Editors Reads Verdict
The best adventure travel book of the 2000s, and more honest about difficulty, relationship strain, and near-failure than most accounts of ambitious journeys. The Kazakhstan and Mongolia sections are extraordinary.
What We Loved
- The honest account of relationship strain, near-arguments, and genuine fear makes the friendship credible
- The Kazakhstan and Mongolia chapters are some of the best adventure writing of the decade
- McGregor's stardom is an asset rather than a liability — he uses it to open doors that help the journey's humanitarian dimension
- The physical landscape descriptions are vivid and specific — the Mongolian steppe is rendered unforgettably
Minor Drawbacks
- The book works best as a companion to the TV series; standalone readers may miss context
- The alternating dual-authorship structure means the voices are not always consistent
- The celebrity dimension is occasionally distracting — not everything in the book is about the journey
Key Takeaways
- → Extreme travel reveals character under pressure in ways that ordinary life does not
- → Kazakhstan and Mongolia in 2004 were among the last places in the world where the landscape was genuinely unmapped and empty
- → The logistics of extreme overland travel — visas, fuel, equipment failure — are as demanding as the physical landscape
- → Friendship under sustained pressure requires explicit communication that ordinary friendship never needs
| Author | Ewan McGregor & Charley Boorman |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Atria Books |
| Pages | 352 |
| Published | June 1, 2004 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Travel, Adventure, Memoir |
| Difficulty | Beginner |
| Best For | Adventure travel enthusiasts, motorcycle travellers, and anyone drawn to accounts of epic overland journeys — the TV series is a useful companion but not a prerequisite. |
In April 2004, Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman left London on BMW R1150 Adventure motorcycles and rode east. Their route — through Europe, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Russia, Siberia, Alaska, and finally New York — covered 31,000 miles across nineteen countries over three and a half months. The journey had been planned for three years, supported by a small team of support vehicles and documentary crew, and became a Channel 4 series that attracted millions of viewers in Britain. Long Way Round is the companion book, written by both McGregor and Boorman in alternating chapters, and it is more honest about the difficulties of the journey — the physical hardship, the near-arguments, the moments when the whole enterprise seemed like a mistake — than the television version could accommodate.
The Kazakhstan and Mongolia sections are the heart of the book and its best writing. Kazakhstan in 2004 was a country in the process of becoming — Soviet infrastructure dissolving, new money arriving, a landscape of extraordinary emptiness and occasional brutality. McGregor and Boorman rode what Mongolians call “the Road of Bones” — a track across Siberia built by Soviet gulag labour, now largely returned to nature — where the surface was so poor that they fell repeatedly and covered days at speeds that should have taken hours. The Mongolian steppe — treeless, roadless, vast — was navigated by compass bearing across terrain where no road existed and would not for hundreds of miles.
The book is honest about what sustained proximity to another person under extreme conditions actually produces. McGregor and Boorman were friends before the journey and remain friends after it, but the chapters are candid about the moments when they were not speaking to each other, when the accumulation of physical exhaustion and minor irritations produced something that required deliberate repair. The management of friendship under sustained stress is one of the things extreme travel teaches that ordinary friendship never tests, and the authors do not pretend that their camaraderie was effortless.
McGregor’s celebrity is both a burden and an advantage: in Russia and Ukraine it occasionally attracted attention that complicated the journey, but it also opened diplomatic doors — an audience with the Ukrainian health minister, encounters with UNICEF workers — that gave the trip a humanitarian dimension beyond adventure. The combination of adventure narrative and celebrity memoir is handled with more grace than the format might suggest. Long Way Round is the best account of what happens when you put two reasonably sane people on motorcycles and point them at the most challenging terrain on the planet, and it holds up as a travel book in its own right, regardless of the series that accompanied it.
Reading Guides
Frequently Asked Questions
What is "Long Way Round" about?
Actor Ewan McGregor and his friend Charley Boorman ride motorcycles east from London through Europe, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Siberia, and Alaska to New York — 31,000 miles through some of the most extreme terrain on earth.
Who should read "Long Way Round"?
Adventure travel enthusiasts, motorcycle travellers, and anyone drawn to accounts of epic overland journeys — the TV series is a useful companion but not a prerequisite.
What are the key takeaways from "Long Way Round"?
Extreme travel reveals character under pressure in ways that ordinary life does not Kazakhstan and Mongolia in 2004 were among the last places in the world where the landscape was genuinely unmapped and empty The logistics of extreme overland travel — visas, fuel, equipment failure — are as demanding as the physical landscape Friendship under sustained pressure requires explicit communication that ordinary friendship never needs
Is "Long Way Round" worth reading?
The best adventure travel book of the 2000s, and more honest about difficulty, relationship strain, and near-failure than most accounts of ambitious journeys. The Kazakhstan and Mongolia sections are extraordinary.
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