the snows of Siberia, we faced everything mother nature
had to throw at us - temperatures ranged from 50°C to
-40°C. We tackled every single inch on our trusty Honda
SH300i scooter and sidecar.
Neither of us had ever driven a sidecar before, in fact,
we’d never really ridden a motorcycle. We were com-
plete novices and we were trained travel agents – not
mechanics! We knew it was going to be ridiculously hard
and that’s why we chose to do it.
We wanted to do something that would be crazy
enough to make the headlines. We wanted it to be a
record breaker. We wanted people to stop and listen so
that we could give a voice to some of the 40 million peo-
ple enslaved around the world.
Our plan was to visit organisations fighting modern
slavery in the countries we passed through in order
to raise awareness of their work. At the same time,
we set up a fundraising page to raise money for the
organisations that met with us.
Before scooting off from the UK we wanted to learn
a little bit about the issue in our home country, so we
met with Unseen UK who run the UK’s modern slavery
helpline. As well as the helpline, Unseen run safe houses
for victims of modern slavery. We went to a community
kitchen in Bristol to cook a curry with one of their survi-
vors, Mo.
Mo cooked us this fantastic lamb curry. His skill in the
kitchen was unbelievable and while we were sat there,
mesmerised by the show, he started to tell us how he had
come to live in a safe house with Unseen.
Mo told us how he had travelled from Bangladesh to
London under the promise of getting good work and a
British passport but instead he was forced to work for
nothing in a London restaurant. He had spent a month
in the back of a lorry to get to London, he had no idea
it was so far, and when he arrived, he found that he was
completely trapped.
Eventually, after some years, Mo escaped, and a
stranger put him in touch with Unseen who have since
helped him restore his life. Mo’s story shocked us. Here
was this super intelligent, charismatic guy that had fallen
into a life of slavery right on our doorstep! It was a stark
reminder of just how easy it is to get trapped by modern
slavery.
Chatting with Mo and the guys at Unseen we learnt
that human traffickers make their living by preying on
the vulnerabilities of potential victims. These vulnera-
bilities come in many forms and are often not as obvious
as you would expect.
One place where it was clear to see was the city stop
on our ride; Paris.
When we arrived, Paris was very much on the front
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