Not much fires the imagination in the same way as a group of intrepid Englishmen navigating tangled jungle tracks in their sturdy Landrover and pith helmets. It was this image that inspired expedition founder Michael Geary to retrace the route of six audacious Oxbridge graduates on the First Overland expedition from London to Singapore. In 1955 it took them just over 6 months to cover more than 18,000 miles in a pair of factory fresh Landrovers. Their great adventure took them through a list of places that almost defines “exotic”: Istanbul, Aleppo, Tripoli and Beirut (known then as ‘the Paris of the Middle East’), Damascus, Karachi, Delhi, Kathmandu and Darjeeling. Then into Burma (now the Union of Myanmar), Thailand and Malaysia before Singapore and a greeting of flashbulbs and champagne.

Now this winter, timed as the original journey was to miss the worst of the monsoons, another team is a attempting the same route – deviating only to avoid the current unpleasantness in areas such as Iraq and Pakistan. Not only that but the team is foregoing the relative power and luxury of a modern 4x4 to rely on the same “eight forward gears, four wheel drive and a winch” supplied by a pair of lovingly restored Series One Landrovers identical to the pair used six decades earlier. One intrepid Magdaleneite, Fred Spaven (2006), is a mechanic on the team.

This time, however, they have another mission. Coinciding with the World health Organisation’s “Right to Sight” campaign they will be distributing a unique new product – eyeglasses which don’t require an optician. In 1985 Prof. Josh Silver had a brainwave – glasses with flexible, liquid filled lenses which, by altering the quantity of fluid to change the thickness of the lens, have a user-variable prescription. Seeing the potential benefits this could bring to third-world countries where there might be fewer than one optometrist per one million people, combined with a target price of just $1 per pair he aims to distribute one billion pairs worldwide by 2020 (pun very probably intended). To this end the Overland 2010 team has been given 2010 pairs to distribute and trial en route before bringing back valuable insights and observations to aid further product development.

Leaving this September and hoping to return around February next year, this epic endeavour hopes to help return sight to those who need it as well as returning a little adventure into this modern world. In order to contribute to the expedition and help improve the eyesight of some of the poorest people in the world, donate online at: www.justgiving.com/firstoverland2010

The money will be split evenly between a direct donation to Futurevision2020 (the charity producing these glasses) and our expedition costs. For more information, see their website: http://www.firstoverland.co.uk/