Neil Hopcroft

[Audiobook]

The Last Overland by Alex Bescoby

This book recounts the story of an expedition following the return path from the First Overland, a journey from London to Singapore in 1955. A documentary of which launched the career of David Attenborough.

The background to this journey and the planning for it are covered. The original plan had been to take Tim Slessor, one of the members of the earlier party. However he fell ill in Singapore on the day of departure and was amply replaced by his grandson, Nat, who amply rose to the challenge.

One of the two Land Rovers from the First Overland, Oxford, was a core character for this journey, the other, Cambridge, was lost to a desert. The 65 year old vehicle, along with two other, more recent, models set off from the Formula 1 starting line in Singapore, travelling through Thailand, Myanmar, China, India and many other places – their route deviated from the outbound journey because of political changes along the way, but there were many nods to the notes in Tims diaries from 1955, visiting some of the same places.

I love travel books, road books especially, and this was no exception – this was an ambitious journey by any measure, and the window into the lives and countries they found on the way provides a different view than you would receive by reading about visiting them as a tourist.

He alluded to the marks on maps left by the British Empire, and how they have left deep scars in some places, rifts between local peoples. I worry that it is worse than that, that there was only a certain type of people who could have embarked upon such a journey in 1955, and their situations in the upper echelons of British society would not have offered them an unbiased view of the places on their passage. The return journey suffered less from the class bias, but not everybody can put aside their lives for a four month project of this nature.

That all said, I have a deep respect for Tim, for his enthusiasm, even if he didn’t actually travel with the group. What an epic adventure for his grandson, and what an amazing shared history for the two of them, even with the temporal displacement.

They were incredibly lucky to have returned to London in December 2019, weeks before Covid started impacting borders, a few more breakdowns or waiting at the entry to Tibet and they could easily have been stranded without hope of proceeding.

There is a television series of the journey available on YouTube, which I am very much looking forward to watching – that was the part of Top Gear I used to most enjoy, before they changed their ‘appeal’ to being mindless oafs.