‘Only Brits would be mad enough…’
‘Retracing our festive adventure – in the Iranian desert’
This year, when John Driskell wakes up on Christmas morning to a full house and probable grey skies at home in Sheffield, the 74-year-old could be forgiven for feeling more than a twinge of wanderlust. It will have been precisely 50 years since Driskell, along with four friends that he met at teacher training college, found himself spending Christmas in the hot, sandy climes of the Iranian desert, part-way through an epic eight-month overland round trip from South Yorkshire to the Everest Base Camp.
“Every year at this time I think of the trip, and often allow myself a look at those photos,” he says, referring to grainy images of the gang in paper hats, tucking into their Christmas lunch. “I tell you, when you’ve got grandchildren running around the house and everything’s busy, like I do now, it really makes you think of the simplicity we enjoyed in the desert. It was what Christmas is really about.”
After graduating from Sheffield Teacher Training College in 1965, Driskell managed to convince friends Johnny Rudd, David Peckett, Les Simms and Pam Archer to save a quarter of their teaching salary every month for more than two years, with the aim of embarking on the adventure of a lifetime. “I thought the hardest thing would be finding people who wanted to do it, but all four of them said yes straight away. At the time, our jobs were paying us £40 a month, but we managed to each put £10 of that away and save for two years. I even had to cut back on buying beer,” he says, proudly.
The gang set to work saving, and meeting regularly for planning sessions. A route was set which would take them through Europe, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and India – “all very settled countries in those days” – before reaching Nepal. Once £300 had been raised, they used that to buy a Land Rover Series II.
“We all drove away from the second-hand car dealership singing songs, the excitement was that high,” Driskell, now a retired head teacher and a grandfather, recalls. Not that they could leave immediately. First they had to toughen the car up for the journey. It was then time to pack a few personal supplies, plus two large tents, tubular camp beds, a table and chairs, homemade mosquito nets, paraffin stoves, a pressure cooker, two sleeping bags each, two large water cans and two large petrol cans.
The beginning of the gang’s trip was previewed in The Daily Telegraph in October 1967. In a gently disapproving tone, a news story told of how the Treasury had made an exception to Harold Wilson’s “£50 limit” on foreign currency being taken abroad for this “6,000-mile overland ‘pleasure trip’ to the Himalayas”, on the grounds that they would potentially stop at schools as they went. (In the end, they did, visiting around 10.) “We just went off into the unknown then, and we were so excited to be attempting it. This was all without mod cons. No internet and no mobile phones, of course, but we promised to write home once a fortnight. In reality, I barely ever felt homesick. We just got on, shared tasks like driving and navigating, and never had a falling out.”
Little was planned by way of dates, but after racing through Europe, the group figured they’d be at the Persian Gulf for Christmas. Finding that a little inhospitable, though, they found the perfect camping spot slightly inland. The decision is recalled in Driskell’s diary from December 23 1967.
“We departed, glad to leave the flies and ‘starers’, but reluctant to leave the sea. In many ways I would rather have stayed longer, but we had to go to get settled for Christmas,” he wrote. “We travelled on up the valley and turned off the main road. As darkness fell we found the ideal camp site – quiet, flat and beautifully situated.” That night, as the group were cooking beside their Land Rover, another vehicle pulled up beside them in the darkness. “We all grabbed blunt instruments, not knowing what would happen, but the accent spoke in perfect English, and wished us a Merry Christmas,” Driskell remembers now, chuckling to himself. “It was an Iranian man who had been educated in America. We said, ‘How did you know we were English?’ and he replied: ‘Only English people would be mad enough to camp out here…’
The gang had as traditional a Christmas as they could muster. The journal suggests that was achieved. “As the final light of the day faded on the surrounding peaks, we reached the bottom, where we encountered a camel train, 14-strong. What a Christmassy atmosphere! Back at camp we made a meal, then lit a camp fire and sat around it singing carols – a clear and beautiful ‘Holy Night’. What a great day,” he wrote.
In the morning, four of them woke to find a surprise in their tents. Or as Driskell put it: “Santa has been!” One of the group, Peckett, had put fruit, sweets, chewing gum and a biro at the bottom of each bed – plus some cigarettes for the smokers. “I wanted to spend Christmas a bit like Captain Scott had in the Antarctic, so we packed a Christmas pudding, a Christmas cake, whisky and sherry,” Driskell says. With help from local supplies, records speak of a slap-up dinner: chicken, stuffing, cabbage, roast and mash potatoes and gravy.
“We followed this with Christmas pudding and delicious white sauce and a cup of all-milk coffee. At the end we drank a toast to the Queen, England and home.”
The stop for Christmas was three days’ journey that none ever forgot. They reached Everest, trekking to Base Camp (meeting the Princess of Nepal in Kathmandu, no less, “but that’s a whole other story...”), and returning in 1968 “a bit underweight, but knowing we’d had the most fantastic time”. The group dispersed and started families, but remained in close contact, and meet every few years. Driskell, Peckett and Simms revisited Nepal, showing their wives the country in 2010. Last month, the 50th anniversary of their departure was marked with a curry in Sheffield. “It’s amazing really, when we get together everyone just slots into the old roles, that dynamic. We get on just as we ever did,” Driskell says.
It’s a trip he thinks about often, but rarely more than at this time of year. In his Christmas Day diary in 1967, he paused to reflect on what it all meant for him. “Thoughts of home have been strong today and we have talked much about what will be going on and sure that they are thinking of us, as we them. I love travelling and seeing these places, and will do all my life, but it builds in one a deep love and affection for one’s mother country and all that is ‘home’.”
Half a century on, it still rings true. “I say I wasn’t ever homesick, but I think at that point, at Christmas, I allowed myself to think about family and everyone in Sheffield,” he says. “I’m too old to do it again now, but we took the chance when we could.”