SOMEWHERE ELSE TOMORROW SCRIPT

10.00.00.00 CGI: Book on wooden table. Cover reads 

“210

2-wheels 1-world 0-money”   

10.00.11.00 MARIANNE: 

Is a foreign land just another location or does it offer something that one’s home cannot? Some travellers seek to immerse themselves in foreign cultures, others welcome the opportunity of getting lost. Whatever the motive or experience, they all return... different.   

10.00.39.00 KRIS: Did you actually know that it was possible?   

10.00.41.00 DANIEL: Well, I knew that it was possible to ride around the world, because other people had done it. I just wasn’t sure so much whether I could do it. Especially making the money for it along the way.   

10.00.52.00 DANIEL: Ya, there were a few dicey situations, but I left out a lot. My mom was reading the travel blog too, you know....   

10.01.00.00 KRIS: Can you tell me about some of the stuff, since I’m your old buddy and not your mom.   

10.01.06.00 DANIEL: Sure, I guess it’s fine to talk it about now.   

CGI: Book on wooden table, opens up. Shows page with film title: “Somewhere Else Tomorrow”   

10.01.34.00 KRIS: Yeah, why do you like travelling so much?   

10.01.36.00 DANIEL: I don’t know, I think it brings out the best in people.   

10.01.39.00 KRIS: You were raised in East Germany, so what was travel like back then?   

10.01.44.00 DANIEL: We travelled to some neighbouring communist countries like Czech or Poland. The number of countries that we could go to were pretty limited   

10.01.54.00 KRIS: So, where did the idea to travel around the world come from?   

10.01.59.00 DANIEL: My buddy Lars and I were working on a project for uni, running late, working through the nights, close deadline. We were going crazy. We’d been living this kind of life for way too long. And there was a point of extreme exhaustion. So we decided that after we’re done with university, after we hold our degrees, there needs to be a big change.   

10.02.24.00 DANIEL: Lars suggested to buy a plane ticket like an around the world plane ticket and just go to certain important destinations and have a look around. Because I have been travelling before, I wanted to take it a step further and then the whole idea of riding a motorcycle around the world evolved from that moment on.   

CAPTION: 6 YEARS AGO   

10.02.44.00 He didn’t have the driver’s license for a bike, he didn’t have the bike. But he was intrigued by the idea.   

10.02.49.00 LARS (SUBTITLED): We’re on our way to Kassel. To look at a bike for sale. And I have diving lessons back in Berlin tomorrow. That’s what I’m studying for right now.   

10.03.08.00 LARS (SUBTITLED): Four previous owners…?

OWNER OF BIKE (SUBTITLED): Yes 4.

LARS (SUBTITLED): Should we get going? I have driving lessons later.   

10.03.21.00 DANIEL: So we thought it would be a good idea to have the same bike because it would be good on the trip in case there were problems, we could figure it out more easily by exchanging parts and we can also, you know, carry certain spare parts only once and then either which one would break down first would get the part and would fit in both.   

10.03.39.99 DANIEL:

This bike is very well known to be very sturdy and easy to fix. It’s very basic, there’s no electronics, not too much electronics in here so if you break down somewhere remote people will be able to help you. But we checked everything anyway and made modifications that we hoped would make our lives easier.   

10.04.04.00 LARS (SUBTITLED): Today’s the 30th of August. The day we start our journey.   

CAPTION: BERLIN 2008   

10.04.24.00 LARS (SUBTITLED): I was nervous this morning. 

VOICE OFF CAMERA (SUBTITLED): How is your girlfriend doing?

LARS (SUBTITLED): Sometimes she cries a little. But she is very brave.   

10.04.35.99 KRIS:

You and Lars took off on the trip. What was that like? What did that feel like? You leave Berlin - that moment.   

10.04.42.00 DANIEL: Knowing that you’ll be gone for so long, it’s kind of a strange feeling. You have all your friends around you then you put your helmet on and you ride off, it’s like silent. It’s just you and your own voice in your head, talking. And trying to anticipate what’s going to happen.   

10.05.14.00 LAR’S GIRLFRIEND (SUBTITLED): Gone.   

10.05.17.00 KRIS:

You head south. (DANIEL: Yes.) Go to Paris? (DANIEL: Yes.) See a few sights? You boot it down to Bordeaux? How where you living? Let’s get back to the whole idea of not having any money.   

10.05.30.00 DANIEL: Well the first time we had to stop for work was pretty soon after we left. After a couple days when the fuel tank ran empty we kind of thought, ok what now? And then we sent round some desperate emails: “Hey guys, do you have some job that we can do over the internet maybe or  can we design something for you on the fly?” And the first guy who answered was my ex-boss from London who said “Well I have lots of work and why don’t you come by. I give you things to do?”.   

10.06.00.00 LARS (SUBTITLED): Dan, I know you’re not in the mood, but tell us; where are we?   

10.06.06.00 DANIEL (SUBTITLED): I’m not so sure myself.   

10.06.13.00 DANIEL: We worked on a construction site. That kind of became our day job.   

10.06.19.00 DANIEL ON CAM SYNC (ENGLISH): So that’s the plan, And I’m Dan the man with the plan... Is this drawing 526? Quantity number 6, north elevation?  This gonna tell us…..errrrr?

IAN ON CAM SYNC: We’re at the wrong building site. 

DANIEL ON CAM SYNC (ENGLISH): We’re in the wrong building. We ought to be over there!

IAN ON CAM SYNC: Oh, that building! Oh. Is that the building we’re supposed to be?

DANIEL ON CAM SYNC (ENGLISH): Yeah.

IAN ON CAM SYNC: Oh.   

10.06.45.00 KRIS: So you saved up a whole lot of money over that 8 to 10 weeks and that was enough for you to survive all the way to Egypt?   

10.06.52.00 DANIEL: Pretty much, I think it got us going for a couple of months.   

10.06.56.00 KRIS: And it was in Egypt that you got to ride on some sand dunes? 

DANIEL: That’s right.

KRIS: What was that like?   

10.07.01.00 DANIEL: My life dream. It was very cool to ride on the sand dunes. I didn’t know that Marianne would be a bike that you could take in the deep sand but I got some very knobby tyres delivered from Germany and put them on - really tough to ride on the road. You can’t go faster than 80ks an hour and Lars had a problem with the tyres later.   

10.07.20.00 DAN ON CAM SYNC (SUBTITLED): If you have trouble putting the bike in the side-stand, or main stand because the ground is too soft, yeah, that’s annoying. Then just spin the rear wheel for a while. I’m just not sure if this method will prove the easiest.   

10.07.41.00 DANIEL: I really enjoyed learning how to ride a bike from scratch. It’s really different riding on sand – it’s nothing that I have ever come across before. It’s not like on snow, it’s not like on mud. You put in first gear, you pull the throttle full and let the clutch go and then wait until you pick up momentum. And then you have to go fast, you can’t go slow. You can’t stop in the valleys. If you want to stop you have to stop on the top of the dunes. 

KRIS: Otherwise you’ll be pushing your bike up the hill, right?   

10.08.11.00 DANIEL: There is no pushing. Every time I stopped the bike sank in up to the axles. 

KRIS: Wow.   

10.08.25.00 DANIEL: So basically it’s like full throttle, never change gear if you’re going up hill, or find a solid patch of sand to change gear, and just handle it like a boat. Put some weight on one foot rest and you go left, put some weight on the right footrest and you go right. It’s like sliding all the time. It’s not driving, it’s not riding. It’s awesome.   

10.09.12.00 KRIS: I want to talk about the sandstorm. What’s it like riding through a sandstorm?   

10.09.16.00 DANIEL: Well the bike looked like new afterwards, like sandblasted?  

KRIS: Really? 

DANIEL: Ya. The chrome parts and aluminium parts they were like polished. 

KRIS: Really? 

DANIEL: Ya!   

10.09.23.00 DAN ON CAM SYNC (SUBTITLED): Sand in your eyes is shit. 

LARS (SUBTITLED): No fun.   

10.09.28.00 DAN ON CAM SYNC (SUBTITLED): The way this place looks, is the way you feel?

LARS (SUBTITLED): Yes, I’m feeling scattered, dirty, weathered and I can’t see far.   

10.09.40.00 DAN ON CAM SYNC (SUBTITLED): You don’t know what the further holds?

LARS (SUBTITLED): Nope.   

10.09.44.00 DANIEL: I was a bit worried about Lars, he seemed down for some reason. But I thought it was a phase.   

10.09.50.00 KRIS: Was it difficult going from so much barren landscape to, like, a crazy city like Cairo?   

10.09.55.99 DANIEL: That’s one of the things I really like about travelling - it’s the extremes. You come from a very quiet place and get into a bustling metropolis.   

10.10.04.00 LARS (SUBTITLED): They orderly queue in 12 lanes. And at the signal, all 12 lanes haste into the intersection. 

DAN ON CAM SYNC (SUBTITLED): Now it’s time, it’s time, it’s time.

LARS (SUBTITLED): I just don’t know what the signal is.

DAN ON CAM SYNC (SUBTITLED): It’s a horn-morse-code.   

10.10.24.00 DANIEL: So the plan was to go through Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and so on. But we learnt that the border between Morocco and Algeria had been closed for a long time. So we focused on getting over to Algeria. Getting ferry tickets was easy – visas, not so much. We ended up being stuck in Spain for over 3 months.   

10.10.46.00 LARS (SUBTITLED): Today’s 22 Jan 2009 and we’re still waiting for our passports. 

DAN ON CAM SYNC (SUBTITLED): “Hello, I’ve very bad news. Your passports are ready but withheld by the embassy for some reason”. 

LARS (SUBTITLED): What?

DAN ON CAM SYNC (SUBTITLED): If they arrive Monday afternoon, it’s too late to re-book the ferry and we will lose the 600 Euros, 700 Euros. When does the next ferry leave?

LARS (SUBTITLED): Daniel, no!   

10.11.17.00 KRIS: But you were at least making good use of your wait time, right? You got these front panniers made in Spain?   

10.11.23.00 DANIEL: Yeah I wanted to work them into the design seamlessly. I went to get an aluminium sheet, or aluminium as you’d say in North America, and built these panniers.   

10.11.34.00 KRIS: That’s amazing. And these ones can lock right? The other ones couldn’t lock.

DANIEL: Yes, so unlock now. Let me see the key. 

KRIS: That’s so cool. 

DANIEL: So it locks in these 5 places.   

10.11.45.00 KRIS: Ya, So all of a sudden you could distribute the weight a little bit more evenly across the bike.

DANIEL: Yeah it was much better. Because in these front panniers I put all the things that I wouldn’t need on a daily basis.   

10.11.55.00 MARIANNE: Getting visas for Algeria isn’t the only challenge at this point. It turns out that travelling through Libya requires a very expensive, but mandatory 24 hour guide! Luckily Daniel and Lars find two other travellers on the internet willing to group up and share the cost. However, the rendezvous at the Libyan border is only a few days away.   

10.12.15.00 DAN ON CAM SYNC (SUBTITLED): “Suggestion: take the ferry from Marseille to Tunis….”   

10.12.20.00 MARIANNE: The boys are torn between two options now. (A) Wait until they eventually obtain their Algerian visas and use the 700 Euro ferry tickets already purchased but miss the chance to group up for Libya. Or (B) ride 1000 kilometres up to Marseilles France, buy new ferry tickets over to Tunisia and make the rendezvous at the Libyan border. Both options burn about the same amount of money.   

10.12.44.00 LARS (SUBTITLED): If only we hadn’t gone to Spain.   

10.12.51.00 LARS (SUBTITLED): I want to make a move. And Daniel isn’t sure either. That’s why we’ll throw a coin. Agreed? 

DAN ON CAM SYNC (SUBTITLED): OK, go!   

CAPTION: LIBYA 2009   

10.13.11.00 DANIEL: We made it just in time. We grouped up and shared the cost of going through Libya, which was stunning, but way too short. In hindsight I think it was good to do this big push to finally make it over to this new world – Africa.   

10.13.27.00 DANIEL: I thought we had a great time in the Middle East. We saw so many famous sites like the pyramids, Petra, the Dead Sea. Although, Mt. Sinai ended up being quite a different experience...   

10.13.38.00 DANIEL: …like 4 in the morning, it was still dark. We heard people come up, chanting. Maybe a hundred or two hundred pilgrims came up the mountain and it wasn’t long until we just got out of our tent and realized that we were, like in the middle of a crowd.   

10.14.06.00 LARS (SUBTITLED): I should be happy. I feel one with nature. Just like all the other 100 people up here…   

10.14.34.00 DANIEL: Even though not everything we learnt made sense right away, I was amazed and really excited to travel further.   

PETRA, JORDAN   

10.15.01.00 LARS ON SKYPE (SUBTITLED): Hello. Can you hear me? 

GIRLFRIEND ON SKYPE (SUBTITLED): Yes I can.   

10.15.03.00 LARS ON SKYPE (SUBTITLED): There you are. How shall I put this? I had a talk with Daniel. He said he’s concerned and asked me to speak my mind.   

CAPTION: DAMASCUS, SYRIA   

10.15.23.00 LARS (SUBTITLED): I noticed this from early on when we had long rides, my thoughts wandered off. I thought about home very often. The whole thing outgrew me and I didn’t realise it. What I’m letting myself in for, and when I was in the middle of it, I didn’t want to admit it. It’s just too much. I don’t regret anything, nothing. I am grateful for the experience. I’m grateful for all these 6 months. I’m happy about having started it. I just have a problem with abandoning you.   

10.16.10.00 LARS ON SKYPE (SUBTITLED): And the other reason is, I want to be with you. In other words, I will ride up to Turkey with Daniel and then ride home. And I am serious. 

GIRLFRIEND ON SKYPE (SUBTITLED): If you were not serious right now, I would have to kill you.   

10.16.31.00 LARS ON SKYPE (SUBTITLED): I am definitely serious.

GIRLFRIEND ON SKYPE (SUBTITLED): I don’t think I can sleep tonight. I need to call my mom.   

10.16.40.00 DANIEL: I think it was a huge relief for him when I said that I would have no problem with him going home early.   

10.16.49.00 LARS (SUBTITLED): I envy you for the great experiences you’ll be having. But I don’t envy you for this way of travelling.   

10.17.03.00 DANIEL: Even though I knew that a couple hotspots were lying ahead of me there was no question about whether I would or would not continue the trip. I had set my mind to doing this. I was a bit nervous about, you know, being on my own from then on.   

10.17.20.00 DANIEL: If you’re travelling in twos, you’re like a unit. But if you’re on your own, its’ different. Because you can’t even park your bike next to a supermarket, go inside and buy stuff. All you stuff is on it and people will take it maybe.   

10.17.46.00 DANIEL: On the other hand, being on my own made me pay more attention to my environment. And people were also more likely to approach me and offer help. But tackling all the upcoming areas along my route on my own made me a bit nervous.   

10.18.06.00 MARIANNE: The Kurds have been fighting for their independence in eastern Turkey for decades. There are regular reports of casualties. Further along the route lie Iran and Pakistan, countries currently in the spotlight for the violence and political upheaval there.   

CAPTION: DOGUBAYAZIT, TURKEY   

10.18.19.00 DANIEL: East Turkey turned out to be easy going, but Iran was a big worry and also Pakistan.   

10.18.31.00 LARS (SUBTITLED): 249 days ago, Daniel and I started the attempt to travel around the world with no money to start with. While Daniel continues, this is the last day of my adventure. Daniel, I wish you the best of luck. I hope you will return safely.   

10.18.53.00 DANIEL: And I would need all the luck that I could get to make it into Iran. There were the elections going on. The people weren’t happy with the outcome of the elections. They thought it was a fraud. And I remember my sister sending me an email with a news article about the demonstrations going on in all the major cities; in Isfahan, Yazd and especially Tehran. And I was nervous about going into Iran. All the gear that I carried, the audio recording, the satellite modem, the laptop, the cameras and everything, I could be mistaken for a journalist. So I tried to hide, well I did hide my satellite modem next to the battery underneath the seat here. When I rode to the border, I was alone, there was no one else crossing probably because of the demonstrations.   

1019.45.00 MARIANNE: What’s not to like when a tense situation turns in to a walk in the park. This is often the reward when one leaves one’s comfort zone and explores the unknown.   

10.19.59.00 DANIEL: So I was alone at the border and I was greeted by this one officer who took my passport and got me to sit down and offered a tea and I had a good talk with him and in the meantime someone in the background ran all the process of getting me into the country, like stamping the visa and getting the carnet stamped and everything. So after 20 minutes, they came back with everything, and wished me good luck and a good time in their country, they didn’t even touch my bike, didn’t even look at it. 

KRIS: Really?! That’s totally different than what you’d expect or hear in the papers. 

DANIEL: What I expected ya, very different.   

10.21.01.00 KRIS: Going through Iran, were you able to see any sights and go spend time in cities? Or did you avoid them because of the demonstrations?   

10.21.07.00 DANIEL: I avoided Tehran, I went to other cities, like Esfahan and Yasd and Kerman.

KRIS: So was Iran a big surprise to you?   

10.21.16.00 DANIEL: In many ways. I found it full of contradiction. In one way I met so many young students that were really worldly thinking and really aware of what their country is made out to be through the media. They took so much time out of their day to drive me to some nice places in the mountains outside the city. And invited me to their house to eat with them and watch them dance and do, like, social activities.   

10.22.04.00 MARIANNE: The city of Bam provides shelter on the last time in Iran. In 2003, Bam was hit by a massive earthquake that killed over 26,000 people. Not only were people crushed by falling buildings, but some were suffocated by the desert sand stirred up by the shockwaves.   

10.22.27.00 DANIEL: Everywhere I looked was devastation. It felt like half the population was missing. But all the obstacles up until that point were like, kids stuff. Anyway, that’s my kinda categorising the difficulties.   

10.22.48.00 KRIS: What did you know about Pakistan before you got there?   

10.22.50.00 DANIEL: Well, I knew that there were huge fights going on between the Pakistani government and the Taliban and it was mandatory for me to be escorted by armed guards.   

10.23.01.00 MARIANNE: Only a few weeks earlier, a French traveller was kidnapped from a small village on our route. Kidnappings are common here, orchestrated either by local criminals or the Taliban looking to make money from a ransom. Since Pakistan became an Islamic and Parliamentary Republic in 1956 no government has been able to make it through the 4 year ruling period without being overthrown. Despite all this, thorough research shows there’s no other way but through.   

10.23.30.00 DANIEL: So I planned to go through Pakistan in the least amount of time, just reduce the risk of you know getting kidnapped or stuff like that. 

KRIS: How many days were you planning to spend in there?   

10.23.39.00 DANIEL: Well I calculated that I could do it in 4 days, if I ride 12 hours a day. I was researching the road conditions and the places that I could stop safely and I said ok in four days you can do it. And at the border I met this New Zealander, he came from the other side, from India, passing through Pakistan, coming into Iran. But he was shaking. He was like a nerve-wreck. He told me that he’d never go there again. He hated it. He told me that he heard bombs going off during the night when he was sleeping in the hotels. But by that time it was just too late to turn around.   

10.24.15.00 MARIANNE: Every border crossing re-fuels the traveller’s excitement, but this one comes with a whole new set of tension - and when tension is high, something usually breaks. For the first time in 15 years, Daniel’s loyal companion let’s her rider down. The timing couldn’t be any worse.   

10.24.49.00 DANIEL: I was very close. I was literally 50km from the Afghani border and a couple of miles from where the French guy got kidnapped. In that moment, I think I wasn’t nervous or anything, my brain switched into survival mode. So I thought, what can I do, to get out of here.   

10.25.11.00 DANIEL: I was with the escorts, right? So they wouldn’t wanna have anything to do with it. So they brought me to a place, a very small village with small houses, really basic and they brought me to this guy and I pushed my bike into the backyard of this guys home. He was a very kind-looking man, young man. And then the guy said your best bet to fix the bike is to get to Islamabad which is the capital of Pakistan and he said, well, I can arrange a truck which you can put your bike on to go to Quetta and from Quetta, people will help you to make it to Islamabad. He also told me that he was the Chief of police of that area. So I stayed with him and his servant for a night and the next morning he drove off in a really nice-looking, really proper uniform with lots of bling on the shoulder ... it was like a bunch of black SUVs and tinted windows and one of the guys opened the door for him. So I think he may have been the chief of police of Baluchistan after all. So, ya I feel honoured to have shared a meal with him.   

10.26.30.00 DANIEL: The ride on the truck to Quetta was quite tough, the whole day in unbearable heat.   

10.26.40.00 KRIS: There was a problem with the truck on the way though, wasn’t there?   

10.26.42.00 DANIEL: The road through the desert is very narrow and at one stage the truck swerved around another truck and came off the road too far and threatened to tip over going down the left shoulder of the road. And that would have been the end of my bike for sure.

KRIS: Were you in the back?   

10.27.04.00 DANIEL: I hopped off the back as soon as the truck stopped. I noticed we were standing in a dangerously steep angle. It was really quiet and everyone knew about the seriousness of the situation but nobody said anything.   

10.27.48.00 KRIS: Where do you stay in Quetta? 

DANIEL: They brought me to... like a hotel which they ordered me to stay at. They just said ‘this is the safest place for you, you stay here’. So it took me a couple of days until I found a way to get my bike on the train and my ass on the way to Islamabad. And the train ride offered an entirely new perspective on the country. From the train I could see different things that you can see from the road. Because it was so hot, there was no air condition in the train, so we pulled down all the windows and the dust would come in and the heat would come in and it would be 50 degrees.   

10.28.46.00 DANIEL: The train ride lasted, I don’t know, two days, three days and I was so worn out from not sleeping well for several nights, and the heat and food, I couldn’t get food. The train would stop but I wouldn’t know how long for so I didn’t dare to get off the train to buy something.   

10.29.17.00 DANIEL:  Anyway, I made it to Islamabad. I was stranded in a way that I was running low on money, I wasn’t expecting to... having to stay in that area for too long. I wanted to plot through to make it to India to where the language barrier I thought would be less and the possibilities for a job would be better.   

CAPTION: ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN   

10.29.44.0 DANIEL: So I was lacking a travel buddy, running out of money, had a broken bike and I was stuck in the least favourable place that I could think of.   

10.30.00.00 DANIEL: But I didn’t want to linger there either. I figured getting the spare parts sent from Germany would take weeks if they made it at all. And if I was to fly home to get the parts myself, I’d have to borrow money for the flight. And even then I don’t think I could’ve brought myself back to this place and the situation I was in.   

10.30.22.00 DANIEL: Finally I found the area where all the mechanics were located. I found a very kind, very nice man, with half a dozen sons working for him. And he said “well I will try to help you. I am not sure whether we can find the bearing that you need”. But he sent all his sons out into all directions to find the parts that I needed.   

10.30.46.00 DANIEL: And I came back the next day, and the day after and the third day. And they said, “well we found something, these are the bearings that will fit in size”. So they welded the bearings into place. And it worked! And because of that bike breaking down I was forced to spend so much time in that country and I got to know so many people who were so kind and amazing in a way. They wanted me to continue my journey and tell everybody about my experience in Pakistan. Because they are well aware of how they are portrayed in the rest of the world. So the 4 days, it turned out to be 6 weeks.   

10.31.28.00 KRIS: So in a way does that make you appreciate those tough moments that you had?   

10.31.30.00 DANIEL: Ya they brought me there. They brought me to that state of mind, to that change. If I’d continued to worry about how things would work I think I would’ve gone insane.   

10.31.41.00 KRIS: So how did you stay positive in those low moments?   

10.31.43.00 DANIEL: I just knew from experience that there would be a good moment around the corner. That’s how it always went. So I just let go a bit and let the Universe decide of how I get someplace. I was still aiming to get where I wanted to go or to have the experiences that I wanted to have but I didn’t decide on how this should happen.   

10.32.03.00 KRIS: When was the next chance that you had to make money?   

10.32.06.00 DANIEL: I rode into India. I was really worn out from all the events that happened and I needed to get a clearer head again.   

10.32.40.00 DANIEL: So I escaped into the northern parts of India, into the mountains where it’s much cooler.   

10.33.14.00 DANIEL: And this is where I became stationary for a while to continue a job for a client through the internet. I also caught up on what was going on at home and a girl that I knew from Berlin, she was a friend of a friend, sent me an email saying she wanted to come to South-East Asia to travel. She suggested a catch up over a coffee if I was there at the time. I wouldn’t have minded a coffee with a fellow German but I couldn’t possibly plan 5 months ahead.   

10.33.47.00 MARIANNE: There are only two unlikely options for Daniel to ride to South East Asia from here: either through the military run dictatorship of Burma, or through China. The Burma route requires a soldier to ride his motorcycle across the country while Daniel flies over to meet them on the other side. The idea of parting with his bike would leave him sleepless.   

10.34.11.00 DANIEL: And I didn’t wanna fly, as I said earlier, I wanna ride through the world not just skim over it. I wanna you know wear the country, going through it.   

10.34.19.00 DANIEL ON CAM SYNC: So where are we going?

LITTLE BOY SYNC: We’re going to the palace.

DANIEL ON CAM SYNC: Nice. OK, let’s have a look.   

10.34.24.00 DANIEL: The other option was China. I had met a Swiss guy months and months before and he paid a huge amount of money to go through China.   

10.34.34.00 MARIANNE: Backpacking through China would be pretty straight-forward, but taking your own vehicle into the country, especially the Tibet region, is incredibly costly because of permits and a mandatory 24-hour guide. Daniel simply can’t afford it.   

10.34.51.00 DANIEL: I had no idea about how to get to South-East Asia, but everything I had learnt on the trip so far told me that something will come up.   

CAPTION: SRINAGAR (KASHMIR), INDIA   

10.35.08.00 DANIEL: So one day I came across a big bright red truck with German license plates on it. I mean, what are the odds of seeing a German truck in the Himalayas? There was no one around so I left a note under the window wiper with my email address saying that I was a German too travelling in the area and they got back to me months later, I was in another country by then.   

10.35.31.00 DANIEL: I was stationary in Kathmandu for quite a while, I was working on a job. It’s a very poor country, it’s very troubled. So there’s a lot of street kids and I met this Irish guy. He was volunteering at this Nepali orphanage.   

10.35.48.00 SEAN ON CAM SYNC: I mean as Kathmandu continues to grow and prosper and become more accessible to tourism more people are coming into the city from the rural areas in search of better things and quite often they’ll end up living on the streets.   

10.36.05.00 SEAN ON CAM SYNC: Some would have come from the breakdown of the family, some would have maybe one or two parents diseased. Some of the families just are in such dire poverty so they can’t afford to keep them. Social and political factors here in Nepal at the minute aren't so good so there’s a lack of funding going towards these marginalized groups.   

CAPTION: CYF ORPHANAGE, KATHMANDU, NEPAL   

10.36.36.00 DANIEL: So one day, I tagged along to visit the orphanage with Sean. They were short on resources, couldn’t pay their rent. And the more I got into knowing all these details and how it all worked the more I realised how I couldn’t just walk away. Before I went on my hike we decided to make a short video and post it on my website and ask people to maybe make a small contribution towards this orphanage. And to give it some time, we went on a ten day hike because I really wanted to see Mount Everest with my own eyes. So we took a 30 minute plane ride to the jump-off point for most Everest excursions.   

10.37.22.00 DANIEL ON CAM SYNC: I’m sitting here on top of the peak and the panorama is just amazing. This, with its head in the clouds, is Everest. It’s only about 5300 and some meters high, but it’s my personal record. I’m pretty exhausted. As far as oxygen level goes, it’s like 50% left up here. So I have to deal with half the oxygen up here. It looks pretty amazing.   

10.38.16.00 DANIEL: And by the time I came back from the hike, round about 1500 Euros had accumulated on my bank account from people that followed my website and wanted to help the orphanage.   

10.38.31.00 WOMAN SYNC: Five European’s in the back of a tiny Suzuki taxi going through the streets of Kathmandu. Can someone please explain to me what we’re doing here?

SEAN ON CAM SYNC: We are delivering a charity donation but also there was some money left over which became Secret Santa’s and gone and bought some presents for the kids which is the reason why we’re here in the car packed in like chickens. 

WOMAN SYNC: So what are your personal feelings now that your closer to the orphanage? What’s the feeling like?

DANIEL ON CAM SYNC: You know, if you look around the car, there’s five Europeans and five huge smiles on their faces. It’s exciting.

SEAN ON CAM SYNC: I might cry

WOMAN SYNC: That’s brilliant. I might cry as well.   

SEAN ON CAM SYNC: So it’s blue for boys and red for girls.

KID ON CAM SYNC: Basketball!!   

10.39.48.00 DANIEL ON CAM SYNC: My friends and my family and all the people that follow my website, they got about €1400 together. I’ve been going to the cash machine for several days. This is for the kids. This is 1.4 lakhs.

WOMAN WHO RUNS ORPHANAGE: Thank you so much. Your friends, Daniel, and thank you for caring for our kids.

DANIEL ON CAM SYNC: No Problem.

WOMAN WHO RUNS ORPHANAGE: Thank you so, so much guys. 

UNKNOWN WOMAN SYNC: Your face is priceless. And how are you feeling? How did you guys do?   

10.40.48.00 KRIS: What about the red truck? Didn’t they get back to you via email around this time?   

10.40.53.00 DANIEL: Yes almost like a dream come true. They were looking for other travellers that they could group up with in order to go through Tibet. I never dreamt that I would get to that place and be able to ride my own bike. That was an awesome opportunity and I was very happy about having left the note under the window wiper. 

KRIS: And that got you to South-East Asia?