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Place your bets now ladies and gents

Posted on 6 Mar 2013 | 27 comments

Whenever we tell people about our trip, there is always the moment where the conversation turns to kilometers.

How many kilometers do we think we need to drive to get us from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia to London in the UK…

I don’t know if you have tried this yet, but go to Google maps and type in Kuala Lumpur as your starting point and London as your destination and hit ‘Directions’. You will see it should only take us 179 hours to drive this and only 14.414km! So we could be in London in a week if we would drive 24 hours a day, at an average of just over 100km an hour. Ha!

Google route planning - no option to avoid war zones...

Google route planning – no option to avoid war zones…

If you look at the route Google shows you though, you’ll see we are planning a bit of a detour and the map we used to plot our route for the blog actually came up with a figure of 25.000km (so based on that we should be there in around a fortnight!).

So now we are going to turn the question around and ask you how many kilometers we will need to add to the odometer to get to London!

When you do your calculations make sure you add a bit of a margin to allow for some adventures off the direct route too as the total driven number of kilometers will include driving into cul-de-sacs, up mountains and back down and being lost in a big city for a few hours trying to find the way out.

When we get Lara out of the container we will let you know the odometer reading and we’ll take a photo when we reach the destination of our expedition at the Royal Geographic Society in London. A place where many other historically important expeditions have also either started or finished, including the famous Shackleton Expedition for the race to the South Pole.

odometer at start

odometer at start

So, leave your bets in the comments below and we will find a suitable prize for the person closest to the actual number at the end!

Entry conditions:

  • Only one bet per person
  • Minimum age: 2 years old. Yep that’s 2 and not a typo, we want to make sure we get a bet from Sophie (Jon’s youngest niece) and Jens (Jude’s youngest nephew) as well!
  • Bets must be placed before April Fools Day!!

27 Comments

  1. 30001 kms
    Bron and Seane

  2. 100,000km!

  3. 33,824km. If I get the closest I want you guys to do a victory lap as my prize. 🙂

    Loving the posts.

    • thanks Todd, we’ll be accepting all donations for our victory lap! 🙂

  4. 52,626kms with plenty of additional adventure kms via foot, paddle, bike or beast along the way.

    • Plan is to buy bikes soon, so you’re definitely right there! Good luck with your last few weeks and please let us know date, name etc 🙂

  5. A few wrong turns, dead ends, “what do you think is done there” and “could have sworn it was that way” and before you know it you are 56,476kms up on the clock! Loving the posts guys!

  6. My bet: 44444

    xx

  7. Hi guys, nice to read that you “hit the road”.
    Concerning the total distance, I will mention 2 distances, the normal distance will be 18.846 km, but with your Garmin, I calculate that the total trip will be 29.653 km, assumed that the trip in Londen ends at the MacDonalds at Queens road, every deviation from that has to be added to the 29.653 km.
    Have fun, greetings for Jon and xx for Jude.

    Dini en Hans

  8. 2 litres of strawberry flavoured milk if I win, please.

  9. 49,892 hard- travelled kilometers.

  10. 43,782kms (38,000-ish if you were in a Toyota but you’ll have to take the long way round a few hazards…;-) )

    • yep there will be, haven’t decided what it will be yet. Might depend on who wins (a 2 year old might want to win something different to an adult…) 🙂

  11. I’m going to guess 24, 414km. suspect at the end you may not do any fancy detours and just head straight for the finish line. (we once drove home from Thargomindah 1000km in one day, just cos we were Over It).

  12. 36,724.3km, or Lara breaks down after 1km when she realises how far she has to go.

  13. So what was the starting reading then? I reckon you’ll be looking at 45,000km – no unplugging of the head unit to fix the result!

    • oops, sorry. Forgot to add the photo of the odometer. Has now been added!!

  14. Jon, Jude
    I suspect you will come in 39,500.
    All the best, and already looking forward to your blog updates.
    Frank

  15. Hai,
    Ik zal van het weekend met Niels en Jens overleggen en de geschatte km doorgeven!
    Hopelijk gaat alles nog steeds goed en zijn jullie eindeloos aan het genieten!
    dikke xxx van ons!

  16. 33,333… for luck. holy trinity, yada yada. Good luck! x

  17. Ha, ha, it will be interesting to see who bets below 10,000km, because Lara is breaking down and not finishing the trip!

    Anyway I think Lara will make it and you will drive a total of 34,946 km.

    BTW I am expecting you doing the appropriate detours before London in case you are well below this figure 😉

  18. 47,480km

  19. Spannend!! Ik ben benieuwd naar de cul-de-sacs die je zullen tegenkomen en vooral de lengte daarvan. Ik moest overigens wel even zoeken naar de betekenis van deze uitdrukking.
    Ik ga voor: 26.354,7 km (waarvan 54,7 km cul-de-sac!)
    Enyoi!!

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