Long way round

I've recently finished reading this book. I came across it when I was loitering in Borders a while back. Now, I can't say that was the first time I'd known about Long Way Round. Sometime back during an episode of Parkinson, there was Ewan McGregor being interviewed. It was around the time when Star Wars Episode III was soon to be released, so naturally I paid a little bit of attention.

But then I realised he wasn't plugging SW Ep3, but some adventure he and a friend had gone on and made into a TV show. Apparently he and Charley (who's this bloke?) had gotten on a couple of bikes and headed East from London to New York. Yup... that's right... they took the long way round, riding their big monster BMW (I guess in this case it's the ultimate riding machine) through Eastern Europe, Russia, Mongolia into Siberia.

Fast forward a couple of months and me in a pretty cool bookstore in town coming across this book with 2 rather familiar looking blokes on the cover. Actually I confess... by the end of the interview I'd known they'd also written a book and I've been searching for it. While reading it I had sudden urges to get myself a bike license, buy a BMW motorbike and head out to the remote wilderness of Russia and Mongolia.

The book was light reading and fun, although most readers complained that the 2 actors whined too much about missing family, the hardship and dissing the support crew, etc. That aside, it must have been an awesome trip, what with the relatively untouched lands they got to experience, the amazing local culture that's not quite been affected by western modernisation as yet. I wonder... if I'll ever get off my butt to do something similar?