by Paul Archer
It was time to start planning.
The planning process for an expedition of this importance and magnitude is highly complex, so a few days later we packed up a map and a laptop and headed to the pub, where Johno, ex-RAF-pilot-trainee-turned-student and never one to miss out on a pint or adventure, joined us to 'consult'.
Now, here, you'll see, is where we made our first – and possibly gravest – error of the trip: never plan anything in a pub.
We agreed right away that a black cab would have to be the vehicle. There were no options other than possibly a yellow New York cab, and it was agreed that that was hardly very British. Next came the route. London to Sydney seemed as good as any; none of us had been to Australia and we fancied seeing some kangaroos. As we started looking at the map and sketching out a roughly direct route to Sydney, some bright spark pointed out that a true black cab driver would take the longest route possible to 'rack up the meter'.
Before long, a marker pen had carved a line across the map passing through Europe, Russia, Africa, the Middle East, India, China, South East Asia and Australia, with a beer spill smudging the line somewhere over Cambodia.
This idea was faultless, perfect and, most importantly, hilarious.
Well, it was at the time at least. And the more we thought about it (which was directly proportionate to the amount we drank) the funnier it got, and, as the owner of a big camera (the basic requirements for the job), we had even persuaded Johno to come as the official expedition photographer. Leigh was the mechanic and I, being the holder of no actual skills of note (or a big camera), would deal with borders.
What could go wrong?
Now that Paul and Leigh had mentioned the journey more than a few times I started to realise, with both horror and excitement, that it might actually happen. My enthusiasm for the idea started to grow. Before long, I had told anyone and everyone who would listen about our planned post-graduation journey. However, when bemused friends and family and incredulous workmates greeted the plan with a sea of rolled eyes and smirks, we quickly decided that we needed to give our idea some kind of collateral. We needed to buy ourselves a taxi.
After scouring the Internet and classified papers we eventually found what seemed to be the perfect model. The LTI FX4 is the iconic London black cab, famous throughout the world, and Leigh had managed to find a 1992 model going for the bargain price of £1,350 on eBay, hidden amongst the knock-off iPods, old CDs and pieces of toast with the image of Jesus burnt into them. Leigh thought that the 1990s workhorse was a good deal but unfortunately he couldn't make it down to London to check it out in person. This left Paul and I, meticulously briefed, to go along with £450 from each of our student loans in our pockets, to inspect the car.
So that's how we found ourselves on the outskirts of London, mugs of tea in hand, strolling round a vehicle we had both ridden in many times but never properly looked at, kicking the wheels and trying to give the impression that we knew what we were talking about.
'Hmm, it says it has done ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine miles here,' I commented, looking at the ancient odometer, 'that seems like quite a lot?'
'Oh, don't pay no notice to that,' replied the cockney salesman, 'the mile reading is stuck.'
'So how many miles has it done?'
He furrowed his brow. 'Probably about three-hundred thou.'
Paul and I looked at each other and shrugged – how bad could it be?
'We'll take it.'
CHAPTER 2
HARD HEARTED HANNAH
I watched impatiently as the signal on my phone flashed 'Searching'. I had just finished my final exam at university, and quite possibly my final exam ever – marking a triumphant finale to my overwhelmingly average academic career.
In theory, I had been working up to this moment since I was five years old. Had I not been so laser-focused on finding signal so I could track down my friends and have a mammoth celebration, the reality of graduate jobs, real life, growing up, marriage, kids, pets, retirement and death would have been crushing.
I watched as 'Searching' suddenly turned to a bar of signal, then two, and then the phone started to ring and a London number showed on the screen.
Oh God, please tell me they haven't travelled to London to celebrate? I'm still stuck in bloody Birmingham!
'Hello?'
'Hi Paul, it's Matt,' said a man with a strong Essex voice. Matt… Matt… None of my friends are called Matt? I had no idea who this was.
'Matt! Mate! How's it going?' I replied searchingly, hoping for something that would help me identify this Essex man called Matt who was calling me immediately after my final exam.
'Good mate, you?'
Not helping, Matt.
'Yeah, great actually, just walked out of my final exam, I'm finished!'
'Fantastic, mate, congratulations.'
Still not helping, Matt.
'Yeah, thanks.'
His chirpy tone suddenly turned serious, almost sombre.
'Right, Paul, we've come to a decision.'
'Great… on what?'
'On the Non Standard Awards, of course.'
Ooooh, that Matt!
The taxi dream had fallen somewhat by the wayside, forgotten amongst finals and the realisation that, even though we had bought the cab, we couldn't afford the trip. In a last-ditch attempt, we had applied for the Performance Direct Non Standard Awards, a competition that awards cash to people doing non-standard and generally stupid things with cars. We had got through the preliminary stages and had gone to their office a few months previously to give a presentation on our expedition idea.
It had been a stab in the dark, but we figured we would give it our all. We had the local printer make us some smart polo shirts with 'It's on the Meter' stamped on the front, took our slightly beer stained map, redrew the line over Cambodia and bought a miniature model of a London taxi.
Our presentation plan had been simple: lay the map on the table, tell them that we were going to drive a taxi to Australia, then, in case that wasn't clear, we'd push the little taxi along the route making car noises. We'd then show them a picture of the real taxi to prove that we were serious, show them a picture of a kangaroo to illustrate the typical wildlife we would encounter along the way, grab a muffin from the pile in the centre of the table, and kick back and wait for the praise and money to flow in.
Unfortunately it wasn't quite so straightforward. Johno's car noises sounded like a race car, which was clearly inaccurate, they'd eaten all the muffins by the time we arrived and, instead of praise and money, complicated questions started to flow.
We were pretty well prepared to answer these after nearly two years of research and Leigh could answer most of the technical questions, but when the overlanding expert looked at our idea to assess the feasibility of the hare-brained scheme, he didn't seem too impressed.
'Are you definitely going through Pakistan? You'll die if you try to drive through Pakistan in a black cab. In fact you'll probably die if you drive through it in anything.'
We had left the meeting feeling rather sceptical. As time passed with no contact, we had given up any hope of acquiring the sponsorship, and now here he was calling me to break the bad news.
The tone of Matt's voice confirmed what I had feared.
'So, we've decided…'
Here it comes. I was ready with my gracious defeat speech.
'… to give you the Non Standard Award.'
We had won! This group of idiots (sorry, Matt and co) had faith that the three of us and our 20-year-old black cab would make it to Sydney. So much faith that they actually wrote us a cheque. This news was incredible: the expedition was going to happen.
Although we would be putting everything we owned into this expedition, it would still be very, very expensive. Winning the Non Standard Award would cover our fuel and a couple of visas; the money we had accumulated from years of saving and working non-stop for a year, plus an overdraft or two each, would pay for the rest o
f the trip, but we would need more.
We realised quite early on that the black cab and the preposterous nature of the trip, coupled with a potential world record for the longest ever journey by taxi, made the expedition quite unique; there would be amazing stories and photos along the trip which meant we would be able to garner some media attention. Performance Direct's conditions of us winning the award were that we would maximise the exposure of the expedition and cover the cab in their stickers. If they would give us a load of cash to do this in return for the media coverage their brand would get, why wouldn't other companies? We started working on getting more sponsors.
Then there was the cab itself. What do you do to a decrepit old rust bucket of a taxi to prepare it for an around the world expedition?
The preparations to make the taxi roadworthy seemed neverending, but thank God for the power of sponsorship: if you ask companies for money, you'll almost always get a no, but if you ask for a product they'll give you two. Winter tyres arrived from MaxSport in Ireland, cameras came from Korea, and a racespec alternator and starter engine were customised to fit the taxi by the lovely folks at WOSP Racing. Samco donated a set of custom silicone hoses for every hose in the engine and a giant Kamei roof box arrived from the Roof Box Company.
The cab's suspension was never going to cope with the mileage, so Paul acquired some double-strength leaf springs from a tractor yard in Staffordshire and front springs from a truck suspension maker in Sheffield. We found an old Land Rover roof rack for sale in Kidderminster and welded it on for storage. All the while a load of personal equipment, bags, cameras, sunglasses and clothes started arriving in the post.
Leigh had been ordering the car parts, and a pile of cardboard boxes in various shapes and sizes sat next to the taxi. One particularly heavy and awkward one begged the question: 'What is this?'
'It's the winch bar.'
'The what? I thought we agreed not to get a winch?' I ventured.
'No, we said we would.'
'We definitely didn't,' Paul cut in.
'How much was it?'
'Five hundred.'
'Bloody hell mate, we've got to send that back, we don't need it, nor can we afford it – that's a person's living allowance in Asia for two months.'
'Can't,' Leigh replied. 'It's custom built for us.'
'So we can't return it?'
'Nope.'
'Balls. Tenner says we never have to use it. But it's custom built for a London black cab? So it will just slide on easily, right?'
'Yup.'
Two and a half weeks of drilling, welding, bolting, a few fires and lots of swearing (especially from Leigh's girlfriend) later, the winch was finally attached. This put us two weeks behind schedule, which meant we had just a fortnight to do everything else.
The months leading up to our journey were spent snatching a few hours' sleep a night on a friend's floor near our makeshift workshop in the basement of Aston University, as Leigh and I struggled to bring the car up to a driveable standard. Paul finalised all the sponsorship and press preparations during the day and joined us on the car each night. Our tempers and friendships grew increasingly strained as we put in marathon work hours; at one point Leigh and I worked on the car for over 50 hours without sleeping. We decided to have a rest after I had jolted awake to find myself holding a still-running heavy-duty power drill inside the stripped-out taxi frame.
Late one evening when we were working on the stripped-out cab, our sound system arrived. We obviously knew that in the grand scheme of things, we needed to have wheels and seats before a sound system. However, we were three young lads, and when JBL says it'll give you a free sound system, you say yes – but we did add that it needed to be one of their compact versions as we were very limited on space already. However, the box that arrived was anything but compact. We had been delivered a 1,000-watt subwoofer, two huge amplifiers, an iPod-ready head unit and speakers to match.
Pete, one of the awesome people who rolled up their sleeves to help us with the final push to get everything done in the workshop, said that it would be impossible to fit in – we just didn't have the space due to all the tools and spare parts, and he was right. The three of us looked at each other and asked the silent question: 'Would we be the lads who got stuck in the desert because we chucked out a spare part to fit in a humongous sound system?'
Without speaking, the three of us started removing tools from the car, while scrolling through our iPods to find the bassiest tracks we had to test out our brand new system.
It set the precedent for the trip. We were going to be 'those guys'.
Our cab was becoming quite unique, but we still didn't have a name for her. I had recently heard the classic 1920s song 'Hard Hearted Hannah (the Vamp of Savannah)', about a famous femme fatale in Georgia who hated men and relished watching them suffer. At the time, 'Hannah' seemed like the perfect name for our little cab. Little did we know that she would live up to her moniker, time and time (and time!) again.
CHAPTER 3
NO U-TURNS
Our trip officially began outside the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden on 17 February 2011. The custom-built taximeter was ceremoniously switched on and the press were there, gaining us more valuable coverage for the Red Cross, who we were fundraising for.
We were waved off by tearful and jubilant friends and family, as we drove across Tower Bridge, trailed by a parade of vintage pre-war taxis, before heading out of London and south towards Dover – and Hannah the taxi's first foreign country. It all seemed to go so well and nobody seemed to notice that we had no idea what on earth we were doing.
The stress of the months of hard work and uncertainties, of lost tempers and strained friendships, of undelivered promises and endless problems, evaporated the second we drove on to the ferry and set sail for France. That single moment made everything worthwhile and in an instant all the petty arguments of the previous months were forgotten. We were the best of friends again; this was it, we were finally living our dream.
Of course in reality those problems still existed: due to a lack of funds and, more critically, time, we were barely even roadworthy. The brakes were so spongy and ineffective that they bordered on dangerous, the indicators only worked occasionally and the driver's seatbelt constantly jammed leaving the driver locked back in his seat, unable to turn to see his blind spot.
We also had no working fog lights and no heating, the importance of which quickly became apparent as we raced into smoke-like fog banks on the gloomy French autoroutes on the way down to Paris. I was constantly bracing myself for a rear-end collision with a French 18-wheeler as I sat, shivering, in the back seat, while Paul and Leigh peered out of gaps wiped in the steamed-up windscreen.
My fears were unfounded and after what seemed like far too short a drive, Leigh faithfully followed the satnav directions off the autoroute, away from the junctions clearly marked 'Paris' and on to mist-shrouded country lanes. As we passed increasingly tiny French towns and villages, their streets paved with cobblestones and lined with pretty little patisseries, we all realised something was amiss. As pretty as les hamlets were, this didn't feel like the right way to get to Paris.
We jerked to a halt at a camouflaged traffic light and tried to find the problem. An ancient French lady shuffled past the idling, steamed-up taxi with a bemused look on her face as we fiddled around with the settings buried deep in the guts of the satnav.
'No wonder we thought this thing was crap!' I cried. 'The bloody thing is on No U-turns!'
Despite this hiccup, at least we were on our way, and now we were nearly at our first destination. We had actually managed to agree upon a specific route quite early on in the planning. Australia was the goal but there was more than one way of reaching it. Apart from detours to see other countries, there were three main routes to choose from (avoiding Afghanistan at least).
The northern route, through Europe, Siberia and Kazakhstan before heading south into China, looked quite good, but we'd hear
d the roads were atrocious almost the entire way – if you could call them roads at all. The central route wound through Turkey, Turkmenistan and the rest of the 'Stans', and had pretty bad roads and a raft of challenging entry visas to secure. Finally, the southern route, crossing Iran, Pakistan, India, Nepal and Tibet, was the most dangerous, but it involved going through some incredibly interesting and diverse countries, plus a crossing of the Himalayas. More importantly than that, the route was, in theory, entirely paved, and when driving a two-wheel-drive taxi designed for the inner streets of London, this was the obvious one to take.