33,520 km to discover what sex, fairytales, eating and travel all have in common.
We all know the end result is great. Everyone loves a happy ending (so to speak) and we all love feeling full after a good meal, but who wants to get to that without all the fun stuff leading up to it? Imagine feeling full without the experience of munching on your favourite meal beforehand. And what the hell is “happily every after” without all the characters, adventures and drama leading up to it? (You get the picture. And if you don’t get the sex bit…. well then frankly, you might be doing it wrong).
Translate this to travel, and Rat & Dragon find ourselves asking: “What fun would life be if we simply arrived?” After all, it’s not just about the destination. So we needed a journey. A big one. Luckily, the world is massive. It’s also bloody beautiful, and packed with juicy, jaw-dropping, sexy, sad and sublime moments across its gorgeous length and bountiful breadth.
Rat & Dragon was formed for one purpose: to catch real travel moments, the extreme, the awesome, the happily ridiculous. We want the best of them on film, in photographs, in words and in their boldest and most beautiful light. Travel content to knock your socks off.
Only a few journeys on this good green Earth would be fit for the purpose. We’ve chosen Hyde Park London to Hyde Park Sydney – a 33,520km route through sumptuous Europe, desolate Siberia, manic Far East and South East Asia, and finally through sunburned Australia.
In keeping with the idea that it’s all about the journey, we’re going to experience every kilometre of it at ground level. No flights. At all.
How? First, there are the exceptional train networks of Europe. Link these with the infamous steel workhorses of the trans-Siberian and we’re already half way around the globe. Next could be the ferries linking the stunning islands of Japan with mainland Asia. China and South East Asia run on busses, tuk-tuks and trains again, all the way to Singapore. From there its ferries and buses again… to a point. And this is the tricky bit.
To make the leap to Australia from Indonesia, there are no public ferries or other vessels. Instead, we’re gambling on talking our way onto a private yacht as crew. This can be done, but rarely. We’ll have to spin some Rat & Dragon magic to make it.
It’s an epic trip full of big risks, but that’s never stopped us before. Years of producing indie films rewards you with a pretty solid skill set when it comes to overcoming the impossible. Besides, therein lies the guts of this whole venture. If it was all about the destination, we’d just book a flight and there’d be no foreplay, no characters, adventures or dramas, no delicious entrée, main and dessert. Just the arrival.
And where’s the fun in that..?