Dubai: If you think a whole day's drive is long, try 132 days. This is what Wissam Al Jayyoussi will be doing from today to raise awareness and funds for children with cancer in Palestine.
After a ceremonial send-off at the Palestinian Consulate General in Dubai yesterday afternoon, Al Jayyoussi will head to Iran today via a sea trip and will then ride to 22 countries in mainland Asia for his solo charity ride on the Goodwill Journey. The trip will cover 60,000km, with Singapore as his last stop.
The journey is aimed at getting support for the Palestine Children's Relief Fund to help equip a new paediatric cancer ward in Palestine.
A year-long preparation was needed to plan the routes, prepare his body physically and mentally and secure all the 22 visas he needed for the trip. Al Jayyoussi, who also did a similar charity ride in 2010 across the Middle East and Europe, said this second trip is much more challenging than the first.
"The terrain is much more complicated. Most of the roads I'm taking are off-road," Al Jayyoussi, 37, told Gulf News.
