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Overland 1970

Overland 1970

by David Shirreff

It is 1970 and in London a group of people gather around a Land Rover bedecked with jerry cans and hooked to a trailer.

Ahead lies a journey of many thousands of miles on ‘The Hippie Trail’, the well-trodden route from London to Nepal. They will encounter every imaginable hazard along increasingly dangerous roads that will take them through mountains, deserts, across empty plains and through teeming cities.

Overland 1970 vividly recreates the experience of the ‘Overlander’ at a time when a Western traveller could make this epic journey without encountering war or totalitarianism. The Hippie Trail had its dangers but to anyone possessed of the spirit of adventure it offered a wealth of fascinating encounters and stunning spectacles.

Author David Shirreff knows his subject well. Having driven the Hippie Trail several times, he captures the chilly mornings, the engine failures, the moments of rapture and the constant stimulus of new sights and experiences. But what sets his book apart is that he focuses on what is surely the essence of those journeys: what happened between the travellers themselves.

Inside a metal box for hours at a time, and for weeks on end, relationships ebbed and flowed. Travellers coupled and uncoupled, nursed grudges, formed bitter rivalries and, occasionally, arrived at a better understanding of themselves.

Overland 1970 takes the reader into that Land Rover and the experience of a vividly drawn cast of characters as they experience the journey of a lifetime.

The Last Overland

The Last Overland

by Alex Bescoby

The Last Overland is the remarkable story of filmmaker and historian Alex Bescoby’s journey to recreate the iconic First Overland expedition made in 1956 in the original ‘Oxford’ Land Rover and the story behind the All4 documentary series.

Africa Overland: The Journey Home

Africa Overland: The Journey Home

by Michael Leytonstone

A sequel to The Overlanders: An African Journey

Had his quest ended in South Africa . . . or had it only begun?

“The path to virtue is a rising slope, each step more difficult than the one before.”

A quest for courage on an African odyssey becomes a quest for honor on the homeward journey. A quest for honor . . . and love.

The Overlanders: An African Journey

The Overlanders: An African Journey

by Michael Leytonstone

What was he seeking in the wilds of Africa . . . the journey of a lifetime, or something greater?

“It sure makes me want to experience a similar adventure.”—Michael Garrett (Stephen King’s first editor), author of Keeper.

Breaking away from his office job in London, Alex Thompson joins a dozen other would-be adventurers on an overland expedition from Cairo to Johannesburg. His journey soon becomes a quest for courage as he confronts deserts, swamps, a civil war . . . and a few of his fellow passengers.

Rule No.5 – No Sex on the bus

By Brian Thacker

Brian Thacker, bus tour-leader extraordinaire, tells it how it really is in this funny, rollicking, absurd, ride through Europe.

Crew Manual Rule No. 5 : Crew must not engage in sexual activity on board the bus with passengers or fellow employees.

Crew Manual Rule No.2 : learn all names on day one.

Crew Manual Rule No.3 : don’t get lost.

But then, who follows the rules?

Brian Thacker confesses all as he reveals the best (and worst) of 20 trips as a tour leader around Europe. He tells how he fed passengers horse meat spag bog, hamburgers made from breakfast cereal and roosters’ testicles. How he left a passenger standing by the side of a motorway in France for three hours in his underwear clutching a purple toothbrush and how, along the way, he lost his driver, his cook, his bus, 10 brightly coloured canal bikes, a large church and eventually his patience.

Europe Overland: Seeking the Unique

by Graeme and Luisa Bell

Would our Land Rover Defender with her large mud-terrain tyres, skull adorned bullbar and self-built habitat be as out of place and inappropriate on the streets of Europe, as a rooftop tent is bolted onto the feminine slope of a Porshe 911? And would Europe be so expensive that we would have to flee for Africa and Asia, desperately? Would we find adventure and un-spoilt nature, would we be able to travel freely and live our outdoor lifestyle? This book is written to answer those questions, and the best way to do so is to continue the narrative of our continuous intercontinental overland journey as written in our previous books – We Will Be Free and Overlanding the Americas “La Lucha”, the story of our family of four giving everything we have to give to achieve our goal of living the explorers lifestyle.We seek nature, beauty, tranquillity and adventure. Many Europeans who read this book may ask themselves whether us outsiders might have found what they may have not, in their own backyard. I believe that we have

Shhhhh…Don’t Tell My Mother

Shhhhh…Don’t Tell My Mother

by Jennifer Wert

With a wish, a dream, and lady luck on her side, a naive 20-year old realized the world was hers to explore. Setting sail on the SS Australis in October 1974 — first as a passenger, then later joining the Chandris Crew family — Jenny shares her hilarious adventures and misadventures recovered from precious memories stored in letters she wrote home. Climb aboard for a trip of a lifetime! You don’t tell your mother everything, so it’s necessary to read between the lines.

Tales From The Big Yellow

Tales From The Big Yellow: Unreliable Memoirs of a Tour Guide

by Simon Tobin

It’s the late 1970s and Simon Tobin knows he wants a life of adventure after he finishes college in England. But when he answers an ad in the paper to become a Tour Guide, he’s not sure what he’s getting into.

“Get your shit together, have a shave and a haircut, buy some clothes that don’t make you look like a stupid hippy,” his boss tells him after the training trip around Europe. “You take the first three-weeker leaving on Monday. Good luck, you’ve got potential. Don’t fuck up.’

Travelling in a coach painted with a big yellow sun across Europe, through Russia and down to North Africa until the early 80s, ‘Tobes’ survives both an earthquake in Montenegro and the traffic in Paris. He runs an Austrian ski resort and converts a chateau in the Beaujolais. He smuggles jeans in Russia, lunches (and lunches, and lunches…) in Tuscany and drinks tea at sunrise in the Moroccan desert.

Through it all, he makes friends – food-and-drink loving Italians, Austrian skiers, and a vast network of young, down-to-earth Aussie and Kiwi travelers and tour guides all with outlandish nicknames. Tobes’ life of adventure turns out to be above all, a life of friendship and fun, giving him more than a few ‘Big Yellow’ tales to tell.

Canada 2018

Canada 2018

Our visit to Canada was great. My Wife and daughter met me in Montreal as they had been in UK. I flew to Vancouver then to Montreal and they met me the following day.

We spent a bit of time in Montreal and also did a trip to Quebec City and also another trip to Niagara Falls.

The Quebec City trip was great we had a good guide and she gave us an excellent walking tour of the old City plus we had a bit of time to explore some places ourselves before catching the bus back again.

The Niagara trip gave us plenty of time and we had lunch at a great place with a view of the falls. It also included a couple of stops, one at a wine tasting place and one in a small village. While there we did do a boat tour on the river below the falls, which was a bit wet but awesome, it gives a great perspective of how bit and how much water is coming over the top.

From Montreal we flew to Toronto and had a few days there. This is where our daughter stayed on for another few days to do a course while we flew next to Calgary.

We planned the Calgary stop wrong as it was bitterly cold and we had 5 nights there killing time until our planned Rocky Mountaineer train trip. We were picked up at our hotel by bus and driven to Banff, after a night there we boarded the Rocky Mountaineer and headed to Lake Louise. This part was supposed to include a Helicopter flight and also a Gondola ride. The Helicopter flight was cancelled due to fog and the Gondola was almost no view at the top also due to fog.

We got to Lake Louise and once again due to low fog no view up to the end of the lake. We were joined by passengers from the train in from Jasper and that extended the train a bit longer. We never thought of doing the Jasper part until then.

Next stop was Kamloops, and then next day into Vancouver. We were greeted by a huge line up of buses to take us to several different hotels around Vancouver. All in a nice line with everyone in uniform it looked really impressive indeed.

We had opted for the Gold Service with the double decker carriages with a great view, we also had meals on the train as well which were fantastic.

Another few days in Vancouver to look around and a lot of walking, a couple of bus tours, it is a place I would gladly go back to at another time.

Our view of the spectacular mountains at Lake Louise

One Foot in Front of the Other – First Steps

Neil Rawlins

In the late 1960s a young New Zealander, who had always known he would travel, first set out into the big wide wonderful world. His first journey was a voyage on the ‘banana’ boat which then regularly visited some of the smaller South Pacific Islands. It was the first step and the wider world beckoned. There was now no stopping him and the Asian Overland was the first magnet. At the time the route between Kathmandu and London was the ultimate adventure. Nepal was still a mysterious Himalayan kingdom at the end of the hippy trail, India and Pakistan were tolerating each other in an uneasy peace; Afghanistan was still a peaceful kingdom and Iran was under the tutelage of the Shah. It was a journey of discovery with a wealth of wonderful places to visit – great elaborate marble tombs, erotic temples, ancient ruins, underground cities, awe-inspiring cathedrals… Europe & particularly England was then the ideal venue for a working holiday, and for a kiwi who had never been near a farm, he soon had employment as a farm labourer! Other adventures followed – a visit to the Soviet Union, which, at the height of the Cold War, and mainly due to Western propaganda, was then thought to be a place to be avoided, after all you could disappear without trace into the maw of the KGB! There was grape-picking in France, and further travels in Spain, Morocco and throughout the United Kingdom before eventually the decision is made to return home, this time on another epic Overland journey – through Africa, travelling by truck to Nairobi then hitch-hiking south to Cape Town to catch a ship back to New Zealand. Again there were many the experiences. There was the vast fascinating expanses of the Sahara with wandering Tuaregs, the rainforests in the post-colonial Congo & the occasional glimpse of Pygmies, the game parks of Tanzania and the tranquil beaches of Portuguese Mozambique, then in the throes of a guerrilla war and of course much more.

This narrative has been compiled from diaries, personal articles, photographs and memories of the happy days of my first travels. This book is also serving as a background to another book which will recount my experiences as a tour leader on the Asian Overland routes to Europe and the later years as a special interest tour leader/guide in India, Turkey and the Middle East in the days before terrorism, international politics and vicious local wars have made many of these fascinating regions no-go areas to the average traveller. All the photographs in this edition were all taken at the time of the events narrated. The photos have helped me immensely in recalling many of the events that took place. This book is a cameo of the golden days of travel before international politics destroyed or restricted many of the places I feel fortunate to have visited in happier days. I know my sentiments are shared by many of my peers.