For many the experience has been less like Inter-Railing through Europe with Audrey Hepburn and more like getting fished out of the Mediterranean Sea with Robert Maxwell. One complained: ‘I was hoping to spend a lot more time drinking beer on a beach, pretending to find myself. Instead, I spent a month dodging land mines, just to end up in a shipping container, shitting into a carrier bag Trust me, it doesn’t feel such a ‘lonely planet’, when you’re crammed into a Red Cross camp with 80,000 other people’.
Although not all refugee expeditions have been negative, with one veteran commenting: ‘It was a totes amazing experience. I met some incredibly spiritual people - ‘Mustafa the Human Trafficker’, ‘Boris the Knife’ and his friend ‘Rapey Mike’. I’ve also discovered things about myself. Like, I can go without food for weeks at a time. Or skills I never know I had – like quickly learning to swim when our raft capsized or how to hang off the bottom of a moving truck’.
