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Often we get cheers from people about our courage to take on such a big project with such little resources.  Many tell us that we are crazy, jaws often drop when Steve Bouey tells them that he cashed out his whole retirement fund to put into this dream.  I have put a great deal of my savings on the line and dug a nice little black hole of credit as well.

When the project first started we went back and forth on the idea of starting TWBR as a non-profit so that we could have an easier time raising money. This was based on the idea that our objective was to work with schools when we return educating youth about what is really happening in the world and inspire them to follow after their dreams like we have.  Again, the majority of people are very supportive of us and these goals.  We don’t expect to change the world, but we certainly hope to change as many minds as we can about what is happening out there.  This is why we ultimately decided to not make this whole thing about a cause like everyone is doing these days.  Many races, expeditions, and adventures are about raising money for something, we did not want to make this about that.

Since both of us decided to pour our entire lives and financial security on the line for this project, it seemed reasonable to at least have the option at the end of this of turning a profit and maybe actually getting paid for the risks we have taken.  Still there are those few out there that take offense to this, as though we are selfish people.  Perhaps someday some of these angry people out there can realize that just because someone is trying to make money, doesn’t mean they cannot also be helping someone.  The most recent and anonymous comment on the blog writes as such:

“Let’s see…..there are hundreds of thousands of children starving, abused, homeless, uneducated, orphaned and generally unhappy every day. 30,000 USD would change the lives of an entire village. I could help them, or help this group put more gas in their SUVs drive around the world. Hmmmmmmmm……….”

This fine anonymous reader of the blog is from Milton, Queensland in Australia based on the IP address.  My question to him/her and anyone who feels the same way is, “What did we ever do to you?”  We are a couple of guys that believe just throwing money at poor, less fortunate people does not solve problems.  As we state in our mission statement and all the info on the site explaining what we are doing- Only 20% of Americans hold valid passports and an even smaller amount of them actually using them in a given year (some years less than 5% of Americans leave the country).  The statistics are very similar in most developed countries.  Although the statistics may be a little better in other countries, not many people who donate money to the Red Cross or the countless other organizations out there trying to help people have even been to the countries where the money is going.  From what we have seen, a majority of this money is misused or never even makes it to the people it was meant to help.

Man on his Soapbox - Courtesy of Wikipedia

There are still many upstanding organizations out there helping people, but saying that giving money to a village is more important than educating youth is crazy in my opinion.  If we can fill the world with more young people that are truly aware of world issues, then we will more quickly solve problems like starvation, illiteracy, corruption, disease, pollution and more.  The majority of people I have met on this journey, American or not, do not know where half of the countries in our route lie on a map.   Before we all fill ourselves with guilt because we are privileged or stand on our soapboxes about sending money abroad, remember that education and understanding are our most important tools to creating real change in the world.  Between Europe, the USA, and the other developed countries pouring billions of dollars each year into foreign aid and influencing countless decisions of other countries governments, it should be our duty as citizens of these countries to make sure that those dollars are spent responsibly and the decisions are made well.  Without ever even getting near these places, who are any of us to say where the money is best spent or whether the decisions being made are responsible?

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PS. Anonymous, if you are looking for a village that has a really great program helping locals, The ETC in KhaoLak, Thailand is a place I would recommend.  Our friend Reid Ridgeway runs the program and it is a place that makes an unbelievable difference in the lives of Thai people and helps to preserve their environment at the same time.  Also, if you were interested we also filmed with AUSAid in Indonesia, and your Australian dollars are being well spent there building schools.

Well, we are in the thick of it now. The thick, blowing sand of the Western Sahara Desert. In fact, we are actually in a UN administered territory called Western Sahara. (The Moroccans like to claim it as their southern province and the rebel POLISARIO Front refers to the land as the “free zone.”) Whatever you want to call it, politics aside, it is definitely the desert. It is strange that a place so empty and so seemingly void of life can spark so much interest and arouse so much curiosity in people. On the surface, it does not seem like the desert has much to offer, but nothing can be farther from the truth, and when it comes to things to offer, the Sahara has a full plate to chose from.

Driving through Western Sahara is a bit odd. Obviously there are not too many people living here as daytime temperatures soar well above 40 degrees and plummet to next to nothing after the sun goes down, but signs of people seem to be everywhere. Signs of life come in the form of ramshackle tents distributed quite randomly amongst the rocks and sand dunes. Sings of life come in the form of blown-out tires scattered along the side of the lone road that meanders its way south to Mauritania… there are other tracks further inland, but the risk for exploration is high as landmines have been buried all over the place. Unfortunately, signs of life here in this part of the desert also come in the form of trash which seems to accumulate everywhere. Although the plastic bag may be practical, when you see “plastic bag bushes” hundreds of miles from any form of civilization it makes you wonder if they are really beneficial at all.

Navigating the trash and hopefully the landmines

Signs of non-human life are even more evident in the desert. Snakes and critters of all types reside here and although they are extremely difficult to spot due to both their camouflage and calculated movements, their tracks can been seen throughout the sand. Underground rivers wind their way through the dunes, completely hidden from view and the only indication that there is water around is the occasional patch of green grass or the even less frequent oasis. No mirages just yet.

Desert Oasis

Mark scouts out a shipwreck we spotted from the road

It is a bit cliche, but camels are also part of the desert and the Sahara is no exception. I am not sure if they are completely wild, but camels here freely graze wherever they chose and sometimes that tends to be in the middle of the road. When you come to a place like the Sahara, you hope that you can catch a glimpse of a camel outside of a typical tourist attraction. For us, this glimpse started in the form of concrete structures which gave way to road signs alerting you to their presence to finally seeing live camels roaming about the desert plains in giant herds. I have to admit, camels are a strange breed of animal. There is nothing quite like a camel and there is no other animal I am aware of that communicates by using what sounds like deep, prolonged belching. In any regard, seeing the silhouette of a camel herd grazing against the backdrop of a setting sun in the Sahara desert is up there with one of the coolest things I have seen in my life.

First sign of camels in the desert

Second sign, literally, of camels in the desert

Almost hitting camels in the desert

We have only been in the desert for a few days and the peace and tranquility that you find here can sometimes blind you to the fact that although beautiful in countless ways, the desert can also be a very dangerous and inhospitable place. So far, the desert has been good to us and we can only hope that the trend continues because we still have a long way to drive before the sands of the Sahara start to give way to the lush vegetation of equatorial Africa.

After making our way through Inner Mongolia and leaving China, the sight of the sky and fresh air in our lungs was like exiting some sort of biosphere project testing how much pollution the human body can handle in one sitting. After three weeks in China, our lungs were beaten down and each breath was painful. The view from the street in Beijing only leant a line of sight no farther than 3 blocks before the buildings on the street would fade away into gray smoke.

It has been 3 months since the expedition was in China. Steve Bouey still has a bad cough or some sort of lung infection that most certainly originated in China. Everywhere you turn in China people carry on with little unhealthy, persistent coughs. Our guide Jason told us that he had a cold when we first met him, but the cold lasted with the same little cough for the entire 3 weeks we were there.

Of all the things we have encountered on the road, the pollution in China is one that still haunts me on a regular basis. Only 1 percent of the country’s 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union. It is pretty easy to see why Steve B. has lung problems after we spent about 90% of the time in cities. Even while driving the thousands of kilometers on the route through China, over and over Jason repeatedly told me, “This area is heavily industrialized.” The truth is that most of the country is heavily industrialized, and lacking any sort of environmental regulation. In fact Haushan, one of the five ancient sacred mountains in China, is less than 6 miles away from a 5 stack coal power plant. The mountain was completely blocked from sight by the smoke on our visit. Imagine if the Tetons or Yellowstone had industrial zoning with factories using technology from the early 1900s right near the entrance to the park.

It is estimated that somewhere between 400,000 and 700,000 people die prematurely from air pollution each year in China. The leaders in China have declined the use of tax policies and incentives for conservation. Loans for heavy polluters are readily available and relatively inexpensive. With double digit economic growth each year in China, the government and citizens seem to have lost any vision for the future, as their health care costs shoot through the roof and the environment they rely on for survival becomes a wasteland that cannot preserve life. The acid rain and wastewater pollution from toxic factories in the north have caused epidemics of cancer in villages throughout the region.

So why is it that so many people that I talk to about China have no idea that the pollution is this bad? The Chinese government does their best to cover all of it up. China’s State Environmental Protection Agency engineered the removal of statistics in a World Bank study, the Financial Times reported, because the government feared the figures could trigger social unrest. While in China I attempted some research for this blog and found that Wikipedia was blocked, along with the New York Times, the BBC and more. The only sites that I could find pollution statistics while in China were grossly underreported.

On my most recent search on “China Pollution,” of the hordes of articles available, a few of the titles read:

“China’s Rare River Dolphin Now Extinct, Experts Announce”

“Chinese Air Pollution Deadliest in World, Report Says”

“As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes”

“Pollution Darkens China’s Skies”

It is amazing why more citizens of the world are not up in arms about this. The effects of this pollution are causing acid rain in Japan and Korea. In Los Angeles, much of the particulate pollution originates in China according to the Journal of Geophysical Research. This year, in fact, China has even surpassed the United States on the amount of pollution they produce. Many times when I bring all of this up the immediate argument is that we cannot get mad at China for having an industrial revolution like the US and Britain had centuries ago. This argument seems so strange since “The Industrial Revolution” refers to the introduction of industry to the world. Back then we did not know any better, today China should. Just because one country makes a mistake does not give the rest of the countries in world the right to make a similar mistake with consequences that make the original Industrial Revolution look like Earth Day.

Check out this photo from on Wikipedia. Where does all of that pollution go after the rain? Could it possibly end up in the watershed? It would seem a strange coincidence that coastlines exist in China that can no longer sustain any marine life due to the algal red tides. As we always say when people ask us about the mission of The World by Road, the main stream media has a tendency to sensationalize stories to make them marketable. For whatever reason, it seems that the story of China’s pollution problems is not sensationalized enough. We have dedicated a photo gallery to Chinese pollution on the site…check out the photos and make the decision for yourself just how bad this problem is.

More links to additional information:

China’s Rare River Dolphin Now Extinct, Experts Announce (December 14, 2006)

Chinese Air Pollution Deadliest in World, Report Says

Environment of China

Pollution poisons China’s progress

As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes

One of the areas that I wanted to visit since the beginning of this expedition was the Aral Sea. The Area Sea straddles Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and these days is not really much of a sea anymore. In fact, experts believe that the desertification of the entire body of water could be complete in the next 15-20 years. The Aral Sea was once a massive body of water that was home to a variety of life and supported a vibrant fishing industry. Today, little is left of the fishing industry and the shrinking waters have become too contaminated with pollutants and chemical weapons waste to sustain much life of any type. The Aral Sea has recently split into the North and South Aral Seas and it is expected to divide again as it continues to dry up.

Bouey imagines what life was like when the sea was here while Karie tries to figure out how to use binoculars

The cause of the “Aral Sea Disaster,” as many refer to it, is the diversion of water from the sea to irrigate and sustain cotton cultivation in an extremely inhospitable and arid environment during the Soviet Era. Although the level of cotton production has declined and become more efficient, the diversion of water for irrigation continues. The canals diverting water from the sea lead off in every direction and reach as far away as Turkmenistan. However, poor maintenance and resource planning means that very little water actually makes it to it’s intended destination. Some people say that up to three times as much water is being drained from the Aral Sea as is replenished by natural sources.

The sign on the outskirts of town is evidence of what life used to be like in Moynaq

It is hard to imagine the magnitude of the effects the desertification of the Aral Sea are having in the region unless you see them firsthand. In fact, the effects are being felt as far away as Kyrgyzstan, where high concentrations of salt, sand and chemicals lifted from the dry seabed have been carried thousands of kilometers by winds. In the immediate area, the rainy season has shrunk from an average of 150 days of rain per year to a stunning 35… most likely due to the atmospheric effects of the shrinking sea.

To our surprise, life limps on in Moynaq

Thanks to the freedom of our Toyotas, we were able to visit the once thriving fishing town of Moynaq in the remote and isolated Karakalpakistan province of Uzbekistan. The shoreline of the Aral Sea now lies nearly 150 kilometers to the north of Moynaq. There are many towns like Moynaq, but here, the rusting, skeletal remains of a once proud fishing fleet that lay scattered across the sand dunes are a striking image of the ecological and economic impact that have been left in the wake of the receding waters.

Remnants of the fishing fleet litter the landscape

Moynaq used to have a population of over 2,000. By our estimates, the present population could not be more than 500. At least that is what it felt like. Moynaq was a total ghost town and everyone was left puzzled as to why any of the remaining residents would chose to stay out here literally in the middle of nowhere. After our arrival, we immediately spotted a few small boats rusting in the desert, but it was only after a few local children pointed us in the right direction that we found what we were looking for.

Small pools are all that remain of the Aral Sea in Moynaq

I have seen pictures of these boats before, but only after you see them with your own eyes, laying in the Martian-like  landscape that has become their grave, do you really start to understand what has happened in Moynaq and the surrounding area. I did a lot of thinking here. Why did they leave the boats here? Why didn’t they move them with the water? Why do they continue to drain water from the sea? Are there any other alternatives? Does anybody care at all?

Seeing what was left of the Aral Sea at Moynaq is unlike anything I have ever seen before. Hopefully, the governments in the region can come to an agreement on a solution, and hopefully experts and scientists are able to identify one that can restore part of the Aral Sea or at least stop its current evaporation. Unfortunately, by the time that happens, I fear it will be far too late and the entire region will be left to deal with the effects. Governments have been arguing over and scientists have been studying the Aral Sea for years. According to locals, if every scientist who visited the Aral Sea simply brought a bucket of water with them, the problem would already be solved.