Who Needs a Road: The Story of the Longest and Last Motor Journey Around the World

In this age of jet travel and space exploration, a trip around the world driving a Toyota Land Cruiser and camper across blazing deserts and through hostile countries, over nearly impassable roads, and in all kinds of weather, including monsoon rains and desert ghiblis, is quite an adventure. The authors covered 42,252 tortuous miles from New York City to France, south to Spain, across North Africa, the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia, Australia, Panama, and finally back to New York to break all previous records for driving non-repetitive mileage. They were trapped in East Pakistan when war broke out. They were felled by food poisoning, hepatitis, and other ailments. They ate camel meat, kangaroo steaks, and warm monkey brains. At times there was a desperate lack of food because of mishaps -- usually thievery. Mechanical troubles and political delays plagued them. Two facts stand out in their rollicking account of fun and frustrations: the large sections of bleak, wild, and uncivilised country still very much with us in this 20th Century, and the evidence of the universal intolerance of men who have been taught to hate and mistrust other men on the basis of race, religion, nationality, or politics.<