Go and shout it from the hills!

I reached the £1000 fundraising milestone today and I think that is an achievement in itself. When I was first told to aim for five grand I didn't think it was possible but now, well, I’m a believer!

A few days ago after a meeting with a BBC journalist I decided to start sending out messages to really try and get the message out about what I’m doing. I emailed all the national papers in the UK which is a long shot, but I also emailed some of the smaller local newspapers especially focussing on the Bangla newspapers in London and yesterday I received a reply.

Emdad Rahman got back in touch immediately and was really interested in what I’m doing asking a couple more questions about what it is that I plan to do. Today I got an email from him telling me that he has put me on his blog http://tsu-doh-nimh.blogspot.com/2010/12/blog-post.html and I’ll be in the Bangla media based in London next week.

If you’re reading this and you support what I’m doing then please post the just giving page (www.justgiving.com/rollingbackhome) and my story wherever you think people may be interested in it, this could be emailing it to friends, telling family members, having a chat with work colleagues or posting it on your wall on facebook – this is all about awareness raising now.

Appearance on page 3(8) of the Daily Star

I got an early Christmas present today when I checked the national Bangladeshi newspaper the Daily Star and your humble narrator was doing some rickshaw surfing on his very own 2 page spread!

It was a really great article that I’m very proud of, written by a friend who works as a reporter for the paper, Shahnaz Parveen. The caption on the picture was my favourite of the article, it read “Peter Donnelly – an indomitable spirit”. I didn’t even know what that meant, to save you looking it up here is the definition, Adjective that cannot be subdued or overcome, as persons, will, or courage; unconquerable: an indomitable warrior. Wow.

The picture also shows me doing a bit of rickshaw surfing down one of the quieter streets in the city, but it doesn’t really give the full impression of just how much fun it can be – I think a video would do a much better job.

Yesterday I met up with retired Bangladeshi film star Ilias Kanchan who is heavily involved with road safety after his wife and daughter were tragically take away from him in a traffic accident over here. I asked him if he would come down to the launch on the 22^nd January and he assured me that if he was in the country then he would do his best to attend.

Test on the tracks

Last week I found myself going to a CRP centre in the north which could be done by bus or train and with the trip home starting next month I thought this would be a great time to get my first experience on a train over here.

I went up with Rumon who works here; it was useful to have a translator and someone to lift my chair up steps that I might come across. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the train but I already had the firm idea that it was going to be by no means an easy ride. When the train pulled up at the platform we quickly located our carriage and I lifted myself from my chair to floor of the entrance. As I sat down I noticed that the floor was wet, I thought this was strange as it was dry outside and had been for days. My eyes wandered to the door on my left. “Gents”! Gross.

I wriggled backward and Rumon lifted my chair on after me then asked me to move back so he could get on. I explained I couldn’t because people were walking past. “Just move back so I can get on” he continued. “Rumon, I can’t go anywhere. As soon as these people pass I’ll move back, just have some patience!”. Then without any warning the train started moving forward. Oh shit. I was on the train with my chair so it was hardly a worst case scenario but I would still like my bag and travel buddy to get on there with me. I saw Rumon make a fast move out of sight. I got back in my chair as Rumon popped his head round the door from the next carriage, “It’s okay Peter, I’ve got on”. That was a relief!

Rumon took the bags to our seat on the next carriage and then I broke my chair down for him to carry there as well. I dragged myself along to the seat and sat down (or up, depending on your perspective) with an overwhelming feeling of accomplishment!

The rest of the trip proved no more difficult than any other day here in Bangladesh, just transfers into CNG’s, getting around inaccessible towns and staying in inaccessible accommodation. Easy Peasy.

I’ve had 1000 business cards printed off with the ‘Rolling Back Home’ logo and slogan along with the website to hand out to people on my way back so when I tell them my story they have something to remind them to give a donation on the website. I’m still really proud of that little logo!

The best thing that has happened in the last week though was yesterday when I got my wrist x-rayed again. I’ve not been able to take it to the doctor yet but from what I can see there are clear signs of healing which I’m so happy about. This makes things simpler for me, I’ll feel more comfortable using it now and I won’t have to go into hospital for an operation when I get back that I have already mentally prepared myself for!

Read all about it! Read all about it!

I got an email from my dad this morning with an attachment of the front page from one of the local St Helens newspapers called the Reporter, the front page is all about my trek home.

Unfortunately they didn't wait for me to email them back with information about the trip, instead they have used what I wrote on the just giving page and a picture that they dug up from archives when I did the Liverpool triathlon last year. The only thing they had to do was come up with a headline that reflects what an adventure this trip will be. Homeward Bound. Really? REALLY?!?

The main thing is that this time they have put the web address in the article so people can get online and donate which they managed to forget last time. This is only one of the local papers, I'm hoping that the other paper does a better job!

It's a date!

After deciding that this could be even better with some more planning I've decided to stay in Dhaka and leave just before my visa runs out. That means that I now have a launch date of SATURDAY 22ND JANUARY 2011!!


So while that does give me 6 weeks in which to try and get more planned to do on route it really isn't a while lot of time and I can see myself being glued to my netbook for the majority of the time, but it's worth it just to make the trip that much better.

Start date? Erm...

I met with Manik today who handles the PR side of things here, Zula and me wanted to see if he could help us with the launch event for ‘Rolling back home’ which is going to start at the national monument here in Savar. Zula is using her PR experience really well and knows exactly what to do to organise an event like this, unfortunately she is leaving this week but the help she has given me so far has been great.

I’m thinking about putting the start date back for my trip back home. Because of visa rules getting back in India can’t be done for 2 months after you leave the country, this means my earliest return will be 7^th January. Another reason I’m considering moving the start date back is because I’m starting to realise how big this thing could be and if I do some more networking and tell more people about it then I’m sure it will grow. Getting more time to do work at the CRP is a bonus as I feel I’ve been neglecting certain responsibilities while working on RBH.

Getting some air time

I was surprised again today when a camera crew from Deshi TV turned up to film a documentary about the CRP for next week’s national disabled day and they wanted me to tell them a little about my fundraising for CRP and I happily obliged, I got to briefly explain the outline of what’s going to happen and also plug the website (www.justgiving.com/rollingbackhome) which was unexpected but enjoyable. So I’m hoping that my bit of time on TV will spark some interest and some donations!

Useful contacts visit the CRP

Today we had a visit from the people at DFID (Department for International Development) which is the UK government’s fight against world poverty (according to the business card). I told them about my journey back home and my attempt to raise £5000 for the CRP and they were impressed and offered to help me promote it and even hold a fundraising event in Dhaka at the ex-patriot club. This should be useful as they have offices in some of the countries I’ll be going through so if I come across any difficulties with visas then I’ll have some help on hand.

Fundraising for the CRP

I’ve decided that instead of just doing this trip for me it would be more worthwhile to do it for charity, while I’m already at the CRP it seemed like quite an obvious option. The just giving page is at http://www.justgiving.com/rollingbackhome, so please take a look, post the link wherever you can just to raise awareness of what I’m doing and please give whatever you can!

More travel plans

So after a trip up to New Delhi last week I’m feeling a lot more confident about getting home, I did fly for parts of the trip but I got on a lot of public transport as well with no problem which makes me think that going home in January is definitely possible.

I’ve decided to add Nepal to my places to go on the way home, I met someone from a spinal unit over there and I thought while it’s on the way home I might as well stop by. Visiting Mount Everest would be a cool sightseeing experience while I’m in the area; one of the people at the spinal conference in India told me that they do a flight around the peak. That’s the only way I’ll get up to the top these days and I’m okay with that.

I’ve decided the best plan for picking up visas will be to do it on route. I can get an Indian visa from Dhaka and the Nepalese visa on the border, once I get to Kathmandu I’ll collect the Chinese and Kazakh visa leaving the Russian visa until I get into Kazakhstan as I need to have my train ticket before I can get a transit visa. Very exciting plans!

Visa screw up

Yesterday I went for an interview with the Indian high commissioner to get a 6 month multiple entry visa, to cut a long story short the interview was the day before, I missed it and as a result I’ve ended up with a single entry which means more work to get back into India come January.

Now there is an option of going back to the embassy in a couple of months to get another visa but this also means that I have to go to 3 more embassies to get all the paperwork I need. Instead, I’m thinking that I can send my passport to an online organisation and get all the visas fixed up in one fell swoop. Luckily I have dual nationality and my United States passport is still in the UK, I figure that I can get the visas in that and then get it couriered out to me in Dhaka which will make things much easier.

Planning and development

The idea of this blog is to keep details about my journey back home from Bangladesh where I’m doing some volunteer work at the moment, you can see more about the work at www.disabledindhaka.blogspot.com.

When I was on Expedia booking my tickets to come to Bangladesh I wasn’t that sure about the flight dates, I knew that I was going to be coming over here at the end of September but I didn’t have a clue when I wanted to get back to the UK since there was nothing to go back for. Now if the volunteer placement wasn’t what I expected then I could quite easily be leaving shortly after my arrival but equally if it was really great than I could stick around for longer, so with this in mind I thought the best action for me to take would be to get a one way ticket over here and book another when I decided to leave.

This is when I had an epiphany. Why waste a golden opportunity like this? I mean here I am about 5’000 miles from home, there must be so many amazing places that I would fly over without even realising it if I jumped on an airplane, so instead why not travel back across land? This epic journey would start early in January and would be made slightly more interesting as I’m a wheelchair user. This idea just sounds so good to me, every time I think about it I never fail to have a big grin on my face, it would be such an awesome adventure!

I imagine that the main methods of transport would be trains and buses but it would be a lot of fun to see what else I could find. There are some things I have to consider such as accessibility of transport, but I’ve never really found anything that I can’t haul myself on and off. Another important planning issue for this is the route back home; so far it goes something like India, China, Kazakhstan, Russia then off through the Scandinavian countries to get a ferry back to somewhere on the east coast.

So far I don’t have any of the visas, this is mainly because if I would have got them before leaving the UK then I would have had to pay for 6 month visas instead of the 3 month visa that I need. The plan now is to get them either here in Bangladesh or en route back home. I’ve applied for my Indian visa as I need to go there in a couple of weeks anyway, this was hard work when they didn’t believe that my visa for Bangladesh was real and now I have an interview with the high commissioner next Friday, so it’s a case of wait and see what happens before I can decide what my next move is.

This blog won’t be updated that often until I set off in January but I’ll be posting whenever I get any more ideas about places to go or anytime I manage to bag myself another visa.