i just finished reading long way down the other night (which i loved & can't wait to see the tv series) & it made me want to re-watch long way round, which i luckily have on my laptop!
it's really just so brilliant. i've been to a couple of the places that ewan & charley went to on long way round but nowhere like mongolia & kazakhstan. and also i can't ride a motorbike, but i'd really love to! it's just the sense of adventure that really gets me about them. both journeys were obviously extremely difficult but they did it. and i love that ewan says he thinks one of the advantages of being famous is being able to draw attention to important issues & that he doesn't care what people think of that. the oxfam stuff they have done is amazing (not to mention ewan going back & adopting a child from that mongolian orphanage. unlike so many other actors he did it the right way and for the right reasons) and the riders for health visit they did on long way down was really moving.
anyway this is getting a little rambley but basically i just wanted to say how much i love what they did.
and also when i watched the end of long way round when their wives surprise them by turning up i really wanted to marry a big strong tattooed man like ewan mcgregor.
because of long way round
I really want to go to Mongolia. All the empty steppes with their rolling hills covered in nothing but grass look lovely.
case in point
http://www.wcs.org/media/image/LandscapeGer3.jpg
wow, it looks like something out of lord of the rings...or something.
looks like
North Yorkshire with a yurt
pfft
North Yorkshire is full of farms and walls and sheep and stuff. Mongolia has Yurts and Llamas which are much more interesting :D
they have llamas in north yorkshire!
and what's so good about yurts?
Them seem pretty cool
I just remembered that they even have Yurts in Yorkshire too. I went inside one at the now closed Earth Centre. I may as well just book a train ticket to Thirsk and act out my Mongolian adventure fantasy :(
i live in mongolia
i'm sitting in an internet cafe in ulaanbaatar right now.
mongolia is amazing. it's like living on the moon, but with camels.
they're called gers, not yurts.
it's pretty much the harshest country i've ever seen. at the mo, the max daytime temp is about -25 degrees C. the goat herders living out in the gobi are some tough mutherfuckers. that's for sure.
then go to
the South island of New Zealand and backpack for a month or two :) instead.
I agree
i loved the book, it was amazing and it made me get off my arse and go to Russia last summer.
I really want to go to Beijing on the train and stop at some of these places on the way. I know I will soon too.
The one thing that has got my goat about both series is that theytwist and moan about the conditions/each other it really gets on my tits.
The were made to look like a pair of buffoons by the boke they met who was circum navigating the globe by pedal power on his ow, without a support crew or fixers or a hollywood sized wedge of cash for all the best clobber in his back pocket.
Still, I really loved them both and actually like Ewan Mcgreggor too, so that kind of pisses on my own bonfire doesn't it?
The TV series was really good
While in parts it was a bit rushed, there were some really, really sweet moments.
Plus the highlands of Ethiopia look fantastic.
Crap programme.
"Ewan McGregor and some other guy go on a roadtrip, to some of the most desolate and dangerous locations on the planet. Their trip is filled with peril and accidents, but eventually they get through it.
Its just them, the motorbikes, and the OPEN ROAD... And an entourage of about 5 jeeps, a camera crew, a producer, one of them's wife, probably a few medics in case anything happens to them, and lots of modern technology, probably including internet access and telephone communication."
Sort of takes the idea away for me.
apart from anything else,
they were really unhappy about the bits where they had to travel in an entourage because it wasn't how they wanted it.
and without the support crew they wouldn't have got through certain bits, such as the road of bones in eastern russia, so there wouldn't have been a programme in that case.
i know you think you're absolutely hilarious, but it must get a bit tiring being this negative about everything, all the time.
I like this Wrighty chap
Like him, I'm Lancastrian, and most people up here have this unique trait of putting everything in popular culture under the microscope.
And concluding it's all a load o' shit wi' sugar on.
This programme was such a load of gash...
Super-rich Ewan McGregor and his goofy upper-class mate get to have the time of their lives...and get paid for it...and all that other stuff about being on their own etc...
I think i summarised what could have been a mammoth post quite well there.