Surprise, Surprise

Nine months passed between deciding that Fromeward Bound was going to happen and finally leaving Tokyo. During that time I did a huge amount of researching and planning – reading blogs and forums, pouring over maps, etc. – and created quite a clear idea in my head of how I thought things would play out.

Despite all that ‘deep’ thinking, some things have turned out a bit differently…..

Free time

Obviously the plan was always going to involve a large chunk of each day taken up by driving. Beyond that, we both imagined that, free of the shackles of work, we’d also have acres and acres of free time to read, think and create! We came prepared with Kindles jammed to the brim with books, a bag of games to keep us amused and a computer loaded with music software ready for the moment inspiration might strike.

The surprise has been that our free time is fairly limited! Between driving, cooking, cleaning up after cooking, shopping, maintaining things and keeping everything organised there’s not a huge amount of extra time left. I haven’t even managed to finish a book yet!

Instead I think our free time is taking a different form: rather than being large blocks of time that enable us to say something concrete like “I read 10 books,” or “We played 72 games of backgammon,” each day is full of many, many pockets of space that add up to lots of thinking, rather than ‘doing’, time.

Suntan

Having spent the last 15-odd years as a fair-skinned, office-dwelling troglodyte; a suntan is something that has never been a part of my life in any way, shape or form. The slightest sign of sunlight would see me dashing for the nearest shade. However, within a few weeks of commencing life on the road the unthinkable happened and a tan started to appear – albeit a classic farmer’s tan! I hardly recognise the fellow who stares back at me whenever I catch my reflection in the car windows.

The car’s performance

As our readers will know, the car we are travelling in is 27 years old. Whilst some of the parts were swapped for new or reconditioned versions prior to our departure, much of the car is still the same as the day it rolled off the production line. For that reason, since day one, I’ve been braced for the inevitable failure of one part or another – my pet worry has been that the rear suspension leafs will snap at some point.

However, to date, the car has stood up to everything the roads of Russia, Mongolia and Central Asia have thrown at her. There have been times where the road has been shaking the whole car so much that I think something *has* to break but, so far, each time we’ve lived to drive another road.

The Garmin

For better or worse I’m a person who, up until 6 months ago, had never owned or used an in-car GPS unit. But for Fromeward Bound I figured I’d pony up the £100 for a cheap Garmin, load it up with maps based on the data from openstreetmap.com and use it to sanity check the routes I would plan on paper.

Whilst we still plan everything out on paper, the Garmin has turned out to be so much more important to our trip. In seconds we can calculate how far it is to the next petrol stop and can plan accordingly; in terrifyingly hectic cities we can plug in the location of our hostel and concentrate on not crashing instead of worrying about which way to go; and in very remote areas we always know how to backtrack and what route options are available moving forward. In short it’s given us extra confidence to explore because we can access a huge amount of information very quickly that can then be factored into deciding if we think something is safe and sensible. Without that extra data we would almost certainly err significantly on the side of caution.

The easy availability of Hoegaarden

It’s been a delight to go into many, many of the supermarkets and small shops along our route and always be able to buy a few bottles of Hoegaarden.

The lack of other overlanders

I don’t know where I got the idea, but before we left I imagined once we hit the road we’d suddenly become part of some secret society of overlanders all making our way around the world together; that we’d see each other on the roadways, stop for chats and exchange information about the roads ahead. Maybe we’d hit it off and spend a few days in convoy. Clare laughed at me when I told her all this!

The reality couldn’t be more different: we’ve seen almost no overlanders on the road. In fact, on some parts of our journey we’ve barely see anyone full stop! And to add insult to injury the overlanders we do see pretty much point-blank ignore us, bar the very occasional wave. The exception has been a few hostels we’ve stopped at where we’ve spent a few evenings comparing notes over a few beers with other overlanders.