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The Bare Necessities Tour All texts and artworks belong to Ben Hopkins  Welcome to ‘the get us out of here’ website. Previous visitors may be aware that the original plan was to cycle from Delhi to Istanbul. The chain was oiled, the panniers were all packed and mentally I was out there pedaling the dusty roads of Pakistan, through Iran and onto the journey’s end in Turkey. Obtaining an Iranian visa was the last obstacle and that’s where the best laid plans came to a crunching halt. The initial moment of despair was brief so it wasn’t long before I rolled out a map and penciled in a plan that would satisfy my hunger for travel and lead me full tilt across the globe from my home base in Thailand back to my homeland in England. Starting a stones throw from the Thai Burmese border I’ll pedal east over the high mountains of Laos and into Vietnam where I’ll take stock in Hanoi before pedaling north into China. The vast landscape of China will swallow a few kilos as I continue to pedal north east into one of the world’s fastest growing cities, Shanghai and onto Beijing. In Beijing the legs will take a rest as I load my bike onto the trans-Siberian express and journey 10,000 kilometers North West into Moscow and onto Saint Petersburg. Hopefully the north wind will be kind as I climb back onto my bike and make my way through northern Europe and back into England. And the first port of call in England! A nice cup of tea with the folks. That’s the journey.
The cause that I’m hoping to raise money for and awareness of is the Thailand Burma Border Consortium (TBBC).
TBBC is a consortium of currently ten NGOs from eight countries working to provide food, shelter, non-food items and capacity building support for Burmese refugees and displaced people who have been forcibly evicted and disenfranchised from their homelands, hence the name getusoutofhere.net. My philosophy to travel is pretty simple: follow your nose and the 'bare necessities' of life will see you through!
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