The End

The end of the trip. The van will be in Southampton on Monday, and need collecting once it has cleared customs and we've paid the bill for the agent this end.

Would we do it again? Yes, but not the same route, maybe ship to Australia and drive back via the countries we had originally intended to visit - Tibet, Nepal, India, Pakistan and Iran. That way we can clean the vehicle here before it goes into a shipping container. Can't see that we'll be doing this within the next ten years, so it will definitely be in a different vehicle. And there are so many other countries to visit in Europe, Africa, America.....

Other things we'd do differently: Travelling as a group has it's benefits, but probably a bigger group would work better. Just three vehicles meant we were always with the same people and when there was friction (which some of you spotted in my writing, but I thought I'd concealed!) there wasn't always space to get away. My trip to the Gambia 3 years ago was better in this respect.


Vehicle : We are very pleased with our choice of van. It met the criteria of enough room for two, fitted into a shipping container, was comfortable to drive/ride in for many hours every day, had the right level of fittings and, perhaps most importantly, it was reliable. Maybe the level of spares and tools taken was excessive, but that's a hindsight thing when you don't use them. There weren't too many countries that we could have found spares for it if we'd needed them so we'd probably take the same amount again.

There are a few more pictures to post once we've collected the van, and I'll probably compile some information on costs and other stuff over the next week or so.