Ella Eyre and Nana Pepera have started race across the world celebrity on a 4,660-mile route from Borneo to Melbourne, and the first-day pressure already showed. Eyre said she was in charge of the map and lost it twice, a rough opening for a pair running on £840 per person and no phones, internet access or cards.
Eyre and Pepera on Borneo
The route covers 7,500km through Borneo, a place split between Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei and home to 23 million people. The show has never ventured farther from the UK, which makes this season’s geography less like a standard holiday run and more like a long budget test with a destination at the far end.
Eyre said choosing Pepera was a no-brainer after 22 years of friendship that began at school. She described herself as “quite gung-ho and impulsive” and Pepera as “very thought out,” which gives the team a built-in balance before a single checkpoint is reached.
£26 a day in Malaysia and Brunei
The money works out to £26 per person per day, and that figure has to stretch across overnight bus journeys, physical work in hot, humid climates and the hunt for cheap accommodation. In practical terms, every leg has to be judged against cash, route choice and energy, not convenience.
Pepera has been looking after the passports and cash, while Eyre admitted she took the map and then misplaced it twice on day one. That split of duties is useful in a race built on improvisation, but it also shows how quickly a small mistake can eat into an already tight budget.
Kaja Island and the checkpoints
In episode two, Eyre and Pepera saw orangutans on Kaja Island in the Rungan River, a reminder that the route is not just about moving fast but about getting through remote ground at all. The race also sends other teams into the same pressure cooker, including Sam Ryder and Kaz, Princess Andre and Junior, and Jeff Stelling and Matt Stelling.
Eyre said, “We would really look forward to the checkpoints.” She added, “Especially if it had been a difficult journey, we couldn’t wait to hear how everyone else’s had gone.” That is the real shape of this season: the competition is not only against the clock, but against distance, cash and the limit of what two people can carry, remember and solve on the move.
