Around the World in 50 Years

by Albert Podell

  On the practical side, I had a great job, good health, an apartment on fashionable East 55th Street, was dating some of the hottest models and actresses in town (a legacy from my previous post as an editor at Playboy), had saved enough to start an investment portfolio, and had a hundred other valid reasons to stay put. But I’d been editing Argosy for four years and wanted to stop living vicariously. I’d sent writers and photographers on dozens of ventures, voyages, and expeditions—by dogsled across Greenland, to Cocos Island and to Bora Bora, searching for Inca gold in Peru, hunting for pirate treasure in the Caribbean, bicycling from Cairo to Cape Town, even giving the wild young Hunter Thompson his first assignment—and I wanted an adventure of my own.

  In December of 1964 I teamed up with Harold Stephens, a travel/adventure writer and ex-Marine, to try to break the record for the longest direct, nonrepetitive, land journey around the world. We aimed to accomplish this by shunning the old Paris-to-Peking route (then blocked by the Iron Curtain and the Bamboo Blinds), and taking a longer, more southerly course, across the deserts of North Africa, through the Middle East, along Marco Polo’s route across Central Asia, through India and Southeast Asia to Singapore, then across the width of Indonesia and Australia, and back to New York from Panama.

  There had been four previous transworld auto expeditions, but all had taken shorter routes. The Great Race of 1908 had sent the competitors from New York to Alaska, to Vladivostok, to Moscow, then across Europe to Paris. The Wanderwell Expedition of 1919–1925 had wandered well over the map, but its direct route had taken its Model T Ford from Spain through Italy, Greece, Turkey, on to India, Japan, and San Francisco. The 1955 Oxford and Cambridge Far East Expedition had driven a Series 1 Land Rover from London to Singapore via Austria, Yugoslavia, and Turkey, but had not circuited the world. The remarkable 1956 solo drive of Group Captain Peter Townsend was poignantly recounted in Earth, My Friend. He pushed a Land Rover over a similar course but did go all the way around, partly as a healing process after Britain’s royal family broke up his romance with Princess Margaret Rose and refused to permit her to marry him because he was divorced, something a royal just didn’t do in those staid days before Di and Charles and Camilla.

  Those previous globe-girdling expeditions had—after deducting for side trips, backtracking, indirect routing, and city tours—traversed 16,000 to 18,000 goal-oriented, nonrepetitive miles. By driving closer to the Equator, where the earth’s circumference is greatest, and by filling in some oceanic gaps with drives across Indonesia and Australia and up from Panama, our goal-oriented, nonrepetitive mileage would exceed the others by at least 6,000, thereby establishing a clear and unbeatable record for the longest latitudinal land traverse of the globe. I optimistically named us the Trans World Record Expedition.

  I wasn’t wealthy, nor was Steve—only his mother can call him Harold—so we needed sponsors to provide the equipment and cash for what we envisioned as an eight-month jaunt. Within six weeks, calling on contacts I’d made editing magazines, we had 30 big backers, including Toyota, Dow, DuPont, Union Carbide, Firestone Tire, American Cyanamid, Thermos, Hat Corporation, Thom McAn shoes, Sea & Ski, the Bourbon Institute, SC Johnson, and Manischewitz, which wanted a photo of us sharing their matzos with Arab camel drivers in front of the Great Pyramid in Egypt.

  We had sponsors for almost everything we needed, with a couple of manageable exceptions. I couldn’t get a petrol partner because no oil company had service stations in every nation on our route. And the toilet tissue manufacturers turned us down because I could not contrive an acceptable method of photographing their product being used in a variety of exotic locations.

  Several corporations, declining official sponsorship, nevertheless donated their products: Upjohn, figuring that we wouldn’t be eating well, gave us three thousand vitamin pills; Johnson & Johnson sent a first-aid pouch and a snakebite kit with a note expressing the hope that we didn’t have to use either; Allied Chemical showed both its charity and pessimism by providing a set of inflatable splints; and Travelers Insurance, after rejecting us for a liability policy, sent us six of their trademark red umbrellas. Between the corporate givings and misgivings, we were well-equipped, fully bankrolled, and ready to hit the road.

  Harold Stephens and me (with hat), the co-leaders of the Trans World Record Expedition, seated atop our Toyota Land Cruiser FJ40 at a press conference in Paris explaining our proposed record-setting land route around the globe. This was ten days into what would turn out to be an arduous 581-day journey. French Government Tourist Agency

  On March 24, 1965, we watched from the deck of the Queen Elizabeth as our Land Cruiser and a half ton of supplies were hoisted aboard, bound for France. I was on my way to 26 new countries and a world of adventures.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Land of a Thousand Horrors

  We off-loaded our Toyota 4 × 4 in Cherbourg and rendezvoused there with three men we had added to the expedition: Willy Mettler, a photographer from Switzerland; Woodrow Keck, a newspaper reporter from the Midwest; and Manu Bolar, a journalist from Spain. Sadly, none of them lasted until the end of the journey: Manu and Woodrow would give up and go home because of the delays and diseases that plagued the journey, and Willy would be captured and killed by the Vietcong in the Parrot’s Beak of Cambodia. But our start, through France, Andorra, Spain, and Morocco, was bright with promise and few serious problems.

  We did get stuck in an April snowstorm in the Pyrenees of Andorra and unknowingly pitched our emergency camp atop a smugglers’ cache. We sustained several weeks of delay getting our air-freighted supplies through customs in Cadiz; smashed the undercarriage of our camper-trailer on Spain’s rough secondary roads; and were trapped for two days in the Spanish blockade protesting the 250-year-long British occupation of Gibraltar. But these were minor inconveniences compared to what was to come in the months ahead.

  On the plus side, in southern Spain we picked up both Steve’s old Jeep and a small trailer to haul supplies and three comely, adventurous, vacationing New Zealand nurses—Liz, Barbara, and Mira—who asked to accompany us into North Africa.

  We crossed Morocco without incident and entered Algeria late one night, where we decided to camp at the first clear spot. The border area was a mess of armed soldiers, concrete tank traps, and barbed wire, but a little past it we found an empty, hard-packed field, pulled in to it, pitched our camper and tent about 40 yards from the road, and were asleep in minutes.

  “Attention! Attention!” Someone was shouting at us in French through a megaphone. It was early morning and I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes.

  “Arrêtez! Arrêtez!!” The command came from an Algerian Army officer up on the road who continued to shout at us in French.

  Willy blanched: “He says we shouldn’t move. We’re in the middle of a minefield!”

  “Minefield? I’d hoped they’d gotten rid of those by now,” I said.

  “Got rid of what?” asked Woodrow, just waking up.

  “The land mines. I edited a story about them at Argosy.” More than seven million mines had been laid throughout Algeria, mostly by the rebels to blow up French troops and equipment during their war for independence, some to prevent an attack from Morocco. After the war nobody remembered exactly where they’d put a lot of them. They’d managed to dig up about half, but of the three million left, a few were apparently somewhere behind, around, or in front of us.

  “What does he say we should do?” Steve asked Willy, who was translating.

  After several shouted exchanges, Willy explained: “He says we should stay here. He has no mine detector. He says in four or five days the mine expert is due back in this part of the country. He also says we’re a bunch of stupid fools to ignore all the warnings.”

  Down the road a sign with a skull and crossbones winked at us in the morning sun.

  A four-day delay would be intolerable and unsafe with eight people eating, sleeping, walking, and answering calls of nature in a confined space surrounded by unde
rground ordnance.

  The safest way to get out was the way we’d driven in, but it was impossible to discern our tire tracks on the hardpack. Steve tried a tactic he’d picked up in the Marines. He took one of our arrows (from yet another sponsor) and to it tied a long piece of string, tied the string to a length of strong cord, and attached the cord to the winch cable on our car. He uncased one of our hunting bows (same sponsor) and shot the arrow as far as the road, where the officer hauled in, successively, the string, the cord, and the winch cable, until he had enough cable to work with.

  Following Steve’s shouted instructions, the officer found a sizable boulder, about 80 pounds. With the help of several nomads who’d stopped to see the harib get blown up, he rolled it to the road and wrapped the end of the cable around it.

  When Steve started the engine to activate the winch, the rest of us took shelter beneath the camper, while he stayed in the Land Cruiser, his foot on the pedals, hauling in the improvised mine sweeper. The big boulder came tumbling and dragging along the ground, certain to detonate any mine in its path. With a solid clink, the boulder hit the bumper; the path was clear.

  But was it really? The boulder had swept a trail wide enough for a pedestrian, but not wide enough for the car and camper. One at a time, seven of us walked to the road along the boulder’s narrow pathway, with me last in line, pulling the winch wire, which, on reaching the road, I hooked around another boulder that Steve hauled in along a path parallel to the first.

  It was halfway home when it detonated a mine. The world erupted. I was deafened by the blast. Rock and dirt exploded skyward and settled over our cars. But that was all: Our group was unharmed, the vehicles were operational, the path was clear, and we were back on the road.

  Two days later, I was leading in the Toyota and Steve was following in his Jeep, when a blue Citroën passed him, doing at least 80 miles an hour on the narrow road. It swerved in behind me just in time to avoid hitting an oncoming car. At the outskirts of a village, the Citroën zoomed past me and, without warning, abruptly cut perpendicularly in front of me, risking a collision. I yanked the wheel violently left and crushed the brakes to bring the Toyota and camper to a slithering stop inches from the crazy Citroën.

  The nurses and I tore out of the Cruiser, raging at the Citroën, who responded in French with a string of curses. Our normally phlegmatic Manu came up with a barrage that culminated in a pledge to defecate on the man’s mother’s genitalia to which the Citroën retorted, “May a pig die on the grave of your grandmother!”

  The villagers rushed to the road, a crowd of about 40, to whom it was obvious, from the position of the cars, that the Citroën was recklessly at fault. Yet all of them took his side, as if they were afraid not to, even those who had seen him force me off the road.

  A woman ran out of the house into whose courtyard the Citroën had been turning, waving a broomstick, screaming in French, “Go away! Go away, foreigners! Always foreigners. Always making trouble. Leave my husband alone!”

  But I wasn’t backing off: “Let me see your license,” I demanded.

  The Citroën’s mouth fell open in shock, but he didn’t budge.

  “I said show me your license,” I shouted, moving in on him.

  “There, that is my license,” he shot back in French, flashing a card from his pocket.

  “This isn’t a driver’s license, and you know it,” I yelled, after I caught a glimpse of an ID card that read MINISTRY OF PUBLIC WORKS at the top. “All this probably says is you dig sewers or haul shit away. It’s a very fitting card for you, I’m sure, but I want your driver’s license. I’ll see to it you never drive again.” I walked behind his car and wrote down the plate number.

  That did it! The Citroën flew into a sputtering rage. He ran at me. I pulled back to punch him. Willy kicked him in the leg. The crowd started to move in. Steve jumped in to break up the fight. We couldn’t understand why the Citroën hadn’t just made a polite apology to get rid of us, but he was in no mood to apologize now, and we couldn’t take on the whole village.

  Two uniformed policemen broke up our squabble. They were somewhat embarrassed, but obviously on the Citroën’s side. From the one who spoke English, the truth began to emerge: The Citroën was an important chap, the police commissioner of the entire district. (The card he’d flashed me didn’t authorize him to dig sewers, but to arrest people, a job he’d won by being a fierce guerrilla leader in the war against the French colonials.) He was a notoriously reckless lead foot whose wild driving was diplomatically ignored in deference to his position. We, however, had caused a contretemps by calling him out on it. The only way he could regain his stature and his village’s respect was for us to admit that we were wrong and make peace.

  And so we did.

  The police built a roaring bonfire in the commissioner’s courtyard, over which the nurses boiled soup and heated tins of meat. The commissioner contributed a five-gallon jug of wine. We were all friends now, en rapport, and the commissioner was happy. He showed us a postcard of Manhattan that a nephew had sent, and asked if we had ever been there. He told us how he’d blown up a train with plastique during the revolution, and that he’d killed at least 15 French settlers. He pulled out his gun and fired three shots into the night for emphasis. He drank until the wine ran down his cheeks. He chased Barbara around the campfire, trying in vain to pat her outstanding butt, as we wondered how to limit our camaraderie without giving offense. He sang bawdy French songs and roared with laughter when we played him back the tape recording.

  Then things took a turn for the worse: He made a request we had to somehow refuse.

  “I wish,” he said, “I wish to buy that girl from you.” He pointed to Barbara, blonde, full-figured, and glowing. I didn’t blame him a bit for wanting her, but we had to get out of this predicament without pissing him off, because a man who’d killed 15 pieds-noirs wasn’t going to think twice about shooting us dead if he felt he had been insulted by an American.

  “How much will you pay for her?” I asked, emulating an ancient Arab custom in which wives were purchased.

  “How much do you wish?” he countered, also following the custom, and I could see we were in for some hard haggling. And I could see that Barbara had stopped glowing.

  I asked him what he thought a fair price, and he offered 1,500 U.S. dollars, cash or gold.

  “Well, that’s a good start,” I answered. “But only for an average woman. It’s not enough for her. Barbara here is exceptional.” Exceptionally pale at the moment, I noticed.

  “How much do you want?”

  “Well, we just couldn’t part with her for less than three thousand dollars. She’s no ordinary woman. Shining hair, nursing skills, nice disposition, and…”

  “And lots of meat,” the commissioner smirked. “All right, I give you two thousand. It’s too much for a woman, but since you’re my good friend, I’ll give it to you.”

  “I’m sorry, but we just couldn’t take less than three thousand, even from a good friend like you. We turned down twenty-seven hundred for her in Marrakesh from the Sultan’s half-brother. We have to send part of the money to her mother.”

  “You do not bargain, Monsieur.”

  “Three thousand dollars is a bargain for a beauty like Barbara.”

  “As you wish. All right. I take her.”

  We were astonished! My ruse had failed. I couldn’t conceive of anybody paying three thousand dollars for a woman outside of divorce court, but here it was. Barbara looked about ready to faint, when I recovered with, “But there’s one thing I forgot to mention, dear friend. You see, we’d planned to sell these women as a group. They all go together. And because you are our friend, you can have the other two at a big discount, only two thousand dollars each, seven thousand dollars for all three.”

  “No, I do not want the other two. They are too skinny. Look,” he said, pinching Liz, who screamed. “No meat. All bones. Like a sick camel. I could not even get two hundred dollars for her from t
he nomads. I only want the big one.”

  “But, you see, we have to sell them together. The one you prefer is the prize of the flock. You have excellent taste. You can understand why we need her to help us sell these other two miserable ones. Nobody will buy these scrawny chickens otherwise. Come on, special for you, as our friend, only seven thousand for all three.”

  We all held our breath while he thought it over.

  “No,” he said finally. “No deal.”

  And so, with a collective sigh of relief, our group drove on to Algiers, the Kiwis sitting in the back of the Land Cruiser singing, at the top of their lungs, “Máori Battalion March to Victory.”

  Algiers buzzed with activity, none of it conducive to a pleasant visit. Under President Ben Bella it had become a center of anti-American propaganda and policies. We’d picked up its radio programs denouncing Americans as “imperialists, exploiters, fascists, and colonialists.” Ben Bella had opened Algiers to international revolutionary groups. Its streets teemed with young rebels from the Mozambique Liberation Front and the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola. The city was plastered with signs and billboards extolling sacrifice, praising Socialism, saluting the Soviets, thanking Red China, and damning America.

  Behind the flags and slogans, we detected unrest and discontent. High prices, low wages, half-empty stomachs, and disillusionment were rife. As were guns and barbed wire. Ben Bella’s palace was surrounded by concrete tank traps and stout walls manned by half a hundred troops brandishing Russian machine guns.

  We searched for the attractive campsites of the tourist brochure, but those sites were also victims of the war for independence that had despoiled the coast around Algiers with barbed wire, minefields, and watchtowers. We were forced to drive 15 miles to find a clear beach, where we set up our camper and rushed for the Mediterranean, eager to wash off the sand and sweat of a week of driving.