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- The bus was manufactured in 1962
by Bristol vehicles
- She was used in Bornemouth for
25 years before being semiretired as a driver
training vehicle.
- After completing over 1 000
000 miles on the South coast of England, the
bus was fitted out as a circus bus.
- To cross borders with the bus
we use a "carnet de passage" issued
by the AA, with this we had no major problems.
- The cheapest diesel was in Iran
where we filled the tank (144 litres) for
less than US$2.OO. The last fill up in England
cost US$130.00.
- The bus had to
cope with extremes of temperature. To prevent
overheating, Pascal Cornier, our French mechanic,
fitted two fans from scrap Mercedes behind the
upstairs radiators.
-
Across much of Pakistan, the roads were so bad,
our Dutch bicycles proved a faster mode of transport.
Sometimes we even had to rebuild the road metre
by metre in front of us.
- So far we've had
five major sea crossings. The first one was on
a container ship from Chitagong (Bangladesh)
to Singapore. The bus was lashed to a
40ft flat rack container by steel cables. We had
to build our ramp with scrap materials. It took
us 12 hours and the bus nearly overturned when
one side of the ramp collapse. The others
crossing (Singapore/Freemantle(Oz)
and Brisbane(Oz)/Auckland(NZ)
were much easier as they were on a roll on/ roll
off. From New Zealand to Chile
the bus was also lashed onto a flat rack and we
saw it being lifted by a crane onto the ship but
in both ports we felt reassured by the competence
of the workers. The last one, Caracas-Santo Tomas de Castillo was also an easy one on a roll on-roll off.
- Yes shipping is
very expensive, this is one of the most stressful
part of this trip. We spent one year in India,
Nepal and Bangladesh saving the money for the
first crossing and one year and a half in South
East Asia trying to save for the second one
-
The bus got stuck in soft sand in Thailand. After
struggling for two days with jacks and wooden
blocks, Roger Harrison (visiting at the time)
came up with the idea of connecting the front
and rear wheels with lorry straps, and so turned
her into a 4 wheel drive.
- The main bearings
broke down in Ipoh, Central Malaysia. The engine
had to be taken out and rebuilt by two Indian
mechanics. They were good but slow... It took
5 months.
- In the Australian
desert, two tyres blew out with the heat, forcing
us to travel 120km with three tyres instead
of 4 at the back of the bus.
- On route to San
Pedro de l'Atacama,high in the Chilean Andes,we
set a new altitude record for a double decker
bus of 3.100 metres. Lack of oxygene forced us
to drive the bus at a maximum of 2 miles an hour
which allowed us to exercise as we could hop in
and out of the bus whiles driving along.
- In Panaachel, Guatemala, Due to road work, we drove 500m in 4 hours, rebuilding the road(or should I say the mud path) as we went along. It felt very good being back on tarmac.
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