Border Crossing

Book excerpt: The first international motor rally from Peking to Paris took place in the summer of 1907. Only five cars were involved and the crews wrote their agreed code of conduct on the back of a menu the night before the start. Their only navigational aids were the sun and telegraph poles. Ninety years later the race was re-enacted when 110 vintage cars gathered in Peking. Their goal was the finishing line in Paris, 45 days and 16,000 kilometres away. In this book, one of the competitors - novelist Rosie Thomas - describes the excitement of the daily time challenge, the strange camaraderie, the test of sleeping outdoors or in flea-pit hotels in foreign lands and her own internal journey, including a near-death experience high in the Himalayas.