First Overland : London–Singapore by Land Rover

Decades before Race Across the World, six friends made the epic journey from London to Singapore and back in two Land Rovers. Why not? No-one had ever done it: one of the longest of all overland journeys, from the English Channel to Singapore.Several expeditions had tried. Some had reached the Persian deserts; a few, the Indian plains.But none had gone further: over the jungle-clad Assamese mountains, across northern Burma, to Thailand and Malaya.It was 1955. For the final 3,000 miles, it seemed, there were ‘too many rivers and too few roads’.But no-one really knew... They were undergraduates with no money, no cars—no nothing, except cool audacity.They wheedled and cajoled, coaxing the BBC into supplying film for a possible series; ‘persuading’ Rover to lend them two factory-fresh off-road vehicles; sweet-talking a book publisher into offering an advance.By the time they set off, their eighty-plus sponsors ranged from whiskey distillers to collapsible bucket–makers.Seven months and 12,000 miles later, two weary, police-escorted Land Rovers rolled into Singapore to flash-bulbs and champagne.Here, their bestseller is republished, with a foreword by Sir David Attenborough.He had given them that film, after all.