reckon I can talk him round.
One of the biggest problems we've got at the moment
is trying to find a cameraman.
He's got to be a good rider, a good shooter,
and, more importantly, he's got to get on very well with the team,
particularly Ewan and Charley.
We don't have any helmets yet, we don't have any bikes.
We don't have any gear, we don't have any camping gear. We don't--
We know more or less what we want, but we're just waiting on everybody.
Yeah, I see, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I get it.
We've been here for weeks and nothing's arrived.
This is the only freebie we've had so far.
-That. -Very nice.
The only reason we did this trip was to get free kit,
and that's all we've got.
This is the kind of training that we're doing.
We know our journey's gonna be physically demanding,
and we need to do something about it.
You'll need to be seriously strong.
I haven't worked out in a gym for maybe a year or something.
So my arms have completely disappeared.
I did work out on that film Black Hawk Down, you know?
-Yeah. -I was in Morocco
and one of the American soldiers-- actors was sitting next to me
and he just went, "Look at your arms!"
Someone told me that adding a little bit of blubber onto your body
was a very good idea, just so that, you know
-What, to keep you warmer? -Well, no, so that in case you get ill
or, you know, as your fatigue goes along--
Thanks, yeah. As your fatigue
I've got less than two months. There's three things I want to focus on.
I want to get the boys aerobically fit, I want to build their strength
and I want to get their bodies accustomed to stress.
It's gonna be an incredibly tough journey, and I need them to be prepared.
One! Two. One! Two.
Okay. Two.
-Again. Four. -Nice one.
Imagine doing that and being hit all the time.
I don't want to go anymore. I don't want to go with you anymore.
What? What? What'd I do?
Well, half a bottle of port every lunchtime, he has.
Did you know that?
This is the bike that we're going on around the world.
It's really painful.
-Thanks. Lift it up. -Jesus.
-Ten, -This is hurting in places
-I didn't even know I had. -nine,
-All around my ass. -eight,
seven, six, five, four
three, two, and one.
Why do we need to work our arse like that?
No, see you later, mate.
The guys are gonna spend some time learning Russian
as it's the language spoken in most of the countries they'll travel through.
Good.
My wife's French. I mean, I don't speak French very well.
But realistically, how much Russian can I learn between now and April?
Good. One. Two.
Take one. Two. Back.
Two. Two.
Two. Good.
Come on. Three!
Quick one.
I'm just gonna be looking at you, Charley.
Take the pain away
That didn't hurt
Just relax. Think manly thoughts.
Just a couple of seconds.
Well done.
We all got jabbed up,
and funnily enough it made the trip even more of a reality, you know?
But the fact that we were getting injections was like, "Oh, yeah.
We're really going away," you know?
You can kind of get bogged down in the theory of it all here,
and the talking of it all, and
every now and again, you remember that you're actually gonna go off and do it,
sit on a motorbike for that length of time, you know?
It's just getting closer and closer and, you know,
time's kind of, sort of running out now.
And, you know, just a bit freaky, really,
when you think, "Fuck, I'm just about off."
It's kind of frightening.
Everyone's been really busy in the office.
And the equipment is finally coming through.
-Is this Rokker stuff? -Yeah.
Yes. This is the daddy gear.
They've just sent it to us just to try it out. No commitment.
-Let me see those leathers again. -Thermo Gloves.
-That's a nice combo. -That's a nice little combo.
That's just a little-- It's a very thin one.
-The same boots, isn't that? -Yeah, yeah.
What?
You're pulling it all towards you. I was, you know
One time I slept in a tent was in Canada.
And it rained and rained and rained.
And then it stopped for about 20 minutes,
so we could pitch our tents, and then it just rained.
And it rained and rained. Until 12:00 the next day, it rained.
And we packed up and went home.
And that was my camping.
See, and that closes the valve.
And then Yours isn't inflated.
If it's minus 18 and you're in a minus 10 sleeping bag,
-you'll be fucking freezing. -Yeah.
Now I'm thinking, if we get a minus 10, minus 15 sleeping bag
and then we got the bivvy bag as, like, a backup
-Well, yeah, a little-- -a little cover.
-If you're really serious about it. -And you can wear your clothes in there.
And then-- and you're in a tent and there's two of you sleeping in a tent,
and you can have the little gas burner going
-if it gets really, really cold. -What gas burner?
-The cooker. -No.
-No. -You can't.
-Burn wood. -To put the gas stove on, to heat you up.
No, you put it to heat the tent up.
Yeah, why not? You're cooking in there. If it's pissing with rain
This is what happened to my dad's--
When he was up at that mountain with those kids.
He changed-- The gas bottle leaked, went on fire, melted the zip,
and they were all caught in a fireball in the tent.
'Cause the zips are made of plastic,
so the first thing that happens is they melt together and you can't get out.
-So you don't ever -Serious brain surgery there.
Seriously don't ever stick the stove on to heat yourself up.
Okay.
Well, it was only a suggestion.
"Put the old stove on, would you, Charley?"
One of our biggest fears is to come off the bike
and hurt ourselves seriously, and we feel we need some more medical training.
You've got your upper airway.
The lower airway
is from this down to the base of your lungs. I've got some lungs here.
Pig lungs.
Yeah, pigs are the closest thing to humans, aren't they?
Don't we put pigs' hearts in humans?
Yeah, we do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Pigs' hearts in humans. Amazing.
So if you'd just like to blow them up, Charley,
just get your lip round of them
Well, I like a good pig, I must say.
That's where the air goes down.
-And is that quite hard there? -Yeah, it is.
It feels quite gristly. It's quite hard.
When you let the air out is it gonna make a noise?
-No, no. -Is it gonna go
I just want to show you the actual size of these.
-That's really insane. Wow. -So you can see how much,
you know, oxygenation gets in the hole.
-That's filling up. -Yeah.
-There's a lot of up and down. -Oh, my God.
Little bit-- That's incredible.
We need to feel a chest movement,
and we need to feel air on our cheek to see if they are breathing.
-Yeah. -I find the best way to do it
is just use your hand, okay. Use the inside of your wrist.
Lick it, and then you can feel your breath a lot easier.
Or a mirror.
I used to use a mirror on my daughter when she was first born,
see if she was still breathing.
-Did you? -Yeah. I used to get freaked out that--
-You got the little mirror, yeah. -Got the mirror.
-Just used to wake them up. -Yes, I did wake her up.
So we look inside the airway, what do you think we're looking for here?
-Any obstruction, really. -Okay.
-Do you want to come have a go? -Yeah.
To do the jaw first, we place the heels of our hands on their cheekbones.
Two fingers, put them under the corner of the jaw, the angle of the jaw,
and we lift up.
That's called the manual method.
-You have to hold it like that? -It's quite hard work.
It is hard work. It is hard work, yeah.
So then you decide to go for the airway you go
That's it. Now pull straight back.
-And down. -Jesus.
It goes in quite easily.
That's it.
It's just popped out.
If it pops out like that it hasn't gone in properly, right?
It's gotta be full penetration, all the way down.
God, I haven't fully penetrated a rubber dolly for a while.
I don't want you to do this in the middle of the night in the tent
just for practice, okay? Try wake up with one.
I'll go, "What the fuck are you doing again, Ewan?"
You wake up with a size 7 up your nostril.
Obviously you've got a helmet on so you've got quite a lot of weight on your head,
and your head is heavy in itself.
Having done this medical course,
we've decided that both Ewan and I are totally useless at first aid.
And that's what it would be.
So, I think we've decided to bring along a doctor with us.
In my experience, if I was on a movie and somebody hurt themselves
and there was no medic there, I would go fuckin' bananas.
And seeing as I'm a coproducer on this, I would be being bananas at myself.
I think it's irresponsible to go into dangerous territories
without somebody who can offer some medical help.
'Cause we're talking about something very important here,
-which is, you know, life or death. -Life and death.
And we're the four people that make this decision.
If someone has broken a bone or something like that,
there is only so much that you can do without a hospital.
And that's the idea we like the most.
-We have those two guys-- Okay. -You can put whoever you want in there.
I'm not sure, Charley, that I'm-- I think I want to know who's in the crew
because I think we do have a decision to make about it.
I don't think we should just say whatever you want.
The consensus is that a doctor should be on board, okay?
So a doctor that we can all get on with
from Russia to Russia.
-From Kazakhstan -From Kazakhstan--
From Russia, Astrakhan-- Yeah, okay, okay.
-To Magadan. -To Magadan.
Right, we need a three-month, multi-entry visa.
We still don't have any motorbikes.
KTM are coming on Wednesday with the big guns.
What they want to do is they want to bring this guy who's done it,
who's gone through Siberia.
And I think they want him to sort of look over our schedule.
I think we have to be very careful.
Rest assured we'll have all our necessary permits in place.
-You got them till now, still? -We will have it.
-Are you sure? -Yeah, of course we will.
We had a meeting with the Russian side,
and try to make sure that that coincides and that they talk with each other.
If you're stuck here, that's the end of your journey.
There's no way out again.
Main problem is you go short after winter.
That means there's the most water.
That's the most problems with the permafrost.
-You want to take 14 days for this. -Yeah.
I think we have more than 14 days, I think.
Eighteen days we've got there.
What do you think if I tell you now you need six weeks?
Hi, Russ. I've got the KTM guys on the line.
Do you want to take it? Okay.
-Well, hey, man. -Señor.
-I think it's in here. -Is it my hood?
Bad news.
Had a call from KTM this morning,
-from the "K" of KTM. -Yeah.
Mr. K-blah-blah-blah, whatever his name is.
-They don't want to give any of the bikes? -Correct.
I don't understand. What the--
For fuck's sake!
And what did this guy come and say? That we couldn't do it?
I mean, that it was not possible to do this?
I fucking knew that--
My first reaction was-- "Don't get that guy here," is what I said.
-No, of course. -I said that to everybody,
I said it's impossible. It was wrong to get that guy here.
That was the condition, unfortunately.
Because of what details?
It is an adventure after all, and
-And you're-- He's done it-- -the idea is that
we're going on an adventure, you know?
Okay. Well, thank you for your time.
Thank you. Bye-bye.
They think that we might fail.
Then we'll do it on the BMW and show 'em
what a great big mistake they .
What a . What a business.
Fucking
Get rid of this fucking--
"Fail." How dare they say that?