A Land Rover-ing we go

5:30pm Wednesday 30th January 2008

TRAVELLING across continents is commonplace now, but it was not the case 50 years ago.

Adventure-loving Eric Edis, of Oak Hill, Woodford Green, surprised his friends and family by travelling to Australia and back by Land Rover.

His 40,000-mile round trip was filled with danger and excitement, from an encounter with a tribe of headhunters to fighting a wolf, to battling malaria to forging a visa to get into Burma.

Mr Edis, who is now in his 80s, planned his trip while he was in a hospital bed in Roehampton, south London, following injuries sustained in the RAF.

He said: "I was scribbling plans down on bits of paper. It was always something I wanted to do. I saw it as a challenge."

Once Mr Edis had recovered, he advertised for people to join his expedition and bought a Land Rover and van.

On October 28, 1957, Mr Edis and his 15-strong crew set off, visiting France, Switzerland, Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, Persia (now Iran), Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Burma, Thailand, Malaya, Singapore, then on to Australia by boat.

By the time he was ready for the return trip, he was the only member of the group left.

He said: "People started dropping out like flies. Many of them did not have the staying power.

"Once in Australia we were on television and I asked for a crew, I had half a sackload of mail in response."

Mr Edis was joined by two teachers, a New Zealand engineer, a commercial artist and a stenographer.

For Mr Edis, the highlight of both trips was the daring journey into Burma.

The Burma Road, which links Burma and China, had been closed for 12 years because of insurgent activity.

Nobody, not even British service personnel, was allowed into the country, but this did not stop Mr Edis.

On the outward trip, his passport was stamped with a message saying he was not allowed through. But Mr Edis put a sticker over the stamp, then got two of the girls in his group to distract the embassy official while he stamped over the top of it.

On the way back, Mr Edis was again not given permission to travel through Burma, but managed to alter a document using a typewriter.

He thought he was in trouble when Thai customs officials said they were going to check the details, but Mr Edis managed to drive away.

He said: "The British Embassy said that it was unprecedented. People could not get into Burma.

"Later, when I was back in England, a group of army officers came to see me wanting to know how we did it, but I would not tell them, I had to use my initiative and cunning to get there, so I thought they should have to do the same.

"Some people say I was foolhardy. I could have ended up in a Burmese jail."

While in Burma, Mr Edis danced with the Naga tribe, a group that cut off people's heads and collected them as trophies.

His Land Rover also got stuck in a swamp, causing him to suffer fever, dysentery, malaria, and Guinea worm.

He said: "I don't really have too many regrets. It was an adventure of a lifetime.

"But I was riddled with malaria and I was gone for 18 months, so I was away from my wife Betty much longer than I expected."

Mr Edis, who is now a grandfather, is writing a book called The Impossible Takes A Little Longer, which he hopes will be published later this year.

The following are stories written by Eric Edis

CHARIOT FROM HEAVEN by Eric Edis

I set off at a pace, following the wheel tracks, left in the snow, by our vehicle, before the breakdown.

My exuberant start, however, was not to last. progress became slower and slower until the tracks were completely obliterated by the continuing snowfall.

As I began to stagger with tiredness, it soon became apparent that I was in serious trouble. I was alarmed at my plight.

Unthinkable and negative thoughts penetrated my frozen skull, as doubt began to tease my brain, I could no longer be sure I was heading in the right direction.

Each step had become a fresh agony. It was only sheer doggedness that drove one leg past another and another, leaving a furrow in my wake.

The cold had long fought its way through the strips of newspaper wrapped around my body parts. The watch on my wirst had stopped and I lost all sense of time, or how far, I had walked.

With the last of my human resources slowly ebbing away, my mind drifted back to the events of the last few hours.

I worried how my friends were coping and what would happen if I could not reach Kabul.

Only John would be fit enough to attempt the journey. Bruce was still recovering from a fever and the two girls from athlete's foot.

I tried to keep calm but was in a position of which I had no control. I was a slave and at the mercy of some capricious snow demon, waiting to decide my fate.

The pain in my joints, made walking, a continuous nightmare. I was drugged with fatigue and wondered how much more my miserable body could take, when I came to a signpost. It had fingers pointing in three directions.

None of which could be read as they were completely covered by snow. I was totally frustrated and lingered there for a while, to focus my mind.

I tried to jump, to swipe the snow off, but my feet hardly left the ground.

With the support of the signpost at my back, I rested awhile. I knew, if I fell asleep, it would be surely my last.

As I stared into the distance, I thought I saw a light, then wondered if it was some cruel trick my eyes had played on me, but it seemd brighter. It was the headlights of a car.

As it came closer I could hear the noise of its engine as it struggled through the snow. It was an old beat-up Mercedes, but at that moment in time, the most beautiful car I had ever seen. Like a chariot from heaven.

I stopped in front and raised my arm. The car stopped. Three men were inside with Afghan blankets wrapped aorund them, scarves covering their ears and wearing a shammagh on their heads. I repeated the word "Kabul" "Kabul".

They opened the door to the seat in the back There were guns on the seat beside the passenger. He pushed them aside to make room for me to sit.

The men did not speak during the journey, which had probably been no more than five or six miles. I uttered the words "Mr Baldwin", "Englishman", a couple of times.

The driver just nodded. As we reached the outskirts of Kabul, I recognised that I was close to the place where Peter Baldwin lived, the driver stopped the car, and with difficulty, I shook the hand of the three men, each of whom bowed his head in approval.

It was difficult to struggle the last few hundred yards to the house.

My clothes were stiff like boards. I walked like a man who was drunk. Mr Baldwin was surprised and shocked to see the state I was in.

He immediately led me into a room with a blazing log fire.

His manservant helped to remove my clothes and a heavy blanket was placed around my shoulders, I was then given a bowl of hot soup...

It was a while before I began to feel my limbs again.

After a hot shower, Peter gave me a pair of his socks to wear, to help thaw out my feet, while the rest of my clothes dried in front of the fire.

After a meal of goat's meat stew, it was suggested that I remain there for the night and return to my vehicle next morning in the Land Rover, when a new dynamo would be fitted.

Although the offer to stay was very very tempting, I could not help but be concerned about my friends. I needed to get back to them as soon as possible.

As soon as my clothes were dry, arrangements were made for me to be driven back to our vehicle. A new dynamo was ready, for which Mr Baldwin had refused to accept any payment.

There were no words adequate enough to express my debt of gratitude to Peter for all he had done for me.

I would never ever forget the sight of that blazing log fire when I came in from the cold. It was the early hours of the morning when I left the house with the manservant and mechanic for the journey back, still wearing Peter's socks.

When we arrived back to where the Land Rover and trailer stood, covered in deep snow, there was no sign of movement around it.

In the headlights, I lifted the canvas at the back and found them all cosily snuggled up in their sleeping bags. They had certainly not heard our arrival.

I tried to wake them to tell them of the new dynamo, but they were completely disinterested. Bruce, tiredly, asked, "did you have any problems?", "No", I said, "no problems." Then all went quiet.

The mechanic took about 20 minutes to fix the dynamo then gave the vehicle a jump-start. Our own battery had been almost flat. As there was no further movement from the back, I retrieved my sleeping bag and made up my bed on the front seats.

I left the engine running for a while, to charge up the battery and let the heater warm up the inside of the cab.

It had been an eventful day and a thin red line between the Chariot From Heaven and the Angel of Death.

The following morning, while preparing porridge for breakfast, my friends remarked that they couldn't understand why I bothered to come back that night as it was so late, why couldn't I have waited until the morning?

AFGHANISTAN 50 YEARS AGO by Eric Edis

The chilld wind blew the swirling snow in my face as I struggled alone through the white wilderness of the hostile landscape.

The raw pain of the cold wracked my whole body. With every step my legs became heavier as I dragge dthem through nature's thick piled snow carpet.

I lost all sense of time or how far I had walked. I was so tired and wanted to rest bu there was nowhere.

The dark starry night and brightness of the snow helped light my way. I muttered to myself, "I must get back to Kabul, I must reach Kabul."

I tried to focus my mind that soon I would see the city lights , but nothing changed. The temperature was dropping fast and it was difficult to brush the snow from my face as beads of ice were tangled inb my beard and my outer clothes were frozen.

I looked around, not a single tree, no sign of life except the distant cry of a wolf. In some strange way, this gave a little comfort, to know that I was not entirely alone.

Fear began to grip me. No-one was going to come along, wave a magic wand and whisk me to safety. I had no back up, no phone to cry down.

But I wasn't about to throw in the towel. I'd been preparing for this journey for 18 months and had already travelled 32,000 miles through some of the world's most inhospitable places, including 1,200 miles, in each direction through bandit-infested jungles of the famous Burma road, and a 4,400-mile, unplanned trek across Australia's great Nullarbor Plain, but that was another story.

Complacently I thought that, as I had already travelled so far and accomplished most of what I had set out to do, I was well innoculated against anything further Mother Nature might throw at me, how wrong I was.

When I left my home in England 15 months earlier to drive across the world to Australia and back I was under no illusion as to the size of the task I had set myself or of the dangers that would be encountered along the way.

This had been made abundantly clear by the Foreign Office, which had avised against, and , of the possible consequences of such a journey.

This was probably good advice, for some, but not for me. My mind was already made up. the thrist for adventure was in the blood like an aphrodisiac that flows through the veins and gives a buzz, and an irrepressible urge to find, and experience the unexpected.

But I was not prepared or equipped for the position in which I then found myself. The clothes I wore gave little protection against the intense, penetrating cold.

I knew when our vehicle had broken down that we were in big trouble and that it owuld be madness in those conditions to try and walk back to Kabul for help, but there was no other choice, somebody had to go.

I knew then, that I must be the one. If it was adventure I wanted, Afghanistan certainly offered it.

With some misgivings, I preapred myself for the walk and remembered a survival film I once saw in the RAF about the many ways a newspaper could be used in an emergency.

I put on extra socks and underwear, then cut into strips the newspapers we had brought from our embassy in Kabul.

We carefully wrapped them around my arms and legs, over my pyjamas. I borrowed a second pullover form one of the boys and wore my jeep coat over the top.

After a hot drink, I left my team of three Australians and a New Zealander to fend for themselves.

They had food and water, good sleeping bags, the shelter of the Land Rover and gas burners to make hot drinks, so they were a problem I should not have had too worry much about.

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