Book Review: First Overland: London-Singapore by Land Rover

Originally published in 1957, this book is an entertaining account of the first overland motorized trip from London to Singapore.  In 1955, five students from Cambridge and one from Oxford set out in two Land Rovers and made it all the way from London to Singapore.  One of the students, Tim Slessor, wrote the book and another, Antony Barrington Brown, did photography and filmwork for the book and a BBC production.

A very entertaining read - I could not recommend it more highly.  Best travel book of any kind I have ever read, and I have read many.

From the Back Cover:

Why not? After all, no-one had ever done it before.  It would be one of the longest of all overland journeys - half-way round the world, from the English Channel to Singapore.  They knew that several expeditions had already tried it.  Some had got as far as the deserts of Persia; a few had even reached the plains of India.  But no-one had managed to go on from there:  over the jungle-clad mountains of Assam and across northern Burma to Thailand and Malaya.  Over the last 3,000 miles it seemed there were "just too many rivers and too few roads."  But no-one really knew...

In fact, their problems began much earlier than that.  As mere undergraduates, they had no money, no cars, no nothing. But with a cool audacity, which was to become characteristic, they set to work -- wheedling and cajoling. First, they coaxed the BBC to come up with some film for a possible TV series. Then they gently 'persuaded' the manufacturers to lend them two factory-fresh Land Rovers. A publisher was even sweet-talked into giving them an advance on a book. By the time they were ready to go, their sponsors (more than 80 of them) ranged from whiskey distillers to the makers of collapsible buckets.  In late 1955, they set off.

Seven months and 12,000 miles later, two very weary Land Rovers, escorted by police outriders, rolled into Singapore - to flash-bulbs and champagne.

Now, fifty years on, their book, First Overlan, is republished  - with a foreward by Sir David Attenborough.  After all, it was he who gave them that film.

"An altogether delightful book... written with humour and beguiling gusto." -- Times Literary Supplement

Tim Slessor spent most of his working life making TV documentaries.  More recently he has sailed the Atlantic, trekked the Outback and the Karakorum, and written another book - on the sins of Whitehall: Lying in State.

Contents

Foreward by Sir David Attenborough

Preface

1. The Idea

2. Preparations

3. Outward Bound

4. Nearer East

5. Middle East

6. Farther East

7. Pakistan: Water, Sand, and Bagpipes

8. India and the High Road to Nepal

9. For a Variety of Reasons

10. One Thousand Miles

11. The Stilwell Road

12. Green Hills and Cheroots

13. Kengtung-side and Beyond

14. Mishaps, Bangkok, and a Problem

15. Epilogue - Four Months Later

Notes

Appendices

Medical Notes

Mechanical Notes

Navigation and Route

Photographic Notes

Quartermastering

Cookery

On Money

A Summary of the Expedition's Return Journey

Acknowledgements

Maps - The Expedition Route, Ankara to Karachi, Karachi to Calcutta, Calcutta to Singapore