OverlandSphere
Overland Travel, Expedition & Adventure Information for 4x4, motorcycle and truck overlanders
Trip Start: 2013-12-31 Trip End: 2012-06-01 .
In 1956 the French left Morocco after 44-years of occupation but recent times have seen a new invasion; from the Southern Spanish Ports they come in their thousands, a campervan cavalcade marching to a victory of sunshine and low-cost campsites. Throughout natural history, species with the means (ie-wings) have wisely selected to spend their winter months in the sunshine of…
Way back in 1962, British director David Lean choose the dusty town of Ouarzazate and its surrounding area to film his epic movie ‘Lawrence of Arabia’. Lean recognised the potential of the area as a unique and versatile film location and inadvertently started the small dusty towns long love affair with Hollywood. Ouarzazate and the smaller UNESCO World Heritage site…
Driving in Morocco is hazardous in many ways and off-road driving on the ‘piste’ even more so as we discovered when we hit a large field of Fesh-Fesh! “Fesh-Fesh, what is Fesh-Fesh?” I hear you cry. Fesh-Fesh, as the Arabians call it, is the by-product of thousands of years of erosion; sand that has been worn down from it’s granular…
Glance at a map of Morocco and your eyes are drawn from the mountains, deserts and cities of the north to a stretch of land in the southwest; few roads and habitations and tentatively separated from the rest of Morocco with a faint dotted line. This is Western Sahara. Few tourists venture this far south, whispers amongst the campervan masses…
Morocco, a short hop from Spain and not requiring a Carnet, has long been a favoured overlanding destination for many Europeans. During our time here we have spotted overland vehicles from Holland, Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, Italy, England and of course it is incredibly popular with the French, whose native language (along with Arabic) is spoken throughout. The 3-month visa,…
Across the valleys of South Western Morocco we camped amongst vast plains of dark, twisted, prickly trees extending from arid soil and bearing hard, oval, bright green fruit. These fruits contain a nut, at the centre of which is a small, hard kernel that produces a rich, nutty oil when crushed. Argan oil is one of the world’s rarest oils…
Leaving the pasta and noodles in Bee-Bee, I was invited to join a Moroccan chef in his restaurant kitchen to learn how to prepare two classic Moroccan dishes; Tagine and Couscous. ‘Tagine’ is actually the name of the conical-shaped earthenware dish that the meal is served in, similar to a ‘Casserole’. The fish tagine is made with red mullet, potatoes…
If the lanes and alleys of the souk and Kasbah are the arteries of Marrakech, then Djemaa el Fna is its heart- a central square pulsating with life. During the day it’s a comparatively sedate scene although still impossible to cross without being intercepted by trinket hawkers, water sellers, snake charmers and orange juice vendors. Horse-drawn carriages lug tourists around…
The transition from European familiar to African unfamiliar is only a 90-minute sail across the Straits of Gibraltar. As with the arrival to any foreign country for the first time, there is always the excitement, yet slight trepidation of the unknown; language, money, people, food, culture, roads and everyday life. Our initial route in Morocco took us down the Atlantic…
(Photo by Thomas Ozanne)We received extremely sad news last week that two of my good friends, ex-work colleagues and fellow artists from my home island of Guernsey were tragically killed in Thailand. Peter Root and Mary Thompson were hit by a pick-up truck in a province east of Bangkok last Wednesday whilst in the middle of their ‘around the world’…
A wet, drizzly morning in Weymouth and Bee-Bee is having the last couple of boxes loaded in; map at the ready and the 11pm Portsmouth – Le Havre ferry booked. With our family situation currently stable and itchy feet so bad we are practically doing the river dance, we are swapping our sunset chase for a longitudinal course. A quick…
Prior to our Truckin’ hell we’d made the decision to head straight back home; unfortunately we were 8000 miles away in Mongolia. In hindsight our departure from Mongolia was probably a little too hasty; a bit more Dakar Rally than Mongol Rally.Bad roads coupled with some wannabe Sébastien Loeb-esq driving damaged Bee-Bee’s rear axle.Luckily my daily under-car crawl exposed the hairline…
It was the first time I had ever planned a route taking into account the curvature of the earth; an epic drive home as directly and quickly as possible to reunite with family. Fortunately our Russian visas allowed us a window of 21 days in which to back-track across this colossal country. It had taken us 43 days to cross…
Mongolia is a unique country in every aspect; a country often associated with isolation and remoteness, a country with a very extraordinary inimitable stark landscape. It is not all nomads and yak though; due to the recent discovery of copper and gold deposits it is developing at an extremely fast rate. The country that Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman visited…
Mud is a big problem in Mongolia as we discovered in a small village in the Khan Khentii Protected Area. After driving for two days on what should have been a scenic round-trip we stumbled upon a small village nestled in a valley alongside a beautiful winding river. Every track into the village was a 1½ metre deep worn channel…
Up until now, only facebook users have been fortunate (?) enough to view our ongoing Video Diaries or “Vlogs” (as modern technology terminology now calls them). Some of our experiences are simply not justified through still photos and writing. Take for example Andy’s depth-checking wade across a Mongolian river in his pants, off-road mud sliding or bone-shaking driving across corrugated…
With a perfectly-pitched camp on the banks of the Zavkhan River overlooked by the holy Otgontenger mountain, dinner was underway (tinned sardines despite two hours spent fishing for Taimen giant trout in the river) when we spotted a small army of Mongolians approaching from the South. Sardines off and tea on, the mother and children gathered on a blanket, entertained…
Our arrival into the Mongolian capital was of stark contrast to our drive from the border with its rolling green hills, peaceful Gers and scenic steppe dotted with grazing animals. The suburban sprawl of the city creeps up the surrounding mountainsides as we approach to see the haphazard concrete urban jungle before us. We were able to get an extremely…
It’s hard to tell if Russia has benefitted from the fall of communism in anyway, as outsiders we have no benchmark to compare it to. Our first impressions were of a country that was slowly falling apart; the roads are appalling, buildings are subsiding and according to Time magazine, Russia is ranked fairly high in the world’s most corrupt economically…
Our first glimpse of the world’s oldest and deepest lake came after we had left the city of Irkutsk 70km behind us; bumping over the brow of a hill this ‘Pearl of Siberia’ twinkled in the valley below stretching endlessly towards the horizon. If you look at a world map and trail your eyes East across Russia, the scale of…
Hours of journeying on fast, busy, noisy motorways, slowing down only temporarily to circumnavigate the choked outskirts of sprawling cities, had started to take it’s toll on us and we yearned again for a quieter journey and to experience rural areas away from the clamour and chaos of the highway. We decided to take a detour that would allow us…
Our quest to sample the local food of Russia continued in Perm, a city in the North of the Ural Mountains. We heard that a regional speciality came in the form of small, tortellini-like stuffed dumplings. Due to our tight budget (and inability to understand or order from a menu!) we opted for one (randomly selected) of the many frozen…
Visiting a town or city in Russia on a Saturday, particularly in July, we are guaranteed to witness several wedding parties. Following the marriage service, it is customary for the entire wedding party to drive around the city in convoy visiting local beauty spots and landmarks. The bride and groom look extremely young; they arrive in the first of a…
Days on the road = 45 Highest temperature = 38°C Bear encounters = None (Despite trying to lure them out with meat) Distance travelled = 6043 Miles/9725 km Injuries to Bee Bee = 8 Fuel Station Stops = 36 No. of countries visited = 10 Eagle encounters = Many Photographs taken = 1967 Kremlin count = 4 Ferry crossings =…
Embarrassingly, us Brits too often rely on others knowledge of our mother tongue when travelling. With every good intention to communicate with the natives, we armed ourselves with phrase books and even spent the last few weeks prior to our departure driving to work listening to a ‘Леарн Руссиан’ CD in favour of the breakfast show. Russian is the largest…
Driving allows us to get a real feel for a country, especially in a land as vast as Russia. In 10 days we have probably seen more of the country than most of its inhabitants will in a lifetime.On our trip it has become apparent that each country has a style of driving that is representative of that countries people.…
A Russian summertime brings with it glorious hot, sunny days, ‘white nights’ of almost no darkness, swimming in rivers and al fresco drinking and dining in cities. Unfortunately for wild campers it brings something else; a deluge of winged camp invaders in a variety of invertebrate forms. Pulling up to what from the inside of the car looks like an…
After a 4-hour ferry ride we arrived in Norway: land of the midnight sun. In stark contrast to a very flat Denmark we soon arrived at a hill, a hill that soon turned into a mountain. In a very short period we climbed 1250 metres to above the tree line and into the snow. For Emma who lived in the…
For us, camping holidays evoke wonderful memories of leaking tents, collapsing chairs, charred burgers and UHT milky tea. Cross the channel in 2012 and it’s a very different story; in Denmark you find what can only be described as five star luxury in the guise of camping. A toilet block on a campsite should be cold, concrete, poorly lit with…
Owing to our delayed departure and a pressing need to ‘Rush to Russia’ to maximize our visa validity we motored the first part of Europe- England to Denmark- at quite a pace. Our passports were literally swept from the postman and into our rucksack on Thursday then we hot-footed it down to Dover and watched the white cliffs fade into…