Roof of the World
Meet the man who decided to drive the ancient Silk Road in a custom Defender
OUR Land Rovers are capable of driving us around the world. Even if the most adventurous thing you’ve ever done is drive a greenlane, I’ll bet you’ll have dreamed of setting off on an exotic adventure. We all do. The truth is, most of us don’t get to live that dream, but what about those who do? We all know what they drive, but what drives them? Take Gerry Mulligan. He enjoyed a hugely-successful career as a top executive with the company that makes Goretex, but he gave it up to drive around the world. And why, exactly?
“What do you do when three of your contemporaries die in quick succession and you have yourself survived two bouts of cancer?” he says. “In my case my thoughts turned to my long-held dream of driving the Silk Road in an old Land Rover.”
Gerry, who was born in Belfast in 1962 had a difficult childhood. At the age of two he fell head-first into an open fire and nearly died. A year later, his mother died of cancer and, for the next ten years, Gerry spent every summer in hospital undergoing major operations as surgeons rebuilt his face.
Fast forward three decades and Gerry’s father died of a split aorta. Gerry recalls: “I got checked and they found I had a 10 cm by 4 cm tumour in my chest caused by Hodgkins Lymphoma, the cancer that had killed my mother. This was treated but it came back about a year later and I had to go for stem cell replacement therapy, where they essentially kill your immune system and feed back stem cells into your blood and regrow an immune system.
“That was 13 years ago and I have been clear since, but the treatment to save my life did a lot of damage and my doctors told me I’m unlikely to be the longest-living person, so I should get on with life – which I am trying to do.
“I once read a book on the birth of civilisation and I wanted to drive to all the places mentioned in the book where Alexander the Great and Attila the Hun once stood. I was specially fascinated with the tales of the old Silk Road, from the civilisation of China to the developing civilisations of Europe, and the mostly forgotten ancient cities that straggled the road and were truly the centre of the world in the distant past.”
So, at the age of 55, Gerry began planning his epic trip, which he called his Roof of the World Tour, because it included the very highest Himalayan passes and the Pamir Highway – 4600 km above sea level. Of course, the most important item was the vehicle itself. It’s time to introduce Nelson, his redoubtable expedition truck which, believe it or
not, started life as an abused Defender 110 300Tdi farm hack. But first, why ‘Nelson’?
“A combination of tough, victorious and strong seems to link to the name from English history – plus the fact the registration ANC reminded my wife Lee and I of one off our heroes, Nelson Mandela,” says Gerry.
“I had never owned a classic Land Rover, but I decided to look for a nice, clean three-door 110 300Tdi to be the basis for my build, because it was the last of the Defenders before complex electronics were added. I was lucky to find a 1996 110 with only 36,000 miles on the clock.”
Gerry thought he’d bagged a bargain for £12,000, but it turned out the low-mileage Defender wasn’t as good as he’d hoped. Within three months the R380 gearbox seized and needed replacing, while the chassis turned out to be rotten. The gearbox was replaced with an Ashcroft expedition unit, complete with higher top gear, while the new chassis came from Richards. Says Gerry: “I also ended up replacing the engine – all very expensive and disappointing as I had paid over the odds for a low-mileage 300Tdi intentionally, expecting it to be pretty bomb-proof with good maintenance, but essentially I paid the same again to fix everything.
“It took around nine months to convert the 110 to the overland beast it became. The most important bits of the conversion were the Alucab pop roof and the neat fit-out inside, done by Coastline Campers. The roof allows for great headroom during the day and two separate sleeping compartments at night when travelling with friends
“Mechanically it is mostly standard apart from some fancy locking differentials, which I didn’t really need; the compressor, which was super-useful, and 50 litre water and diesel tanks - both critical for range and desert work.
“Nelson also has a three-battery electrical system with solar, a diesel heating system and a 270 degree awning with sides to create a nice extended living area in cold climates, especially with the neat wood burning stove.”
The total bill (including the base vehicle) was around £50,000, but what a cracking expedition camper.
Once the work was completed, Gerry set off on two shakedown trips – to the Baltic and Morocco – to test all the systems. “They were invaluable for making the truck more liveable and to get me used to the mapping and navigations systems we had to rely on during the big trip to central Asia,” says Gerry.
“Now I had one more major task: visas. To travel in central Asia, some visas have to be obtained in your home country, while some have a limited duration of three months. In some cases the only option is a business visa. It took me three months, an Irish passport (for Iran) and about £5000 to get all the permissions, invitations, guides, 11 visas and China crossing together to make the trip possible. It’s not for the faint hearted.”
Gerry and Lee finally set off on May 15 last year. He takes up the story: “The opening phase was a simple drive to Istanbul via Croatia, Bosnia and Albania. We arrived in Istanbul in the middle of Ramadan and for the first time I began to understand the degree of change I was about to experience, but then, and for the rest of my trip, the reality of the friendliness and safety of the Muslim countries became apparent. Lee had joined me for the run down to the Balkans but had to return from Istanbul, so I was now really on my own.
“That feeling lasted only a day, because at a campsite in the south of Turkey I ran into a camping group from Tehran and offered them a lift as we were heading to the same place. In the end we travelled together all the way to Tabriz in Iran over ten days. From then onward in Iran I was handed from friend to friend of my travelling companions as I reached each new city.
“The people of Iran are the most friendly and welcoming that I have ever met in travelling across the world. When I stopped in a park it was usually only half an hour before I had drawn both a crowd and a few invitations to dinner.
“After Iran I got properly into the ‘stans’. Cutting across Turkmenistan in 47 deg C of heat without air conditioning was a tough induction, but a fast run across the steppes of Uzbekistan reconnected me with Lee at Almaty and we roamed the plains for days, camping at will, all the way through Kazakhstan to the Russian Alti and Mongolia. That border crossing took a full 12 hours and involved a van crashing into the back of us when its brakes failed. Thankfully Nelson is made of tough stuff – just scratched – although the van was in bad shape.
“We joined up with some UK friends from Polaris Overland for the northern crossing of Mongolia in the middle of very unseasonal downpours. Lee drove through deep muddy waterholes in the road as we made a detour that would take us 200 km (124 miles) out of our way but accidently into the lovely village Naadam during its festival of wrestling and horse riding.
“Ulaanbaatar was the next changeover, where I picked up my next passenger, Tony Borill, who was to stay with me for the next seven weeks as we got lost in the Gobi desert, lost all the engine oil, recovered and explored the Pamir highway, drove along the border of Afghanistan in the Wakham valley and made our way to China down the mighty Karakorum highway to central Pakistan.
“This was a really tough section of the journey and I was very lucky that Tony was a good man in a crisis, because a few times we ended up driving in the dark through some very washed-out roads playing chicken with big trucks; again not for the faint hearted. Tony is a great photographer and thanks to him I have the best images of the trip.
“I then made my way to India, having dropped Tony in Islamabad and had a lovely three weeks with Lee and my two daughters in India and Nepal – a rest stop that I was really needing after the tough month on the Pamir and the Karakorum. However, as soon as the family flew back home it was back to business as usual as a landslide wiped out the road from Khatmandu to India for a full day and the detour, which looked okay on the map, was a scary ten-hour winding road over the mountains, once again driving in the dark. I called in at the tourist spots of Taj Mahal and Amritsar and the great mosque of Lahore along the way, then I got to the most exciting part of the trip.
“There is a Muslim holiday called Ashura, which in some places is quite frenzied. The upshot of this is I approached the city of Quetta, with a police escort, as dusk fell on the eve of the festival.
“Eventually, to my surprise, up rumbled an armoured car and four motor bikes, each with two special forces commandos on it – one driving, one riding shotgun, literally. I was instructed by the officer in charge to follow the armoured car, who told me: ‘No lights, no stopping for anything’.
“We set off into the now-dark city with the special force’s motorbikes alternately running fast overlaps at the junctions, blocking traffic, or forcing our way through crowded markets; any locals who tried to block me got a gun pointed at them. It was a white-knuckle ride and I had to remember to breathe occasionally as folk tried to cut between me and the armoured car all the way to the police headquarters.
“This was familiar to me, as I was brought up in Belfast in the 1970s, so police station means significant fortress. I was to stay there in protective custody for four days until the festival died down. The kindly chief of police told me he had 15,000 police deployed to keep the lid on things, so I would understand if getting me to the Iranian border was not his top priority.
“Four days later we made a two-day run along the border of Afghanistan with police escorts and had to sleep in fortified police stations, under constant guard. I sent a message to my wife on my secure satellite system saying ‘nearly in the safety of Iran’ – not a message I expected ever to send. After that, even driving along the Kurdish border in Iran seemed like a chilled-out breeze and the welcome of the Land Rover club in Turkey felt like coming home, even though I still had 3000 miles to go.
“At the end of the trip my first reflection was that I was extremely lucky; for a whole six months I travelled across some of the most remote and difficult places in the world and I did not suffer a major breakdown. I ended up back home safe and sound a few days earlier than planned, on November 1. I had been on the road 24 weeks and two days (or 170 days). Total distance: 26, 313 miles. I was even more lucky with my two main travelling companions, my wife Lee and Tony.
“I am grateful for all the wonderful people I met along the way and the wonderful, generous and open-hearted people that I met in every country I visited. The hospitality of the Muslim peoples of central Asia, who often have so little, was humbling and inspiring and in total contrast to the stereotypes we glean from the media.”
Gerry’s Roof of the World trip was his dream trip, but it hasn’t cured his wanderlust. He’s now exploring South America – in Nelson, of course.
“I will stick with Nelson because I am so attached to it,” he says. “My advice to anyone considering an overland trip is to just do it – don’t over-think it, and do some small trips first to make sure you enjoy it and get your kit sorted out.”