Long Way Round: Chasing Shadows Across the World

Great book. This book is not necessarily all about the bikes and blokes that ride them, but it is more about the places, the people, and the moments. Ewan and Charlie travel through some of the most remote and poorest regions of the world, but wherever they go, the people are gracious and kind, offering what little they have, including food, liquor, and shelter.

Ewan rarely plays his "Obi-Wan" card - only when it's a must. For most of the journey people have no idea who he is. He is just a guy riding through occasionally in need of help and often needing a place to stay and a meal.

As the guys travel through Kazakhstan, Serbia, Russia, and Mongolia, they realize it's not about getting from one point to the next, but about all those show more moments in between.

Really well written in alternating voices of Ewan and Charlie. Just a great book! show less

Unfortunately too many years have passed since I watched the Long Way Round docuseries to say whether or not this book offered anything new. I will say I probably enjoyed the docuseries more as the distinctions between Ewan and Charley’s personalities are more apparent on television and obviously there’s the visual component. That said though, this book is still worth reading if you enjoy either actor or crave a vicarious road trip.

The book switches back and forth from Ewan and Charley’s points of view, indicating who is speaking at the start of each segment. I have no doubt that these accounts of the trip came from Ewan and Charley, it’s just that the editor or whoever went through and polished things up polished them so show more thoroughly that Ewan and Charley’s “voices” as well as the few snippets of dialogue often sounded too similar. While Ewan and Charley share similarities like choice of profession, love of motorcycles, etc, I do think they are probably more distinguishable from one another than it tended to feel here.

Like I mentioned it’s been a long time since I watched the television series of this trip, so I also don’t recall whether Ewan and Charley’s whining felt as prominent on TV as it does in this book. During their most recent docuseries trip, maybe because they’re older, they seemed more laid back about things than they do here. There really is a tremendous amount of complaining here for two people who are being paid to go on dream vacation. Sometimes I was like, well, we’re all occasionally guilty of whining about things that aren’t really worth whining over, it’s human, and good for them that they’re willing to include that flawed side of themselves here rather than presenting as perfect, but other times it just really got on my nerves since like I said, they were being paid to go on a dream vacation.

The content of the trip itself, the countries they visit that aren’t places often visited or documented, issues with the bikes, the moments where they reluctantly place their trust in strangers, it’s all interesting stuff, but I think it could have been that much better, had the book gone with slightly different formatting. As is too often the case with many books, there are photo sections rather than interspersing them throughout the book where they could have actually lined up with the timeline of the trip. It also seemed that the appendix in the back thoroughly detailing dates and destinations was so wasted there when I would have appreciated such specific details throughout the book where the sense of time in relation to place was often more vague than I would have preferred. show less

Long Way Round is a fairly well-known TV series documenting the journey undertaken by actors Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman in 2004, riding motorcycles all the way around the world from London to New York, across very remote and wild terrain in Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Siberia. McGregor was already quite a famous actor, appearing in Star Wars, Trainspotting and Big Fish; Boorman was considerably less well-known, in the shadow of both Ewan and his more famous father John Boorman (the director of Deliverance). Long Way Round turned out to be the largest success story of both their careers.

I'd already greatly enjoyed the TV series, and since I have motorbikes on the brain at the moment, I recently rewatched it and then picked up the show more book, which is ostensibly written by both of them but is actually obviously ghostwritten. The style is a bit strange, actually - it regularly cuts between Charley and Ewan, prefacing their segments with their names, but there is no difference whatsoever in their writing style (because, of course, they didn't really write it) and the only way I could ever remember who was talking was to see whether it was "Charley and I" or "Ewan and I" doing something. I'm really not sure why they chose that style.

The book is related in a fairly conversational tone, as though the two adventurers are telling you stories at the pub, and the chronology jumps around quite a bit in the early stages, with flashbacks to the planning sections while they're already riding through Europe. It's a very easy and quick read, and one which I found very enjoyable, but I wouldn't recommend it to somebody who hadn't already watched the TV series.

For somebody who has watched the TV series, however, it's a fascinating in-depth look at the journey. There were a lot of things which happened to them that weren't featured in the series simply because they didn't catch them on film and therefore couldn't work them into the narrative; my favourite would have to be Charley pulling two people out of a car crash on the Road of Bones. There's a deeper insight into their relationship with their two producers, Russ and David, including a crucial confrontation in Prague; there's also a deeper insight into the two men themselves. Both Ewan and Charley are extremely honest about what they think about themselves and each other: their flaws, their strengths, the things they do that really piss each other off... and the fact that, at the end of the day, their positives outweigh their negatives and they're still best friends. There's also appendices detailing the exact mileage and destinations they covered on every day off the trip, and a full inventory of all the equipment they carried on the bikes and in the support vehicles.

Overall, Long Way Round is an excellent supplement to its televised brother, but probably wouldn't work as a stand-alone book. show less

Unexpectedly wonderful. This book surprised me with its spiritual nature. This is not your typical celebrity-goes-abroad book; it is touchingly human. Boorman and McGregor take it in turns to tell the story of their remarkable journey. Frequently moving, insightful and compelling, this is a fantastic read.

Dark side of "friendly company" trip is here. Bright side too, but not very bright. All of it was in the TV series, but not with such moody contrast. Hm, best and positive travel reports that I've read (not many by all means) was done solo. Makes me think.

Whilst this is an interesting read with some good stories about their experiences, difficulties and ultimately the enriching personal battles that the two guys had to deal with, there is one problem. That unlike people like Ted Simon, Nick Sanders and many others, you knew that most of what they achieved was because of a combination of their fame/cash/cameras and the support crew that followed them around and that they were never really alone and immersed in the situation.

Nonetheless still enjoyable on a fairly superficial level.

What an incredible journey these 3 guys made. I definitely lived vicariously through the pages of this travelogue. For someone who's been afraid of getting on a motorbike after falling off one when I was 18, it made me almost want to get on one again and ride with the wind in my face across the land. Almost... but not quite.