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14th February 2015
11:48am GMT
The Make a Wish Foundation is particularly close to the lads’ heart, as one of the five involved, Jonathan Lewis, told us recently.
“Jordan’s cousin was born with Rett Syndrome. It’s a rare developmental disease that affects the growth of the hands and is the cause of a number of related issues. For example, approximately 50 per cent of people affected are unable to walk.
“As well as being Jordan’s cousin, her Dad used to coach the hockey team that me and one of the other lads played for so there’s a connection there. The whole family went on a trip to Orlando thanks to Make a Wish and we wanted to pay back the charity for what they did for them.”Having heard about the Mongolia charity rally through a friend of his sister’s, Jonathan and Jordan were convinced it was something they wanted to do and before long, they had convinced the other three members of this particular party of five to give it a go. Saying you’re going to go to Mongolia and actually going ahead with it are two completely different things; type Ulaanbaatar in to Google Maps and you’ll get an idea of just how far away it is. For a sense of perspective, the distance between Cairns and Sydney in Australia is 1,500 miles. Route 66 in the USA is just short of 2,500 miles. In short, it’s a long journey. And it’s not as if they’ll be travelling on fantastic roads for the duration of their trip either. Only ten per cent of the roads in Mongolia are paved. There will be times when an Irish country boreen will seem like the equivalent of an eight-lane motorway.
There’s a romantic notion of the lads seeing where the roads will take them but while there will be an element of that about the trip, it’s not that simple either.
There are Visas to be sorted. The culture in the places they’ll be travelling through will sometimes be completely different to what they’re used to at home.
Most importantly, the atmosphere in some parts of the route is pretty hostile at present. A potential route through the Ukraine, for example, was discounted because of the present situation there, while the lads will be avoiding north-western China due to instances of terrorist attacks in the region in recent times.
With that in mind, Jonathan says they’ve done their homework.
“We're by ourselves and we’ve nobody looking over us so we’ll have to deal with whatever happens along the way.“At the same time, we want to be safe. Myself and Jack have done a lot of travelling and Jack has done a lot of research on where we’ll be going and what we can expect. “The route we're taking is a bit tricky but the alternatives involved going through Ukraine and close to Syria, Iraq and Iran down south. “We didn’t think it was worth taking a risk going to those countries with everything that's going on there at the moment. Another way would have been to go above Ukraine and go through Russia for half the trip but we didn’t want to do that either. “So we talked to another guy who went across the Caspian Sea by boat and he said it’s completely doable. And he did it in a Nissan Micra!” The lads will be careful when they have to be, but they want to experience these countries and make their own judgements, rather than being guided by the perception of them that might exist in the Western world.
“People might have preconceptions of these countries and we want to document our experiences. We want to try to throw common stereotypes about these places out the window.
“One of the guys on the trip, Jack, is studying film and English so he’s going to help us make video diaries along the way. We want to get people on board on the way, talk to them and get to know them as we’re travelling and get to know their cultures."
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