Rachna bisht-rawat speaks to survival expert Gary Humphrey and car whiz Bill Wu on their experience hosting the latest adventure and reality show to hit our television screens — 'One Car Too Far.'
What happens when two guys — one, a car expert and the other, a survival expert — are dropped into the most challenging terrains and asked to escape to safety using an all-purpose vehicle? Cars rattle over log bridges across freezing rivers; they skid over a volcano and glaciated crevasses; the men find themselves in thigh-deep freezing water for days at end and in one episode they even drive 18 hours at an angle when a back wheel rips off coming down a steep slope.
Some of the stunts are so unbelievable in Discovery Channel's One Car Too Far that you're surprised survival expert Gary Humphrey and car-whiz Bill Wu come out of each episode with their lives and spirits intact. Which calls for a bit of cynicism and the first question: just how real is this reality show?
"What you see is what you get," says Gary, a former British special forces operative. He assures you that he has smashed all his teeth on the show, almost got hypothermia, ripped the sole off his boots and torn his hands to pieces. He adds though that there are safety crews and he wouldn't have taken many of the risks he did if they were not there. "I wouldn't really go putting my life in danger for a TV show," he says.
Risky business
Bill disagrees with that and says some parts they shot were so risky that he and Gary could actually have been dead. He has some scary memories of the episode where they climbed up a volcano. "We were driving over a crevasse. There were no ropes holding the car in. The false bridge could have collapsed and the car could have fallen 100 m down. Nobody could have extracted us. I don't know if Gary realised it, but it was very, very dangerous. If we were upside down in a river, if the doors weren't open and if something were to get stuck, we would be dead."
The two seem to have done it all. If you ask them to rate their experiences, they both agree that the rainforest episode where it rained for 10 days at a stretch and they were stranded in thigh-deep water most of the time, was the toughest. "We shot in almost constant rain. The water in those rivers was between five and 10 degrees as it ran off the mountain from the glacier. The weather was like 65 degrees, so it was just constantly cold and wet. That was probably one of the hardest things I've done since Special Forces training," says Gary.
Besides his Special Forces training, yoga is the other thing that has come in handy for Gary while shooting for One Car Too Far. It is a way of life for him and helps tackle the many injuries he has suffered. In fact, even on the show, he says, he would take out time for yoga. "The sun would be coming up over the volcanoes in Chile, the fog would be below me, and I'd have 10 minutes on my own just to stretch out and think about what lay ahead for the day."
Ask the two about the most dangerous car adventure they had on the show and they say it was when coming down a really steep icy slope — they slid into a gully and the back wheel ripped out of the car, and smashed into pieces. They had to sleep overnight with the car in a ditch and the next day they had to drive it at an angle to keep the wheel wedged in. "On the show, that's about 10 minutes but in real life it was 18 hours of pure hell," says Gary. Finally, Bill had to substitute the wheel with a tree trunk and they eventually used it to hobble out of the rain forest.
Bill has scary memories of driving over a crevasse without any ropes holding the car in. "We could have easily fallen in. The false bridge could have easily collapsed. It could have swallowed the car. Nobody could have extracted us. We would have been swallowed up by the earth," he says. This makes you wonder how their families put up with this and whether there are any major rows at home for working on programmes like this.
While Bill's family gets nervous and stressed when he's out of reach for days putting his life in danger, Gary says his two boys have grown up with him travelling to dangerous areas."So they think I'm a super hero and that's lovely. They're just like me. They've got their little knives and plastic guns and they sleep outside and surf and swim," he explains.
For those keen to be survival experts, Gary would like to list out three must-have qualities: knowledge (so that you can start a fire, build a camp, build a shelter); the doggedness to laugh in the face of adversity and to keep going, and lastly, knowing when to give up. "It's all right being dogged, but if you don't stop at the right time and seek shelter and rest, then you're going to get hurt," he says.
However, he also adds that he and Bill wouldn't want people to go out there and just do crazy stunts, because that's not what the show is about. "This is about survival with a car and how to show the car at its best and trying to push the limits." So remember guys, have fun watching the show but don't try any of it at home. You could get killed doing it.
One Car Too Far airs Monday to Friday on Discovery Channel at 10 pm.
What happens when two guys — one, a car expert and the other, a survival expert — are dropped into the most challenging terrains and asked to escape to safety using an all-purpose vehicle? Cars rattle over log bridges across freezing rivers; they skid over a volcano and glaciated crevasses; the men find themselves in thigh-deep freezing water for days at end and in one episode they even drive 18 hours at an angle when a back wheel rips off coming down a steep slope.
Some of the stunts are so unbelievable in Discovery Channel's One Car Too Far that you're surprised survival expert Gary Humphrey and car-whiz Bill Wu come out of each episode with their lives and spirits intact. Which calls for a bit of cynicism and the first question: just how real is this reality show?
"What you see is what you get," says Gary, a former British special forces operative. He assures you that he has smashed all his teeth on the show, almost got hypothermia, ripped the sole off his boots and torn his hands to pieces. He adds though that there are safety crews and he wouldn't have taken many of the risks he did if they were not there. "I wouldn't really go putting my life in danger for a TV show," he says.
Risky business
Bill disagrees with that and says some parts they shot were so risky that he and Gary could actually have been dead. He has some scary memories of the episode where they climbed up a volcano. "We were driving over a crevasse. There were no ropes holding the car in. The false bridge could have collapsed and the car could have fallen 100 m down. Nobody could have extracted us. I don't know if Gary realised it, but it was very, very dangerous. If we were upside down in a river, if the doors weren't open and if something were to get stuck, we would be dead."
The two seem to have done it all. If you ask them to rate their experiences, they both agree that the rainforest episode where it rained for 10 days at a stretch and they were stranded in thigh-deep water most of the time, was the toughest. "We shot in almost constant rain. The water in those rivers was between five and 10 degrees as it ran off the mountain from the glacier. The weather was like 65 degrees, so it was just constantly cold and wet. That was probably one of the hardest things I've done since Special Forces training," says Gary.
Besides his Special Forces training, yoga is the other thing that has come in handy for Gary while shooting for One Car Too Far. It is a way of life for him and helps tackle the many injuries he has suffered. In fact, even on the show, he says, he would take out time for yoga. "The sun would be coming up over the volcanoes in Chile, the fog would be below me, and I'd have 10 minutes on my own just to stretch out and think about what lay ahead for the day."
Ask the two about the most dangerous car adventure they had on the show and they say it was when coming down a really steep icy slope — they slid into a gully and the back wheel ripped out of the car, and smashed into pieces. They had to sleep overnight with the car in a ditch and the next day they had to drive it at an angle to keep the wheel wedged in. "On the show, that's about 10 minutes but in real life it was 18 hours of pure hell," says Gary. Finally, Bill had to substitute the wheel with a tree trunk and they eventually used it to hobble out of the rain forest.
Bill has scary memories of driving over a crevasse without any ropes holding the car in. "We could have easily fallen in. The false bridge could have easily collapsed. It could have swallowed the car. Nobody could have extracted us. We would have been swallowed up by the earth," he says. This makes you wonder how their families put up with this and whether there are any major rows at home for working on programmes like this.
While Bill's family gets nervous and stressed when he's out of reach for days putting his life in danger, Gary says his two boys have grown up with him travelling to dangerous areas."So they think I'm a super hero and that's lovely. They're just like me. They've got their little knives and plastic guns and they sleep outside and surf and swim," he explains.
For those keen to be survival experts, Gary would like to list out three must-have qualities: knowledge (so that you can start a fire, build a camp, build a shelter); the doggedness to laugh in the face of adversity and to keep going, and lastly, knowing when to give up. "It's all right being dogged, but if you don't stop at the right time and seek shelter and rest, then you're going to get hurt," he says.
However, he also adds that he and Bill wouldn't want people to go out there and just do crazy stunts, because that's not what the show is about. "This is about survival with a car and how to show the car at its best and trying to push the limits." So remember guys, have fun watching the show but don't try any of it at home. You could get killed doing it.
One Car Too Far airs Monday to Friday on Discovery Channel at 10 pm.