Fire Truck Expedition Reaches Nepal

Today I am so very proud of the Fire Truck Expedition team led by Merle Heinemann (spokesperson) and Tatiana Goussarova (executive producer).

The two young women were supported by National Geographic photographers Thomas L. Kelly and Martin Hartley, Berlin-based photographer-filmmaker Drilon Mehmedi, as well as a team of professional drivers led by Dirk Heim, and a security detail led by Prakash Thapa.

This core team was instrumental in making the Fire Truck Expedition a success. They were augmented by a number of guests who joined the expedition along the route from the kick-off at Frankfurt International School (Fis Alums), to Berlin, Bavaria, Austria, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India and Nepal.

The Expedition entered Iran the day after the German government issued an emergency bulletin advising all German citizens to immediately evacuate from Iran for fear of arbitrary detention. The Expedition traversed the entire length of Iran and was warmly welcomed by the Iranian people and not once stopped by any authorities.

After Iran, the route meandered along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. In Pakistan the Expedition was accompanied by armed police and military escort, which stopped escorting the Expedition once it reached an area controlled by tribal militias. They, too, extended all courtesies to us and allowed the fire truck to proceed onto a less embattled region of Pakistan.

Our chief driver, Dirk Heim, drove the entire distance from the Pakistan-India border to the India-Nepal border without stopping except for diesel fuel, shattering our carefully constructed timetable and delivering the fire truck to Nepal sooner than anticipated - exactly one month after departing from Berlin.

In Nepal, the Expedition was met with a wave enthusiasm and gratitude by the people of Nepal. After two days of driving through Nepal's Terai region and over the foothills of the Himalayas, the Expedition reached Kathmandu on Saturday.

This Expedition would have happened years ago if a number of tragic and unfortunate circumstances had not occurred, starting with the passing of my dear friend and Kobold brand ambassador James Gandolfini in 2013. It was Jim with whom I first began planning the Expedition back in 2011.

In 2015, actor Malcolm McDowell and explorer Ranulph Fiennes agreed to help me resurrect the Expedition. Our plans were delayed by the 2015 earthquakes and the 2015-16 Indian blockade.

The Indian blockade of Nepal lasted 6 months through winter. India's blockade was in clear contravention of United Nations treaty regulating the unhindered passage of goods into and out of land-locked countries. Which explains why to this day the Government of India -which for years has been lobbying for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council- continues to deny that the blockade even existed.

During this time, Nepal's Prime Minister K.P. Oli issued me with instructions to document the blockade and to expose it via my media and political contacts in the U.S. After this task was accomplished, the Expedition faced even greater regulatory difficulties at the hands of corrupt Government of Nepal officials in India's pocket.

In late 2018, attorneys of the Nepal Tourism Board entered into an agreement with the Expedition to use an outstanding balance of $100,000 that NTB had previously agreed to pay the Expedition, to cover the costs of shipping to Nepal a number of fire trucks and fire engines I had purchased or that were donated to the Expedition. NTB never fulfilled its part of the agreement.

Also in late 2018, Nepal's biggest newspaper, The Kathmandu Post, began running a series of defamatory front-page articles about the Expedition and about me, filled with complete fabrications.

To counter the smear campaign, my team and I started the Roast The Post campaign. In a series of articles and social media posts, we exposed the Kathmandu Post owner, Kailash Sirohiya, as a racketeer and extortionist who demands protection payments from politicians, members business community, and even foreign embassies in exchange for not unleashing smear campaigns against them.

To compile this evidence, we interviewed and recorded several individuals with intimate knowledge of the so-called "Sirohiya Scam" - individuals within Kantipur Media Group (which owns The Kathmandu Post) and victims of Kailash Sirohiya's mafia methods.

Finally, in late 2019, Prime Minister Oli once again gave the green light for the Expedition to proceed. Less than six weeks later, the pandemic shut down travel around the world. In the meantime, the firefighting apparatus we had compiled years earlier had fallen victim to the elements.

Earlier this year, actor Malcolm McDowell, executive producer Tatiana Goussarova and I met in Munich to discuss the relaunch of the Fire Truck Expedition. Unfortunately, due to last-minute filming commitments, Malcom was unable to join the team.

However, now that the Fire Truck Expedition has reached Nepal, there can be no more doubts in the minds of Nepalis everywhere that my team and I have only had the best of intentions, namely to help Nepal better prepare for disasters and calamities.

The fire truck we delivered today is only the first of several such vehicles we will bring to Nepal in the future. Now that we know the route, have made new friends along the way, and are assured that we can proceed across 10,000 kilometres relatively safely, we will keep doing this! It's fun, it's exciting and it helps Nepal.

In the future, we will also release a number of documentary films about the situation in Nepal. One of the films directly addresses the prevalent corruption that plagues Nepal's firefighting services - in many cases, fire departments don't respond to fires in a timely manner because they're paid off by unscrupulous business to arrive late to fires that are the result of arson.

Another documentary film, David vs. Goliath, details the 2015-16 Indian blockade, as well as our efforts to expose it. The Nepal Connection exposes the Government of India's long running efforts to subvert Nepal's national sovereignty with the objective of staging a referendum in the distance future, in which Nepalese voters agree to join the Indian Union. The documentary film I am personally most looking forward to releasing, however, is the one about the 2022 Fire Truck Expedition.

A big thanks to everyone who has made this adventure possible, as well to all the many well-wishers in Nepal and around the world. Today Nepal won!

Jay Nepal!