TALLINN - On the evening of Feb. 4, two extremely well worn Mer-cedes-Benz G-class cross-country vehicles quietly pulled into Tallinn. For Raido Ruutel, 52, and Tiit Pruuli, 38, it was the end of a grueling 18-month journey.
The first thing Ruutel did was call his pastor and ask that he open up the church. He wanted to pray. Pruuli, despite his fatigue, stayed up the entire night talking to his two daughters. They had a lot of catching up to do.
Ruutel and Pruuli were the leaders of the Rolling Estonians, a group of daring travelers whose round-the-world journey took them and their crew through the world's most exotic areas, through rain-drenched swamps, across baking deserts and over snow-capped mountains. Only these two men participated in the entire trip, whose itinerary covered 68 countries, six continents and a total of nearly 200,000 kilometers.
Now celebrities at home thanks to a 38-part documentary TV series made up of their crew's dispatches from the road, the Rolling Estonians have returned, and after a few days rest, they spoke to The Baltic Times about their odyssey.
"I'm not a traveler. I like being at home," said Ruutel, the veteran rally-car driver who ended up being the team leader, as well as the man responsible for all matters mechanical. When Pruuli presented him with the idea for the world excursion, however, he jumped at the chance to see the world's spiritual sites. "I am a very religious person, and for me it was a pilgrimage," he explained,
By contrast Pruuli, who handled the bureaucratic and PR side of the trip, was a hopeless travel fanatic. From 1999 to 2001 he and another Estonian crew famously circumnavigated the globe on a boat called the Lennuk. He also admits though that he had another motivation for going. "I can't work from nine to five every day. It's too difficult for me. So I found an easier job," he joked.
After three years of careful planning and preparation, the Rolling Estonians set out in June 2002. They were joined at intervals by a total of 110 crewmembers, who rode with them from just a few days to a couple of months. They provided expertise and the financial donations that, together with some corporate sponsorship, funded the project.
The group stuck mainly to out-of-the-way areas, preferring local village flavor to big city blandness. They slept in the cars or in tents, ate porridge for breakfast and dined on either camping food or local cuisine. But there was no such thing as a typical day.
"Our problem was that we were in a hurry almost all of the time," said Pruuli. "I think maybe three years would be normal to see everything on a route like ours, but a year and a half is too short a time," he said. In some places, like the plains of Argentina, they would cover hundreds of kilometers in a day. In more culturally or naturally interesting places, they would stay put for a while to soak up the ambience. But this was far from a one-way cultural exchange. In all the strange and exotic places they went, from the Australian outback to the jungles of Cambodia, the Rolling Estonians became de facto goodwill ambassadors for their country, predictably having to answer the same first question each time. You're from where?
"We did a kind of grassroots diplomacy," said Pruuli, pointing out that their cars, covered with Estonian flags and corporate logos, attracted a lot of attention wherever they went. With the help of the Estonian Foreign Ministry and local Estonian diplomats, the Rolling Estonians also handed out about 100 kilos of brochures about their country and organized local press conferences about their trip.
"It's not necessary that some villager knows exactly where Estonia is," said Ruutel, ascribing more significance to human contact than to the material they were giving out. "To me it's much more important that [he thinks that] this guy was a nice guy, so the country must be nice," he said.
Overall, the reception the Rolling Estonians received was just as friendly everywhere. "Nobody attacked us, and everybody helped us. If you are honest and open, then everybody will answer with the same," said Ruutel.
Of all the places they visited, however, it was Tibet that left the most lasting impression on the spiritual Ruutel. Pruuli was more fascinated by the Mayan cultures of Central America and the tribal areas of northern Thailand, Laos and Myanmar.
It wasn't always smooth driving though. There was the time that two crewmembers were hospitalized with altitude sickness in Tibet. There was serious transmission trouble in Peru. And of course there was homesickness.
"These days its very easy to communicate with your home from any point in the world but still, it's not a real family life," said Pruuli.
The most tense part of the trip, according to Pruuli, was in Western Sahara. "There were no roads at all. We used GPS, digital maps and a local guide to get us through the minefields. It was difficult for the crew and also for the cars," he said.
During these rough times, they sometimes kept up their morale by singing some good old Estonian tunes.
It was at the end of the trip that the biggest disappointment came. Russian border guards, citing dangerous rebel activity, would not let the Rolling Estonians across the border into the northern Caucasus region at either of the points they tried. They ended up having to load their vehicles onto a Moscow-bound truck and fly from Baku. The affair caused a lot of stress and a 10-day delay.
"It was quite a sad thing you know. You have already been traveling a year-and-a-half but for the three last days, the last 3,000 kilometers, you can't do anything. It was quite frustrating," said Pruuli.
Now that they're safely back home, Ruutel will get back to teaching extreme driving courses and Pruuli plans to write a book of his travel memoirs, but neither man has any plans for further world travel in the near future.
"That's enough for me. The big trips are over now," said Pruuli. But then the devoted family man corrected himself. "Not exactly. My next big trip will be around Estonia next summer with my daughters," he said.
