Latest / The Overland Journal Podcast / Ray and Marianne Hyland on Overlanding from London to Singapore in a 1954 Land Rover

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Ray and Marianne Hyland on Overlanding from London to Singapore in a 1954 Land Rover · The Overland Journal Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Overland Journal podcast. I am
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: your host, Ashley Drew Dano, and we are here today
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: with some very special guests. And if you've attended any
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: of the overland rallies such as the Northwest Overland Rally.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: And if you've attended any of the overland rallies such
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: as the Northwest Overland Rally, BC Overland Rally and Rocky
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Mountain Overland Rally, right, you may be familiar with the Highlands.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: You may also be familiar with the Highlands from their
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: epic journey in a land rover, which they'll talk to
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: you about that special kind of land rover they took
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: with their three kids from London to Singapore. Thank you
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: so much, Ray and Mary Anne for coming on the
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Overland Journal podcast.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Thanks for having us.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: I'm so happy to have you on here. We don't
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: get Canadians on the podcast very often. Tell us a
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: little bit about yourself and how you got into the
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: overland space. And because you guys have been in this
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: industry for a little while.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: That's an interesting question. I think it came about because
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: we needed to buy a minivan. I was living in Singapore.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: We had three little kids at the time. I had
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: an old classic like antique Mercedes station wagon which broke
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: down every time Mary and jove it, especially when she
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: had the kids, and my mother in law said, you
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: guys should get a minivan. I wasn't really ready for
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: a minivan, and I looked around and found a Defender
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: one ten, which is really fun, and we bought it.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: And I think the question was what is this And
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: I said, this is the world's coolest minivan, and yeah,
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: that kind of got us started. We joined the Landover
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: Club in Singapore. We started going on adventures and trips
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: up into Malaysia and stuff like that, and we just
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: got hooked.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Why a Defender A couple of reasons.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: One is I think I just always liked the look
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: of the classic Defender. I mean, I grew up with
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: you know, Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom series. You know,
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: the guys would be driving the old series trucks across
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: the savannah and jumping off the hood and tackling gazelle's
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: and stuff. Right. But at the same time, in Singapore,
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: if you bought a like a Defender, because it was diesel,
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: it was registered as a commercial vehicle and it was
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: actually much more affordable than buying a land Cruiser or
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: something like that.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Well, you're with it.
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: It was two thousand and.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Four, and what you're with The land Rover was five.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: It was No. Four I guess it was. It was new. Yeah,
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: we ordered it. Yeah, it was police blue, which is
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: pretty funny. Sometimes you drive around the island in this
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: truck and you know that was kind of what the
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: police had just given the color. Sometimes you'd roll up
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: to a checkpoint or something and people are ready to
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: salute you until they realized, oh, it's just some random
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: dude in an old land Rover.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: So what were you doing in Singapore at that time?
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: It worked for different companies in marketing and communications.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: And then you met in Singapore. Yes, so how did
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: you like the Defender?
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: I liked it because it.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: Was it didn't break down. Well, I mean it's a landover.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: It still broke down, but it didn't break down as
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: much as a thirty forty year old car. But also
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: I think you liked the fact that you set up
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: really high right, and it's easy to see when you're driving.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you're in Singapore doing marketing, you have little kids,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: you have this Defender. Then how does that lead you
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: to I guess that introduced you to the land River
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: community there.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we started doing lots of trips. We started doing,
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: you know, little weekend trips turned into bigger, longer expeditions
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: and finding old tracks that hadn't been traveled for years,
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: and we eventually became good friends with kind of a
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't say a hardcore group of people, but people
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: who liked getting out and really using their vehicles as
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: they were intended. So we ended up heavily modifying the truck.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: Eventually I built it up for the Rainforest Challenge. By
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: that time, it would go pretty much everywhere, so yeah,
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: it was a lot of fun.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: Was that group traveling mostly around Singapore or was it
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: all around around Asia, typically into Malaysia.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of really interesting jungle trails and
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: stuff in Malaysia. The Indou romp and rainforest is close by,
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: and then you can drive up the Malaysianeninsula up into Thailand.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: It takes about a day, it's not too hard. It's
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: a ton of really interesting places to go and beaches,
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: rainforest mountains. Yeah, it was very cool.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: So many things have happened since then with the rallies,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: and you're one into Singamore trips.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: How do we get from there to here? Yeah, we
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: moved to New York. The company moved me to New York.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: We brought that truck that we had was too new
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: to bring over with us, but we bought an old
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: one which actually used to belong to the Singapore Swat team.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: So it was like this old police truck, flat black,
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: kind of terrible looking, but with really low mileage, so
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: it was a good deal. We got it in an auction.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: We took all the modifications we had on our current
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: truck and put them onto the old truck and then
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: shipped it off to North America. And then we were
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: in North America for a while. We were in New
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: York and then eventually back to Canada. Scott was looking
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: for a marketing guy for Expedition Portal in the Journal.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: I knew of Scott because one of the clients I
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: worked with had sponsored one of his exp in the past,
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: and so reached out and started working with the Journal
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: and Expedition Portal, and that was a lot of fun.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: We've spent a ton of time in Prescott, got to
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: know the whole crew, and we did a whole bunch
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: of really fun trips together and got to do you know,
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: interesting trucks and interesting gear and you know, that was
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: that was actually pretty awesome. One of the things that
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: the Journal did at the time is we had this
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: little rally called the Overland Rally. The first one was
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: in California and then we moved it to the Northwest.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: I was focused on the event. I was having so
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: much fun with it that I said to Scott, eventually,
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: I'd like to just focus on the event. And so
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: the event was kind of spun off as its own
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: standalone company, separate from the Journal, and we've been running
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: the Overland Rallies ever since and we've just been having
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: a great time with it.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They're really well known for being small and family
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: oriented and yeah, just intimate with really good opportunity for
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: learning and of course the bond fire at night and
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: campfire talk and all those things. So I could see
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: that would be a really fun event, but also a
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: lot of work.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of work, but it is It is fun,
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: its a It has a great feeling in the Overland
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: community because it's so casual. We've always had to people,
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: you know, show up, drive what you've got you don't
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: have to have the latest, coolest, biggest truck to go camping, right,
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: And we've had people to show up with the weirdest, funnest,
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: eclectic vehicles. We had a couple showed up at the
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: Northwest Rally one year in a little Triumph t R
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: seven convertible that they were going to drive I think
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: to Shuia m back and they had like two little
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: kermit chairs in the trunk and a pup tent and
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: that was it. That was their whole setup and off
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: they went. And we're like, you guys are awesome. So yeah,
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: it's it's been a lot of fun. I think people
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: enjoy the fact that they are very relaxed, and we
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: have amazing presenters coming from around the world and you know,
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: some of the top instructors, and yet even the instructors
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: and presenters that come to the show, as they say,
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: we really enjoy coming back to your events because they're
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: just so fun and they're just so casual.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: Absolutely can confirm and they're in So the Northwest Overland
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Rally is in Plaine, Washington. If listeners aren't familiar with
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: the events, the BC Overland Rally has had a couple
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: different venues, right.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we started out in a little ski resort called
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: Sasquatch Mountain and we outgrew that, and then we moved
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: to the Whistler Olympic Park, which was pretty cool, and
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: we outgrew that. As of last year, we moved to
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: big venue in Merritt, BC, and so it's a couple
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: hours away from Vancouver, but it's a beautiful spot. It's
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: a great big valley, nice river running through it, tons
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: of places to explore around there. So yeah, we're really
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: happy with that nice.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was great. And then there was a Rocky Mountain.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: The Rocky Mountain event was a lot of fun. We
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: did that for one year COVID happened, and then you know,
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: we were looking at renewing it after COVID. It has
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: been challenging getting the dates that work for us, so
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: that one's currently in limbo, but we'll see what happens.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: It'd be nice to resurrect that one in the future. Yeah,
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: that's right, Yan Gunnison.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: Take me behind the scenes of organizing an overland rally.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: We talked about this a little bit last It's like
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: the amount of work that or I guess time, so
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: obviously you're both working full time and doing the rallies
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: on the side, and it takes months of preparation for
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: these events to come together.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: I should probably defer the question to Marianne because she
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: does more of the work and I'm more of the
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: face of the show. But I think, you know, one
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: of the one of the challenges is making sure that
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: the show's really balanced, right, So you need to have
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: enough offerings that people can come back to and feel
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: their learning every year. So you need to have interesting classes,
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: interesting instructors, interesting gear, interesting things to do, whether you're
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: you know, an overlanding expert or whether you're just a beginner,
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: And so having that mixture of classes and activities and
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: fun stuff and fun presenters every year, you know, is
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: a challenge, and sometimes you know, at the last minute
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: we're scrambling and I think one year I called you
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: up and said, hey, you want to run a yoga
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: class for me in the morning. But you know, because
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: we do to try to make sure that there's a
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: little bit of everything for people so people can when
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: you drive out there into the wilderness with your overland setup,
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: it doesn't just end there. It's not like you pull
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: out your snowpeak, cook set and have a nice meal.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: And that's it. That's the whole destination. It's all about,
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: now that I'm there, what do I do? Right? So
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: we have a lot of fun stuff there with like
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: ARII and people who come to the shows and they bring,
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: you know, their latest kayaks and mountain bikes. And we've
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: got guys there with you know, teaching fly fishing and
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: like all sorts of just fun interesting things. And then
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: in addition to that, we have full lot of the
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: traditional stuff, so you know, how do you fix a
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: flat tire? You know, how do you fix your winch
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: when it's broken? How do you get yourself unstuck? Do
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: you safely recover another vehicle? A lot of those classes,
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: and then we have the ridiculous fun stuff too.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: We have.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: What we call the Trophy Challenge on the last day
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: of the show, and that's where we have it's almost
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: like an obstacle course or like some sort of a
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: fun competition where people get to race their vehicles in
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: a safe ish manner through our technical and obstacle course.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: Then we'll put fun things into it. So one of
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: the classic ones is we call it the Embarrassing wetness challenge,
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: where we'll tape a cup of water to the hood
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: of your vehicle and then you have to drive through
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: the off road course as fast as you can without
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: spilling the water, and then whoever has the lowest time
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: in the most water wins. And this year we did
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: what do we call it? You know, we had a
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: Nerf gun challenge. I can't remember what the name of
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: it was, but oh yeah, it was the biathlon, yes,
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: because it was going really fast as well as shooting,
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: and so every driver got a NERF gun with those
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: little foam bullets and we had little paper cups up
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: throughout the course and you had to drive through the
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: course as fast as you could and then you had
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: to stop periodically and shoot these little targets with the
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: Nerf gun. The targets were on either side of the vehicle,
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: so sometimes you had to lean across and shoot out
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: the passenger window and that was entertaining. I think the
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: hardest part was when we're trying to find all the
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: Nerf bullets afterwards in the forest. But everybody had a
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: good time and we had a consolation prize. There was
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: a little kid, he was about eight years old who
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: decided to go through the course on his bicycle at
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: the end, and he didn't realize that the mud pit
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: at the end was deeper than he was tall, and
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: he went straight in full blast and just buried himself
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: in his bicycle and he came out and he was
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: just covered head to toe in mud. So we gave
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: him a consolation price. He was pretty happy. But I mean,
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: and that's I think kind of the nature of the events, right,
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: is we all have a lot of fun. We learned
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: a lot of stuff. There's great instruction, there's great people there,
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: fun and inspiring speakers, but the whole event is all
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: about have fun first. And that's the slogan, right The
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: slogan of the show's has always been have fun, make friends,
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: learn stuff in that order.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: I like that a lot. I also liked that there
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: were quite a few classes for kids, but they were
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: put on by kids. Yeah, so that was pretty awesome.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: That's a lot of fun. We have classes for kids
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: kind of two ways. One is we've been working with
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: the guys from Veteran Overland for a number of years,
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: great organization, So every year they'll send a team of
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: vets to the show, and these vets will be teaching
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: these little kids, you know, outdoor survival skills and how
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: to light a fire, how to make a shelter, how
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: to tie different knots and ropes and that kind of stuff,
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: which is fun. And then on the other side of it,
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: we have a lot of little kids who will do
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: classes for other kids. So you'll have you know, a
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: family who's been driving around the world and there in
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: their sportsmobile or Mercedes Sprinter, and they've got three kids
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: and you know, ages like maybe eight through fifteen, and
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: the kids will put on a presentation for other kids
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: at the show about what it's like to around the
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: world with your mom and dad in a van. And
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: that's actually been a lot of fun because they're like,
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: all right, so, yeah, your mom and dad are going
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: to want to do this, and they're going to think
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: it's exciting, and Okay, it's kind of going to suck
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: a bit because you're going to have to get away
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: from your friends and your video games and all your stuff.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: But on the other hand, there's this other there's a
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: cool side of it too, right, and they'll talk about
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: what they enjoy about it, and I think that's been
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: really interesting for little kids to kind of go, Wow,
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: I'm mom and dad are telling me this is going
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: to be epic, and sometimes I believe mom and Dad
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: and sometimes I don't. But if other kids who've gone
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: through this or sharing their experiences, it's more real. Right.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: We had little kids teaching things like water filtration classes
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: and cooking and stuff at the kid level, so it's
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: a lot of fun.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: That's a nice segue because we're talking about kids and
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: traveling and kids being on the road and having experiences
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: traveling with our parents. So I wanted to touch a
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: little bit on your trip that you did as well
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: with your three boys from London to Singapore, because it's
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: probably like one of the most epic trips ever I've
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: ever heard of, so hardcore, it's so cool.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: We didn't plan it that way. It just sort of
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: happened that way. But yeah, the vehicle and my lack
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: of planning and preparation, I think, yeah.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: Well, let's start from the beginning. I guess of that
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: whole thing, like you just said, it started because of
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: the vehicle. Yes, so that was pretty important to the
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: inspiration of how it went and where you went.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: We were still living in Singapore. The members of the
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: landover Club. These guys came over, a bunch of old
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: guys from England and it was two thousand and five
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: and it was the fiftieth anniversary of the first overland
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: expedition from London to Singapore. And if listeners aren't familiar
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: with that trip, no one had driven from England further
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: than India at that time. They'd never driven further overland
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: because there was this impenetrable jungle in Burma. And in
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: World War two, General George Stillwell as part of the
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: forces to resupply the people fighting the Japanese, they cut
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: a road across the It was called the Burmahump. They
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: cut this road through the jungle and it was called
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: the Stillwell Road, sometimes called the Ledo Road, and then
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: it was abandoned at the end of World War two
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: because you know, nobody really needed to drive that way.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: It was just you know, it was a road of
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: convenience because of the war. So in the early fifties
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: a group of students from Oxford and Cambridge decided, hey,
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: what if we did an epic trip, an epic adventure.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: Let's drive as far as it's possible to drive from London,
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: well from Oxford, because that's where they set off from
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: in the British Empire. How far can we go? And
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: the farthest point was Singapore. They said, you know, in theory,
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: somebody cut this road through the jungle in the war,
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: and it was only like, you know, five or six
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: years ago or ten years ago, I guess by the
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: time they actually set out, and maybe we could get
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: through this jungle because they've invented this new thing called
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: a four by four. Right then, the early Landrovers were
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: based on the US military jeeps, and so they went
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: to the Rover Company and they said, hey, we'd like
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: to drive to Singapore. We've got this crazy idea, and
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: would you be interested in sponsoring a car. And Landrover
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: had just come out with in their Series ones, they
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: had come up with something called a station wagon in
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: nineteen fifty four. They weren't sure if it was going
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: to be very popular, so they had a few of them,
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: you know, kind of floating around as press vehicles, and
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: they lent two of them to this this group of students,
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: and those guys drove, you know, from in nineteen fifty
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: five and fifty six from London all the way to
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: Singapore and had this epic trip and wrote a book
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: about it, and it was popular at the time because
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: the BBC gave them cameras and David Attenborough, young David
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: Attenborough in his twenties, was running a travel program for
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: the BBC at the time, and so he would get
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: the film, these cans of film that these guys are
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: mailing back as they drove around the world, and he
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: would like edit them and have this little BBC programmer
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: every week in you know, jump ahead fifty years. It's
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: a two thousand and five. It's the fiftieth anniversary of
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: this trip, and these guys, remaining members of the expedition
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: flew to Singapore to do you know, they were going
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: to do a fiftieth year reissue of the original book,
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: and they also decided to do an audiobook recording at
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: the same time in Singapore, and one of my buddies, Dave,
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: who was in the land Over Club with me. He
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: was the sound engineer who put the audiobook together, so
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: invited us to come and meet these guys, and so
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: we went down and we met them and they were
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: really nice. We had a great time and Marianne and
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: I said, you know, how cool was that like, wouldn't
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: it be amazing if you could recreate that journey today? Right,
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: But it was just a thought because you know, the
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: roads through Me and Mars, so Burma's now Me and
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: Mah and the borders have been closed for years and
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: you couldn't you couldn't recreate the trip, right, And we're like, okay, well,
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: that's a fun idea, and we kind of forgot about it.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: And then, you know, fast forward to another eight or
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: nine years and we're now living in Canada in the mountains,
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: and we've got our Defender and We're doing a lot
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: of trips and I'm working with the journal and I
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: decided I wanted to have a little project vehicle to
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: work on with the kids. And the boys were getting
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: a little older that like grade, you know, they were
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: I think eleven, twelve and thirteen years old at the time.
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: And I found this old land drawer, terrible vehicle. It
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: had been sitting like abandoned in a field in Rebelstoker
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: somewhere for like twenty years.
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: I had chickens living in it and didn't have any
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: doors and didn't have any windows, and it was just
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: a shell. But it was really cheap. I think I
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: paid three hundred Canadian dollars, so it was like two
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: hundred and twenty five dollars. US dragged this thing home
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: on a U haul trailer and I didn't really know
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: what I had. So I started, you know, kind of
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: tinkering with it and trying to find some parts and
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: put it back together. And in an effort to figure
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: out more about the truck, I wrote to the Series
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: one registry in the UK and I said, hey, I've
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: got this truck. This is the VEN number. And they said, well,
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: I think that's the station wagon. And they said, you know,
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: you pull the cab off the back, you know, you
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: can look at the way the cappings are done and
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: you can tell if it it's the original station wagon body.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: And so I said okay, And I was pulling it
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: apart anyway, and so I looked at it and I said, yeah,
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: this is It has all the correct you know, bits
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: and pieces. It's an original station wagon. So I kind
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: of reached back out to the Series one guys and
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: I said, yeah, so I have this truck. This is
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: the VIN. I've confirmed it. You know, the body matches
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: the VIN on the frame. It's an original station wagon
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: from fifty four. How rare is this? And they said, well,
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: there's three and I said, what do you mean And
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: they said, well, we knew of two still existing in
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: the world, and now you've got one. So now there's three,
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: you've got the third. And I said, oh, all right, wow.
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: And so I went back in the house and I
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: talked to Mary and I said, turns out this little
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: wreck of a truck that we bought is a bit
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: more rare than I thought. And then we didn't really
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: think too much of it. And then I happened to
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: pick up my copy of First Overland, like just randomly
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: to look at something one day, and I realized that
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: the vehicle we had was the same as what those
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: guys had driven in and then an original eighty six
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: station wagon. And I said, wow, that's very cool. And
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: I happened to mention it to Marianne and I said,
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: you know, wouldn't it be amazing if we could take
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: that vehicle and recreate the first Overland trip from nineteen,
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: you know, fifty five? And she was like, that would
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: be really cool. But you know, of course, the borders,
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: you know, me and mars Land borders are still closed.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: And a couple months later, me and mar opened the
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: borders and we said, okay, it's it's an omen, right, okay,
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: road trip. I think I had about a year to
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: get the truck running, and like I didn't I didn't
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: restore the truck in any way. I mean, I just
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: I literally got it running. I found some old doors.
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: I found the bench seat from the autorecord for an
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: old Chevy astro van, which I threw in the back
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: of the kids. The front seats were trashed. I think
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: I took a couple of beach towels and folded them
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: up and set them on top of the seats as
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: cushions and strapped a piece of canvas over put some
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: seatbelts into it with the original seat. Yeah. Yeah, there
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: are wooden seats filled with straw, but the straw had
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: all collapsed and I didn't really want to go out
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: and repack the straw and then so I just I
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: folded up a couple of beach shells and through them
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: on top and said, okay, they'll do it. Didn't have
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: any locks or anything on the doors. I took a
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: big chain and like just wrapped it around the truck
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: with a padlock, and that was how we locked it
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: when we left our stuff in it on our trip. Yeah,
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: and the first I got it running and it was like, okay,
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: the you know, we're going to shift this to Singapore
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: next week. I got it running that week. I decided
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: to take it to a land Rover show that following weekend.
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: It caught on fire on my way to the show.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: Managed to get the fire put out, fixed some electrical
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: problems with somebodies at the show itself. That was kind
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: of the shakedown and like the next day I put
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: it in a box and I sent it to England.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: And so that was the total prep for the trip.
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: And I mean the truck is tiny. It's the size
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: of a Volkswagen Beetle boys.
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: Because they sat in the back, right, it was not
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: designed there was for the legs to come down.
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: It was designed for side facing seats.
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: Okay, so their legs literally had to be like with
• 22:17
  Speaker 4: where the seat meets the floor, that's where your legs up.
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: The legs are never hanging down. They always bit.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: And ra Yeah, we put a false floor in the
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: back so we could put some cargo underneath. So that
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: meant it took the room for your legs away. So
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: they basically had to sit with their knees up for
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: you know, nine months. Yeah, so it was it was crowded.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: So what was the feeling or the mood or whatever
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: when you brought up this idea to do this trip
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: and it seemed like it was happening. What was your reaction,
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: Mary Anna? And what what were the kids thinking? How
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: did they react? Where they excited for the like, this
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: is crazy.
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: It comes up with great ideas on a daily basis,
• 23:07
  Speaker 4: I have don't pay.
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: Attention to them.
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: But then it finally dawned on me that oh, this
• 23:12
  Speaker 4: is this is happening, This is happening.
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: I better take this seriously because this is going to happen.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: I like the way you had a little pause before
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: you said great ideas. I don't think great was originally
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: the word you're going to choose, But yeah, I came
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: up with a lot of ideas.
• 23:26
  Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, so I just I think I just needed
• 23:29
  Speaker 5: the list of countries we were visiting, and then I
• 23:34
  Speaker 5: just needed to check them out in regards to safety,
• 23:38
  Speaker 5: and the only one I had concerned.
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: With was Iran. Right.
• 23:42
  Speaker 4: And then when you go to the Canadian government website,
• 23:45
  Speaker 4: it says in big red letters, do not visit Iran.
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: If you get in trouble, we may not be able
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: to get you out right.
• 23:53
  Speaker 4: And I thought, okay, let me see where else I
• 23:56
  Speaker 4: can get information on Iran. So I went to the
• 23:58
  Speaker 4: Lowest Prices blog and I read what she wrote, like, Okay, that's.
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: Fine, we can do it. Iran.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: Honestly, Iran was amazing. It was amazing. Level trip was great.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: We never had a bad experience. But I mean.
• 24:15
  Speaker 4: People, the people of Iran really make Iran amazing.
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: I mean it's an amazing land.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: But the people, yea. And everywhere we went, we had
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: so many people who would they would see our license
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: plate and see we were from Canada, and they'd come
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: over and they would say, we're so happy that you're here,
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: so you can go back and tell people you know,
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: what it's like here. And the one thing that consistently said, look,
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: you have to recognize that our government doesn't represent us
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: as people. It's just the government, you know. And then
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: the people were wonderful. People were just kind of caught
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: in the situation that they're caught in, but but yeah,
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: they were some of the most generous people we'd ever met.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: Were there any steps that you had to take specifically
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: as a Canadian traveling through Iran.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: Three countries at the time were restricted in their travel,
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: so it was Canada, the US, and Great Britain. So
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: if you had one of those three passports, you weren't
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: allowed to travel unaccompanied. So you had to you know,
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: register ahead of time and get a guide to meet
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: you at the border, and you were supposed to be
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: escorted while you were there.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: So you shipped the land Rover from Canada to the UK.
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: Shipped and put in a box in Vancouver.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: Did they get trained across Canada? No?
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: I think they just put it on a boat in
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: Vancouver Harbor and.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: Oh it went from Vancouver, Okay, I.
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: See, yeah, and then we drove across. So we drove
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: to Pennsylvania. At the time, we were still running a
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: show called the mid Atlantic Overland Festival with the Henwoods,
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: and so we went over there. We did that overland Festival,
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: and then when it was done, we flew from New
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: York to the UK to pick up our truck. Of
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: course we got there that the truck was delayed and
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: so now we're in the UK with no truck and
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: that was really fun. That kind of set the tone
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: for the whole trip because at that time Facebook was
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: the dominant you know, social media platform, and so I
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: put a post on Facebook and I said, hey, so
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: we're here in the UK and our truck isn't here,
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: and I'm not sure when it's going to get here.
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: But if anybody happens to have an old vehicle that
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: we could borrow or rent, and you know, if it
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: was an old Landover, that'd be cool, please let me know.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: And within a day, like a friend of our friend
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: of our friend, this guy Pete, who's now become a
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: great friend of ours that we keep in touch with.
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: Pete reached out and said, hey, we've we've got an
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: old Defender, Like he basically said, I bought a new
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: one ten I was going to sell my old one.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: I haven't sold it yet. It's still ensured. If you
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: want it, just come and pick it up and use
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: it as much as you want, which was amazing. So
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: we went and we had this nice, you know, three
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: hundred TDI Defender one ten. You know, we drove around
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: the United Kingdom for the next almost a month really
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: while we waited for our truck to show up. So
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: we went all over Ireland, and England and you know
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: the coast of Scotland and Wales and like we just
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: explored you know, the islands and it was fantastic, and
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: of course it was. It was probably a nicer way
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: to explore than in our little Series one because you know,
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: it had a working windshield, wipers, and it had a
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: heater and it had all these things that we take
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: for granted.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: So for people that haven't traveled in a Series one
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: Land River before, can you paint a picture of what
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: the experience was like over those nine months, because.
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if you could imagine like an old farm tractor,
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean, like those ones with the
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: big wheels in the back and the skinny little wheels,
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: and you sit in a metal seat and you're perched
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: up on top of the engine and the wind is
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: blowing in your hair and it's kind of like that
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: with a windshield. I mean, it's honestly it it sounds
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: like I'm exaggerating, but it's not that boys had to
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: wear hearing protective Actually we all did. We all were
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: hearing protection while we're driving, because when you got up
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: to you know, close to highway speeds, it was literally
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: deafening inside Uh, it's like riding in a big cookie tin, right,
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: So there's no sound insulation at all. It was designed
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: as a as a vehicle that you could use as
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: a farm tractor, that you could also if you wanted to,
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: you could drive to church on Sunday, right, So that's
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: why I had a cab on it. But you know,
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: straight cut gears, crazily underpowered, Like everything in that vehicle
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: was over built for mechanical solidity. You know, it was
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: very robust design, but it was not designed for comfort
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: at all. And so yeah, it was it was a
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: bit like riding a motorcycle kind of thing.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: But Louder tell me a little bit about limitations unpacking
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: because you only had so much space and you had
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: five humans in there.
• 28:51
  Speaker 5: Was I remember we had to wait everything and we
• 28:55
  Speaker 5: had to weigh ourselves.
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: We're still slightly over.
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: It was still.
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: Slightly over, which we just gotted when we drove from London.
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: To the colt.
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: Oh that's right, when the springs collapsed. Yeah, everybody had
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: one little duffel bag, right, so you know, like a
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: little you know, maybe eighteen inches long, little rounduffel bag
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: and we had these little dry bags, so each person
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: got a dry bag, and that had to contain your clothing,
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: your blanket, your pillow, your sleeping pad, all of your entertainment,
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: and anything else you wanted to bring. It was like,
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: like you said, it's a bit like being a motorcycle traveler, right,
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: Like you had to go super pared down. And so
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: every morning you'd pack all your gear into your little
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: duffel bag and roll it up, and we'd throw it
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: onto the roof rack and strap it down and off
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: we went. And other than that, I had four little
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: wolf boxes in the back under the floor, and one
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: had our kitchen stuff and one had spare parts and fluids,
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: and one had some basic tools, and I think the
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: other one might have had I don't know, maybe some
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: homeschooling stuff in it. But yeah, because we homeschooled the
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: kids on the way.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to ask if you pulled them
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: out of school for that period of time, but yeah.
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: We've been homeschooling the whole time, So it was that
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: was actually pretty easy.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: Did you have some like great gear winds or some
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: really crazy gear fails or did everything kind of?
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: We're good friends with Cam who owns Nemo tents and
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: he's he's been a long time supporter of the Journal
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: and expedition portal and the whole team uses his gears.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: Gears great, and at the time he had this little
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: tent with airbeam. So he's like, look this, this tent
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: is amazing. It's a two person tent and instead of
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: carrying poles around, it just has like this little these
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: little airbeams that hold it up and support it. It
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: comes with a little tiny pump the size of like
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: a tennis ball, and we're like, okay, that's cool, that's great,
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: you know, and the whole tent, you know, folds down
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: the size of a grapefruit, right, and so we're like, okay,
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: that that's awesome. Until it leaked. I think we discovered it.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: It was like a two am pouring rain storm and
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: the tent has collapsed on us and we're both drenched,
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: and you know, and of course the tent is the
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: tents wrapped around you now and it's soaking wet and
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: the rain is thundering down on you and you can't
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: even get yourself out of the tent, you know what
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: I mean that it was an adventure, and we went
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: through a couple of patch kits and stuff and eventually
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: Cam just sent us a different tent. I think he said,
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: we're not allowed to test gear anymore. I have a
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: bad reputation of destroying gears. So but other than that,
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: I mean, we had we had a full set of Nemo,
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: like the sleep sets, right, so, the down blankets and
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: the little matching pads. They were amazing. They fold up
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: to almost nothing and they're really lightweight. Still have them.
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: They're great. Yeah, other big winds yeah, So, and then
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: we switched over to the Nemo the Dagger and Galaxy tents,
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: so a little two men for Marianna and I and
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: a three man tent for the boys. Those are great.
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: Still use them every day or every year won go camping.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: And then we use the Kurmit chairs. And I'm not
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: sure if you've ever used a Kermit chair. There used
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: to be this old guy named Kermit and he'd made
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: these chairs in his basement in like Tennessee or somewhere.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: They're like handmade out of I think ash or hickory
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: wood or something, and they fold up tiny, and they
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: roll up into a little tube and they you know,
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: with canvas, and they're not terribly light, but they're really
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: really robust. And they're really small and you sit loader
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: the ground, right, that's the only thing that some people
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: don't like about them. But you know, the nice thing
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: about sitting load of the ground is you don't have
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: to worry about having a footstool or a tall table, right,
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: And those were great. So we had a set of
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: those and they've been fantastic. And then or other big
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: wins where we had an MSR stove, a little tiny
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: backpacking stove, the Dragonfly. Yes, and the Dragonfly stove is long,
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: it's really loud. It sounds like a jet turbine when
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: it's running.
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: But yeah, the only was recommended to us, the only.
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, true simmer.
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: Which is because we eat a lot of rice and you.
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: Have to, right, So when you're doing big one pot
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: meals with kids who've grown up in Asia, I mean,
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: you know, being able to make good pot of rice,
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: right is awesome. And of course a lot of the
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: world where we're traveling through, rice is a staple everywhere. Right.
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: And then I was going to say the pot because
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: the challenge with most camping pots is they they're all
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: about lightweight and so they're like titanium or they're anadized
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: aluminum or they're stainless or whatever, but typically they're like
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: almost paper thin, and they're designed for boiling right. Boil
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: water as fast as I can, and I'll throw my
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: instant food into it and rehydrate it and everything's good.
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: It doesn't matter how good your stove is. If you've
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: got a paper thin pot and you're trying to simmer rice,
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: it's going to burn. And so we said, surely there
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: must be a company that makes camping gear but still
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: understands rice. And we're like Snowpeak, right, Snowpeak, classic Japanese company,
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: and so we bought this called I think it is
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: the Snowpeak Caldera whatever they called it, but I mean
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: it's a giant anadized aluminum pot and the base of
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: the pot is five eighths of an inch thick, so
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: it's perfect for cooking rice and big one pot meals,
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: and it's super light. It weighs almost nothing because it's aluminum.
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: But they didn't sell it in North America. It was
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: kind of a japan only product. So we called up
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: the guys from Snowpeak and made a special request and
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: they imported one for us, and that became our one
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: big pot for the trip, and you know old land rivers,
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: they have a spare tire typically on the hood, and
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: so we put our big pot inside the spare tire
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: and put all of our cooking utensils into the pot.
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: And we had one of those little front runner tables
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: that kind of clips onto a spare tire, and we
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: clipped that on top, and that was our whole cooking
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: and eating and camping set up. It was right right
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: there in the spare tire. Was really cool.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: What kinds of meals were you cooking on the road?
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: Do you have any go tos? Or was it a
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: little bit of everything?
• 35:11
  Speaker 4: It really was whatever we could find because we didn't
• 35:14
  Speaker 4: have a fridge.
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: We had like a soft hole yeah six six six can.
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: We had a we had a little tiny the cooler
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: that you take to the park for lunch, right like
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: it literally was the size of a six pack and
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: uh and soft sided, and and you know, because the
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: truck was full, it wasn't room for anything else, and
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: so we had this little tiny cooler. It would keep
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: things cool for a couple of hours, really not really,
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: and so we just we just lived off the land
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: as we went along. We did we just every day
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: we would stop and buy food as we traveled, and
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: that was actually kind of cool because it forced us
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: to eat whatever the locals were eating where we were.
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: And we would be in some little village in Turkey
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: or Greece or somewhere, and you didn't even know, like
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: there was nothing in the town that looked like a market.
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: You might have to go to and then just you.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: Know, yeah, or I mean, like I remember one town
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: in I ran somewhere and we were out in the
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: middle of nowhere in the desert, and there's like little houses.
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: It looked like maybe there's twenty houses here, and I'm like, well,
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: surely somebody must have food here, like these people eat obviously,
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: And you know, used Google Translate, which I think in
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: those days it was so called babblefish, but the little
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: translation program, and asked somebody work and I buy food,
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: And they pointed to a house, and I went and
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: knocked in the house, and I used to again Google
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: Translate on my phone. I said, do you sell food?
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: And they're like yes, and it went in and and
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: like you know, one of the rooms in the house
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: was set up as a little shop and they had
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: some staples, had some canned food. They some beans and things,
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: danced some little bags of rice and some random dried
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: mystery meats and some dates and things like that, and
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: we bought some food and off we went. But yeah,
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: it was it was interesting because we never would have
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: we never would have had those experiences if we just
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: had a fridge and we just packed a bunch of
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: food and we're like, Okay, we're good, We're good for
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: the next week. We don't need to speak to anybody, right,
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: we can be self contained. By not having that, it
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: forced us to interact with people even when we were
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: outside of our comfort zone, and their comfort zones expanded
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: pretty rapidly.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: You had some weather during this trip.
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: It sounds like, yeah, we when we got to Europe,
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: the truck was delayed, so then we when we went
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: into the mountains and stuff. It was much later in
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: the year, in the season that we had planned for.
• 37:37
  Speaker 4: Well, your experienced winter earlier that ye twenty fifteen.
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: I remember we were camping outside London and.
• 37:46
  Speaker 4: It was September and it was like two degrees celsius
• 37:50
  Speaker 4: and I remember face timing probably at that time it
• 37:53
  Speaker 4: was like what was that?
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: I can't remember, but one of my boys teaches.
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: Liam and I were.
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: Like huddled with you know, blankets over us and trying
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: to talk about I don't know what English or something.
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: But then, I mean, there was a lot of rain.
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: There was a lot of rain, and.
• 38:13
  Speaker 4: Uh, when we crossed into France, took the ferry across
• 38:17
  Speaker 4: and we got off the ferry end. It was so
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: cold and the wind was blowing so hot, and then
• 38:23
  Speaker 4: there was this little hole where I where my feet went.
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: Oh that's right, yeah, because at some point to cover it. Yeah,
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: and look, the wind was.
• 38:32
  Speaker 4: Just blowing in and we had to keep moving. So
• 38:35
  Speaker 4: I had to take my bag and I had to
• 38:37
  Speaker 4: shove it up the hole and put my feet there
• 38:39
  Speaker 4: to just stop the wind from coming in.
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: That's right. I had forgotten about that. Somebody had cut
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: a hole in the bulkhead to put it in like
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: an auxiliary heater or something. At one point the heater
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: was no longer there, but the hole was still there,
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: and so Marian was exposed to the elephant elements as
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: are driving down the highway. I think eventually I just
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: put some duct tape over it or something.
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: We made the decision not to go to Paris, to
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: just skip Paris.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and just head south.
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, which was.
• 39:08
  Speaker 4: A very good decision because we figured, you know, if
• 39:12
  Speaker 4: we want to see Paris, we can always fly to Paris.
• 39:15
  Speaker 4: That's so easy to do, yeah, but everywhere else in
• 39:17
  Speaker 4: France that requires a little bit more.
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: So we were just going to go.
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah. That was awesome, Actually we were. We We spent
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: quite a bit of time exploring France and like the
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: Lower Valley and some of the amazing chateaus and castles
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: and that of thing. And then we went down to Avignon,
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: which was very cool, and then Nice and yeah, we
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: have a good friend, Patrese. Patrese has been a long
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: time contributor to Expedition Portal. He used to have an
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: overland import business in Europe. We went to visit Patrise.
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: He now runs a business in Nice called Nice Caravans.
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: Caravans are basically what they call motorhomes right in Europe,
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: and so he's got this big RV dealership and so
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: we went to visit him. He had a mechanic there
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: who helped us do some work on our truck, which
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: was kind of a consistent story, stop everywhere find a mechanic.
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: But he also let us camp in some of these
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: fancy new RVs in the lot while we were there,
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: and so we used Nice as a little base. We
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: spent about a week there just exploring around kind of
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: southern France and going into Monte Carlo and the type
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: of thing, and it was really cool. Yeah, great experience,
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: and then we had to leave. Yeah, we said that
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: Monte Carlo was the only country Harmonico was the only
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: country that the series one didn't break down.
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: In, and then Turkey was like winter did you say
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: minus seventeen celsius minus eighteen?
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, from Europe, we went down through Italy and
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: we took a ferry over to Greece and we kind
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: of island hopped through Greece, and then from Greece to
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: Turkey we took another little ferry. In of course, at
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: that time there was thousands of Syrian refugees fleeing in
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: the opposite direction, so that was really interesting kind of
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: seeing and meeting all these refugees as they were traveling
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: in the in the opposite direction of where we were going.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: And then we got into Turkey itself, spent some time
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: in the south of Turkey, which is really pretty went
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: up to Istanbul, did some truck mods met some really
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: fun land over people and then we crossed into Iran
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: at doug bayz It, which is a little small, small
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: border town, northern border crossing, and it's in the mountains
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: and it's right literally beside Mount Ararat, right, we passed
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: that way, and yeah, where the Arc of the Covenant
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: was supposed to have. You know, anyway, if you if
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: you follow your Bible references from Sunday School when you're
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: a little kid, you'd probably still know the name. But anyway,
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: so we crossed there. It was absolutely freezing, like I said,
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: eighteen below. The night. We got a little hotel close
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: to the border so we'd be up and early ready
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: to go. And also we weren't really prepared for sleeping
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: in minus eighteen outside in our tent. Right got up
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: in the morning, everything's covered in snow and the truck
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: won't start because you know, it's just you know, this
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: old engine. It leaks so much oil that I was
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: running pretty thick oil in it and it didn't like
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: the cold, and I didn't want to kill my battery
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: trying to crank it over. And I said to a
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: guy in the hotel, I said, hey, can you you know,
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: is there a tow truck or somebody that you know
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: has a vehicle that maybe I can hook my jumper
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: cables up to and I can slowly crank the engine
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: over until it loosens the oil up enough that it'll fire.
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: And he goes, oh, yeah, no problem. You go in
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: and have some breakfast and we'll take care of it.
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: And so we were sitting there having some breakfast. I
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: think breakfast consisted of hard boiled eggs and slice cucumbers,
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: and it's why we're there enjoying our cucumber slices. And
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: Marian's looking out the window. I'm sitting with my back
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: to the window, and she goes, I think somebody's building
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: a fire under our truck. And I'm like what. And
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: so they went out to see what was going on.
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: They had understood the problem, but they didn't quite understand
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: the solution I was asking for. And they were like, oh, yeah, yeah, well,
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: the engine's really cold. We'll just build a fire under
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: the engine. It'll warm it up. And I said, no,
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: you don't understand. This is an old land rover and
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: it's leaking fuel and oil continuously. If you build a
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: fire underneath this engine, the whole truck is just going
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: to go kaboom. So what we ended up doing is
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: they started bringing out teapots from the kitchen, a little
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: chain of teapots coming out and with kettles, yeah, and
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: were pouring this almost boiling water like hot water over
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: the block to warm up the oil inside, because the
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: block was just basically a giant heat sink, right, And
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: so we poured enough water over this thing that there
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: was a skating rink underneath the truck. But eventually the
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: engine was warm enough that it turned over on its
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: own and started and off we went. Just another morning
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: on our trip. Yeah, and then we drove to the
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: border and the water was insane just trying to get
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: across that border. There's no way you'd ever get across
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: the border without using a fixer. Then we found a
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: great fixture and he that's a whole story, that's a
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: whole episode in itself, just talking about that one border crossing.
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: But but yeah, that that's got us into Iran, and
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: it ran was really pretty super friendly cold up in
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: the north, but when we got we got down to
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: the south. We're in Iran for about a month down
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: on the southern coast before Christmas. Yeah. Yeah, so we
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: got there just before Christmas. Yeah, under robus was nice
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: and warm. Its kind of interesting little port, something you'd
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: imagine from an old Indiana Jones movie. Right. Yeah.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: That's in the southern, very southern part of Iran and
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: that boat takes you into the u A.
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah sure, and that was an interesting trip.
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: Oh my goodness. So there's sanctions against Iran at the time,
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: so they couldn't get spare parts for their vehicles. And
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: the ferry that normally crossed the Gulf, and it's a
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: pretty big crossing, right, it's like a it's a yeah,
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: it's like what eight or ten hours or something like that, right,
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: the crossing time typically, so that you know, it's kind
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: of an ocean going ferry, like a big ferry, except
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: that the ferry had broken down. They couldn't get parts,
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: and so they had this little tiny faerry that just
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: typically runs like a half hour trip over to these
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: local islands, and they said, oh, we'll just take this
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: across the Gulf and tiny little ferry can flat bottom
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: And we got out there into the middle of the
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: Golf and this big storm came up and this boat
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: is pitching all over the place. Everything was covered in
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: salt because like the spray is breaking over the boat,
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: and then everything was like the truck you know, all
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: the trucks were just covered in a sheen of salt.
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: It was amazing. Actually it looked really cool, but probably
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: not very good for them. But that's right when they
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: were trying to get onto that boat. By the time
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: we reached Sharjah, I mean, the boat was just basically
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: encrusted in salt and vomit from everybody on the boat. Yeah,
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: it was an adventure Christmas, yeah and bye and then
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: that was fun. We met some really cool people there,
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: lots of land over fans. Met one guy who took
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: us out to show his collection of land rovers and
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: ended up driving into Aman with him, annoyingly across the
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: border in the desert. From there we went to India
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: and that was struck in India, Oh my goodness. Yeah.
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: Shipping is the I mean, anybody who's done a lot
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: of overland travel will tell you the worst part of
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: any overland trip is anytime you put your truck on
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: a boat.
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: It's like the most worth it, but also a headache, headache.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: Where were you shipping the vehicle?
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: Like how we were shipping from Dubai to Mumbai in India.
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: We did that because I didn't want to take the
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: kids through Pakistan, Southern Pakistan. At the time. It wasn't
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: that it was very violent. It was just said it
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: was unpredictable.
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: You have to cross the.
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: There was an incident on the side went off.
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean if military escort.
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: It seems indulgent for me. That's what I think.
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: You know, to have the escort, Yeah, yeah, but yeah, yeah,
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: not only that, but I mean people who had done
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: the trip that we spoke to you said you the
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: escort was not going to add any value. If you're
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: driving along and some bandits came along, the escort is
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: just gonna run away anyway. But yeah, so there was
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: a there's a lot of uncertainty along that route, so
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: we decided to just ship around there. So that's why
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: we went down to Dubai and then up into Mumbai.
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: But then we had to fly to New Delhi because
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: we had to go to the Me and Maar embassy
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: to get our visas. Oh, yes, that's true, and so
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: we were in we were in New Delhi without our
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: truck and then we had to go right, and then
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: we traveled down to Mumbai picked up our truck again,
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: which was late. The timing on our visa for the
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: border crossing into Me and mar was fixed. We had
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: a cross on a certain.
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: Day, right.
• 47:59
  Speaker 6: And in India, Yeah, And India is a pretty big
• 48:03
  Speaker 6: country and the roads aren't very good, especially when you
• 48:07
  Speaker 6: get yeah multiple times.
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: But yeah, so then we had to basically race across
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: India in this truck and.
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: You're like, I'm racing it. How many kilometers an hour
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: across India?
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, very long days and.
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: Stressful because literally collapsed.
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: Right oh yeah, the roof mountains collapsed. But that was
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: when we were in Yeah, that was in Naga Lands
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: and but I think that was from those Indian highways.
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: We couldn't open to the roof and then we could
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: open the.
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: Door, right, yeah, yeah, I mean it was brutal. The
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: roads in India were just so bad. And I mean
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: if you've if you've done any travel in India, you
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: think it's pretty bad in the cities. The cities are
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: pretty terrible, but when you get into the countryside, I mean,
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: the highways just deteriorate and you'll have you know, you'll
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: have a nice, big four lane highway and you're driving
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: along at a good clip and then you're like, what
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: is that across the road? Is that like a strip
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: of paint or something? And you always slow down because
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: you don't know what it is. I mean, one time
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: we're driving along the highway and somebody had dug a
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: trench across the highway like they were going to put
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: a pipe in or something. So they dug like a
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: two foot wide, three foot deep trench right across the
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: highway and then just left it and like, if you
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: hit it at full speed, like you'd be dead. And
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: that kind of stuff was everywhere, or you'd be just
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: driving down the road like and if you're driving at
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: night in India, it was brutal because you'd have you know,
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: people would drive the wrong way down the highway all
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: the time because it was more convenient for them to
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: just drive on the wrong side of the highway rather
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: than go up to the exit that they needed. And
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: at night, they would drive with no headlights because they're
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: trying to save diesel fuel. And so you'd be driving
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: along at night in the fog and suddenly a dump
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: trunk with no headlights comes out of the fog. Heading
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: right for you, right, it was. It was terrifying. It
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: wasn't boring, that's for sure. It was stressful. Yeah. So
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: eventually we crossed into Nagaland and then into me and
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: mar and we made our border crossing, like got to
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: the border of the day before our visa expired.
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: Do you remember when the ignition wouldn't work. This was
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: just like the day before between India and me and
• 50:15
  Speaker 3: MOP and the ignition wouldn't work. So you hot wired it.
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: Well, that's right, But that meant that.
• 50:20
  Speaker 4: We couldn't stop the vehicle until we reached our destination.
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, because the starter failed, the starter switch failed,
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: the ignition switch failed, and so I just wired it
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: direct because I didn't have any parts with me, and so,
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: you know, hot wired it got the truck running, but
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: I mean, the only way to turn it off would
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: be to pull the wires back out. We just let
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: the truck run all day until we got there. And
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: I think at some point I found a button. I
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: wired a button up as a starter switch. But yeah,
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: it was was an effort. Forgotten about that.
• 50:51
  Speaker 4: Actually, we were sometimes we were lucky that we made
• 50:54
  Speaker 4: it into the city and then we'd have to find
• 50:57
  Speaker 4: a place that sold car parts.
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: Right, Oh, yeah, there's always something breaking.
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: Down, like spark plugs and batches.
• 51:05
  Speaker 4: What was that piece of I can't remember what cop
• 51:09
  Speaker 4: pot that was that kept failing, and we kept buying
• 51:12
  Speaker 4: it a new one, and every town we always had
• 51:14
  Speaker 4: a spare I can't remember what it was.
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of those, that's true. But yeah, we
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: went through a lot of spark plugs. So you know
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: the truck was I mean that it was so old, right,
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: and I mean we got it running, but we didn't
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: refurbish it. Right. The rings were all broken, right, Piston
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: rings were all broken in three or four places each,
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: and so as you'd be running, it would be contaminating
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: the spark plugs, and spark plugs would get covered in
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: oil and then they would eventually fail. So we're always
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: swapping plugs out and cleaning them and drying them and
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: swapping them back in. Because the rings were gone, the
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: engine would build up too much pressure in the crank
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: case and it eventually blew the main seal out of
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: the back of the engine as we were climbing into
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: the MLA. As we're going up into their glingk So
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: we had to some guy to help us machine and overseal,
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: and he cut a leather seal out of an old
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: Girkha army hat and packed that in to hold it
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: in place. That's still in the engine, and that kept
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: us going. The truck literally broke down every day, and
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: every day something would break on that truck, and we
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: got really good at pulling this truck apart, fixing things,
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: putting it back together, and the kids just kind of
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: got used to it. It'd be like, Okay, this is
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: a typical day. You get up in the morning, you
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: drive until the truck breaks, You spend a few hours
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: fixing the truck, and then you drive until it's dark
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: and hopefully you arrived somewhere where you could camp.
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: Do you guys have like a special capacity for type
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: too fun? Or would you have changed anything about this
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: the way that this trip went? Like, what was when
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: you're breaking her down every day? How did you like,
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: where did the resiliency come from? I guess I'm wondering, like,
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: and there must have been patients involved, and no, not.
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: Really there was a lot of frustration, but I think
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: the thing was at one point I I said fairly
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: early on, look, if this truck I mean, it's not
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: a very expensive truck, right, it's like three hundred dollars.
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: If it dies like dies dies and I can't get
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: running again, fine, I'll just take the license plates off
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: it and I'll just leave it. I'll just abandon it
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: on the side of the road and we'll just hitchhike.
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: We'll just take a bus to the next city.
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: And so there was always that in the back of
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: my head. If this truck ever completely dies on me,
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: that's it. I'm just I'm not going to worry about it.
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: And that took a certain level of stress away from me.
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: It was like, I'm quite happy to abandon this vehicle
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: if I have to. And I think, you know, for
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: a lot of Overlanders, that's not an option, right because
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: they have a lot of money invested in the vehicle, right,
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: the vehicle is their home. But for us to be
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: able to say, look, if I get frustrated to a
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: certain point, I'm just going to walk away from this thing,
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: that kind of I think took a lot of stress away.
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: But the truck never actually died completely. It would sort
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: of die, yeah.
• 53:55
  Speaker 7: You know, it never completely gave up the ghost, you know. Yeah,
• 54:01
  Speaker 7: it's stuttered and puttered and failed and knock, Oh my goodness,
• 54:08
  Speaker 7: what's going to happen now? It always came back to life,
• 54:11
  Speaker 7: and it always got us to the next town, and
• 54:14
  Speaker 7: it just it just it never all the little issues
• 54:17
  Speaker 7: we had. We never got stranded. It never we never
• 54:21
  Speaker 7: had to get towed or rescued. We always were able
• 54:24
  Speaker 7: to get it running again and get it to the
• 54:25
  Speaker 7: next town.
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: And it made it all the way back to Singapore.
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: So and then we from Singapore, we shipped it back
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: home here and and you know, it was fine.
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: So do you still have it?
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: I still have it. Yeah. I eventually took the engine
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: out and sent it to an engine rebuilder, and I
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: asked him to kind of refurbish it. And he took
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: it apart and he called me up on the phone.
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: He was laughing at me. He said, Ray, I've I've
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: never seen an engine in such bad condition that still ran.
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: Because I had said, like, take it apart and go
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: through and make a list of all the parts that
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: we need to replace, and you know, I'll order the
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: parts and we'll do some machining and we'll rebuild the engine,
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: the original engine. And he said, I need everything. He said,
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: every single part that you can order for this engine
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: I need, he said, every single thing, and this is
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: worn out. He said, the camshaft is completely smooth. He says,
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: I don't even know how it runs anymore. Says the
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: loves are completely worn off. He said, every piston ring
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: has broken in three or four places. He's like, and
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: he just went through every single component, and he said,
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: this component is worn to the point where the engine
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: shouldn't run. And this component is worn to the point
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: where the engine shouldn't run, and this component is worn
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: to the point where the engine shouldn't run. And guess what,
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: the engine is still running. So, yeah, it was amazing.
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: You were talking a little bit about how this is
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: like playing I wouldn't say Devil's Advocate, but taking inexpensive
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: old vehicle I think obviously has its pros and its cons,
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: but some of the pros really regarding budget on this trip,
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: in terms of Carney spending in parts along the way,
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: you were saying something about that.
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Marian and said to me one time while we're
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: driving right about, I'm so glad we didn't restore this
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: before we left, because it's so much cheaper to do
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: it on the road. Because cheap mechanics, cheap parts, you know,
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: as you're traveling through Asia and Europe and.
• 56:01
  Speaker 3: You gave us that worldwide restoration.
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: Right, be it was mechanic we met in India or
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: in the Istanbul. Yeah that was funny, but yeah, I
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: think you know that, Like like you said, the carne
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: was really cheap because the cost of the truck was
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: really cheap, right. And then the other fun thing was
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: I mean it was a classic old land drover. So
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: everywhere we would go, I mean, like you'd see people
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: would show up in a one hundred and fifty thousand
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: dollars decked out gee wagon or sprinter van or whatever.
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: You We had guys showing up with unimogs and stuff
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: right on some of these overlanding destinations. And we'd roll
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: up in this terrible little truck and everybody wanted to
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: come and see the truck. Everybody wanted everybody thought was
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: really cool. We'd roll into a town and everybody would
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: come out. We stopped at a traffic round about, traffic
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: circle in Tehran, I think take some pictures, and a
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: cab driver pulled up behind us. He got out and
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: it came up to talk to us, and he offered
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: to share his breakfast with us because he thought we
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: must be so poor because we drove such a terrible
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: old vehicle, we must be so poor that we couldn't
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: afford our own food. So he offered to share his
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: breakfast with us, which is the sweetest thing. But it
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: was pretty funny. So that tells you just how good
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: the truck looked.
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah, classic land Rover.
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: Right, no paint. The little bit of paint that was
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: on the truck was in multiple colors, and yeah, but
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: most of it was just fare better to aluminum.
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: What did you learn from this trip? Was the lesson?
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: Was there anything that you took away? Or were you
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: just like, wow, that was really hard, really rewarding.
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: I think the biggest lesson, when I hope the kids
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: also took away, was that you know, you'll figure it out, right, like, Okay,
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: everything's going wrong. It's okay, everything's going wrong, You'll figure
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: it out. We'll just figure it out. We'll figure out
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: what we need to do. Okay, this may not be
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: the plan, but this is what we're doing now. And
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: don't get too hung up on the fact that everything's
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: going wrong, because things go.
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: Wrong happen and then you work through it and I'm
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: assuming build confidence because you keep figuring it out.
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, everything will go wrong and you fix that
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: problem and everything will go wrong again tomorrow, but tomorrow
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: will be a different problem.
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: So was that the same for you very well? Or
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: I think?
• 58:16
  Speaker 4: I think meeting so many people who were just kind, generous,
• 58:21
  Speaker 4: wanting to help that probably was the most significant thing.
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: Every single person that we met, from every single culture
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: and every single socio economic division in society. Every single
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: person we wanted to help. They wanted to be helpful.
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: They wanted to see what they could do. Wow, that's cool.
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: Where you're going, Why are you doing that? Doesn't make
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: any sense? Can help you? Right? I mean it was,
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: it was awesome.
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: I always take this from Scott Brady or I figure
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: out my own question. But today, because we were looking
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: through your collection of books last night and it is great.
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: What is your favorite book? And why?
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: For me? It's A Short Walk in the Hindukush by
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: Eric And it was because it's the story of a
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: guy who decides to drive overland in an old station
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: wagon in the fifties from London to Afghanistan and climb
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: a mountain and he's never traveled overland before, and he's
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: never climbed a mountain before, and everything that could potentially
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: go wrong on a strip went wrong and he still
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: had a great time.
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: Sounds familiar, I think probably mine children.
• 59:30
  Speaker 4: I think it just captured me right from the beginning,
• 59:34
  Speaker 4: right to the end. Just that's what a good story is.
• 59:37
  Speaker 4: Just catches you and it takes you along all the
• 59:40
  Speaker 4: way to the end.
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you, I'm welcome your story has captured me today.
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: It brought me all the way to then, and I'm
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: sure the listeners as well. So thank you guys so
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: much for taking the time. Thank you to chat with me.
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: It's been wonderful. I feel like we barely scratched the surface.
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: So we'll have to definitely get to together again and
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: do another podcast at some point, and we can talk
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: about all the other stories that you have from that trip.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: So yeah, how to meet friendly mechanics and every place
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: that you stop, how to get through random border crossings.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: So yeah, we had a lot of fun on that trip,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: but there's a lot of stuff we learned there that
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: we never expected. So but yeah, yeah, definitely stories for
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: another day.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: Yes, I look forward to it. Thank you guys. So much.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: Thank you, and thank you to the listeners for tuning
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: in to this episode of the Overla and Journal podcast.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: And yeah, we'll catch you next time on the next episode.