This morning, we were delighted to see this clipping in the local Imphal paper. It's fun (and a little bit eerie) to read people's speculation about our intentions here in India...

Journal and photos by Nancy Olson

Bear with me, if you will. Today is my journal day, but I am, again, swamped with a lot of other writing to accomplish. I spent the day working on the below press release. It didn't make the cut, but I think it's good enough for publishing here on our blog page. And, anyway, it'll explain some of what we accomplished by transiting Myanmar. --N.O.

MOREH, INDIA, Aug. 19, 2004--“We have carnet stamps on our passports, which means we have officially crossed Myanmar,” said LONGITUDE Expedition leader Nick Baggarly yesterday.

His Drive Around the World non-profit organization’s third expedition is the only continuous overland journey to cross the former country of Burma in more than 50 years.

The eight-member volunteer team left northern Calif. Nov. 1 last year to begin a yearlong expedition around the world to raise money for Parkinson’s Disease research. Since then, they have traveled more than 22,000 miles across twenty countries and four continents to arrive here at the India/Myanmar border town of Moreh. Their longitude route brought them from the U.S. to the tip of South America, across Australia, and up through Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and China. By driving their four Certified Land Rover Discovery expedition vehicles across Myanmar from the Ruili, China, border in the west to the India border in the east, the team has placed their drive-a-thon in the history books.

This milestone comes with the sense of accomplishment that accompanies only the most hard-fought of achievements.

“Myanmar is a country that is perhaps the most strict when it comes to tourism, and especially vehicle travel. Planning this has been my Moby Dick since the beginning,” said Baggarly, 36, of Los Gatos, Calif.

Myanmar’s arguable politics, its tourism restrictions, and a near absence of good, navigable roads have made it all but impossible for foreigners to drive their own vehicles across the country. Much of the difficulty lurks at the borders of this tiny, former British empire. The team spent one month in Bangkok visiting embassies and working with agents to prepare the intense paperwork for the China-Myanmar-India leg of their expedition. Transiting Myanmar hinged on the expedition’s success in first securing China permission, India permission, and finally Myanmar permission.

“As to Myanmar, it’s basically impossible to drive into! We ended up shipping
from Bangladesh to Malaysia,” warned an expedition contact in an e-mail to Baggarly. His team didn’t even bother trying.

In 1953, a team of Cambridge University students drove two Series Land Rovers through Burma during a record-setting drive from London to Singapore. Their east-west crossing of Myanmar was the most difficult leg of their (however-long) journey.

In Feb. of this year, a Swiss couple was turned away at the China/Myanmar border in Ruili when their India Border permits failed to come through. They were forced to drive back through China to Bangkok in defeat.

Before that, Londoner David Burleson made it all the way across Myanmar to Tamu, Myanmar’s India border town, before he was denied entry to India for failure to obtain the required Protected Area Permits for that country. He left his car in Myanmar and returned to London.

Burleson was exploring shipping options when he found out about the Swiss couple’s intentions.

“I decided to wait and see if I could join up with another group who got the permit,” said Burleson. When the Swiss expedition failed, he began to give up hope. “I was just hoping that something would turn up, and then [Drive Around the World] came along.”

When the LONGITUDE Expedition contacted him through networking channels, Burleson had his opportunity. Admittedly still skeptical, he bought a ticket to Yangon, Myanmar, and flew out when the team’s permits came through. Baggarly and his team met Burleson east of Mandalay and began driving together toward India.

But not even Drive Around the World was without its trials.

“Tomorrow from 2:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. China time will be the most difficult hours of our expedition,” said Baggarly in an e-mail to supporters upon his team’s approach to the China/Myanmar border town of Ruili.

Their China carnets, or vehicle passports, were about to expire on their Land Rovers. A delay in the India permit office trickled over to a delay in obtaining Myanmar permits, and that meant the team would be in limbo in China for one week until their guide could meet them with their permits to drive into Myanmar. Because of their desire to prevent what had happened to Burleson from happening again, Myanmar officials abstained from stamping the vehicles into their country until they knew the convoy would not be turned away at the border to India.

“At this border, the traditional policy, when paperwork is not ready for Myanmar, is to force the group to turn back to the China point-of-entry which, for us, means they will force us to drive five days back to Laos,” said Baggarly’s Aug. 5 e-mail. “I have read accounts of two groups who have recently experienced this most-frustrating case, and, without official paperwork, we are poised to be the third.”

The team reached the China/Myanmar border, amidst a cloud of uncertainty, on the day that their vehicle permits were to expire. The plan was to attempt to convince the Chinese to store the vehicles in impound while the team waited in China for their Myanmar paperwork to arrive.

Fate sided with the team, and they were greeted by smiling and accommodating Chinese customs officials and border police, who were more than happy to help a group of American adventure-philanthropists. The team was granted an extension to keep their vehicles in the country until their Myanmar transit permits were ready.

On Aug. 14, a joyful group cleared Chinese customs and met their Myanmar guides in the border town of Muse. That was the beginning of what they agree has been some of the most beautiful and most difficult driving they have experienced during nine-and-a-half months of world travel.

Their route brought them west along the historic Burma Road, past where it intersected with the old Stillwell Road, through the capital city of Mandalay, and north along the India-Myanmar Friendship Highway to India’s border.

The Burma Road extends about 700 miles from the railhead of Lashio, Myanmar, to Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province of China. Built by the Chinese as a military supply route in 1937-1938, it was used by the Allies during the early months of World War II. From its opening in 1938 to about May of 1942, more than 490 thousand tons of strategic materials, 10 thousand automobiles, and 90 thousand armed forces were transported to the front lines across rugged mountainous terrain.

In 1941, before the U.S. declared war on Japan, a small squadron of American fighter pilots, nicknamed the “Flying Tigers” by the Chinese, secretly set up a base of operations in Kunming. While protecting supply planes and patrolling the Burma Road, the Flying Tigers flew their P-40 fighter aircraft back and forth over a portion of the very route the LONGITUDE team traveled.

In April 1942, the Japanese captured Lashio and closed the road. The Allies constructed an alternate supply route, which originated in Ledo, a railhead in Assam, India, and crossed northern Myanmar to connect to the Chinese portion of the Burma Road, named Stilwell Road in honor of the American general Joseph W. Stilwell. After the war, the road fell into disuse, and today it is overgrown impassable to vehicle traffic.

Crossing the point where the old Stilwell Road crosses the Burma Road, the team said they were struck by the area’s historic significance and America’s place in it. This area where young American fighter pilots used to patrol now rarely sees westerners. It is a country where ox-driven carts and big-wheeled steel bicycles are the standard means of conveyance. Water buffalo, not tractors and Peter Builts, are the primary beasts of burden.

The team relied on quick reflexes and well-honed driving skills to avoid bikes, chickens, dogs, children, and ox carts on the narrow roads. Beyond Mandalay, the crowded, narrow streets dwindled down to remote, bumpy dirt paths, and beyond those paths lay what amounted to mud slicks and switchbacks. It took the team 16 hours to travel one 160-mile stretch of “good road” through Myanmar’s center.

“If this is the good road, I’d hate to see the bad one,” said team member Chanda Baggarly, 32, of Visalia, Calif.

Along this year-old road that replaces a portion of the old Burma Road, the team had to perform more than six vehicle recoveries and await the repair of a bridge that had fallen as the result of heavy rains. The LONGITUDE team winched Burleson’s Isuzu Trooper once and towed it out of thick mud twice, winched a Burmese military Jeep that had become bogged down in the mire, and yanked a Chinese-built transport bus full of passengers on their way to Mandalay out of a muddy rut with their 9,000-lb. WARN winch.

“My heart is beating faster than it usually does,” said a team member after crossing a precarious bridge. “That means it’s a good driving day.”

At 2:30 a.m., the team finally hit pavement at the start of the north-south India-Myanmar Friendship Highway, which was built by the Indian government. Beautifully paved, the narrow road is spotted with constant friendly reminders to drive safely. “Better late than never,” read one. “Driving with care makes accidents rare,” and “Life is a journey; complete it,” read others. One that reads, “Remember your wife and children; drive slow,” reminded the team’s two female members that women drivers in Myanmar are, indeed, a rarity.

In the remote backyards through which the team has traveled, everything about them is a rarity, from their flashy Land Rover Discoverys, to their language, to their physical appearance.

“I didn’t make anybody cry when I got out of the car today,” said team member Justin Mounts, 31, of Wichita, Kansas. At 6’3”, this blue-eyed blond is the physical opposite of his new Burmese friends.

The majority of people in the remote areas have likely never seen westerners before, and there is almost no chance they’ve ever seen one driving a personal vehicle.

“They’ll probably still be talking about you months from now,” said Mr. Chetry of Journeys tour company, the team’s Myanmar guide.

The team said they won’t soon forget Myanmar, either.

“I have a feeling several of us will be back,” said Chanda Baggarly.

Next, the team will drive through Imphal, India, under armed escort, on their way to the flood-damaged state of Assam. From there, they will travel through the Himalayas to Kazakhstan and Russia, before making the home stretch through Alaska and Canada . They are due home in Los Gatos, Calif., in December.

Help support our cause: The LONGITUDE Expedition is the longest journey ever attempted with a focus on Parkinson's Disease. The Drive Around the World team aims to raise money for Parkinson’s Disease research by driving four Certified, Pre-Owned Land Rover Discoverys around the globe following lines of longitude. Readers are encouraged to pledge small amounts of money per expedition-kilometer via a pledge form that can be found on our Parkinson’s page by clicking HERE. One hundred percent of donations received go directly to Parkinson's research, and all who donate $10 or more will be entered into a raffle to win an expedition-equipped Land Rover Discovery.