Latest / The Overland Journal Podcast / Exploring the World in a Land Rover Defender: Yak Overland's Epic Journey

Transcript

Exploring the World in a Land Rover Defender: Yak Overland's Epic Journey · The Overland Journal Podcast

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Overland Journal podcast. I am
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: your host, Scott Brady, and I am here with my
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: illustrious co host who also has two first names, Matt Scott,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: I actually have three, and I believe you also have
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: a degree, Yes, Scott Alan Brady.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: So we're the three first name crew here prime for
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: a Republican Party ticket.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: And we know that we're soon to be replaced by
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: David and Ellie as the podcast host.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: They're just too nice.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: They're not only nice, but they have We had to
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: turn down the charm on their accents a little bit
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: so that you all didn't fire us immediately upon the
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: completion of this podcast. But they're also incredibly well traveled
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: and they're traveling around the world in a land Rover Defender,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: so they are clearly very brave as well. We're super
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: excited to have them on the podcast today to talk
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: about your journeys.
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: So thanks for being with us, Thanks very much for
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: having us.
• 0:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah, real pleasure to.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Be Yeah, absolutely, and a special thanks TOX for supporting
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: this week's podcast. Are you tired of searching for a
• 1:05
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• 1:10
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• 1:27
  Speaker 1: Download on X off Road today and find your own space.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Thanks again on X. And we are all at the
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Big Thing here in Montana. So I'm going to deviate
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: from how we normally do things, which is talking about
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: your childhood or something like that. We're going to talk
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: about the event for a few minutes. What did you
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: guys think of the Big Thing? What do you think
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: went well, What do you think could be improved? What
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: was your overall take on the event, the experience.
• 1:57
  Speaker 4: It's been incredible for us. We haven't actually been in
• 1:59
  Speaker 4: the States for very long, so it's been quite a
• 2:02
  Speaker 4: whirlwind so far. But I think the thing that really
• 2:05
  Speaker 4: stood out for us was just the community feel. I mean,
• 2:09
  Speaker 4: we don't have so many big kind of overland events
• 2:12
  Speaker 4: like this back in the UK. But I think it
• 2:15
  Speaker 4: was just such a good size, Like.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: It's a really good size.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think about seven hundred people, probably seven hundred
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: and fifty people.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but it was like still small enough to feel
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: like I don't know if intimate is the word, but
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: like you could talk to people, you can make friends.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: Like these kids running around with like those little frozen
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: what otter pops, just the ones you cut the top
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: off you had as a kid. You know, there's kids
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: handing those out, and there's waters and there's all these
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: nice little touches that were really definitely yeah, and obviously
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: like we're affiliated, but that's just like me, like like
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: I had a really great time.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: And that's why you guys can say what you like
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: and what you don't like. We were genuinely curious and
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: I'm sure the audiences do so.
• 2:54
  Speaker 5: I think, like you're saying, back in the UK, we
• 2:58
  Speaker 5: have kind of small landover and then and everyone feels
• 3:01
  Speaker 5: like a bit of a community and with the family
• 3:03
  Speaker 5: is quite quite a thing. And I know you guys
• 3:05
  Speaker 5: have these big over land events in the in the
• 3:07
  Speaker 5: States and this, yeah, this feels pretty different. Not that
• 3:10
  Speaker 5: we've been to them, but yeah, just people.
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: Stop being oh, what you're doing here, what you're driving.
• 3:14
  Speaker 5: Where have you come from, and to have that kind
• 3:17
  Speaker 5: of level of oh, I don't know you, but I
• 3:19
  Speaker 5: want to I want to get to know that's that
• 3:20
  Speaker 5: was really cool to experience.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: And it seems as if a lot of the people
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: that are here aspire to do what you two are doing.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: So the fact that they get to chat with you,
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: learn about your experience, be inspired by what you two
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: are doing.
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: I think that that's really special.
• 3:34
  Speaker 4: Too, So thank you. Yeah, I mean we've been super inspired.
• 3:39
  Speaker 4: We feel really kind of pumped to get back out there.
• 3:42
  Speaker 4: I think after this, after hearing everyone else's stories, and
• 3:46
  Speaker 4: especially yeah, after hearing you Scott last night, and obviously
• 3:49
  Speaker 4: Patty Upton was super.
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: Instruction, incredible, incredible.
• 3:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I definitely shed a few tiers towards the end.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: I did too.
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: I did too.
• 3:58
  Speaker 5: Yeah, And I think for us, obviously we've been traveling
• 4:00
  Speaker 5: on there, we've been on the road for nine months,
• 4:02
  Speaker 5: and you get elements where I kind of want to
• 4:04
  Speaker 5: be back home at the moment, and yeah, com into
• 4:06
  Speaker 5: something like this just really reinvigorates.
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: That want to get out there. And yeah, something as
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: extremes what Patty did you. I want a bit of that.
• 4:14
  Speaker 5: I want to get out of the comfort and yeah,
• 4:16
  Speaker 5: I mean we see, I can't see what we do
• 4:18
  Speaker 5: is was pretty luxurious. You know, we've got a roof
• 4:20
  Speaker 5: turn with a mattress. Patty was just sleeping in there.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: Don't you not have air conditioning? No air conditioning, but
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: very luxurious.
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: Little vents that.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: Open on the front.
• 4:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we feel like we've gone soft because we've got
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: a fridge and a diesel heater now, and for our
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: previous trip to Central Asia we didn't have any of that.
• 4:40
  Speaker 4: So I feel like we've gone soft.
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: The fridge. The fridge is fair. I mean, it's nice.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: You've definitely gone soft. I'm the hard boy here.
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: Me too, Me too.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, But I mean think about when Patty did that trip,
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: no GPS, no sat phone. You know, you probably they
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: probably did have radios, but communication could take weeks or months.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: They sometimes they didn't know how each other was doing
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: when she was off getting parts and trying to get
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: him back to the car. I mean, incredible to think
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: about in today's day, where you know, I've got six
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: ways to communicate via satellite or radio or any other
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: number of things. I mean, it's just like my trips
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: are so much easier than what they went through. Or
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: you think about Tom Shepherd from the UK, you know
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: that crossed the Sahara in the sixties, again with no GPS,
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: using a sex stint, using a sun compass, you know,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: communicating only by radio. Just really impressive what those early
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: journeys were all about.
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: The real deal for sure. Yeah, that's next level.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's just so many travelers here, like legit ones.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: Like it was cool, like I was chatting with Graham Jackson,
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: you know, and he did his Africa trip early two thousands,
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: and it's like internet cafe kind of information, right, Like,
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: so you had everything from like Patty Upton to kind
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: of like these early two thousands trips to obviously everything
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: that like ex Oberlin's doing, you know, with their modern
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: exhibitions and like just everything in between. You know, it
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: really felt to me kind of like those early days
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: of over the Expo. And that's definitely like a feeling
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: that I have been searching for a long time. It's
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: you know, that event people kind of on it, but
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: it's been a big part of my life, and I
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: think people feel so passionately about that show because like
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: it really changed. But this feels like kind of like
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: this breath of fresh air in the space, like everyone
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: was happy. It was just a great group of people,
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: and I know they don't want it to be too huge,
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: and it was great. I mean, it was pretty much
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: hat capacity this year for what they wanted to do.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: I think so, and it'll it'll increase in size slightly,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: but I think the key is to keep it curated,
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: you know what. I My takeaway was it really felt like,
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: you know, like the stability that you get out of
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: a tripod where you have thirty percent of the event
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: feeling very community focused, thirty percent of the event feeling
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: very training and education focused, and then about thirty percent
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: of the event feeling a little more commercial where there's
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: vendors here and they're talking about their product and they're
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: also training people on the proper use of their product.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: So it felt like it was pretty balanced. I mean,
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: the Overland Expos are essential for the capture because it's
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: a collection point of, for example.
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: All of the trailers or all of the campers.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: So someone who's getting ready to make a half a
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: million dollar purchase, they can go to one spot and
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: experience all the different products. And I'm so grateful that
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: the Overland Expos exists, but I'm also really grateful that
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: this is all.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: I think it's a it's a sign of a really
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: healthy industry, you know, like you said, like there has
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: to be those overland expos and I think it's a
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: really really good sign that this little world can support
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: that and it can support this, yeah, for sure, because
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: that allows I don't want to say that takes some
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: of the pressure off of Overland Expo to be this
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: like community type thing. I mean, it's kind of going
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: its own direction, but our world also needs that, you know,
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: particularly in the US, Like it's it's maybe a little
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: more commercial than the UK, and you know, this kind
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: of international overland scene. But yeah, I think it's Yeah, I.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: Think of the difference. Overland Expo they are professional event organizers.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah X Overland Ranch, we are professional storytellers.
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: For sure.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: It's a completely different experience just because of the nature
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: of the skills of the people who are putting on
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: the two events. So it's it's understandable that it would
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: feel so different and there would be a lot of
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: storytelling here and a lot of inspiration and a lot
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: of those visual considerations about how something feels.
• 8:49
  Speaker 5: And what I think what I've really loved is, you know,
• 8:51
  Speaker 5: you've got the real simple bils like Patiatons, just a
• 8:55
  Speaker 5: jeep get out. I do it, and then you've got
• 8:57
  Speaker 5: these really awesome builds, right, you can live up with
• 9:00
  Speaker 5: your vehicle quite comfortably.
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: And then there's just everything in between, everything in between.
• 9:04
  Speaker 5: And so for people who come looking for a little something,
• 9:07
  Speaker 5: a little bit of inspiration of this or a bit
• 9:08
  Speaker 5: of that, there is everything for them to see on
• 9:10
  Speaker 5: a really nice scale where they can actually just talk
• 9:13
  Speaker 5: to a person and.
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: Say, oh, how did you do that?
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: What do you do here?
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: And yeah, that's what I thought.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: Well, let's maybe pivot to that a little bit around
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: you guys. You guys told us about the vehicle you
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: chose to take around the world. Why did you pick
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: the vehicle that you picked, and what are some of
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: the things that you've done to it that you most appreciate.
• 9:30
  Speaker 4: We've We've got a Landrover Defender one ten with a
• 9:33
  Speaker 4: three hundred t DII engine. Perfect. It's nineteen ninety seven.
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: Last year the three hundred, isn't it?
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: I think?
• 9:40
  Speaker 5: So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, younger than us.
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: That's so funny.
• 9:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you can talk more about who You're very passionate
• 9:50
  Speaker 4: about the three hundred TDI aren't you? I am.
• 9:53
  Speaker 5: It's a good choice, I think, And I said this
• 9:55
  Speaker 5: in our talk, it's for me, the perfect overlanding engine.
• 9:59
  Speaker 4: That's so not if you want power, if.
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: You want, but which you usually don't.
• 10:03
  Speaker 5: Standard diesel engine that just sort of there's no ECU.
• 10:07
  Speaker 5: It's got the starter most and that's pretty much the
• 10:09
  Speaker 5: only electronic thing on it.
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: You can run it off vegetable oil pretty much.
• 10:13
  Speaker 5: We've put a lot of very questionable different qualities of
• 10:17
  Speaker 5: diesel and it's just it's just chugged on. And I
• 10:19
  Speaker 5: mean Ellie's childhood parents both had Landrover's series Landrovers one
• 10:24
  Speaker 5: tens all through their early marriage, and then when you
• 10:28
  Speaker 5: were maybe seven, they got their first three D I
• 10:32
  Speaker 5: won ten. So we're slightly indoctrinated.
• 10:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you could say I've been brainwashed from me.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: Fair enough, fair enough, me too, Me too. Animal trophies
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: were brainwashed me exact.
• 10:43
  Speaker 4: I'm just going to say I grew up on those,
• 10:45
  Speaker 4: absolutely love those, and just sort of how incredibly capable
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: they were also when they're quite stock as well, pretty
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: much just as they come out of the factory, which
• 10:52
  Speaker 4: is pretty cool.
• 10:54
  Speaker 5: I agree, And that always really surprises me what our
• 10:57
  Speaker 5: Landrover can do. We took it around that course and
• 10:59
  Speaker 5: I slot kind of the side of the articulation.
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: Of the tech course.
• 11:01
  Speaker 5: We're not getting through that, but with kind of the instructors.
• 11:04
  Speaker 5: You know, I tried my first bit of left foot
• 11:05
  Speaker 5: breaking and nice, I can't believe I'm getting through this
• 11:08
  Speaker 5: and looking kind of the mama looking at the weird
• 11:09
  Speaker 5: up in the weird house.
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: Is that that's cool?
• 11:11
  Speaker 5: And yeah, so they're just so capable without you rear lockers,
• 11:14
  Speaker 5: front lockers.
• 11:15
  Speaker 4: That's pretty cool. And I think one of the main
• 11:16
  Speaker 4: things for us in choosing it was just there's hardly
• 11:20
  Speaker 4: any electrics, which isn't very common nowadays. But you know,
• 11:23
  Speaker 4: when you're out in the bush, when you're out in
• 11:25
  Speaker 4: remote places and something goes wrong, it's usually pretty simple
• 11:29
  Speaker 4: to fix. And neither of us were very mechanically minded
• 11:33
  Speaker 4: when we set out on the last trip. It's kind
• 11:34
  Speaker 4: of turned you into a mechanic a little bit.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: Don't Leanda. Rivers do have that effect.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you get good at taking care of it, and
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: we'll take care of you, absolutely will. Now, Elliott, I
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: heard you talk a little bit about your early travels.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: Talk about some of your early trips.
• 11:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, growing up, we were really best as
• 11:52
  Speaker 4: a family because my parents both worked in a school
• 11:55
  Speaker 4: for most of my childhood, and that meant we had
• 11:57
  Speaker 4: really nice long summer holidays. I would usually spend kind
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: of four or five weeks going off around Europe because
• 12:04
  Speaker 4: that's obviously super accessible for us where we are. We
• 12:08
  Speaker 4: did an expedition to Iceland that was over about five
• 12:11
  Speaker 4: weeks with five land rovers. I think that was just amazing,
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: amazing experience as a youngster. Yeah, I think it really
• 12:18
  Speaker 4: kind of shapes you. And yeah, I just kind of
• 12:20
  Speaker 4: caught the barg I guess and knew I wanted to
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: go off and do my own stuff when I was ordered.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: Oh amazing. I just think your truck's so freaking cool. Yeah,
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: I mean a white lane. It's got the simple roof
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: rock on it too. Yeah, and it's not really lifted.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: It doesn't really have much going on. There's no tinted windows.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: Like I followed you guys on Instagram for a while
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: and I saw the kind of saw you driving by,
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: and I'm like, man, that truck's just like a daydream.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: It's so pure, it's so pure.
• 12:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we've tried to keep it as stock as possible.
• 12:50
  Speaker 4: We really do like that classic look and it was
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: kind of Safari vibes and white, which we really liked. Yeah.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: On the other advantage of that, your photos will look
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: cool forty years from now, Like if you're driving, like
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: even like the vehicle we're testing right now, a Ford
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: Expedition tremor super Capable rear Locker thirty three, all the things,
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: forty years from now, those photos will not look cool.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: It's gonna be like those old photos where you see
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: like a like like an Oldsmobile from like the seventies
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: or eighties, and you're like, oh, that's unfortunate. Yeah, and
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: it's the style will so change.
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: It'll this style will change, you know it.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: You know, just like a modern range Rover won't look
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: great forty years from now, whereas a range Rover Classic
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: one hundred years from now it'll still be worthy of
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: going back into the loop.
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: And in my mind, that's the key to a Defender
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: one ten.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: Don't put all the stickers on it, don't put the
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: fancy wheels on it, because it'll date the car, it'll
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: date the photograph. Whereas your photos, if you did a
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: little treatment on them, like a polaroid, it would look
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: like you guys are traveling in the eighties. Yeah, yeah,
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: and it will look also just as cool in twenty forty.
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: It does feel criminal when people kind of really pimp
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: them out and stuff, because.
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: It's totally I feel like it should be.
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: It should be like a protected building.
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: I like that.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: Like that, you guys should start the Ministry of land
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: Rover Heritage or something like that.
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: I love that.
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean like functionality is like great. You know,
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: if somebody feels the need that they have to do
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: something for their particular needs, that's cool. But there's something
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: special about just a very minimalist approach to overlanding. You
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: guys spent your money on travel. You didn't spend your
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: money on a million things. You know, you're kind of
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: just saying, oh, we just got a fridge.
• 14:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah, And I mean with our talk the other day,
• 14:38
  Speaker 4: we really didn't want it to sound like we were
• 14:40
  Speaker 4: dissing all these really smart trucks here. You know, there's
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: nothing wrong with them. Didn't want to sound bitter.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: Give you guys wanted it more right like you, like
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: you really wanted it. You wanted to do it, and
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: you found a way to do it.
• 14:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we kind of figured that we could wait, you know,
• 14:54
  Speaker 4: five ten years. I have a really kitted out, comfortable build.
• 14:58
  Speaker 4: But I guess we're just really impatient. We just wanted
• 15:00
  Speaker 4: to get out for you guys.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we tell people that all the time in the podcast,
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: and there are very few people who do it. There
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: are very few people who say or take responsibility for
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: the fact that they do have a choice in their life.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: We'll get a series of reasons why people can't go,
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: but they're all choices. You can sell everything you own,
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: you can sell your house, you could take the equity
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: you have, and you can go travel around the world.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: I'm not suggesting that people do that, but we always
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: have to remember that we do have a choice. Or
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: if you don't even have the money to buy a car,
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: maybe you buy a motorcycle. If you don't even have
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: the money to buy a motorcycle, buy a bicycle and
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: you can start traveling. You know, there's a Japanese guy
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: traveling through Africa a couple of years ago. Graham Bell
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: picked him up and he was traveling with no money.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: He was like a zen Buddhist. He had his passport
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: and he traveled with no cash.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: Wow, I'm sure Borders loved him because he would wait.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: He would wait until someone was willing to be as
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: patron through the border and pay the forty dollars fee
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: or whatever, or they would just were somebody that would
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: finally just say like, get.
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: Out of here. So it's possible, but it's possible, it's possible,
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: we do.
• 16:12
  Speaker 5: This, yeah, I think. So we got married and we
• 16:14
  Speaker 5: didn't have a lot of money. In the first year
• 16:16
  Speaker 5: of our marriage, we kind of, you know, just finished Uni.
• 16:18
  Speaker 5: I was about to start teacher training, and he took
• 16:21
  Speaker 5: a while to get a job because it was just
• 16:23
  Speaker 5: quite difficult in London, and we just we just really
• 16:26
  Speaker 5: wanted to get out of there. So we spent a
• 16:27
  Speaker 5: bit of time trying to get out of our overdraft.
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah, to be very candid, I think we were on
• 16:32
  Speaker 4: a joint income of about fourteen thousand dollars would it be, Yeah,
• 16:37
  Speaker 4: so a lot super round.
• 16:39
  Speaker 5: And so then after that we were like, well, let's
• 16:40
  Speaker 5: just put everything we have aside. So it was kind
• 16:43
  Speaker 5: of just making those lifestyle sacrifices to make it happen.
• 16:46
  Speaker 6: You know.
• 16:46
  Speaker 5: It's just simple things like not eating out, not getting takeaways.
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: We didn't do a lot on the weekend.
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: To be honest, life was a little bit miserable for
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: a while. We weren't in the prettiest part of London.
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: We both missed the countryside. We're from a really nice
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: place on the coast, the southwest, so yeah, it wasn't
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: really a fun time, but we just tried to keep
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: that end goal in mind, you know.
• 17:06
  Speaker 6: Yeah, and now you're doing it. Yeah, you're now you're
• 17:08
  Speaker 6: seeing them roll. Yeah, incredible. That was again a deciding factor.
• 17:12
  Speaker 6: And like no fridge, no diesel heater, because you've got
• 17:14
  Speaker 6: to buy them and then you've got to fit them.
• 17:15
  Speaker 6: And if you know it's something like a diesel heater,
• 17:17
  Speaker 6: you want a professional doing. You don't want to do.
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: It, burn your own truck down.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they require and maintenance and stuff too.
• 17:22
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and so let's just do it. Let's just whack
• 17:25
  Speaker 5: a bit of wood in the back and get a
• 17:28
  Speaker 5: roof tent.
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: And as we were talking about before, you know, just
• 17:31
  Speaker 4: really inspired by those all like Landryver expeditions of the
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: fifties and sixties and like the Oxford to Cambridge incredible.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: They didn't have a diesel heater exactly, they didn't have
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: a fridge, So you're right after you go, So we.
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: Knew it could be done, you know, we'd have to
• 17:45
  Speaker 4: sacrifice some level of comfort obviously, but yeah, we're just
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: so keen to get out there.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: And what was your first trip in the land River
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: when you kind of buy it and where did you
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: head off to?
• 17:55
  Speaker 5: So we we did a few couple of a couple
• 17:57
  Speaker 5: of little trips to Wales, which is a really beautiful
• 17:59
  Speaker 5: part the UK, some good off roading, but then kind
• 18:02
  Speaker 5: of the main international trip was we went down through
• 18:04
  Speaker 5: to Spain with Ellie's sister and Ellie's mom and dad
• 18:08
  Speaker 5: in there one ten just to sort of get a
• 18:10
  Speaker 5: feel of, oh, what's gonna work for us, what's not
• 18:12
  Speaker 5: going to work?
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: And then yeah, after that.
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: That was kind of a bit of a test run
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: for us.
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and then it was just.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: Central Asia And what what did you find you enjoyed
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: about Spain?
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: I think it's a great place to travel Andorra as well.
• 18:23
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it's it's so varied for a country, and it's
• 18:27
  Speaker 5: not huge, especially compared to the States. You know, you've
• 18:29
  Speaker 5: got kind of desert, you've got mountains, it's got a
• 18:32
  Speaker 5: lot to offer and.
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: Top us, it does have a great food to us,
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: yeah accent bit.
• 18:42
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and yeah, great food and actually quite cheap if
• 18:46
  Speaker 5: you do it right. And it was a fantastic shop
• 18:48
  Speaker 5: across Europe called Little and you can buy not sponsored
• 18:53
  Speaker 5: that would be nice, really cheap groceries.
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: So again, if you wanted to do it cheaply, you can.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: Just we do love Spain.
• 18:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and you can actual to get out to places
• 19:00
  Speaker 4: that feel quite wild and remote. I can't remember the
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: name of the desert in the south better than that,
• 19:05
  Speaker 4: I think, yeah, yeah, and you kind of feel like
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: you're out there.
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: What's the camping like there? I mean, you know, like
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: I guess in the west of the US, you guys
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: are kind of starting to get a little acquainted with
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: with how we do it, and it's we have all
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: this public land.
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's slightly different for us. It's definitely more challenging
• 19:22
  Speaker 4: in Europe.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: So do you have to like find a campsite? Yeah,
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: so I just really haven't done that much camping like
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: in Europe Spain, Like it can.
• 19:31
  Speaker 5: Be quite expensive because Spain is quite a popular tourist destination.
• 19:35
  Speaker 5: You're looking maybe minimum sixty euros for a camp.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: Site sixty yeah, and so and you can say it,
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: I mean genuinely, like you can say hotel for.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: That that's why I didn't camp in the gread. Yeah,
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: all the way through Europe and there's no reason to camp.
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: As a principle.
• 19:50
  Speaker 5: The reason, part of the reason we overland is because
• 19:52
  Speaker 5: you've got free accommodation.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that keeps your like your your your daily
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: costs like so low.
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: It kind of defeats the object. Yeah, and I think
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: it's it's a bit of a gray area. Some places
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: it's kind of tolerated, but I don't think you're technically
• 20:04
  Speaker 4: meant to wild camp. So it can be challenging finding places,
• 20:07
  Speaker 4: and the.
• 20:08
  Speaker 5: Finds can be high. If you do get caught in
• 20:10
  Speaker 5: the wrong place, you can be up to two three
• 20:11
  Speaker 5: hundred euros. But you find the right places, you find tracks,
• 20:15
  Speaker 5: stuff like that.
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: I mean, over the years, I did quite a lot
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: of Europe with my family, as I said, and we'd
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: quite often just turn up to a field and ask
• 20:23
  Speaker 4: a farmer and you know, some broken Italian or that. Yeah, sure,
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: and they were usually really accommodating. Not always, but a
• 20:30
  Speaker 4: lot of the time. So yeah, there are kind of
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: ways around it, but it's definitely not as accessible as
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: in the US.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: I definitely found some wild camping in the Pyrenees. I
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: did an old smugglers route from Andorra into the Pyrenees
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: and there was quite a bit of remote camping there.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: There's just no nobody living there.
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we haven't done that region yet. We'd love to.
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: It looks amazing.
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really great.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: So you guys start doing the stands. So let's talk
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: about that. Let's talk about that trip. When did you leave?
• 21:00
  Speaker 5: Was the seventh of February twenty twenty two, and we
• 21:03
  Speaker 5: were we were super excited. It was we you know,
• 21:06
  Speaker 5: we'd worked those three years sort of saving up and
• 21:09
  Speaker 5: then you know, just like let's just crack on.
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: So we came down through Europe.
• 21:12
  Speaker 5: We didn't spend a huge amount of time there because
• 21:14
  Speaker 5: for us, it's kind of I guess like Mexico or Canada,
• 21:17
  Speaker 5: it's closed.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: You want to spend your time like at the far
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: off places, right like, you got to maximize that opportunity.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: It's easy to go back to, it's easy to go
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: eat cheese and France.
• 21:29
  Speaker 5: For you guys, we were we were hungry for adventure,
• 21:32
  Speaker 5: for remoteness unknown and Central Asia just off as that
• 21:35
  Speaker 5: on a level you can never really experience in Europe
• 21:39
  Speaker 5: and so yeah, we we did spend a bit of
• 21:41
  Speaker 5: time in Albania and Greece because they're really cool places.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: In Albania is great, you guys, Alex from buzz Overlindess
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: it keeps talking about that area.
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: Credible country.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: Did you go to tef We did, yeah, so we
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: did do that overland route to get there.
• 21:55
  Speaker 4: It was it was still pretty very sing.
• 21:58
  Speaker 5: So we did the kind of track out and we
• 22:00
  Speaker 5: the road that we'd come back in on the paved road.
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: We started going back out that way.
• 22:04
  Speaker 5: We didn't know about this track at the time, and
• 22:07
  Speaker 5: there was an Albanian discovery too came back and said,
• 22:10
  Speaker 5: no snowfalls, come off the mountain, it's blocked, but follow us,
• 22:13
  Speaker 5: and we were like okay. And he went off at
• 22:16
  Speaker 5: thirty miles an hour down this track and hey, I
• 22:18
  Speaker 5: can't keep this up. I'm going to destroy the land driver.
• 22:20
  Speaker 5: So we kind of sad, you carry on. We'll make
• 22:24
  Speaker 5: our way slowly. And it's so good and it's such
• 22:26
  Speaker 5: a beautiful track and you get up Gordon Mountain and
• 22:28
  Speaker 5: all of a sudden we were driving through deep snow
• 22:30
  Speaker 5: and that was kind of that was the first bit
• 22:32
  Speaker 5: of a bench on that trip.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that area was beautiful. Yeah.
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: Really, it's a real overlanding dream.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: I think you come across like these random churches in
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere and these these homes where the
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: you know, the the roughest kind of collapsed in like
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: out of a movie, and yeah, it's just yeah, it's
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: really special.
• 22:49
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: And because it was so cold in Europe.
• 22:51
  Speaker 5: That's another reason we didn't spend a huge amount of
• 22:52
  Speaker 5: time because of the diesel heater, it was sleeping was
• 22:55
  Speaker 5: was pretty rough.
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: We had minus twelve at night.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: And so you kind of have that amount of like
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: in the in the truck and then you've got like
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: a tube going to the tent or how do you
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: have that set up what further trip The little diesel
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: heater you've kind of mentioned a few times.
• 23:08
  Speaker 5: So the one we've got it's also termed which I
• 23:12
  Speaker 5: think they're a Russian or a Latvian company.
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: We just have it kind of coming up the front
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: of my seat box.
• 23:16
  Speaker 4: We haven't actually used it in the tent. Yeah, we've
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: tended to sleep inside on this trip.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay, makes sense.
• 23:22
  Speaker 5: Yeah, but yeah, so Allie spent a couple of mornings
• 23:25
  Speaker 5: for maybe four or five days melting ice.
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: On tent, especially when we were in central Turkey it
• 23:32
  Speaker 4: was really cold. We did have a couple of nights
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: in a motel treated us.
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: I hear great things about Turkey. I don't think we've
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: really ever had somebody on the podcast that's really.
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: Parked about We could we could go on about Turkey again.
• 23:45
  Speaker 5: The food like just insane, and again from a European
• 23:49
  Speaker 5: standpoint where it's not super easy to wildcamp. You can
• 23:51
  Speaker 5: put your rooftop up anywhere and they don't care. We obviously,
• 23:54
  Speaker 5: you know, you look for the beautiful places. But there
• 23:56
  Speaker 5: was one night we pulled up to a town, found
• 23:58
  Speaker 5: a tennis court and I to it.
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: And it was all right, and people waving.
• 24:02
  Speaker 4: Us, just pulling onto beaches as well. Nobody cares. It's
• 24:06
  Speaker 4: just super normal there.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: And it has a pretty good for a drive culture there.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: People they're into it. That's crazy. They're really they're really
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: into it and they want to help you out.
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: I remember, Yeah, that's one of the fastest growing economies
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: in the world, like Turkey is like rapidly changing deservedly.
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's a great country crossroads of the world.
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: I mean it always kind of has bad yeah, We.
• 24:28
  Speaker 4: Met up with another defender owner there and a white
• 24:30
  Speaker 4: defender and did what's it called canyon? And there's the
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: I think it's called cash you're low something like that.
• 24:38
  Speaker 4: My Turkish isn't very good. There is mine, but it's
• 24:42
  Speaker 4: I think it's Yeah. The other name is the Stone Road.
• 24:45
  Speaker 4: So it's this old road that kind of winds through
• 24:47
  Speaker 4: this canyon and it's got all these you might have
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: seen it on Instagram and stuff. It's got all these
• 24:51
  Speaker 4: kind of tunnels carved out of the side of the canyon.
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: It's just amazing amazing.
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: So we did that and convoy with him. That was
• 24:58
  Speaker 4: a really cool experience.
• 25:00
  Speaker 5: Sounds very He told them one hundred and thirty two
• 25:02
  Speaker 5: years to build, and then a year after it was
• 25:03
  Speaker 5: completed they bit a different highway on the other side
• 25:05
  Speaker 5: of the canyon.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, then technology progressed so much, like there's still
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: a guy with a pickaxe and yeah, and here comes
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: the boring, which you amazing amazing. What's your advice for
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: somebody like for Turkey, Like, what are the things you
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: think overlanders need to see when they come there, or
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: are there anything that anything that's like very like particular challenging.
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: I mean, Kappadocia obviously is incredible, some really interesting.
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: History, Kappadosha that they're known for the balloon, yeah, sunrise thing.
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: That's then, yea, all those famous photos. But they've also
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: got these incredible kind of underground monasteries and we don't
• 25:43
  Speaker 4: usually do kind of really cultural historical things, but that
• 25:46
  Speaker 4: was really really interesting, and it's all super cheap as well. Entry.
• 25:50
  Speaker 5: Yeah, we paid I think it was it one pound
• 25:52
  Speaker 5: eighty each to enter one of these. Yeah, these underground
• 25:54
  Speaker 5: churches and they all kind of built them underground because
• 25:57
  Speaker 5: I think the early days of the church there was
• 25:59
  Speaker 5: a massive amount of persecutions, so they were just hiding
• 26:01
  Speaker 5: in rocks, so they build these churches in the rocks
• 26:04
  Speaker 5: and then lived there and it was that was really
• 26:05
  Speaker 5: cool to something.
• 26:06
  Speaker 4: And obviously the incredible rock formations as well. It's kind
• 26:09
  Speaker 4: of otherworldly, isn't it.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what a special part of the world. And you
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: guys get to camp a little bit along the Black
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: Sea and all that.
• 26:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we'd love to have spent more time there.
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: And then did you go into Iran or did you
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: go into Georgia from there?
• 26:21
  Speaker 4: Georgia from there, yeah.
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, kind of going into central Asia. You've got three routes.
• 26:25
  Speaker 5: You can go through Russia down through the Iran, and
• 26:28
  Speaker 5: both of those at the time weren't really options because
• 26:30
  Speaker 5: Russia had just invaded Ukraine.
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: A couple of weeks before we were there.
• 26:35
  Speaker 5: Already weren't handing out these is to uk citizens all
• 26:38
  Speaker 5: that easily. But also Turkmenistant kind of the route up
• 26:40
  Speaker 5: from Iran that was completely shut off due to COVID.
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: So yeah, they stayed shut for a long time time.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: Was Turkmenistan shut completely to you guys?
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 26:52
  Speaker 5: Interesting, So we were we were really interested to see
• 26:54
  Speaker 5: it kind of from a historical standards.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: First, first, Iran would have been so cool. I mean,
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: it's just it's a challenge. You know, everybody that I'd
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: known that has traveled there that says that people are
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: so so amazing, and there's so much to seine. It's
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: so beautiful, there's so much history, so much culture. It
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: was one day, one day.
• 27:15
  Speaker 4: Did you go through Turkmenistan?
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: I did.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we went across the Caspian from Azerbaijan in the Turkmenistan,
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: so you probably went across the Caspian and then into Uzbekistan.
• 27:25
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So we went from the pool to Mbaku, over.
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: To currik catching f one race while you're there.
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: We didn't know it was there.
• 27:33
  Speaker 5: And I think two weeks after we were there and
• 27:35
  Speaker 5: we got stuck at the Azerbaijan border. So again they
• 27:38
  Speaker 5: were closed due to COVID. There's the kind of narrative
• 27:41
  Speaker 5: that were selling.
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: It was it was towards the end of COVID, So
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: I think, as far as we're aware, there are only
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: a few countries in the world that were still closed.
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: I think it was maybe influenced.
• 27:49
  Speaker 5: We can't obviously say this for certain, but I think
• 27:51
  Speaker 5: it was influenced partially kind of all the Russian and
• 27:53
  Speaker 5: Ukrainians that were fleeing. We don't know if there's anything
• 27:56
  Speaker 5: to do with that, but we got stuck for three weeks,
• 27:58
  Speaker 5: and you know, like we said, Central Asia was the
• 28:00
  Speaker 5: and we've got to get through this boarders. We were
• 28:02
  Speaker 5: looking to apply for a transit visa. Can we just
• 28:05
  Speaker 5: spent seventy two hours getting to the port. Took us
• 28:08
  Speaker 5: three weeks, a lot of phone calls, a lot of emails,
• 28:10
  Speaker 5: a lot of visiting the NBASC, but finally got through
• 28:12
  Speaker 5: and it was.
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: A that was quite an emotional moment because at one.
• 28:15
  Speaker 5: Point we thought, are we just going to have to
• 28:16
  Speaker 5: turn around and go back home. Yeah, we got to
• 28:18
  Speaker 5: that port, and as you'll know, that's a wild experience.
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: No schedule, when's the coming maybe tomorrow?
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: Well, and the crazy thing is the port is like
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: from call it eighteen eighty two and you turn around
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: and there's a Ferrari dealership on the other side of
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: the room.
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: It's insane.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's to be exciting that the juxtaposition there is
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: just to be crazy.
• 28:39
  Speaker 5: So we lived there for three days waiting to be told, yeah,
• 28:42
  Speaker 5: you can get to the ferry now.
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: And Ellie was the only female truckers.
• 28:46
  Speaker 4: Quite an experience having to share a shower block with
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: a load of trucks.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: Now that's interesting because when I because when I went across,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: they were moving natural gas is big cylinders, but you
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: would have been going to use Becker stand So what
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: were they sending me to?
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: Kazakhstan? Oh, Kazakhstan. Okay, Yeah, it was I mean, it
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: was everything.
• 29:04
  Speaker 5: And while we were there, you know, we we kind
• 29:06
  Speaker 5: of experienced some of that hospitality that you hear about
• 29:09
  Speaker 5: is inviting us. I'll come over for a cup of tea,
• 29:11
  Speaker 5: off some food and that was really cool, but it
• 29:13
  Speaker 5: was still a wild experience. Yeah, for sure, I think
• 29:16
  Speaker 5: we were It was two o'clock in the morning, just
• 29:18
  Speaker 5: sort of a sleep in our seats, knock on the window,
• 29:20
  Speaker 5: you can go on now, oh okay, And yeah we
• 29:23
  Speaker 5: were off and that was exciting kind of knowing that, yeah,
• 29:25
  Speaker 5: we're going to get to Central Aia.
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: This is what we've been saving and waiting.
• 29:28
  Speaker 4: For, just all that unknown ahead of ours, And yeah,
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: it was an emotional moment when we kind of hit
• 29:33
  Speaker 4: Kazakh soil, saw our first camel, saw our first herd
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: of wild horses, and it all just felt really real suddenly,
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: and thinking about all the time we'd saved and the
• 29:43
  Speaker 4: uncertainty when we were in Georgia, not knowing if we'd
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: actually be able to get there. Yeah, it was really emotional,
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: just an amazing moment.
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: And did you go back? And it was becka stand
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: from there. We we did, which, you know, for you Americans,
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: not that big a deal.
• 29:58
  Speaker 5: We did a crazy drive kind of across the western
• 30:02
  Speaker 5: desert of Kazakhstan, so.
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: We ended up having to transit it a little bit
• 30:05
  Speaker 4: more than we wanted to because we'd been held up.
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: We were on quite a tight time schedule just because
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: of our budget.
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: Really had to pick up your sister.
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: And my sister was flying out to Kyrgyzstan, so we
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: kind of had to transit across the length of Kazakhstan
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: to meet her in time.
• 30:19
  Speaker 5: And it's one of those things which for us, you know,
• 30:21
  Speaker 5: from Britain, we would do a forteen hour driving day
• 30:25
  Speaker 5: and thinking, yeah, we've covered ground and you look at
• 30:26
  Speaker 5: the map.
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: We really it's a big country and was surprisingly be
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: so flat and so barren and so empty, and that
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: really blew our minds.
• 30:35
  Speaker 5: You know. We had one particular day where we would
• 30:37
  Speaker 5: drive for three hours at a dead straight line and
• 30:39
  Speaker 5: you look at the map and it's I think it's
• 30:41
  Speaker 5: a road one hundred and fifty miles long, but there
• 30:42
  Speaker 5: are no turns, not even like slight deviations.
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: No petrol stations.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: Sure I think we.
• 30:47
  Speaker 5: Didn't see anyone in it, which is really kind of
• 30:49
  Speaker 5: that was that sense of Eventure's kind of cool. Yeah, super,
• 30:53
  Speaker 5: we're really vulnerable right now.
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: I always wanted to visit like the Soviet space port
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: that they have, Ye, yeah, that would be really cool
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: because there's all these like abandoned I mean, I don't
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: know if you can really go in it, but you
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: see the photographs from like there's an abandoned building, there's
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: like the Russian space shuttle just riding inside of it.
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: Wow, that looks really cool. That's very cool. Yeah.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: So then you went from Kazakhstan back into Kyrgyzstan and Tadjikistan.
• 31:19
  Speaker 5: Kagstan plan was Mongolia. We had our Russian visas all
• 31:24
  Speaker 5: sorted and we were going to get through the outside mountains.
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: It's easy shot, yeah, and it's.
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: This tiny section of Russia. Really, it's easy. Yeah, And.
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: They did a month before. We probably would have been fine.
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: In that we knew there are a couple of overlanders
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: there at the time, so really deliberated because Mongola. Mongolia
• 31:43
  Speaker 4: was probably the country we were most excited for, but
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: we just decided against it in the end. As you
• 31:48
  Speaker 4: can imagine, our moms weren't super keen with the situation, which.
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Russia wasn't super popular though probably not super popular now.
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah even less.
• 31:58
  Speaker 4: So it was a real for us and we yeah,
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: we had a good think about it and decided against it,
• 32:03
  Speaker 4: but we we really want to get back there one day.
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: So where did you wrap your trip? Up then.
• 32:08
  Speaker 5: So yeah, well after that, yeah, we we did Kyrgyzstan.
• 32:13
  Speaker 5: It was Kyrgyzstan, it was Beekistan into Tajikistan, back into Uzbekistan,
• 32:19
  Speaker 5: and we spent a couple of months just going around
• 32:21
  Speaker 5: those kindries.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: To go through the tunnel of death between Uzbekistan and
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: Tajikistan when you're going down into do Shanby.
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: Oh, yes, we did one in.
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: The Fan Mountains.
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's the one you almost is that the one
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: that's like all unlit? Yeah, crazy, there's water like you're yeah,
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: it's nat yeh.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: There was a landslide on the other side of the
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: tunnel and we didn't know it when we started in,
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: and so everybody backed up and nobody shut their cars off,
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: so of course there's no air filling with carbon monoxide.
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: Crazy, yeah, and you have all the trucks like with
• 32:53
  Speaker 4: no lights on and they.
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: Wouldn't shut them off.
• 32:56
  Speaker 5: That was our first experience of Tajikistan, you know, driving
• 32:59
  Speaker 5: down and stuningning. That's one thing about Central Asia, it's
• 33:03
  Speaker 5: you kind of We tried not to do a huge
• 33:05
  Speaker 5: amount of research, so that stuff was a bit of
• 33:06
  Speaker 5: a surprise to us, and Tajikistan's the second most mountainous
• 33:09
  Speaker 5: country in the world. You just dropped all the time
• 33:11
  Speaker 5: in maths, just yours, just on the floor. This is
• 33:14
  Speaker 5: a crazy country. And same for Kyrgyzstan. Yeah, is it
• 33:17
  Speaker 5: third most mountainous country.
• 33:18
  Speaker 4: And it's so small, Kyrghyzstan, but it's it's just absolutely beautiful,
• 33:23
  Speaker 4: so much packed into such a small space and a
• 33:26
  Speaker 4: lot of it you'd think you're in Switzerland, you know,
• 33:28
  Speaker 4: lush alpine meadows and amazing hiking.
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Did you go through the Warkan Corridor.
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: We didn't, So there was a bit of instability in
• 33:36
  Speaker 4: the Gorno bad Eksham region while we were there, so
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: we were kind of keeping one eye on the news
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: because we knew there'd been a little bit of instability.
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: It's a pretty good road that goes around though.
• 33:45
  Speaker 5: Yeah, so we were really excited for that route, but
• 33:48
  Speaker 5: they stopped handing out that visa. So you can get
• 33:50
  Speaker 5: your thirty dollars visa, your fifty dollar visa, and that
• 33:52
  Speaker 5: one includes that whole area and you know the Panet Highway.
• 33:56
  Speaker 5: That's kind of one of those really cool routs and
• 33:58
  Speaker 5: we just we didn't get to do that again because
• 34:00
  Speaker 5: of bureaucracy and instability.
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: But again it's one of those things where it's we're
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: going to get back, we're going to go do it.
• 34:05
  Speaker 4: We managed to do a good chunk of the Pama
• 34:07
  Speaker 4: high Highway. We kind of got right up to the
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: border with the Gorno Badactuam regions.
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: It was amazing, Yeah, amazing. And then where did you
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: go ship back from?
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: Then?
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: Oh, you drove back nice, well done.
• 34:19
  Speaker 5: We got to the Yeah, we got i think within
• 34:21
  Speaker 5: a mile of the Chinese border and that was the
• 34:23
  Speaker 5: furthest east we got.
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: Sure, and I think for us it made the world
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: feel really small, you know.
• 34:29
  Speaker 5: The first when we first got to Istanbul, which is
• 34:31
  Speaker 5: I think on Google Maps, so twenty four hour drive.
• 34:33
  Speaker 5: We got there and we were like, wow, that's a
• 34:35
  Speaker 5: massive drive. And then we got to the Chinese border
• 34:37
  Speaker 5: and we were like, oh, so you've taken us a
• 34:39
  Speaker 5: couple of months.
• 34:41
  Speaker 4: It doesn't really change your perspective.
• 34:43
  Speaker 5: But then saying that we'll get back home and it'll
• 34:45
  Speaker 5: be a twenty minute drive to the shops.
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 34:50
  Speaker 4: But we absolutely loved the stars. It was just an
• 34:54
  Speaker 4: incredible experience and we've never had hospitality like that before.
• 34:58
  Speaker 4: I mean, we didn't have to cook us meal and Tajikistan,
• 35:01
  Speaker 4: I don't think, because we were just invited in constantly. Yeah,
• 35:04
  Speaker 4: just really warm, lovely people.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they wouldn't even let me fill out my passports
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: paperwork at the border. They just like sat us down
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: and brought us tea and took our passports and they
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: filled it out.
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, all the paperwork by hand. The same thing happens
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: when I go through US customs.
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: Exactly the same thing. Yeah.
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: I think it's quite similar to Iranian culture in that
• 35:24
  Speaker 4: sense that you know, they really honor and value their guests.
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: They're just yeah, so excited to have you there.
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: It's so genuine. It it feels really genuine.
• 35:33
  Speaker 5: We had a nineteen year old kind of walk up
• 35:36
  Speaker 5: to us when we were setting up camp and he said,
• 35:37
  Speaker 5: I want you to come over and be my guest.
• 35:39
  Speaker 5: Took us onto his dad's land and he kind of
• 35:41
  Speaker 5: where he works a small farm there, and for those
• 35:43
  Speaker 5: two days he just waited on us hand and foot.
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: It was quite funny.
• 35:46
  Speaker 5: We pulled up to why they lit so much time there,
• 35:50
  Speaker 5: apple orchard, and then he took us to this suspension
• 35:55
  Speaker 5: it's one up the bridge. It was just some wires
• 35:56
  Speaker 5: across the river, and he said, hop in the basket,
• 35:58
  Speaker 5: look into the basket. There's no flaw and there's a radiom. Ever,
• 36:01
  Speaker 5: and he just pulls us along, goes back and gets early.
• 36:04
  Speaker 5: And you think about kind of all the the stranger
• 36:06
  Speaker 5: danger you're taught when you're growing up, don't talk to strangers,
• 36:08
  Speaker 5: and that's all He's come across this river with me.
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, but you just learned to say yes to
• 36:13
  Speaker 4: opportunities like this thing. Yeah. So we spent a few
• 36:16
  Speaker 4: days there with him. Just the loveliest guy, wasn't he.
• 36:20
  Speaker 4: And I think in our culture we feel almost slightly
• 36:23
  Speaker 4: uncomfortable when someone's waiting when you like that constantly.
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you are kind of raised with that stranger danger thing,
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: like I think, not a bad thing, I mean, honestly,
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: particularly like I think the younger you are, the more
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: like you've been taught like that person may have some
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: some some some sinister intentions or or whatnot, so you
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: kind of become a little more insul or. I always find,
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: like when I travel, like it takes a while to
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: kind of like I.
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: Came from that standpoint. Every time someone.
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: Approached me, they want, yeah, what do they want from me?
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: Like as you get more, you trying to let that go.
• 36:57
  Speaker 5: And yeah, and this this young lad in particular, was
• 36:59
  Speaker 5: he really he stuck with us because then we went
• 37:01
  Speaker 5: back through Deshambey and he said, oh, when you're coming
• 37:04
  Speaker 5: back through, visit my family.
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: And again they waited on his hand and foot, and
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: then when we left, I needed to.
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: It's just why I kept hearing the little bell last night,
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: like you're expecting off.
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: We've expected at some level of yeah, we needed a tire,
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: my cookies there and yeah.
• 37:20
  Speaker 5: So when we got to the tire repair shop that
• 37:22
  Speaker 5: he led us to and he said, you need to
• 37:23
  Speaker 5: get out there and pay otherwise he's going to try
• 37:25
  Speaker 5: and do it.
• 37:26
  Speaker 4: So we were racing him to this garage.
• 37:28
  Speaker 5: I kind of got up to this guy and I said,
• 37:30
  Speaker 5: I need to pay for this and he like, no,
• 37:31
  Speaker 5: it's done. What do you mean it's done? In this
• 37:33
  Speaker 5: twenty year old who's not got a huge amount has
• 37:36
  Speaker 5: paid for our tire repair and we're trying to like
• 37:38
  Speaker 5: shove money in his hand and he's just not letting
• 37:40
  Speaker 5: it happen.
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: That really challenged.
• 37:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we left the Stars just feeling yeah, so challenged
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: by that warmth and hospitality and it just really got
• 37:48
  Speaker 4: us thinking about how we conduct ourselves at home.
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: And it's a gift for them too. I mean, they
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: got to spend time with somebody completely different as well.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: They get to learn a little bit about your life,
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: you know. I remember in Who's Becca Stan we were
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: looking for a place to stay and we were eating
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: at this restaurant and I was trying to ask the proprietor, like,
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: how do I find a hotel or whatever? And the
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: thing that he was most clear on is like, you're
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: not this is going to be where you're going to stay. Wow,
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: because you already kind of eat reclining and he's super comfortable,
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: you know, and he's like, you know, you're going to
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: stay right here. But then the next morning I woke
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: up and their tire was flat on their car. So
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: without even telling them, I pull out the tire repair kit,
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: I pull out the compressor. And so I found ways
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: to make myself, you know, feel like I was able
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: to give back a little bit.
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know it.
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: And because they're so genuinely hospitable, Yeah, it's really wonderful.
• 38:39
  Speaker 5: That's again kind of what we saw on the road
• 38:42
  Speaker 5: and you see a car broker down, you see someone
• 38:44
  Speaker 5: else with them, and we did have a couple of
• 38:47
  Speaker 5: breakdowns with the land driver fair but our flange tour
• 38:51
  Speaker 5: when we were at the start of the Pama Highway.
• 38:53
  Speaker 5: So we're on a road that's pretty rough, quite a
• 38:55
  Speaker 5: steep grade, and then to our right about two hundred
• 38:57
  Speaker 5: foot drop, and you just hear this horrible shearing noise.
• 39:01
  Speaker 5: That's not what we want to hear on this road.
• 39:03
  Speaker 5: So Ellie has to get out hand on the break
• 39:05
  Speaker 5: because obviously our handbreke's gone as well. So I know
• 39:07
  Speaker 5: I need to take the prop shaft off put it
• 39:09
  Speaker 5: in diff lark too. We'll drive fine, we'll sort out
• 39:11
  Speaker 5: of the problem. I get underneath after we've chopped the wheels.
• 39:14
  Speaker 5: Ellie's got her foot on the brake, keeping keeping yourself.
• 39:17
  Speaker 4: Alive, fully aware that if I took my foot off,
• 39:19
  Speaker 4: we'd probably will just roll off the side of this mountain.
• 39:22
  Speaker 5: And I'm underneath trying and get the bolts off, and
• 39:24
  Speaker 5: obviously shaft bots are quite soft, and I just keep
• 39:27
  Speaker 5: slipping and they keep getting round it and round, and
• 39:29
  Speaker 5: I'm thinking this if I don't know what to do,
• 39:31
  Speaker 5: if I can't get the prop shaft off, and this
• 39:33
  Speaker 5: minibus rumbles in. This man jumps out and I'm underneath
• 39:36
  Speaker 5: looking what's going on, and he takes his top off,
• 39:39
  Speaker 5: doesn't say a word to me. He gets some of
• 39:40
  Speaker 5: his tools out, shimm's underneath next to me. Five minutes
• 39:43
  Speaker 5: it's off, and then he just drives off. And then
• 39:45
  Speaker 5: he's desperately trying to shove some biscuits or sweets or
• 39:47
  Speaker 5: tea or money in his hand. Then he's going nope, nope, nope,
• 39:49
  Speaker 5: just drives off.
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah, throughout history, like they it's such a hostile environment.
• 39:57
  Speaker 4: You know, if you get stuck in the wrong place,
• 40:00
  Speaker 4: wrong time of year, it could be life or death.
• 40:02
  Speaker 4: So they're all just so used to inviting people in
• 40:04
  Speaker 4: and yeah, because.
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: They've experienced the same thing and they know that if
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: someone doesn't help them, the weather can turn so quickly.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: Food is so difficult to come by, So it really is,
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: especially in Mongoli, even more so because you may go
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: for days without seeing a river or a yurt or
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: someone else that can.
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: So it's just part of their culture is to help travelers.
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: It's amazing. Yeah, so cool. You got to go, Matt,
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: I want to go.
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: Got to go so much to do, so much to do.
• 40:34
  Speaker 5: We had another moment again. It's that whole Soviet influence
• 40:37
  Speaker 5: of repair not replace. Let's keep stuff going. You know,
• 40:40
  Speaker 5: if something we was to go to the UK, oh,
• 40:41
  Speaker 5: I'll just buy a new one. Our start to know
• 40:44
  Speaker 5: have failed in a field in Kyrgyzstan. Elli and her
• 40:47
  Speaker 5: sister tried given us a bump start, but we were
• 40:49
  Speaker 5: kind of parked up pail.
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: That wasn't going to happen.
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: It was a good workout.
• 40:53
  Speaker 5: That's why I went and found a scrapyard truck. He
• 40:55
  Speaker 5: gave us a bump start, and we went off to
• 40:57
  Speaker 5: try and sort it out. Found a four by four
• 40:59
  Speaker 5: tour owner and he said, oh, let's go and find
• 41:01
  Speaker 5: someone who can fix it. Whipped it off, the starter
• 41:03
  Speaker 5: motor off. We got to this row of shipping containers
• 41:07
  Speaker 5: and they all had their own individual speciality transfer boxes, headlights, whatever,
• 41:11
  Speaker 5: and he took me to a guy who just worked
• 41:13
  Speaker 5: on starter motors and alternators. He sort of looked at it,
• 41:16
  Speaker 5: took the kind of casing off, looked at the kind
• 41:18
  Speaker 5: of copper spool whatever it is, and tested it and
• 41:21
  Speaker 5: said this is what you need to do to Then
• 41:23
  Speaker 5: our new friend took us up to a shop. We
• 41:25
  Speaker 5: bought the part for the equivalent of about five dollars,
• 41:28
  Speaker 5: drove it back. This guy solded it together, whacked it
• 41:31
  Speaker 5: back together and put it on a Nandroid and it's
• 41:32
  Speaker 5: still going to this day.
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: That's love, you know.
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: Look, a new starter motor in the UK is about
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: two hundred dollars, so.
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: It's got through most of the Pan American as well.
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and a great story. Yeah, and we fixed it
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: for ten dollars. That's incredible.
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: That's good value.
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: That's really good value. Yeah. That's a good lesson, isn't it.
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 41:49
  Speaker 5: And I think as I've got more confident, I'm now
• 41:52
  Speaker 5: more able to think, Okay, well I can do this
• 41:54
  Speaker 5: and I can bodg this to keep us going, whereas
• 41:57
  Speaker 5: before it's it was.
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: A bit of wrecking.
• 42:00
  Speaker 6: You know.
• 42:00
  Speaker 5: I've done a few jobs on and his dads Andandro
• 42:02
  Speaker 5: helped him out. But until you start doing it yourself,
• 42:05
  Speaker 5: you're not really gonna learn. And I think maybe that's
• 42:07
  Speaker 5: something that might put people off starting and kind of
• 42:10
  Speaker 5: stepping out into that unknown.
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: But if we can do it, anyone, well, it's such
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: a foreign experience, like I think from like the American perspective,
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: like it's the same as you're saying you just would
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: buy in your starter. I mean even just the process
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: of rebuilding it. I don't know, It's just it's just interesting.
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: It's just completely different, I don't know.
• 42:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah, different mentality.
• 42:30
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and for someone who's coming from zero mechanical background.
• 42:34
  Speaker 5: I now I'm gonna pick myself up too much.
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: But I know quite a lot now.
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: And if I hear something, I'm thinking, oh, I think
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: that might be the the belt tension, or it might
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: be this.
• 42:43
  Speaker 4: And you do just get and there are a lot
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: of sounds, and we get a new mystery sound every day.
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: But the cool thing about land Rovers is half of
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: them will just go away. It'll auto heal itself.
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: It helps you pass the time.
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: Think land Rovers is the only car that ever like
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: fixes itself magic.
• 43:00
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean we at the moment, we've now gone
• 43:04
  Speaker 5: five six months without a breakdown.
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: So I'm thinking it looks like metal but it is
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: actually wood.
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you might want to knock on it a little bit. Okay,
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: So you guys make it back to the UK and
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: then what happens next. It worked for a little longer. Yeah,
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: so you left February of twenty two.
• 43:23
  Speaker 5: Yes, we came so we came back after six and
• 43:25
  Speaker 5: a half months and we got I'm a primary school
• 43:27
  Speaker 5: teacher by trade, got back into school and then I
• 43:30
  Speaker 5: think a week into it we sort of looked at
• 43:32
  Speaker 5: each other save up for another one. So it wasn't
• 43:35
  Speaker 5: get back and go straight out. It was again two
• 43:38
  Speaker 5: years of pretty hardcore saving.
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 43:40
  Speaker 4: I mean you you worked multiple jobs, didn't You didn't
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: have many free weekends, so yeah, we really just tried
• 43:45
  Speaker 4: to knuckle down get back out there.
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: Really blessed to live with Eddy's parents and that saved
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: us a lot of money.
• 43:51
  Speaker 5: Of course, a lot of young people in the UK
• 43:52
  Speaker 5: are doing that nowadays because just rent is so high.
• 43:55
  Speaker 5: So we were able to put a fair amount back
• 43:57
  Speaker 5: for this because this was a more expensive trip for
• 43:59
  Speaker 5: us because he got ship out, ship around the darry
• 44:01
  Speaker 5: And Gap, unless we wanted to spend three years getting
• 44:04
  Speaker 5: through it and then we've got a ship home. So
• 44:06
  Speaker 5: it was a longer, sort of a more financially challenging trip.
• 44:10
  Speaker 5: But yeah, when we're back, we really want to get
• 44:13
  Speaker 5: back to Central Asia. I know there's Africa, Australia, although
• 44:16
  Speaker 5: I don't think we'll ever be able to clean yack
• 44:19
  Speaker 5: enough to get it through the type Australian difficult.
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: You can just buy something there though, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 44:25
  Speaker 5: So I think I think Central Asia is the next
• 44:27
  Speaker 5: one for us. Again, we want to get to Mongolia,
• 44:29
  Speaker 5: we want to do the Pamet Highway. We also just
• 44:30
  Speaker 5: want to see it again and spend more time there.
• 44:32
  Speaker 4: If we're able to have kids as well, I feel
• 44:34
  Speaker 4: like that would be such an incredible experience for them.
• 44:36
  Speaker 5: So I think, yeah, we said the the start of
• 44:38
  Speaker 5: the last trip, we want to do one more before
• 44:40
  Speaker 5: we start trying to have a family, and then we thought, oh,
• 44:43
  Speaker 5: maybe we'll just settle down. But again being here, seeing
• 44:46
  Speaker 5: how many families are traveling and the families we see
• 44:48
  Speaker 5: on the road, it's so doable.
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: So it's how can we cram them into the land driver?
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: If you might want an air conditioning the Mega maybe yeah, yeah.
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: I think lots of the kids don't care.
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: They don't know.
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: I guess they don't.
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: They don't know what they don't know.
• 45:03
  Speaker 5: So I think, yeah, if we can have children, that'll
• 45:05
  Speaker 5: be the next thing. But it will be We've got
• 45:07
  Speaker 5: six weeks whilst I'm not on school holidays. We'll take
• 45:10
  Speaker 5: them around Europe and sort of start putting the money
• 45:12
  Speaker 5: side for the next but.
• 45:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so we spent was it about two years? Saving
• 45:17
  Speaker 4: again about that just over two years? Yeah, and then
• 45:21
  Speaker 4: sat out on the Pan American.
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: And where did you go to ship into into Uruguay? Okay?
• 45:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so we flew out to Buenos Aires, went and
• 45:29
  Speaker 4: met the land drover and then we headed down to
• 45:32
  Speaker 4: Schwire and then yeah.
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: Up north, so you came down the east coast of Argentina, Yes,
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: and then we started off.
• 45:39
  Speaker 5: We did a little bit of southern Brazil because we
• 45:40
  Speaker 5: really wanted to see some of Brazil. If I don't
• 45:43
  Speaker 5: know if you've experienced this having gone further afield, but
• 45:46
  Speaker 5: we almost felt like we were cheating flying out and
• 45:49
  Speaker 5: I met the land rover there and we's just here,
• 45:51
  Speaker 5: we've got driven here, headed down the east coast. That's
• 45:55
  Speaker 5: where our prop shaft let go on the motorway. That
• 45:58
  Speaker 5: was a terrifying experience, a party, yeah, and we were
• 46:03
  Speaker 5: We got away very lightly. It hit the front bracket
• 46:05
  Speaker 5: for the anti roll bar, which we don't have, and
• 46:08
  Speaker 5: it missed the transfer box the gearbots.
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: On the front of the rear front.
• 46:12
  Speaker 4: Yeah, the most dangerous taking our legs off here.
• 46:15
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and we just fitted our you transfer box as well,
• 46:19
  Speaker 5: and so if I would have been devastated if it'd
• 46:21
  Speaker 5: hit that, but we got.
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: Away very lightly and then we carried on down that
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: pretty dull right.
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So what made you ship like into the south,
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: start in the South, and go north. I don't know why,
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: but I always think of that trip as kind of
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: like you're heading south and you're you're ending at the
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: end of the world. What was your thought on that.
• 46:42
  Speaker 4: I guess for people from the States, that's kind of
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: more naturally starting at home. We didn't really realize at
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: the time that it was so unusual.
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: So I don't think it's unusual, you know, it's just
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: I mean, I guess maybe it is just an American perspective,
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: and I.
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: Think that would be kind of neat because you would
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: then encounter a lot more travelers because you're going the
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: opposite direction of most travel true, so you get to
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: encounter a lot more people.
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: You're probably really good for information, like genuine Yeah, I guess.
• 47:07
  Speaker 4: We figured as well, maybe at the end we'll be
• 47:09
  Speaker 4: a little bit tired and it will be kind of
• 47:11
  Speaker 4: more comfortable once we get to the States. We won't
• 47:14
  Speaker 4: be roughing it quite as much. So, Yeah, I guess
• 47:17
  Speaker 4: that was our thinking.
• 47:18
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and there's there's an intensity to overlanding when you're
• 47:20
  Speaker 5: in these cultures that are so different, you don't speak
• 47:23
  Speaker 5: much of the language, and we thought Americans are basically British,
• 47:26
  Speaker 5: aren't they, you know basically?
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think that was Yeah, We're really quite honest.
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: It was We're going to be tired so aggressively drinks
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: coffee tea.
• 47:37
  Speaker 5: It'll be easier to sort of integrate and kind of yeah,
• 47:41
  Speaker 5: it will be less intense trying to speak Spanish all
• 47:43
  Speaker 5: the time.
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: And sure, but actually it turns out to quite difficult
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: to understand Americans. Fair'll be fair, Yeah, totally true.
• 47:52
  Speaker 4: We did actually have so there's a brit here buzz
• 47:55
  Speaker 4: overlanded it. Alex lovely guy. He actually brought out some
• 47:59
  Speaker 4: l grade for us. We put in an order especially.
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's such a nice guy. He kept us grenadier
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: at our office and we kind of drove up to
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: the event with film. He flew in. Poor guy was
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: like landed in Phoenix from the UK to a new
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: coumble hour Yeah, yeah, walked into an oven in Phoenix,
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: then goes to Prescott and then the next day drives
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: like twelve hours, meets us and tell your ride like
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: he's fun. Yeah, that was That was one thing that
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: we were really excited for for the States.
• 48:33
  Speaker 5: You know, you've got all of these different countries that
• 48:36
  Speaker 5: speak lots of different languages, they've got a you know,
• 48:38
  Speaker 5: very different sort of history, whereas the US, you know,
• 48:42
  Speaker 5: we see it as very similar to the UK, but
• 48:43
  Speaker 5: there are so many really stark differences.
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: And we spent the fourth of July with and from Expedition, right,
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: and that was really.
• 48:50
  Speaker 4: Cool, and we had the proper American experience and we.
• 48:54
  Speaker 5: Were just so excited to meet Americans. And there was
• 48:56
  Speaker 5: a lovely Irish guy that came across for that as well.
• 48:59
  Speaker 5: So we were just three Brits, an Irish guy and
• 49:01
  Speaker 5: this one lone Texan the fourth of.
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: July, and that was really cool, you know those.
• 49:05
  Speaker 5: Yeah, we sort of see America as quite done because
• 49:08
  Speaker 5: a lot of our friends will go there on holiday,
• 49:09
  Speaker 5: but there's still so much for us to learn from
• 49:11
  Speaker 5: this country and experience, and that's been really cool.
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: And the natural beauty here is unique anything.
• 49:16
  Speaker 5: Else, you know, such a such a variety here, and
• 49:19
  Speaker 5: again it was one of those experiences.
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: Oh, we're going to drive up to the big thing.
• 49:22
  Speaker 5: And we were by Lake Tahoe and we had to
• 49:24
  Speaker 5: get up to Idahoe for the fourth of July two
• 49:26
  Speaker 5: days driving. Oh easy, look's only twelve hours forgetting that.
• 49:29
  Speaker 5: A lot of that is eighty five miles and we're
• 49:31
  Speaker 5: sick six. I've got into this drive. We've done twelve
• 49:35
  Speaker 5: hours of the day.
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: Look at the map, I mean win a mucker.
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: On our way up, we actually got pulled over by
• 49:43
  Speaker 4: the police. We were a little bit nervous and didn't
• 49:46
  Speaker 4: know what was going on. Anyway, he came over and said,
• 49:49
  Speaker 4: do you know you're going way below the speed limit
• 49:51
  Speaker 4: and we were like, we can't.
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: Go any faster. As fast as we can go.
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: What did he say?
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: It's funny heat. So we were doing fifty five and
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: a sixty, so we thought that's not too.
• 50:01
  Speaker 4: At that point, a steering wills started to shape.
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 50:04
  Speaker 5: As he took away my passport to check everything, and
• 50:06
  Speaker 5: he came over and he was like, well, the good
• 50:08
  Speaker 5: news is you're not wanted in the States. I was like,
• 50:10
  Speaker 5: that's excellent, but Ellie had thought he just meant we
• 50:12
  Speaker 5: don't want you here.
• 50:15
  Speaker 3: Oh no, oh no, I could see how you would
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: think that with what he said.
• 50:21
  Speaker 4: David was really confused, like, why is that upset her
• 50:24
  Speaker 4: so much?
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: That totally makes sense that yeah, because he goes back
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: to the poster, it would have your face.
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: Oh that's hilarious. Oh no, that's awful.
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: And some of the states actually do have a minimum
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: speed posting because it's so it's so dangerous if someone
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: was to come up behind you at eighty or five,
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: and of course he drive very fast.
• 50:50
  Speaker 4: You're noted maxing it out the massive, massive end.
• 50:54
  Speaker 5: That's the one thing about the US that we've seen
• 50:56
  Speaker 5: a few US films and you see these trucks and
• 50:58
  Speaker 5: that's not real, and then you turn up and they're
• 51:00
  Speaker 5: it's all real. Three times the size of the landrover.
• 51:02
  Speaker 4: We feel so small.
• 51:05
  Speaker 3: Towing a house, yes.
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: Exactly, with like three air conditioners, the three axles, fifth reel,
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: and then there's a there's a twenty foot long UTV
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: with twenty four inches of suspension trouble in the back.
• 51:17
  Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly, and in every way if you're towing, you're
• 51:19
  Speaker 5: restricted to sixty miles an.
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: Hour, but not send it just I get guys in
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: those like those with those big we call them toy
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: hollers and live the big diesel trucks and I'll be
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: in the roamer and they just blow by me uphills.
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: I mean, some of these guys are like yeah, like
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: they're aggressive with it.
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: They're sending it about it. And he said, you know,
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: in the UK or in Europe, you just accept you're
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: going to be going a bit slower. In the US.
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: Bigger engine, just yeah, yeah, big bigger tires, bigger engine. Yeah, exactly,
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: send it. That's so funny. Fortunately, there's usually a highway
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: that you can take. There'll be a slower speed that'll
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: parallel the interstate or something like that. So you guys
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: drove then down to Ushuaia and then what did you
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: take back up South America?
• 52:03
  Speaker 5: So we kind of hip hopped up the Chile and
• 52:06
  Speaker 5: Argentinian border. We had our first Southern Hemisphere Christmas just
• 52:11
  Speaker 5: on a kind of the like a beach next to
• 52:14
  Speaker 5: a river in Chile on the character.
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that was and we you know, we.
• 52:18
  Speaker 5: Felt a bit kind of nervous, not nervous, maybe just
• 52:20
  Speaker 5: a bit down about being away from family for Christmas,
• 52:22
  Speaker 5: but it ended up being really special. You know, we
• 52:24
  Speaker 5: dropped up to this beach, beautiful spot. It was like
• 52:27
  Speaker 5: twenty seven degrees in the day or whatever. That isn't faro, Yeah, sure,
• 52:30
  Speaker 5: I don't know. Sounds delicious, but the water was really
• 52:35
  Speaker 5: crisp and cool, and we were like, Okay, this is
• 52:36
  Speaker 5: going to be a nice Christmas. And then the next
• 52:38
  Speaker 5: day about sixty different families descended. But because this is
• 52:42
  Speaker 5: Christmas Day and we just we were surrounded by these families,
• 52:45
  Speaker 5: kids playing in the.
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: Water and this is really cool.
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: We thought we were going to feel a bit down,
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: but it ended up really being really special.
• 52:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 52:52
  Speaker 3: And then yeah, we carried on that.
• 52:53
  Speaker 5: We met some friends in Bolivia who'd flown up from
• 52:55
  Speaker 5: the UK but we're really good friends with back home.
• 52:58
  Speaker 5: They spent two weeks traveling with us.
• 53:00
  Speaker 4: We're just UNI with them, quite a bit of Bolivia
• 53:03
  Speaker 4: death Road. That was really special. To be able to
• 53:06
  Speaker 4: share those extreme.
• 53:08
  Speaker 5: We didn't, so we were We did the Argentinian Altiplano
• 53:12
  Speaker 5: and we had to get to a UNI to see them.
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: And we'd chatted with a brit down in Chile and.
• 53:17
  Speaker 5: He actually said, if you're choosing between one and the other,
• 53:19
  Speaker 5: I do the Argentinian one because it's he said it's
• 53:21
  Speaker 5: sort of less commercial, and he'd done it. He said
• 53:23
  Speaker 5: there were just thousands of vehicles up on it. So
• 53:25
  Speaker 5: we thought, okay, well we've only got one. We've got
• 53:27
  Speaker 5: to get to a Uni.
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: We would have loved to have done both, but because
• 53:30
  Speaker 4: we had these time constraints, because our friends were flying
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: out and it's a it's a bit tricky.
• 53:35
  Speaker 3: It happens. So they shoved them in the back.
• 53:38
  Speaker 5: We've got a bed platform that I just built and
• 53:40
  Speaker 5: they kind of drove along, sat in the back there
• 53:43
  Speaker 5: and they slept in the back.
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: We went in the roof tent and we hit some
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: pretty bad weather in Bolivia.
• 53:47
  Speaker 4: We kind of got we didn't time it very well.
• 53:49
  Speaker 5: The start of rainy season, and so we went to
• 53:52
  Speaker 5: bed on a wet mattress a couple of nights.
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: That wasn't there.
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: That wasn't so fun.
• 53:56
  Speaker 5: And then we did Peru, Ecuador, Columbia, and then shipped
• 53:59
  Speaker 5: from Carta Haina to Vera Cruz. We didn't we went
• 54:02
  Speaker 5: able to do Costa Rica, Nicaragula, Ol Salvador because you're here, yeah, yeah,
• 54:06
  Speaker 5: So then we nipped down to Belize, spent the week
• 54:08
  Speaker 5: in Belize, which is a really cool country.
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: Totally.
• 54:12
  Speaker 4: We didn't know much about it, so going into it, yeah,
• 54:15
  Speaker 4: without any kind of prior knowledge was really cool.
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: Actually, it's so unique.
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: I mean they used the US dollar, it was a
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: British it was part of the British colony system until
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four or something like that.
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: Very recent cabean Ye place that was really cool, had
• 54:28
  Speaker 3: some amazing.
• 54:29
  Speaker 4: Food considering it it borders Mexico. It was just so different.
• 54:33
  Speaker 4: It's crazy, isn't it. And a really nice break for
• 54:35
  Speaker 4: us to be able to speak English for a bit.
• 54:37
  Speaker 5: Yeah, for sure, it's because we travel on a pretty
• 54:40
  Speaker 5: tight budget. Belize was always a bit of a holiday destination.
• 54:42
  Speaker 5: So we did some really cool snorkeling on the islands
• 54:45
  Speaker 5: and then some cool off roading and then we the
• 54:47
  Speaker 5: Guatemala came up sort of like central western highlands of Mexico,
• 54:52
  Speaker 5: did whacka kind of went through Mitchewikan and Hillisco a
• 54:55
  Speaker 5: little bit amazing.
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: And again that's a place that the UK government it's
• 54:59
  Speaker 3: do not go it.
• 55:00
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and there are a lot of places where the
• 55:03
  Speaker 5: government say that it's not really that bad, like Tajikistan.
• 55:07
  Speaker 5: We've never felt safer, but we knew that Mexico. You
• 55:09
  Speaker 5: got to take that a little bit seriously. But we
• 55:11
  Speaker 5: went through that area really beautiful dries, really warm people.
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: And then great food. Yeah yeah yeah.
• 55:19
  Speaker 5: And then we got to bar because when we were
• 55:20
  Speaker 5: in Kartageno about to ship, we kind of got the
• 55:22
  Speaker 5: invite to come here and so we were like, let's
• 55:24
  Speaker 5: of time, it's out.
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: So we did a bit of time in Baja.
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: That was really cool. It was getting quite warm to
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: take the furry over. Yes, that's a wild experience as well.
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: Do do the trucker furry or did you do the just.
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: The passenger one?
• 55:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 55:34
  Speaker 5: And then we stayed because we didn't have a huge
• 55:36
  Speaker 5: amount of time in Baja. We thought we want to
• 55:38
  Speaker 5: see a Cortez side. It's a bit calmer bit of
• 55:40
  Speaker 5: short fishing. Got stung by a sting ray.
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: That's fun. Oh wow, that sounds so we've got what
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: happened there.
• 55:47
  Speaker 4: David has a knack for catching dangerous animals wet fishing.
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: Do not go to Australia. I'm not safe there.
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: It doesn't sound like it.
• 55:56
  Speaker 5: So we do a bit of fishing back home, just
• 55:57
  Speaker 5: off a boat, just Matt Crawl. Still yet to catch
• 56:00
  Speaker 5: a bass, but yeah, so I thought I would be
• 56:02
  Speaker 5: quite easy. So I've never cast on the shore before,
• 56:04
  Speaker 5: you know, so I was giving it a go, caught something,
• 56:06
  Speaker 5: picked up.
• 56:06
  Speaker 4: What was this?
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: Ellie took a picture, sent to chat GPT. David put
• 56:10
  Speaker 3: it down.
• 56:10
  Speaker 5: It's a puffer fish. Okay, let that one go cast again.
• 56:15
  Speaker 5: About two minutes later, I thought what I thought was
• 56:17
  Speaker 5: a flat fish. In the UK, there's a lot of
• 56:19
  Speaker 5: places a lot of flat fish. I thought, that's cool.
• 56:21
  Speaker 6: Elly.
• 56:21
  Speaker 5: Come and look she's on FaceTime to her sister and
• 56:23
  Speaker 5: I'm trying to get the account so I can release it.
• 56:25
  Speaker 5: And she goes, David, that looks like a barb And
• 56:27
  Speaker 5: seconds after she said that, wow, straight through the finger.
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: I'm screaming, screaming, Ellie was She wasn't a little bit
• 56:37
  Speaker 3: of a panic. We got off to hospital.
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: That's what's too rowided.
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 56:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: The doctor kind of looked at it and all that
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: looks rough, and I was like, yeah, it hurts.
• 56:45
  Speaker 4: Turns out the bar but actually gone through his finger
• 56:47
  Speaker 4: and out the other side.
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 56:49
  Speaker 5: But because it had done that, he had left a
• 56:51
  Speaker 5: load of venom in sides and then he squeezed it
• 56:53
  Speaker 5: out and the second the venom was out.
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: I was fine.
• 56:55
  Speaker 3: Interesting, So I'm not going to remember that.
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: Not a very.
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: Successful fishing experience.
• 57:00
  Speaker 5: I was thinking, we're going to be catching Sierra macrawl,
• 57:02
  Speaker 5: We're going to be cooking out on the barbecue.
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: You're better off just buying it from the locals when
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: they come in with the ponga. Yeah, a couple couple bucks,
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: you get a whole fish.
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 57:11
  Speaker 5: We had some incredible tacos. Because you have experienced that
• 57:15
  Speaker 5: the food in Central Asia is maybe not to Western tastes.
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: Well, I found myself falling in love with like the
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: plows and the goat and the lamb meat, like and
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: I never really ate much goat or lamb before that,
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: but by the end of it, like I still have
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: a craving for it.
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: Let's have a lamb night. Let's do it. Let's do
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: lamb nights when you guys come through Presca.
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 57:36
  Speaker 3: Perfect. Yeah.
• 57:37
  Speaker 5: But yeah, so the food, we really, we really enjoyed
• 57:39
  Speaker 5: that in just a hole of Mexico. And then yeah,
• 57:41
  Speaker 5: we entered the States and all of a sudden, you're.
• 57:43
  Speaker 4: Just the biggest cultural change.
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: Sorry about that. It's like an explosion of a flag
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: flying the border. Twenty six lanes we used to fairly
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: small border crossings.
• 57:57
  Speaker 5: And you know, we got across it about nine at
• 57:59
  Speaker 5: night and let's go get McDonald's.
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: Walk around Walmart at midnight, get some McDonald's.
• 58:08
  Speaker 3: Genuinely one of the things.
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: You buy a gun, yes, Walmart? No not, I think
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: you can, but joke.
• 58:16
  Speaker 4: We are doing the shooting calls after this, getting the
• 58:20
  Speaker 4: full American extent.
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: Going because because this shooting thing that they're doing, all
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: of the Brits that come to see us one, they
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: all want to shoot guns. The last one wanted to
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: shoot their own car with our guns.
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: No we did, that's right, you did shoot thee Remember
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: the London taxi guys.
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, Paul shot the car. Okay, yeah, no,
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: don't shoot it, don't shoot it. This was this was
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: a clapped out taxi.
• 58:44
  Speaker 5: We've we've said, you know, obviously we've got a couple
• 58:47
  Speaker 5: of things here and there. We actually had so we
• 58:49
  Speaker 5: called the Andrea Yak because it's slow, carries lots of
• 58:53
  Speaker 5: weight and we'll get there at the end. And we
• 58:57
  Speaker 5: got a couple of dings from yack horns when we
• 58:59
  Speaker 5: were in k Star. It's really cool. Never ever changing that.
• 59:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and we said if we get a bear scratch
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: in the States, it'll be more than a scratch, that's yeah. Yeah,
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: let's just help that one doesn't it'll peel the whole door.
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: We did.
• 59:12
  Speaker 5: We had a black bear outside the land drover just
• 59:14
  Speaker 5: outside Lake Tahoe. So we've gone up to Loon Lake
• 59:16
  Speaker 5: to start of the ruber, teasing him with some food.
• 59:19
  Speaker 5: So wetched.
• 59:20
  Speaker 3: We'd heard that you're not supposed to do that. Bear
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: is a dead bear. Elli woke me up at one
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: in the morning, David, there's a bear outside. No, No,
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: there's not.
• 59:28
  Speaker 5: You know, you're used to cows and cattle outs up
• 59:30
  Speaker 5: sort of livestock. And then half an hour later it
• 59:33
  Speaker 5: was back. And so we opened up the ten get
• 59:36
  Speaker 5: the head touch out, turn it on, and there's this
• 59:38
  Speaker 5: huge black bear like the back wheel. And the second
• 59:41
  Speaker 5: we turned the torch on, it bolted because they're quite timid.
• 59:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's quite big for a black bear, because they.
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: Can be very big.
• 59:47
  Speaker 5: Yeah, And so that was really cool because we spent
• 59:49
  Speaker 5: three turkey. There are a lot of brown bears, and
• 59:51
  Speaker 5: all of our friends we traveled with they were seeing
• 59:53
  Speaker 5: them days after we left them.
• 59:55
  Speaker 3: Why have we not seen a bear yet? Like that.
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: But if we're in the States, we surely surely have
• 59:59
  Speaker 3: to see you one. So that was you're really exciting.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: That is very cool.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 4: Take that one off now.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: But no, but no, scratch down.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: You want to see a grizzly from a distance. You
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: don't want to see a grizzly beneath your tent because
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: they'll stand up and look you in the eye.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 3: Will they will literally stand as high as your roof there,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: do you reckon?
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 4: We've got a good chance in Canada. I've seeing one,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 4: I would say, so, yeah, I don't want to in
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 4: the tent in the UK.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 3: Is a cow so.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, man maybe from a place that's so mild, I
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: love it. I want to live there. We talk about
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: the scale, we talk about that. What a great story.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: So what's next on the trip? I mean you're saying Canada,
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: you guys going to continue north, You're going to hang
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: out in the States for a bit.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 4: It's the big question now because we've we discovered a
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 4: couple of nights ago that we've got a little bit
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 4: of an issue with our visa and our timing.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 5: So we've got a ninety day esther. We thought, you know,
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 5: if we're on day thirty one and we cross into Canada.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 5: It pauses there, and then when we get into Alaska,
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 5: day thirty two starts on our rounds and apparently not
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 5: apparently it carries on. So we're flying back on the
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 5: tenth of October, supposedly, but our esther runs down the
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 5: sixteenth of September, so we're just trying. We're gonna I'm
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 5: gonna bring the embassy tomorrow and see what we can do,
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 5: what our options are. But the plan at the moment
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 5: is two weeks in Oregon and Washington. My sister's flying
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 5: out to join us for a little bit, and then
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 5: we head up to Alaska, and then after that the
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 5: plan was to come back down to Utah and Colorado
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 5: wants utahould call down a bit, but it's all a
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 5: bit up in the airline.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'm sure we'll be all of figure it out.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we might fly home for a little bit. My
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 4: sister's getting married, so we kind of have a hard
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 4: deadline there. Anyway to get back, spend a bit of
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 4: time there. Maybe we can earn some money and fly
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 4: back for a while, because we really don't want to
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 4: feel like we're rushing the states. We've been so excited
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 4: for Utah Colorado areas so much. Yeah.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 5: One option is to leave our Landriver with Andy and Idaho,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 5: yeah and come back next summer. I'd love to do that,
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 5: but I hate the idea of not being with my
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 5: land driver for more than a month.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 3: So that's the right place to leave it though.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: So we're just we're figuring even with a list of tasks.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 3: He's mployed at the moment. Change the oil quick, so
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 3: we checked the prop shift.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 5: Yeah, we're figuring stuff out. But at the moment, we'll
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 5: get out to prudobate and then figure out that.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: Amazing.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 3: So how do people follow you?
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 4: We're doing it Jack Overland on Instagram and YouTube. We
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 4: put a little bit more effort into YouTube at the moment.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 4: I found it hard kind of keeping up with both.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 4: So we're a little bit behind. I think we're still
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 4: back in Guatemala or something.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah. When I was messaging guys, I'm like, you're not
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: going to make it.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I think we you know, Instagram ever changing, and
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 5: it's it's there's a lot of gimmicky stuff out there,
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 5: Whereas I feel like Nellie's a bit of a storyteller.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 5: I don't do anything with social media, try and reply
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 5: to the messages. But Ellie really loves photographyography, so I
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 5: think YouTube gives us the element to just capture it
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 5: in a bit more in a real way.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 4: It feels more authentic to me and less I don't.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 3: Know, kind of look at me.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we like to show the highs and the lows,
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 4: you know.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: I like that.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 4: So yeah, I tried to put a video out every
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 4: other Friday.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 3: Generally awesome. Yeah, awesome.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: Well, you guys are awesome. So you guys are a
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: great inspiration. Thank you for being at the event and
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: for sharing your stories with all the people that were here.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: Thanks for being on the podcast. Really means a lot
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: to us to tell your story as well.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: So thanks, thanks.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 4: Really, Yeah, you guys are legends. So it's real honored
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 4: to meet you. We had no idea we'd be doing this. Yeah,
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 4: it'd be really good.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: You guys were great. This is a supera to keep
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: following along. Yeah, absolutely, thank you.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: Thank you both for being on the podcast, and we
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: thank you all for listening, and we'll talk to you
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: next time.