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Charley Boorman travels from Ireland to Sydney as he embarks on his most daring adventure yet
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Charley Boorman – Ireland To Sydney By Any Means
Day and time to be confirmed BBC TWO
 Programme copy
Gritty adventurer Charley Boorman embarks on his most daring journey so far this week, as he travels from Ireland to Australia using any available means of transport. Accompanied by a small crew made up of producer Russ Malkin and cameraman Mungo, Charley meets the local people and personalities in each place he visits and experiences their way of life first-hand.
Here, Charley and Russ chat to Programme Information about their adventures.
Charley Boorman
Tell us a bit about the new adventure you're tackling.
I've been travelling from Wicklow, in Ireland, to Sydney, Australia, by every mode of transport I can get my hands on. We left Ireland on 12 April and arrived in Sydney towards the end of July.
I've driven buses and tuk-tuks, sailed boats across the Channel and ridden on elephants – if it moved, I got on it. We got back to the basics of travel and had a lot of fun along the way.
What's different about this trip compared to Long Way Round, Race To Dakar and Long Way Down?
I suppose there are some similarities between this and all the others as they all have involved travel. For By Any Means I went from one place to another, overland, to experience different forms of transport and learn about cultures and the way people live their lives in different countries. It was basically about getting back to how people used to travel before flights became so easily accessible.
Who went on this trip with you?
This time I went with Russ, who I've done the previous three trips with and whom I've worked closely with for the past four years, and Mungo, our cameraman.
What kit did you bring with you, and how did the three of you manage?
This time I took everything in one leather suitcase. I had everything I needed in that case: warm-weather clothes (which I swapped with the cold-weather clothes when we left Turkey), lots of baby wipes and a silk sleeping bag liner to avoid catching bed bugs in dodgy hotels!
I brought just enough to survive. I've found, though, that as you travel you can pick up anything that you need along the way.
How did you plan which exact route to take?
When we came up with the idea, the plan was to travel from my home town in Ireland to Sydney and we tried to find the most direct route possible between those two places. The route has changed quite a few times now. With Afghanistan and Pakistan being particularly unsafe at the moment we avoided those countries, and the tragedies that have taken place in China and Burma also forced us to change our route – it's quite complicated to travel overland these days.
Did you do any training, and what have you learnt about transport?
I had done lots of training for my last trip, Long Way Down, so we had a few refresher courses for first aid and things like that. Then Russ and I brushed up on our yachting skills and I learnt how to drive a steam train.
How did your wife and two daughters feel about you leaving again?
All my life I've travelled, ever since I was a kid. When I met my wife, 20 years ago, I continued to travel for movies and for different projects, like Long Way Round, Long Way Down and Race To Dakar.
You do get used to it but it's never easy to leave. My wife and kids work hard to make it easy for me to be able to go off and do things like By Any Means, but being away from my family is still the hardest thing about all these expeditions. They will come and meet me at the end though for a big celebration.
Out of all the countries you have travelled through, which one stood out the most?
It's very hard to say because all of the countries are places that I'd never been to before; places I had always wanted to go to. You always hear about backpackers who make their way towards Thailand, Indonesia and Bali and the Gili Islands, in Indonesia, and other incredible places, so finally getting the chance to travel to them has been amazing.
Going into Nepal and then into the Himalayas was something that I'd dreamed about for years, and to get up to Kathmandu was a real feat as everyone talked about Kathmandu when they'd travelled in that direction, so it was brilliant. But I think Cambodia was the most interesting because it has only just come out of its difficulties and it's still very unspoiled. The most memorable for me was my almost disastrous journey over to Borneo which was pretty wild. But then it's difficult because India, Nepal, Vietnam and Laos, everywhere, really, were all so fascinating!
What was the scariest moment of your trip?
There were definitely a couple of hairy moments – we've had a bit of bad luck with boats on this trip. It seemed like every kind of boat we went on there was some sort of disaster. The boat that we got on originally to get to Borneo started sinking about 40 minutes into the journey and there was a small river running inside the cargo hold, which was quite a lot of water. And then in Vietnam we got onto a speedboat that almost sank – the engine died and we were drifting towards cliffs and rocks in quite lumpy seas. But, thankfully, a little fishing boat saved us.
Then we had this six-day nightmare journey with a lovely Australian guy called Warwick. We went on Warwick's Indonesian boat, which was a beautiful thing, but it took us six days and for around three of those we went through really bad weather. And for half of those three days there were six-to 10-metre waves and all I could really think about was the Perfect Storm – and we all know how that ended!
But, you know, secretly I quite liked it because the sense of achievement once you've done it is pretty impressive. And it was a great experience – I had faith in our captain and he was an amazing man, with a great story to tell so I liked him a lot.
What was your accommodation like throughout your journey?
Well, we did all sorts of things. We went from lovely hotels to dodgy hotels, to sleeping on people's floors, to camping out in the bush in Australia, to sleeping on deck on boats. I can actually remember one bed that was probably the worst, which was in the passenger ship that we took to Timor. And I woke in the middle of the night on this cabin bed, flicked on the light and the wall was just covered in cockroaches. I then realised they were all on my pillow and on my bed – that was pretty nasty.
What has been the most emotional moment of your journey?
I found the train journeys very difficult – especially the overnight ones. I think it's because we'd get on at two or three in the afternoon and we wouldn't get off until the next morning. On those journeys I just found myself with too much time to myself and I would often think about why I was here and would miss my family and my children terribly. It's funny, as you don't miss physical things when you're travelling, you miss people and you miss friends and family. I missed the simple things like waking up next to Olly, who always gives me a little cuddle in the morning, or Doone and Kinvara bounding up the stairs on a Saturday morning when they should have been sleeping in – you can't wake them up when it's a school day, but they're up at 6.30am in the morning at the weekends and jump into bed and take over the telly! It's those kinds of things you miss.
You've travelled on over 100 forms of transport – can you name three of the best and explain why?
We've done some extraordinary things. One of the journeys I liked a lot was in Iran when I jumped into this guy's old beaten-up truck and travelled with him for a bit, and I sat and listened to his story. We met him at a truck stop, had some food with him and chatted away, then got into his truck – he'd done over a million kilometres in it. It was pretty old, as he bought it second hand. I think it was built in the early Seventies. It was wonderful just to hang out with him.
Anything we did on motorbikes was just fab – I loved that. So, riding through Cambodia on the motorbikes was really magical for me – and the boat with our Australian friend, Warwick. In actual fact, all the forms of transport were just brilliant.
You must have experienced lots of different types of food. Can you give some examples of the best and worst?
One of the best meals we had was in Borneo. We were in Pontianak and went to this place where they specialise in snake, turtle and squirrel! So we sat and had this amazing puff adder stew, which really was absolutely delicious. And then we had the squirrel, which wasn't so good, but the turtle was tasty.
The worst was in Dover. The night before we were going to cross the English Channel in the Laser, we stayed at this hotel, which shall not be named, and had fish and chips. It's quite difficult to mess up fish and chips and they did it really badly – that was probably the worst meal of the whole trip, actually.
Did you ever think you wouldn't make it to Sydney?
When I make the decision that I want to do something like this, Long Way Round, the Dakar rally and Long Way Down, I get right into it.
So never have I been on a trip and sort of said: 'I don't want to do this,' because I'm not the hired help – I helped to plan the journey. When I'm on the trip, though, there are those scary moments when I think: 'Is this worth it?'
When I was sitting on that speedboat in Vietnam, just by Halong Bay, we were drifting with no engine, overloaded, towards the cliffs on a rough sea and I had a definite moment. At that point in time, bizarrely, I quietly slipped my wallet, my passport and these pearls that I had just bought into my pocket thinking: 'Well, if we go over at least I've got my passport and my credit card so I can get home'.
That was really the only time I felt quite worried that we were going to get injured, especially as a couple of people in the boat couldn't swim, so I was concerned then.
Some means of transport can be isolating and others sociable. Can you give us some examples of those you experienced along the way?
As much as train journeys can be very sociable, it is still quite a lonely way to travel. I always felt very lonely on the trains and, for me, the overnight trains were the hardest journeys. These night trains were supposed to have been a good idea because while we were sleeping we would still be travelling and making up the miles across the world, but I really found those the hardest.
The most sociable and one of the funniest was when we did the dolmus through Turkey and picked up some people on the way. And Cenk, who was helping us with translating, was just hilarious and made me laugh so much. We picked up one guy whose name was Farti, which was so funny, although I'm not sure he found it funny. I think he thought we were crazy! But the dolmus was definitely the most social of all the forms of transport.
Did any of the training you did before the journey come in handy?
The sailing training really helped and certainly the refresher for the first aid is useful – it's something I think that everybody should do. Also, a little bit of exercise before we left the UK did me the world of good, because while they all dropped around me like flies, I carried on! A little bit of preparation is always a good idea.
What was the most challenging aspect of the journey?
The journey itself was challenging because it's relentless – we travelled for three and a half months and every day we were on the move, we just kept going, seven days a week and sometimes early in the morning well into the evening to get to places. Sleeping in a different place each night was difficult – we were in a different type of bed, or outside, or at someone's house, or some other crazy place every night. You never really have a chance to relax and the most we stayed in one place was maybe two or three nights.
I wouldn't change the journey we took but it could get really, really tiring. And, towards the last part of the journey, I got physically quite tired and found it fairly hard. I always felt a sense of responsibility that I had to keep going. It was a big challenge for me, so at the end I had a huge sense of achievement. It's almost as though the best part of the whole thing is achieving what you set out to do – that you'd arrive in a certain place at a certain time on a certain day.
Russ Malkin
Out of all the countries you travelled through, which stood out the most?
India stood out as the most vibrant, colourful, amazing, bubbling place where you cannot walk out your front door without feeling embraced by life. As a photographer or a cameraman, you can't turn your head without another picture presenting itself to you. I loved India and I would definitely go back.
For me, I think the most exciting place was up in the Nepalese Himalayas. There were a lot of first-time experiences for us during this part of the trip, and we also met Sir Edmund Hillary's son, Peter, and granddaughter, Emily, which was fantastic. We were so lucky because it turned out to be a day that we could never have planned.
Cambodia was a very spiritual experience for me. I think it was the combination of the amazing landmarks, such as Angkor Wat, and the fascinating people we met. I had a conversation with one man who had been a monk for 11 years of his life, and he explained to me about Buddhism and spoke about the sense of self-belief that seems to pervade the country. I would like to go back to Cambodia, except next time I would travel alone because, as a lone traveller, I find that you often end up meeting more people.
What was the scariest moment of your trip?
The scariest moment of the trip was in a little speedboat that we took in Vietnam. It was overloaded with people, overloaded with our bags and we were quite a long way out to sea between two huge rocky cliffs. The waves began to develop and crash over the boat, killing the engine. We started to drift and take on water – it would only have been a matter of time before the boat hit the rocks and sank. The water was strong and two people in the boat couldn't swim. The only other boat in sight was a very small local fishing vessel, which threw us a line and towed us to safety. We were very fortunate.
What has been the most challenging part of the journey in terms of filming and production?
We don't have a script and we don't contrive things for the programme and, therefore, I could find it quite personally challenging at times to organise things on the ground – such as ensuring our next form of transport was in place to meet us. I have to balance both the business and creative side of things and then communicate the concept of the programme to the cameraman without actually having to direct, because if you over-direct somebody, you don't then get real life being filmed.
I also have to work with our team in the London office, and it became increasingly difficult to manage the business side of things as the time difference grew between London and our current position on the trip. Business matters had to be discussed later and later in the day and then, of course, there were many other communication difficulties such as losing mobile signal and not always being able to pick up emails. My job involved many different tasks that are not always simple to organise in the field away from the office.
Did you ever think you wouldn't make it to Sydney?
I knew from the outset that there was a strong possibility that something could happen which might get in our way or stop us. Our main problem was changing on to so many different modes of transport, because you're really at the whim of the maintenance of a driver's tuk-tuk in India, or the fact that somebody knows how to paddle a canoe in Cambodia. The probability that something could go wrong at some point during a three-and-a-half-month-long trip, on over a hundred different forms of transport, was very high, so I was prepared for things to go wrong and ready to solve them, but I never thought we wouldn't make it to Sydney.
What was your favourite form of transport?
My favourite form of transport is the steam train – I find them quite charming. I like the metal, the steam, the sound, the energy and the passion that goes into the making of those things.
I think from a trip point of view I was quite surprised at how much I enjoyed the elephant ride in Nepal. At first, I thought it was going to be very touristy but it made me suddenly realise how quickly you can form an affinity between yourself and an animal. I would have liked to have spent a lot longer travelling through the landscape on the elephants.
I can't say the jet boat in Cambodia was my most favourite mode of transport, but it was certainly the most exhilarating. We were zipping along the Mekong River with our hair streaming back and tears coming out of our eyes, with the engine just ripping its way through the water. It was just a bonkers bit of fun.
Did any of the training you did before the journey come in handy?
We did a lot of training before we went away because, from my point of view, as the event organiser, I felt it was our responsibility to understand some basic first aid.
I think the sailing refresher course we took made a big difference when we sailed across the English Channel, because we were very nervous, and the horse training helped when we went riding in the Snowy Mountains.
I think if anyone were trying to emulate our trip it would definitely be worthwhile attending a course and brushing up on things that you might be expected to do. If anything, it at least gives you the confidence that you're not a complete novice.
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