Building the Landy Camper

Originally, I had pretty open ideas about what form the BA (Big Adventure) would take.  Up there was a motorcycle trek across a continent.  There is something uniquely special about adventuring on 2 wheels, but this BA is not just mine, but also belongs to Mrs E, who has bravely "adopted" the dream.  The prospect though of sleeping in a tent and having a fraction of the luggage capacity meant the bike option will have to wait for another adventure.  I can't say I'm upset, as 4WDing comes in a close 2nd in my list of adventurous pursuits.

So I set about turning Harry (the Land Rover) into the most luxurious home we could manage, given the Disco's space limitations and our very limited budget!  Given that I have a dislike of wood-working in general, mainly due to poor skills (don't ask to see the shelf we made out of an old pallet!), I'm pretty proud of the result!  There are still some finishing touches to be had, but it's almost ready to head out into the wilds.

I didn't think pictures quite did it justics, so we've put together a short video of the main features (plus a few photos below):

Turning a dream into reality

Hi to all of our friends and family,

Welcome to the official blog of our "Big Adventure" (herein abbreviated as BA!).  The goal of this BA is to drive overland across Europe and into the Middle East, substituting at least half of our journey back to New Zealand of boring/painful air travel for exciting overland travel.

When I was 18 I read the journal of Glen Hagstead, who rode a BMW Adventure bike from the very Eastern end of Russia (which is just across a sea channel from Japan!), all the way to the Western border.  This was a huge challenge, given the mammoth distance, and extremely inhospitable terrain across which he was traversing.  The incredible stories and experiences that emerged from his journal forged a lasting desire in me to embark on a trans-continental adventure of my own.

In a couple of months time, 10 years after the seed of that dream, I, together with Jean, will finally have the opportunity to have that dream fulfilled (or should that be fuelled??).  Starting the UK, us, and Harry (our Land Rover Discovery) will be heading East!  Our trip (I hope!) won't be quite as intrepid, long or dramatic as Glen's was, but I'm sure will still be full of highs, lows, exciting times, maybe some boring ones, new friends, fun, new experiences and enduring memories.

Here's a quick run down of our plans:

August: 1 Month travelling around Scotland - sort of pre-run before we leave the UK!
Early September, we will cross the channel for France
France: 15 Days - spending at least a week in Provence, southern France
Italy: 11 Days
Albania: 4 days - crossing on a ferry from Italy
Greece: 5 days - not stopping too much, just heading straight for Turkey
Turkey: 14 days - There's a few things we want to visit here, including Gallipoli.  Being such a vast country though, we can't stop anywhere for too long to be able to keep to our schedule
Iran: 16 Days - Should be around 1 November when we arrive in Iran.  Iran is the country I am most looking forward to visiting, so we are spending 16 days here.  That isn't much though, as it is also a HUGE country.  I'm even learning some Farsi to try and add to our experience there.
UAE: 3-4 days - we will cross from the bottom of Iran on a ferry to Dubai.  We don't want to stay long in Dubai - just enough time to get Harry on to a ship back to England.

From the UAE we will continue for NZ via the air, but the adventure won't quite stop there!

We will fly to Mumbai, India, and spend 16 days here.  High on the priority list in India is to visit the School where Jean volunteered and taught for three months in 2006.

After India, we will fly to Australia and visit some friends and family, before finishing the trip back in New Zealand.

We've been thinking about and planning this trip in earnest for the past 9 months, and are getting excited about the day we finally get to set off.

That's it for my first blog!  I'll be posting again soon with some details of our Discovery camper fit-out, as well as some more philosophy about our approach towards the trip planning.