Drive Around the World: My next adventure explained

[A pop-up photo of the Drive Around the World team and vehicles near the Golden Gate Bridge can be found here. I'm the sourpuss on the hood who's not smiling.]

After several weeks of dropping hints, I suppose it's time to come clean about my latest adventure. For the next three months, I plan to drive across the Americas as part of a Land Rover-supported expedition that will eventually drive around planet Earth along lines of longitude. Hence, it's no surprise that our expedition (and nonprofit organization) is named "Drive Around the World". In addition to the basic adventure of tackling the world overland, our project will promote the study of geography among American students through our education program, and our global "drive-a-thon" will raise money for Parkinson's Disease research through the Parkinson's Institute and the Michael J. Fox Foundation. I'll be the expedition travel writer, and you should be able to follow our pan-American adventures on this blog and other websites (to be announced) as the journey progresses. Our eight-person team includes a three-man film crew, so perhaps you'll be able to catch us on the Travel Channel (or somewhere similar) in due time.

At this point, those of you who know me probably have plenty of questions. My dispatches in coming weeks and months should answer all such questions, but first I want to cover the basics:

Where exactly does the Land Rover expedition go?

We're starting in San Francisco, California, and heading south through Mexico and Central America. From Panama, we will ship the vehicles to Ecuador (thus avoiding the Darien Gap), then continue south along the Andes and the western coast of South America, all the way to Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost part of the Americas. At that point it is likely that I will part ways with the expedition as the vehicles ship to Australia. From Australia, the expedition will continue on to Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, China, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Russia. In Russia the team will travel over some of the most isolated parts of Siberia en route to the Kamchatka Peninsula, where the vehicles will be shipped to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. From there, Drive Around the World will travel full-circle to San Francisco via Alaska, Canada, and the Pacific Northwest. The planned time for this transit is nine months, covering nearly 35,000 miles.

Why are you skipping out after South America?

I've applied for a Pew Fellowship in International Journalism, and -- if accepted -- I will have to report to Washington, DC to start that program in mid-January. If the Pew Foundation turns me down (and if I can afford it) I will likely continue with Drive Around the World through Oceania, Asia, Siberia and North America. Or, if SPAM comes onboard as a trip sponsor, I may defer the Pew Fellowship, drive the whole trip, and write a book about it. (If you have a way of helping us land SPAM as a sponsor -- and we are completely serious about this -- please let me know!)

Can we come along?

Believe it or not, it is possible to come along, via our "Take Me With You" program, which allows room for guests to ride along for 1-2 week stretches. Once the "Take Me With You" page on the DATW website is online, I'll make a separate announcement with more details about this program.

I'm also looking to replace myself as the team travel writer after South America. Only writers with good travel writing experience and opportunities for exposure are likely to make the cut. I'll announce more on this in later weeks.

If you are a U.S.-based schoolteacher, we are also looking for people to help us with our education program. There are a couple ways to do this. One is to have your class follow us online and take part in our interactive curriculum. Another way to take part is to sign up as one of our on-the-road educators (which involves the use of an expedition Land Rover inside the United States, but will likely require a significant amount of time away from your normal job). If you know of U.S.-based teachers who might be interested in this, please send them my way. More on this soon.

If you live overseas in one of the countries we're visiting, we might be able to meet up with you en route. In particular, we are looking for locals and expats who can share interesting travel opportunities, as well as schoolteachers who'd like us to speak to their students. If you know of any teachers, expats, friends or family who live along our route, please have them get in touch if they're interested.

A final way to get involved would be to pledge a few pennies per expedition mile towards the Parkinson's Institute. And pardon the redundant refrain, but I'll post this information later as well.

Does this trip count as vagabonding?

Not really. In my Vagabonding book, I encourage folks to travel slowly and privately, be spontaneous, and avoid overplanning. Thus, at 36 countries in nine months, Drive Around the World will be moving too fast to count as vagabonding. And, with Land Rover sponsorship and a film crew onboard, the expedition won't be too private, either. Moreover, given the bureaucratic rigors of a vehicle-dependent expedition, intricate planning and itineraries will at times be necessary. So, in many ways, my latest adventure will often deviate from the advice of my latest book: It will be more like a National Geographic special than vagabonding voyage. And, after seven or so years of nonstop vagabonding, I welcome the novelty of these new travel twists.

Yet in many ways, Drive Around the World will indeed hold true to the vagabonding ethic. As we travel, we hope to wander off the beaten path and interact with locals as much as possible. We will remain open to new travel lessons and experiences, and we will spend our money almost exclusively at the grassroots level of local economies. We hope to seek adventure, keep things real, and be creative as we drive our way around the world. We hope to come home enlightened and inspired and changed. And through our education program, we hope to promote travel as a way to learn about other cultures, broaden people's horizons, and improve the way we see the world.

Does this mean you're leaving Asia for good?

I'll eventually return to Asia in some capacity or another, but yes -- as of last month, I am no longer Asia-based. Asia will always be special to me, but after seven years of living, working and traveling there, I wanted to test some new ground while I'm still young. Thus, after Drive Around the World and the Pew Fellowship, I hope to base myself in Latin America for a few years. (And I'm open to suggestions as to where in Latin America I should live!)

How will this blog be affected by your upcoming travels?

As the trip gets underway, my blog entries will likely be longer, but less frequent. I hope to post journal entries at least once a week in addition to whatever magazine stories I'm producing at the time. I will also post links to lots of pop-up pictures (see a few samples above and below).

Actually, our DATW training has already started in Los Gatos, California (if you'll recall Tim Cahill's road-travel classic Road Fever, you'll know that half the trip is in the preparation), and I will be posting some of those "adventures-in-preparation" stories before long. Just so you know, I'll probably be posting stories on a one-to-two-week time lag, even when they're written in the present tense.

Anyhow, that's the scoop on my new adventure! I'll be really busy in coming weeks and months, but I'll try to answer any questions you have in the "comments" section below.

Photo: DATW team members take a break during 4WD training in Hollister, California

Photo: Rolf sets up a safari tent during Land Rover training at Hollister