Faced with war on his path, Sowerby turns to skies

The motel wasn't much, just a strip of rooms with a dirt parking lot handy to the airport. There were no screens on the windows and the stained interior walls were in dire need of paint. It was the sort of motel room you're happy to share with someone to help keep an eye out for whatever might creep or slither on by.

Between the stifling heat and noisy aircraft, I didn't get much sleep. Neither did Ken Langley, my partner on that around-the-world record drive attempt back in 1980. After an arduous 12-day drive across India and Pakistan, we were filthy, bug-bitten, exhausted and sick with dysentery. We were also keen to get airlifted out of Pakistan and, with the Karachi airport in sight, we could smell our escape.

The original objective had been to drive east out of Pakistan to Afghanistan through the Khyber Pass, then cross Iran and Turkey into Europe. But during our transit of India, the Iran-Iraq war had broken out, terminating that plan.

With the then-Soviet Union out of the question, the only option was to find someone to airlift us over the war. We would make up the lost driving miles required for the record by doing a northern loop into the Scandinavian Arctic. Through our office in Toronto, Canada, we managed to convince Germany-based Lufthansa Airlines to reroute one of its cargo planes, returning to Germany with a load of Bangladeshi carpets, into Pakistan to pick us up. They would drop us and our 1980 Volvo DL station wagon in Athens, Greece.

We got to the Karachi cargo terminal early and started the paperwork to let us fly off to Greece. Since Ken and I would be traveling on an aircraft configured strictly for freight, additional documentation was required for us to exit Pakistan as "special couriers."

The "what if's" disappeared about noon when the bright orange Boeing 707 taxied up to the hangar. I felt like our mothers were coming to make the nausea go away and airlift us to a playground closer to home.

The German pilots, in a hurry to get back to Frankfurt for happy hour, looked remarkably tidy in the shabby cargo office.

"How vill you be paying for zis?" asked the captain, a burly man with a handlebar mustache.

I fumbled for my wallet and pulled out my American Express card.

"Aaah, zat will be fine," he offered, then asked the office manager to charge $18,000 to my already-warped card.

For the next hour, we watched the car being loaded onto the aircraft. It gave the captain a chance to brief us on emergency procedures to follow in case something went haywire during the flight. Since one of the two "courier" seats was right beside the entry door, he paid particular attention to its operation.

Once inside, we realized how cramped the flight would be. The Volvo was strapped down in front of the carpets leaving little room between its grille and the back of the cockpit door. In our wobbly, dehydrated state, it seemed an edgy place in which to fly over a war. Ken took the only seat in the cargo hold, just aft of the door, hoping for some sleep. I strapped into a seat at the back of the cockpit with a sprawling view out the windscreen between the pilot and co-pilot. I put on a set of headphones and immediately flashed back to my air force days flying DC-3 aircraft.

"It's hot and we're heavy, we'll need every inch (of runway) we can get," the captain advised the first officer, after being cleared for takeoff.

On the climb out, I could see Karachi fading into the haze with an endless stretch of the Arabian Sea pounding its shoreline. We leveled off at 38,000 feet and flew along the south coast of Iran. Later, I saw the heavy, black smoke from the Abadan oil refinery drifting up into the stratosphere. The refinery had been attacked by Iraq a few days earlier and the fire had not yet been brought under control.

Although still sick, I was preoccupied with the view, the chatter from our Abu Dhabi-based air traffic controllers and the operation of the Boeing 707. Then Ken tapped me on the shoulder. He looked pale and scared.

"You gotta club me, Sowerby. Put me out for while. I'm really shaky and its getting claustrophobic back there." I knew it was serious.

"I have this fascination with the door," he explained. "Can't get my mind off of it. Whenever I close my eyes to try and sleep all I can hear is that song, 'Don't Fence Me In,' sounding like it's coming from a cheap megaphone. I see all my relatives marching around to the beat of it when I look out the window."

This didn't sound good. Ken was obviously concerned about the situation and I wasn't keen to leave him alone back there with the door.

I thought about telling the captain, but figured stories about my delirious partner wouldn't be impressive. "Er, excuse me, captain. Do you have a monkey wrench so I can knock out Ken to curb his fascination with that door you showed us how to operate?"

On the horizon I could faintly make out the mountains of Lebanon. We were following pipelines stretching for hundreds of miles across the deserts of Saudi Arabia and I felt that once we reached those mountains we would be back on our side of the world and all would be well.

But what about Kenny? I went back to the cargo area, fished a rope out of the Volvo and tied him to his seat, cowboy style. He was cooperative, but we had to get through a few bouts of the giddies in the process. I covered him up with a blanket so the pilots wouldn't see the rope, then watched him drift off to sleep.

Back in the cockpit, I hoped my knots would hold. We were over Lebanon about to head out over the Mediterranean Sea and I felt proud of what we had accomplished. We were through the difficult part of our attempt to drive around the world in 77 days or less and hopefully, now, our health would improve.

And when we landed and pulled up to the hangar in Athens, perhaps Ken could convince the pilots to let him open the door.

Garry Sowerby, author of "Sowerby's Road: Adventures of a Driven Mind," is a four-time Guinness World Record holder for long-distance driving. His exploits, good, bad and just plain harrowing, are the subject of World Odyssey, produced in conjunction with Wheelbase Communications. Wheelbase is a worldwide provider of automotive news and features stories.