A Steppe Too Far? - Raising Money for The Fred Hollows Foundation

In October 2014, four lads met in the dusty north of Peru, with a goal of traversing the country on a terrifically terrible machine known as a Mototaxi. Having survived this 2 week, 3000km odyssey, we set our sights on something a little more difficult - a 7 week jaunt across 25 countries from London in the West, to Mongolia in the East. We depart on the 17th July and our ‘planned’ route will take us through approximately..

25 countries

15 time zones

16000 Kilometres

14 currencies

4 ‘stans

In a quest to test the much fabled German engineering prowess the jaunt will be undertaken in a lime green 1.3L 3 door Volkswagen Polo.

To offset our carbon emissions and increase the feel good factor, we are once again aiming to raise money for Cool Earth and The Fred Hollows Foundation. From experience, we know that these blanket appeals for sponsorship don't amount to much so we'll be personally harassing you over the next few weeks to donate to this excellent cause. In 2014 on our mototaxi odyssey we managed to raise $1500 for Cool Earth, which allowed them to purchase 11 acres of virgin Peruvian rainforest to protect it from logging companies and $1200 for the Fred Hollows foundation, which went towards almost 50 sight restoring cataract operations in 3rd world countries.

So without further ado, let us introduce the team:

Shaun Sundance Zico Cassidy (yes folks that's his real name) - brings a wealth a valuable skills to the team including an accent that's smoother than maple syrup running down a freshly polished apple and an ability to talk for such durations as to sap the energy from even the most determined Turkmen/Uzbek/Kyrg/Kazakh - stani border official pushing for a bribe.

Jimmy Haworth

A somewhat unique individual, James likes to make sensible, well informed decisions and reckless, thoughtless decisions in equal measures. This unpredictability is a key component to the dynamic of the team and one which we all admire and try to replicate to the best of our abilities. This bipolarity also manifests in his body hair, with werewolf-like hairy legs and an upper body smoother than Shaun's accent. James can be relied on to attempt to speak to officials in any country in a language that he does not know and with a confidence he should not possess.

James Moore

Undeniably the brains of the operation (which isn't tough given the competition), James knows how ‘That Internet’ works and generally has an ability to complete simple technical tasks that the rest of the team find baffling. James has backed himself into quite a tight corner with respect to visas and is currently relying on civil wars preventing the sharing of immigration information between immigration departments in several countries in order to travel on multiple passports to Mongolia.

George Lilley

George has spent the last 2 months learning Spanish in Colombia, which would've been extremely helpful 2 yrs ago as we negotiated the wildernesses of Peru, however will be extremely useless as we cross exactly zero Spanish speaking countries on our journey. George is highly susceptible to “Go-Fever” which manifests in extremely dangerous driving through roadworks and annoying the rest of the team with early morning starts. When we inevitably run out of petrol in some desolate central Asian desert, it will almost definitely be his fault.