Around the World in 50 Years

by Albert Podell

  It became unsafe for foreigners to walk the streets. Several Americans were dragged from their cars and beaten. The media warned the populace to watch for suspicious-looking people and report them. The military exhorted the citizens to arm themselves and to shoot enemy guerrillas on sight, a directive that had to be modified when several Pakistani pilots were shot by their own people after bailing out of their disabled planes.

  Most menacing was the appeal to the students: They were encouraged to become vigilantes, enforcers of the emergency defense laws. When a curfew was placed on Dacca they patrolled the streets hunting for violators, and during air-raid blackouts they combed the residential sections searching for glimmers of light, beating on fences and doors with sticks as a warning.

  Steve and I were in a particularly uncomfortable position: We did not have diplomatic immunity or any cognizable function in Dacca, as the other Americans did. We had no friends there. Nor did we have a plausible excuse for being there. Who’d believe we were driving around the world through the middle of a war? It also looked as if we’d no longer even have a place to stay: Our hotel workers were casting increasingly suspicious looks at us. We expected our door to come crashing down any night and vigilantes to drag us into the street. We had no way to escape. Nor could we communicate with the outside world: All postal, telephone, and cable services had been terminated. We headed to the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) to ascertain if there was some way to send word to the Expedition members who were waiting for us in Bangkok.

  When we reached the USIA, the staffers were boarding up the windows. We learned that the university students were on their way to protest America’s aid to India and might attempt to sack the library. We weren’t in East Pakistan to cover the war, but we could at least get photographs. I dashed across the street and into a four-story office building whose balconies offered a perfect vantage point for taking pictures. I raced up the concrete stairs and knelt down on the third-floor balcony, concealed from the street, while Steve hid himself in a parked bus. I soon heard the shouts of the marchers coming down Topkhana Road and screwed a telephoto lens on my camera.

  The day after the 1965 war began between India and Pakistan, the irate citizens of Dacca, capital of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), staged an angry march on the United States Information Agency, claiming America was providing arms to the Indians. I came within seconds of being lynched.

  Suddenly, two soldiers came up behind me and dragged me inside, into a large room whose door read: CIVIL DEFENSE HEADQUARTERS AND OFFICE OF THE COMMISSIONER OF DACCA.

  They held me down in a chair as four officers fired questions at me. A mob of agitated civil defense employees surrounded me. One pulled the film out of my camera. He snarled “Indian spy!” as he spat at me.

  “Kill the Indian spy,” another worker shouted.

  “Death to the enemy,” screamed another.

  “Hang him! Hang him! Hang him!” the angry crowd chanted.

  A porter came in with a thick rope, threw it over a rafter, and started fashioning a noose.

  “Hang him! Hang Him! Hang him!” the room rocked with the chant.

  “STOP!” I cried out. “I’m not an Indian spy; I’m an American magazine editor.”

  “Then why are you prowling around our Civil Defense Headquarters?”

  “I have a very bad case of diarrhea. I caught some bad bug in filthy India. I just arrived in Dacca and was looking for a toilet. It’s an emergency.”

  “Hang the spy! He’s lying. Hang the liar! Hang him!”

  With nothing to lose, I wrestled free, pulled down my pants with one swift motion, and explosively shat a greasy bright-yellow barrage all over the floor, making it graphically clear, even to the most vehement of the lynch mob, that I was not faking a stomach disorder. (I’d been afflicted with increasingly loose bowels and painful cramps for more than a week, but hadn’t gone to a doctor, hoping the problem would cease. Instead, it had grown steadily worse.)

  Still, all I had proven was that I could crap on cue. Thus, I was not only a spy, but a spy with the world’s most disgusting party trick.

  Just then Steve, who’d seen me being dragged off the balcony, pushed his way into the room and shouted, “What are you doing to my friend?”

  They all turned to Steve.

  “This Indian spy is your friend?”

  “He’s no spy. He’s the editor of a big American magazine. And I write articles for it.”

  “It’s forbidden to take pictures here,” the ranking officer replied. “Show me your identification.”

  “We are reporting on the unity and impressive morale of the people of East Pakistan in the face of the Indian aggression,” Steve told him, handing over his passport. “We are not spies.”

  The arbiter studied it carefully, then walked across the room and made a phone call. When he hung up, he turned to us: “We shall see.”

  Half an hour later, in walked the American Vice Consul, who’d been summoned to vouch for our identity. “I thought the consul general told you two to stay out of trouble,” he said, as I removed the rope from my neck.

  Although no noose was good news, Dacca was succumbing to hysteria. Hindus and Moslems, even old friends, were beginning to fight, raising fears that communal riots, like those of 1947 that claimed nearly a million lives, might reoccur. An emergency edict required all vehicles to have their headlights blackened with paint or covered with tape, which turned night driving into a demolition derby. Some took it upon themselves to camouflage their cars with tree branches and leaves, counterproductively making those vehicles all the more conspicuous, masses of green moving through a brown city. Even more ridiculous were the gas station owners who covered their pumps with foliage. When we stopped at one such station to get the daily gallon ration, I prepared to photograph the jungle-covered pumps, but the attendant yelled for the police, compelling us to drive away with neither photo nor gas. The government issued an edict proclaiming it a crime to carry a camera; anyone doing so was presumed to be spying. Two days later we discovered we were being followed; wherever we drove, a white Renault kept close behind us. When we returned to our hotel room we saw that our bags had been searched.

  We needed to find a safer place to stay. A minister we’d met on the ferry had given us the address of his missionary friends in Dacca, so we went to see if they knew anyone who could put us up. We drove out to Dhanmondi, the section where the foreign community lived—the suburb the Pakistanis call the “Golden Ghetto”—and located their house. They weren’t home. Their chaukidar (servant) looked at us suspiciously and told us we’d have to come back later.

  As we climbed into our Cruiser, the air-raid sirens howled. The quiet residential street filled with noise and commotion. Residents ducked from their houses to scan the skies for enemy planes while pedestrians caught outside ran for cover. The chaukidar impatiently gestured for us to hurry and leave so he could lock the gates behind us. But by now vigilante bands were running down the streets, chasing foreigners to cover, shouting and banging on the fences with clubs and sticks. Overriding the protests of the chaukidar, Steve drove our Cruiser into the yard behind the house, where it couldn’t be seen from the street. I slammed the gates shut just as the mob reached them. We ran into the house, followed by the chaukidar. Having little choice but to give us shelter, he led us into a small pantry adjoining the kitchen, lifted a trapdoor, and pointed down into a cellar. We descended a dark stairway and he closed the door above us.

  When the all-clear sounded, the chaukidar opened the trapdoor and led us into the house. The missionaries returned an hour later, listened with understanding as we told them why we needed to find a safe place to stay, and put us in touch with Bill Maillefert, the acting chief information officer at USIA, who knew as much about what was going on in Dacca as any American there.

  We spent the next day at his home in Dhanmondi, discussing the war in general and our problems in particular. By the time we left, Bill had arranged for us to move in with
Mike Schneider, an audio-visual specialist at USIA, who lived alone in a large house nearby.

  We had plenty of company there: Mike’s house had become the nightly gathering place for other unfortunate foreigners, mostly Americans, who’d been caught in the hostilities. We met a missionary, a USAID engineer, six Peace Corps volunteers who’d been ordered to Dacca from rural areas, and others who popped in and out with the latest rumors and directives.

  On our second day at Mike’s house we saw a directive from Consul General Bowling:

  NOTICE TO AMERICANS IN EAST PAKISTAN

  East Pakistan has become an area of hostilities. The Consul General has therefore determined to evacuate all Americans in the near future, using aircraft chartered by the U.S. Government, if they can be brought into Dacca. We hope to have aircraft in Dacca on Saturday. All Americans should report to the American Consulate General for processing as soon as it is convenient. They should bring their passports or other proof of U.S. citizenship.

  We filled out the forms, wondered what would happen, and waited. A few started packing and closing their houses. But Saturday came and went, as did Sunday. And Monday. And Tuesday. There were no planes, no evacuation; only more directives and rumors.

  When we weren’t discussing the rumors, we listened to the shortwave set, perhaps the biggest rumormonger of all. First, we’d tune in to Radio Pakistan and hear that: “The brave Pakistani armies are advancing and inflicting heavy blows upon the aggressor in all sectors. Our brave jawans have destroyed 63 American-made Indian tanks in the Sialkot-Jammu section in the last 24 hours. Our gallant airmen shot down 21 enemy planes in today’s action. We have lost only one aircraft.” We’d then pick up All-India Radio to be told that: “The Indian Army is advancing. In a fierce battle in the Waggha-Attari section, we’ve smashed 56 enemy tanks while losing only two of our own. Indian jets brought down 42 Pakistani planes today, with no losses.”

  By the eighth day of the fighting, our running tabulations of the tanks and planes allegedly destroyed by both sides exceeded the combined losses of the Allied Forces in WW II.

  Bowling had no guarantee that any evacuation could be arranged; his request had been met with three days of stony silence from the government. They then told him that no planes were available for charter inside Pakistan because they’d all been turned over to the military. When he explained he intended to bring in U.S. Air Force transports, the Pakistanis refused approval, claiming they couldn’t risk having American planes land in Dacca as long as the airfield was being bombed by India. When Bowling pointed out that there really hadn’t been any such bombing, they said that, in any case, the airport was reserved for Pakistani aircraft.

  When word that the Americans were trying to evacuate reached the citizens of Dacca it caused an outraged uproar. The government helped it along, channeling the peoples’ frustration about their inability to quickly defeat the Indians into an outburst against America. Thousands marched through Dacca to the USIA and the American Consulate, protesting our aid to India and our “refusal to help Pakistan in her hour of trial.” The locals threw rocks through windows and beat up Westerners. They severed all social relationships with Americans, even close friends. No American could walk or drive through town without fear of being attacked. The son of President Khan called Americans “warmongers with the Bible in one hand and Stengun in another preaching their weird doctrines to unreceptive audiences,” and suggested that a mass uprising could prevent our departure.

  Two days later it appeared that the Pakistanis might give the green light, for they presented Consul Bowling with a long list of items—gold, jewelry, cameras, radios, Pakistani money—that were declared war contraband and could not be taken out in an evacuation. This gave heart to the American community because it was the first sign that the Pakistanis were genuinely considering the evacuation proposal.

  The hopes aroused by the directive were quickly dashed the next night by new rumors that ran through the foreign community. Steve was sorting our equipment at Mike’s house, and I was concealing our film inside the linings of our suitcases, when a British consular friend of Mike’s came rushing in. (No foreigners communicated anything important by phone anymore because the lines were tapped by the secret police.) He reported that the Pakistanis had decided to forbid the evacuation and hold the Americans hostage to prevent the Indians from attacking Dacca.

  The next morning there were still no evacuation planes, but there were still more rumors: “The Pakis might allow Bowling to get the women and children out, but all men will have to remain behind.”

  The following morning, a USIA staffer came running in, waving a consular envelope of the kind with which we’d by now become familiar. “The latest directive,” he shouted. “The latest directive on the evacuation.” Mike tore it open and read it out loud to all assembled:

  NOTICE TO AMERICANS IN EAST PAKISTAN

  Subject: Operation Icarus

  1. Due to the delay in obtaining official evacuation transportation, the following preparations should be made:

  a. Beeswax—this material should be collected by all persons and stored in an air-conditioned room. Beeswax will be delivered by Jeep to official homes. Private citizens must appear in person.

  b. Feathers—this will be distributed according to the length of each individual’s arms, and will not exceed …

  CHAPTER 6

  Changing Goals

  After two weeks of captivity, we were evacuated by a U.S. Air Force C-130 and flown to Bangkok, where Steve was hospitalized with hepatitis and I was treated for my intestinal issue. I then flew to Japan to confer with Toyota, which was aghast that the Pakistanis wanted to paint their Land Cruiser khaki and draft it into their army. Steve cabled our camper-trailer sponsor in Wisconsin, whose CEO was a close friend of his influential congressman, Mel Laird, who headed the Defense Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. Caught between the pressure from Tokyo and Washington, the Pakistanis caved and let us return to recover our vehicle and get back on the road.

  By the time we did, Manu had given up and returned to Spain, Willy left to photograph the war in Vietnam, incorrectly believing that his Swiss passport guaranteed his safe passage, and Woodrow was off hawking multivitamins in remote Thai villages.

  After another year of traversing the rest of the globe in relatively peaceful fashion, and with almost 42,000 miles on our odometer, Steve and I crossed the U.S. border at Laredo, to be welcomed by cheering customs agents, the press, and a totally transformed nation. Our formerly staid and complacent homeland had become, during the 19 months we’d been away, an alert, alive, aware, moving, modern, mind-expanded, turned on, tuned in, lit up, teeny-bopper Go-Go Land. No Marco Polo returning home from 30 years abroad could have been as astonished by the changes as we were. We headed to New York—and a record of 22,252 nonrepetitive miles—on the new interstate highway system, as our homeland zoomed by in a flash of Mustangs, miniskirts, mods and rockers, go-go girls, Beatles and Rolling Stones, Head Start and head shops and Heaven to be home.

  After the Expedition concluded, I returned to my playboy ways, dating actresses and models and tooling around town in my homemade wooden sports car powered by a 1947 Chrysler 6-cylinder in-line Spitfire. For the next 30 years my ramblings around the world were desultory and sporadic.

  During the ensuing seven years I completed writing Who Needs a Road? with Steve, appeared on a dozen TV shows, got married, got divorced, became one of the Mad Men and rose to VP of an ad agency, spent three years as a good-government lobbyist, then entered NYU School of Law to get a degree so I could—depending on my mood that day—either get rich or save the world. I was working so hard and taking so few vacations, that I’d visited just 51 countries by 1982, up to a mere 63 by 1990, and 83 by the turn of the century, averaging only one and a half nations a year, all in a casual and desultory fashion, plus 49 U.S. states. (Sorry, North Dakota.)

  But I was not aware of these numbers at the time; I kept no tab because I had no
such goal. My goal was totally different: Ever since the final days of the Expedition, I longed to be the first person to ever travel by land completely around our world in a longitudinal direction. My plan was to drive from New York to the tip of South America, then somehow manage to motor across Antarctica, drive north from the Cape of Good Hope through the length of Africa, on to the northern edge of Europe, fly over the Arctic (which was not land, and therefore did not have to be driven across) to the northernmost shore of Alaska, and conclude with an easy run back to the Big Apple.

  I’d carefully studied the route, noted the most favorable departure date, prepared a detailed budget that I was sure my previous sponsors would cover, written about this dream in both the hardcover and paperback editions of Who Needs a Road?, and even begun to assemble a crew. For more than 30 years that was my dream, my ambition, and my obsession.

  But I was thwarted by two big problems, and eventually defeated by one of them.

  First, the way was not clear. The Western Hemisphere route was blocked by wars and sustained guerrilla fighting in Colombia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. Europe presented the barrier of the Iron Curtain. Africa was aflame with wars or revolutions in Algeria, Angola, Chad, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Eritrea, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, Rhodesia, Zaire, Uganda, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Burundi, and Rwanda that blocked any route through. (Sir Ranulph Fiennes did, from 1979 to 1982, successfully lead a longitudinal expedition around the world, and wrote an excellent book about it, To the Ends of the Earth, but he avoided the war zones by taking ship much of the way.) The land route would have to wait at least until most of the conflicts were resolved, which did not happen until well into the Millennium.

  But it was the crossing of Antarctica by automobile that proved insurmountable. My dreams die hard, but I did finally conclude—and I hope one of you will one day prove me wrong—that such a crossing could not be achieved. I read. I researched. I tested. I studied. And I consulted experts. But I could not conceive a reasonably secure way of traversing Antarctica’s many wide glacial crevasses and barrier mountains by car, or of keeping the vehicle intact in Antarctica’s subzero temperatures. When I tested 4 × 4s in northern Canada in the dead of winter, the tires froze and shattered and the engine had to run continuously to keep the battery charged, the parts from disintegrating, and the essential fluids liquid—a feat not easily accomplished on a barren continent where there are no filling stations.