If you have the opportunity to see “The Long Way Round” with Charley Boorman and Ewan Mcgregor when it is on in the states on Bravo I thoroughly reccomend it.
McGregor who was in star wars and trainspotting and his mate took off last year from London on two motor bikes and rode east, from London, through Germany, Czech, Russia, Kazachstan, Mongolia and Siberia to the Bering Straights and then from Anchorage to Fairbanks to Calgary, ND, SD, MN, Chicago and on to NY and the series that documents this is being shown on Bravo.
If you have the change to watch it, it is fantastic, one of the best things I have seen on TV in years.
Also the best ad for BMW enduro bikes any company could hope for.
Sorry, not to rain on your parade, but this can’t compare at all to a book, "Off the Map’, about the first bike ride (i.e., ya gotta pedal–no fossil fuels pushing one’s fat ass) across the entire USSR, including hundreds of miles of pushing their heavily loaded bikes through areas of no, nada, zero, zilch, roads. The incredible story and haunting writing in this book is unreal. If you have any love for the bike, the story will stay with you for a lifetime…
It was on this fall. Unfortunately, Bravo treated it very poorly. You never knew when it was going to be on, and it kept getting bumped for celebrity poker. Reportely it’ll be out on DVD some time first quarter 2005, and I plan on buying it then.
One of those pictures being worth a lot of words situations. There were some very tense scenes where it looked like Ewan, Charile, and/or the crew were doing to drown themselves and their bikes in a flood-swollen Russian river. And for those who enjoy that sort of thing, many nice shots of Ewan’s bare ass. Very much the feel of Michael Palin’s docu-travel shows.