SEEN & HEARD

HOLGATES HIT IRAN

123 days after leaving Cape Town’s Nobel Peace Square on International Mandela Day, 18 July 2018, the Holgates and their team have safely reached Iran. This was after a long trek crossing southern and eastern Africa as well as Turkey, Georgia and Armenia.

According to expedition leader Ross Holgate, “it’s been an incredible adventure so far and a world-first for the Land Rover Discoverys, as this humanitarian and geographic journey continues to make its way east towards Kathmandu in Nepal.”

Having visited World Heritage Sites including Ephesus, Troy, Pergamon, Pamukkale, Cappadocia and the WW1 battlefields of Gallipoli, the six-person team will now head to the northern Caucasus Mountains near the Russian border and the highest inhabited peaks in Europe.

Kingsley says this segment “turned out to be a fascinating chapter… [we saw] high-altitude villages of Ushguli, with their stone-built watch towers nestling beneath Mount Shkhara, the highest mountain in Georgia and other grand, snow-capped mountains which are out of a medieval fairy tale.”

From the highlands of northern Georgia, the team went into Armenia, following the ancient