by The Raven Brothers
Ever had the desire to jump in your car and keep driving? Well, that is precisely what The Raven Brothers decided to do whilst stacking boxes of frozen oven chips in a -30 degrees freezer. With a squeaky foot pump and an SAS survival guide, the travel writing duo from the UK fired up their rusty Ford Sierra and headed east. After clocking up over 12,000 kilometres, quite literally living in the car, they miraculously arrived in the Far Eastern city of Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan.
What the brothers had in fact done was drive Russia’s new Trans-Siberian Highway, a staggering eight years before the road was completed.
With only very limited skills of wilderness survival and, virtually zero knowledge of the internal combustion engine, Simon and Chris crossed ten time zones in the beat up petrol engine saloon they used for work. Driving through endless rivers and canyons in a bid to cross the notorious Zilov Gap in darkest Siberia, the hapless heroes capture the true spirit of overland travel during a life-altering journey across one of the world’s last frontiers. Along the way they rub shoulders with Chechen criminals, escape highway robbery, trade banana flavoured condoms with Russian cops, meet an eccentric cast of characters at truck stops in darkest Siberia, endure torturous road conditions and enter into a race to the finish with the Germans. Surviving the journey by the skin of their teeth, the brothers are forced to confront their worst fears in a toe-curling comedy of extreme road trip adventure.
Priding themselves on going it alone, The Raven Brothers have been noted by Lonely Planet for their talent to portray an “accurate view of what to expect”.
The Raven Brothers were born in the United Kingdom. The first published work by the authors, Living the Linger, tells the story of a journey of lost love and a search for the truth during a road trip through backcountry USA.
A year later, the brothers became established travel writers following a life-altering drive from the UK to Vladivostok in a rusty Ford Sierra. Noted by Lonely Planet for their talent to portray an “accurate view of what to expect”, the book Driving the Trans-Siberian spurred a life on the road.
Carnival Express was the concluding title in the ‘Linger Series’ trilogy, and follows two struggling writers on a South America adventure. A period of photojournalism, documenting new and off the beaten track destinations, tribal India, China’s deep south and Crimea, led to the release of Black Sea Circuit.
Seizing a narrow window of opportunity to cross the notorious Caucasus frontier, the book explores great legends from Jason and the Argonauts to a tribe of fierce female warriors known as the Amazons. The release of Hike, Drive, Stayin’ Alive! signals a return to the duo writing “buttock clenching” travel comedy, with the first in a collection of ten candid stories of adventure by The Raven Brothers.
by Alex Bescoby
In 1955, Attenborough, then a young TV producer, was approached by six recent university graduates determined to drive the entire length of 'Eurasia', from London to Singapore. It was the unclimbed Everest of motoring - many had tried, none had succeeded. Sensing this time might be different, Attenborough gave the expedition enough film reel to cover their attempt. The 19,000-mile journey completed by Tim Slessor and the team captivated a nation emerging from postwar austerity. Tim's book, The First Overland, soon became the Bible of the overlanding religion. Inspired by the First Overland, Alex made contact with now eighty-six-year-old Tim and together they planned an epic recreation of the original trip, this time from Singapore to London. Their goal was to complete the legendary journey started more than sixty years ago in the original Oxford Land Rover. In awe of the unstoppable Tim, and haunted by his own grandfather's decline, Alex and his team soon finds themselves battling rough roads, breakdowns and Oxford's constant leaky roof to discover a world changed for the better - and worse - since the first expedition.
Alex is an award-winning filmmaker, author and presenter from Manchester, UK, with broadcasts on All4, History, BBC, Discovery and Canal+.