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By Caleb McClain
What would you do if your friend asked you if you would like to travel the world in a Land Rover with them? Being someone who regularly invites people on adventurous trips that are just three to 10 days long, the general answer is along the lines of, “That would be cool. Maybe someday.”
I get it—money, relationships, family responsibilities, work—they are all things that must be considered, but tomorrow is never promised. Fortunately for Robert Bateman, when he was asked that very question by his friend, Bristol Foster, he agreed.
In 1957, Foster was caught in one of those crossroads in life we all find ourselves in. He had just finished a master’s degree, he was single, and the decisions on a career were daunting. Similarly, Bateman, an art teacher, had the whole world before him but was in the awkward time where you are too old to be a kid and too young to be taken as a serious adult.
Then one day, his friend posed the question, “How would you like to go around the world in a Land Rover?” Bateman, like most, balked at first, but Foster persisted. “If you can think of five good reasons why we shouldn’t go around the world, I’ll accept it. Otherwise, we’re going.” Just one week later, they bought an atlas and a Land Rover, then plotted a 40,000-mile path around the earth.
The Grizzly Torque
The Series I Land Rover, named The Grizzly Torque, was a special-ordered long wheelbase station wagon with a 2.0 Liter engine. It was then outfitted with every customization required to be a home base for global exploration, including folding beds, a pellet gun for “collecting specimens” (as they called it), and jerry cans labeled “Gin & Tonic.”
The Canadian duo picked up the Rover in Scotland, then departed for the Gulf of Guinea in in July of 1957. They traveled down the coast through Ghana and Togo, then on to Central Africa. A boring trip, it was not. In Cameroon, they were crawling down trails at just one mile per day. As they made a road through the forests of the Belgian Congo, they had no less than 30 Mbuti tribesmen on and in The Grizzly Torque, banging drums and singing songs with them.
Bateman, an artist, used the Rover as his canvas. Every country they crossed was commemorated by a tattoo on the chassis featuring the flora, fauna, and culture of the place. Like Michaelangelo at the Sistine Chapel, he painted murals on the ceiling for every creature they hit on their unpaved journey, chameleons and chickens occupying most of the frescoes.
With the jungles behind them, they raced across the Serengeti, only being slowed by passing giraffes and some mud pits in Lake Magadi, Tanganyika. From Mombasa, they piled into a freighter and cut across the Indian Ocean to Bombay.
India was no picnic either; at one point, an entire village of men aggressively approached them in the dead of night. Despite the language gaps, the pair disarmed the would-be attackers with comedy, and they pushed on to Calcutta, Nepal, across Southeast Asia, and finally to Australia, just 14 months after they set off.
The Art of Adventure
The pair went on to some celebrity, with their story first being published in the Toronto Telegram, eventually being made into a documentary in 2025 titled “The Art of Adventure.”
When looking back over his life and considering the question posed to him by his friend decades before, Robert Bateman simply said, “I couldn’t think of an excuse not to go, and of course, it’s one of the greatest things I’ve ever done.”
So go on the adventure—the Amazon, New Zealand, Africa, Alaska, the Rocky Mountains—they are waiting for you, but the grave isn’t. Give me five reasons you shouldn’t start planning your adventure today.
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