Around The World In 800 Days
  • Home
  • Blog
  • About
    • The Car
  • Route
  • Photos
    • Europe
    • Russia
    • Mongolia
    • Morocco
    • UAE and Oman
    • The Alps
    • Slovenia
    • Croatia
    • Serbia
    • Montenegro
    • Albania
    • Greece
    • Turkey
    • Armenia
    • Georgia
    • Kazakhstan
    • Kyrgyzstan
    • Tajikistan
    • Uzbekistan
    • Turkmenistan
    • Iran
    • India
    • Myanmar
    • Laos
    • Cambodia
    • Thailand
    • Malaysia
  • Visas/Borders
    • Russia
    • Kazakhstan
    • Kyrgyzstan
    • Tajikistan
    • Uzbekistan
    • Turkmenistan
    • Iran
    • Thailand
    • Laos
    • Cambodia
    • Malaysia
  • Logistics
  • Budget
  • Choosing a Vehicle
  • Journalism
  • Talks
  • Overland Design Service
  • Links

Useful Bits 'N' Bobs

30/7/2015

0 Comments

 
Here is a summary of some of the minor pieces of equipment we carry that are so useful on a daily basis we now couldn’t imagine adventuring without them. At the start of any trip it’s difficult to know exactly what to take when you have limited space and budget but as this list of little gems proves, it’s often the most basic, cheap and unassuming objects which are the most ingenious, utilised and valued.

The Red Basket

A convenient containment of all those ‘things’ which are needed regularly every day; quick access to bread, tea-bags, soap, salt, pepper, chilli sauce (an Emma essential on all food), pegs, matches. It’s a place to quickly chuck those little random thingamajigs which are used too regularly to be stashed in a box but for which there are no specific ‘homes’. For those moments when one of you is waving an object confused and the other says “just stick it in the red basket”. Intended as a lightweight, foldable shopping basket, for us it’s a precious, practical storage of easily-grab-able stuff.

Pegless Elastic Washing Line

One simple metre of white, twisted elastic with hooks at either end. On a daily basis we use it to easily dry shower towels, damp socks or used tea-towels hung from the car, fence, tent or tree. Stretched out, it fits all socks and smalls on laundry day, saving our precious 12 pegs for the main line. For big laundry days we carry a 20 metre length of Paracord.

'Baby Legs' Torch

Our pet name for one of the single most useful objects we carry. Being LED, the batteries last for ages and the varying levels of brightness covers all needs (although yet to use the flashing red light setting!). In our pre-GoPro days we even super-glued a camera mount to the top of the torch and filmed drive-by shots from the bonnet. The magnetic feet are invaluable when working under the car or in the engine bay.

http://joby.com

Cargo Net

This hangs above the back seat area of the car above our boxes and tidily stashes our bulky jumpers, jackets and coats. This frees-up valuable box space yet keeps everything tucked compactly in the roof allowing a clear rear-view through the whole car. Hats, jumpers and jackets are easily grab-able when you need them.

Sticky Back Velcro

Sometimes the simplest solutions are the most effective and this is certainly the case with our sticky-back Velcro. The entire passenger side of the dash board is covered with the soft Velcro side so that a range of gadgets and items can be firmly, yet temporarily, fixed and easy to view. In all of our thousands of miles driving on bumpy-roads and unexpected pot-holes we have never had a single item fall off. Practical items such as the iPhone, GPS, iPod, pen holder and thermometer stick side-by-side with sentimental items such as our Lego Indie and various collectibles and coins from our travels. It also secures our GoPro remote control to the steering wheel.

SPOT Locator

Another gift from a mildly-anxious family member, this device allows us to send an ‘OK’ signal by pressing a button each evening from our camp. Working with GPS satellites, it doesn’t matter how remote we are, we don't have to rely on internet or mobile phone signals. Once we’ve pressed the ‘OK’ button, an email is sent to 10 people which contains a pre-written message declaring we're safe and having fun along with a google map link of our exact location. Most of the time our family has a better idea of where we are then we do thanks to this!

http://findmespot.com

Sink

Carrying everything but the kitchen sink? Take the sink. But make it a super-light, fast-drying, foldable and durable one like this. So incredibly handy for washing vegetables, dishes, clothes and bodies. Not all at the same time, but it’s possibly big enough if you needed to. Being black, if we fill from a glacial stream and stick it on our black car bonnet in the sunshine it heats the water up good too.

Knife, Fork and Spoon Set

This neat little basic, 3-piece cutlery set had followed me for 9 years on Middle Eastern expeditions before it even began its 800days stint and being Titanium it’s still immaculate. On long trips, it’s nice to have decent cutlery rather than food fumbling with battered, plastic bent forks and knives which can only just about cut butter. A splash out (obviously a gift!) as they’re not cheap but for us essential; they’re stronger than steel but only half the weight and come in a neat pouch to avoid losing a piece. 

https://www.lifeventure.co.uk/

Diesel Stickers

Simple idea, potential car lifesaver for those questionable translation moments when a petrol station attendant is about to fill up your precious tank with mystery fuel from an un-marked pump. 

http://www.touring-gear.com

Galileo Pro Maps App

Avid purists when it comes to navigating- preferring a beautiful, beaten up paper map to any technology robotically telling you to “turn right at the mosque”, this iPhone App has proved invaluable since we adopted it on our third departure. It’s perfect for navigating busy city’s and finding essential locations; embassies, banks, offices… pubs. We waypoint all our wild camps to share with other adventurers and it’s incredible how even the faintest, rarely-used donkey tracks are still marked on the opensource maps. We still get lost, but that’s part of the fun. The best part is it works completely off-line!

https://galileo-app.com

Key Lanyard

Never hear “where are the car keys!?!” again… if you’re camped up they’re hanging from this basic key lanyard on the rear-view mirror, out and about and the same item secures them to Andy’s belt as well as in his pocket. Security, peace-of-mind and multiple argument avoidance about who had them last.

Paper Fan

Never be short of breath again! Purchased from a Japanese tut 6 dirham shop in Dubai, this has saved many a faltering fire in rainy conditions and aided perfect, even cooking of chicken and chops on the BBQ (minus the spitting when trying to blow the fire). Andy has lovingly patched it on several occasions with Duck tape but it’s still going strong.

Sunglass Case Multi-holder

Fixed to the car interior with 2 self-tapping screws, this simple leather sunglass case acts as a home for small, easy-to-lose items such as pens and pencils which need to be at hand in the cockpit.

Thermometer

Extremely useful to help judge when you probably shouldn’t climb any higher to set up camp as the outside temperature is falling by the minute. An old supermarket fridge monitoring device, this little retro gauge continually informs us of both our outside and in-car temperatures. Probably more informative than actually useful as we tend to ignore it anyway, persuading ourselves that minus 2 is really OK to be sleeping on the roof. 

Torches

Clipped for easy reach and access, knowing exactly where your torch can be found whilst grappling in the dark is essential. This pocket-sized lamp is held in place by 2 spring clips fixed by 2 self-tapping screws into the front windscreen door post. No more torch-fumbling in the dark. My Grandma always said "a place for everything and everything in its place" and never is this as important as when you live in a car.

Vegetable Bags

Nothing is as unappetising as sweaty, squashed and bruised vegetables & fruit suffocating in plastic bags. When you’re stocking up for the long road there’s not always room in the fridge so keeping veg cool and dark in soft fabric extends its lifespan in a hot, bumpy car. These bags were lovingly handmade by my sister so sensible and sentimental. 
0 Comments

Adventure Annoyances 2 - Bad Drivers

18/7/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
Following on in our ‘Adventure Annoyances’ series we look now from the surface of the roads to those driving on them, specifically the Bad drivers. Every country has atrocious drivers; only some have more than others, the worst offenders we have found being in Albania, Turkey, Russia and Georgia. Tailgating is a huge problem in all countries, with cars literally less than 2m from your rear bumper at speeds of more than 50kph.
The Georgians & Russians in particular have a unique style of overtaking, which involves passing as close as possible to your vehicle; behind, along side and in front. We have witnessed vehicles overtaking vehicles that were already overtaking other vehicles. We frequently see people being forced off the road by on-coming overtaking vehicles, usual accompanied with a kind, informative light flash which states “I’m coming through, even though you have right-of-way and I’m going to have to force you to brake and swerve”. The hard shoulder, when it exists, is also a valid lane for ‘undertaking’. 

We rode in several Taxis in Georgia’s capital Tbilisi and not once did I see the drivers use their mirrors. One driver purposefully inched sideways todays a lady driver to intimidate her and another reached out his window and snapped off the wing mirror of another car who refused to move out his way. 
Outside of Europe no one uses baby seats in cars, it’s not unusual to see children playing on dashboards, sat on laps (without seatbelts) and standing in the gap between the two front seats. In Bishkek (a city renowned for it’s chaotic, fast traffic) we witnessed a 5-year-old boy steering the car from his fathers lap whilst dad sat back and ate a sandwich.
Picture
On one occasion in Armenia crossing an icy, snowy pass we encountered a white Lada on its roof being retrieved from down a steep verge. 30 minutes later the same white Lada overtook us on a blind bend!
Seemingly it doesn’t matter what the driving conditions are, the drivers don’t seem to change their driving habits. We had several near misses in fog because other drivers failed to use their lights; rain, snow and ice also have no effect on drivers speed or care. Bright sunshine in your eyes? Just cover your driver’s window completely with a towel, shading your eyes and also obscuring your entire peripheral view. Why just drive when you can multitask? - Combine it with messaging on your phone, reading the paper or eating your dinner?
The condition of the cars also doesn’t fill you with confidence, bald tyres, broken windscreens, no lights and often completely overloaded (and that’s not just our car!), sometimes to the point where you are swerving to avoid tumbling items from the truck ahead; from rocks and gravel to onions and potatoes.

One positive side to all of the bad drivers (excluding taxis!) in the countries mentioned is that these motoring misdemeanours are rarely carried out in an aggressive fashion. People seem to accept each other’s stupidity, dangerous manoeuvres and blatant disregard for human life as all part of normal, daily road use. Horns are beeped cheerfully to let others know you’re about to do something reckless and stupid, rather than as a hostile reaction to others foolish and careless driving. Narrowly missing a head-on collision at 60kph on a blind bend from an oncoming, overtaking pickup with windscreen obscured by the tons of hay precariously piled on top… a wave and a big happy smile from the driver on the phone with his baby on his lap and it’s all OK.
0 Comments

Adventure Annoyances 1 - Bad Roads

12/7/2015

2 Comments

 
Picture
Gaze at the constant stream of romantic overland expedition posts on social media and it’s easy to believe that it’s all exotic sunsets, idyllic camp spots and laughter with locals.

In reality however, it’s not all thrilling and fulfilling- overlanding has more than its fair share of exasperations and frustrations. But surely that’s part of the experience, right? Most days these provocations can be shrugged off, even laughed at, but even with the strongly developed tolerance and patience of an overlander sometimes these few repeating niggles make you want to scream from the roof(tent)tops.

In this short series of blogs I retain the right to rant, expose the things that have left nail marks in the steering wheel and detail our main adventure annoyances, our overlanding irritations. So here is my stage on which to vent. First up, bad roads. Expected? Yes. Tolerated? Mostly…
We’ve experienced some pretty terrible roads on our travels. Just to clarify, we’re not talking about off-road dirt tracks high up into the mountains here, we’re talking about main roads, motorways and city streets.

Russia, Kosovo, Albania, Armenia, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan all have their fair share of ‘bad’ roads often with potholes larger than your car.


Deep chasms are not the only surface danger, due to heavy truck traffic many roads become furrowed, once in a groove your vehicle handles like it is on rails, without a vigilant steering wheel wrestle this can suddenly send you veering towards oncoming traffic.
Travelling in Armenia in your own vehicle is costly, on entry we paid at least £50 for ecology and road tax. Ironically when we left we should have billed Armenia for the damage done to our car for using such terrible roads. I’m not sure where the tax money is going but it certainly isn’t being spent on the roads.

The highway system in Armenia consists of 7,633km of (apparently) paved roads, of which, 1,561km are supposedly expressways; our average speed on Armenia’s M1 was about 28mph.
Picture
One of the worst stretches of urban street we encountered was in Sevan; some of the potholes on the main high street are so large you can see them on Google Earth!
Picture
It is not just the road surfaces that are dangerous in these countries; the lack of road markings, signals and ambiguous road junctions are equally hazardous, as are open drain covers and deep gutters. Other potential dangers include animals, overloaded trucks and clueless pedestrians. In Georgia we narrowly avoided hitting a child, who crossing the road with his mother, ran straight out in front of our vehicle. Fortunately the only physical damage done to him was from the heavy clout round the ear his mother gave him for being so careless.
Georgia’s excessive use of speed bumps is simply annoying. A motorway should never have speed bumps! Especially unmarked speed bumps.

In Western Europe we have a system for using roundabouts, it works because every roundabout employs the same system, you know your place and everybody else knows theirs. In Eastern Europe the system fails as every roundabout operates a different system. Some roundabouts allow vehicles that are approaching to have right-of-way whilst others allow the vehicles on the roundabout to have priority, some even employ both on the same roundabout. Some roundabouts even have traffic lights mid-roundabout whilst others have no road markings at all and are simply a massive city square with six lanes of traffic and a fountain in the middle. So, bad roads, the first of my adventure annoyances- the logistical network allowing me to traverse this wonderful planet, but at times my reason for breaking the 6pm G&T rule.
2 Comments

    Archives

    July 2020
    March 2020
    April 2019
    March 2019
    September 2017
    February 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    October 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010

    Categories

    All
    Adventuring
    Albania
    Americas
    Andy
    Armenia
    Bosnia
    Cambodia
    Car Selection
    Charity
    Cooking
    Croatia
    Culture
    Cyprus
    Electrical
    Emma
    Engine
    Europe
    Facts
    Fault
    Food
    Fund Raising
    Gallery Magazine
    Georgia
    Greece
    Hilux Surf
    India
    Iran
    Kazakhstan
    Kosovo
    Kyrgyzstan
    Landcruiser
    Laos
    Magazine Articles
    Malaysia
    Modifications
    Mongolia
    Montenegro
    Morocco
    Myanmar
    Nature
    Photography
    Planning
    Pre Adventuring
    Pre-adventuring
    Problems
    Research
    Russia
    Scandinavia
    Slovenia
    Spain
    Tajikistan
    Thailand
    Thoughts
    Turkey
    Turkmenistan
    United Kingdom
    Uzbekistan
    Vehicles
    Video
    World


    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • Blog
  • About
    • The Car
  • Route
  • Photos
    • Europe
    • Russia
    • Mongolia
    • Morocco
    • UAE and Oman
    • The Alps
    • Slovenia
    • Croatia
    • Serbia
    • Montenegro
    • Albania
    • Greece
    • Turkey
    • Armenia
    • Georgia
    • Kazakhstan
    • Kyrgyzstan
    • Tajikistan
    • Uzbekistan
    • Turkmenistan
    • Iran
    • India
    • Myanmar
    • Laos
    • Cambodia
    • Thailand
    • Malaysia
  • Visas/Borders
    • Russia
    • Kazakhstan
    • Kyrgyzstan
    • Tajikistan
    • Uzbekistan
    • Turkmenistan
    • Iran
    • Thailand
    • Laos
    • Cambodia
    • Malaysia
  • Logistics
  • Budget
  • Choosing a Vehicle
  • Journalism
  • Talks
  • Overland Design Service
  • Links