Charity Road Trip

I love travel, road trips in particular.  I always find myself watching the celebrity travel documentaries from the likes of Michael Palin with a little bit of envy.

So when I was approached a couple of weeks ago regarding doing some photography over the final 10 days of a road trip that starts in London and finishes in Dushanbe, Tajikistan it immediately got my attention and interest levels up.

It's called "The Roof of the World" Rally, it's all for charity with the profits going to Sworde-Tepa and Make-A-Wish.  The website is www.charityroadtrips.org.

Currently my involvement is to photograph the start of the rally in London on 3rd July 2010, and then to fly out to Baku, Azerbaijan to meet up with the rally on 15th July and then stay with it all the way to the final destination of Dushanbe.  As the crow flies its around 1000 miles, but our planned route will be much longer along what appears to be some "interesting" roads.

If I said I wasn't a little bit worried about some of the places we'll be visiting I'd be lying.  Lets face it the area hasn't exactly had a positive press over recent years, but this is a huge opportunity for me, and impossible to put into words just how excited I am.

As you might expect with it being for charity I'm not going to get paid, so I'm going to have to find a way to fund myself.  By far the biggest expense will be the air fare, probably around £700, so I need to raise quite a bit of money.

How?  Well I'm going to be approaching some companies direct also asking for small amounts of sponsorship in exchange for advertising space on my website.  I'll be creating a special section of the website dedicated to the trip and updating it with news and sponsorship information as things progress.

Maybe I should get myself sponsors for all the injections for inoculations I'm going to need prior to July - I've been told I'll need 11 jabs.  Have I mentioned yet how much I hate pain & needles?

That's all for now.  There's lots going around in my head.

Update: I've just got information through on our ideal route.  The exact route we take depends on visas, so it might change a little, but this is the ideal scenario.    Baku – Turkmenibashy – Ashgabat – Mary – Turkmenabat – Bukhoro – Samarqand – Tashkent – Andijon – Osh – Pamir Highway – Dushanbe – Qurghonteppa.