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We’re David & Charlotte - once ordinary travellers, now full-time overlanders picking routes as we go, changing plans when reality demands it, and writing it all down honestly as we pass through. Expect culture, chaos and beautiful places that don’t feature on glossy lists. This is our roadbook from the real world: what happens when you set off overland with a bit of planning and a lot of curiosity. 

• If you’re new here: This was the original post Made it to Morocco and 15 minutes of fame You can start there and work through, but just know it's not a complete account (yet) until you get to From Paperwork to Pastures: A Hard Lesson in the Road Ahead. Which is where we really doubled down to improve the quality and volume ( we blog now twice a month).

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Blog Link	Country	Points of Interest
Thailand Pt2: No Alternative Route – Driving Blind Through Thailand’s Floods	Thailand (Southern)	active flooding, impassable roads waist-deep road crossings submerged vehicles, invisible roads petrol station refuge emergency boats, displaced residents instinct vs judgement, survivor guilt forced flight toward Malaysia
Thailand, Part 1: An Easy Country, Until It Isn’t	Thailand (Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Phuket, Khuek Khak)	temples, selfies, sacred queues monk chants White Temple, gold palaces, spectacle staged villages, souvenir traditions Phuket bars, expat bubbles tsunami ruins, beach memorials
https://www.sommertravelling.com/post/india-part-two	India (Varanasi, Ganges River, Delhi, New Delhi Railway Station, Jaipur)	burning ghats, death at arm’s length Diwali smoke, fireworks, and collapsing air tuk-tuks, street logic, and rented survival rats, flies, and drawing personal limits
India Part 1: Ziro to Kolkata – At the Fading Edges of India	India (Hyderabad, Ziro Valley, Kolkata)	tribal tattoos, vanishing traditions Durga Puja chaos vs quiet hills rickshaws, dignity, and biryani regret
A Christmas Thankyou…	Journey recap + what’s next (Europe → Middle East → SE Asia; next leg: Chile / South America)	Maps of our journey so far Map of next leg
Between Borders and Brothels: A Brief Drift Through Laos and Thailand	Laos (Boten, rainforest, Vang Vieng, Vientiane) Thailand (Bangkok)	SEZ sleaze and karaoke brothels rainforest nights and red-mud roads paperwork derailing “freedom”
Seventy-Two Bends and a Few Too Many Tyres	China / Tibet (Khunjerab Pass, Tibet, Lhasa, Nujiang “72 Bends”)	oxygen masks and prayer flags riot police outside holy temples tyres exploding, visas expiring
China: Border, Control, and the Long Road to Tibet	Pakistan → China → Tibet (Khunjerab Pass; across China; into Tibet)	map interrogation, deportation threats SIM cards as surveillance a 34-hour mechanical race against visas
Escorted Across Pakistan: Guns, Landslides and a Narrow Escape to China	Pakistan (Gilgit, Hunza, Karakoram Highway, Sost, Khunjerab Pass)	armed convoys and sirens mountain roads that kill sneaking under live power cables
Tea with the Taliban: An Overlander’s Passage Through Afghanistan	Afghanistan (border region, Kunduz, Kabul)	Taliban tea and “customer feedback” razor-wire hotels and AK-47 dinners secret schools and banned books
Tajikistan – On the Roof of the World	Tajikistan (Pamir Highway, high-mountain villages, Panj River)	diesel alarms at 4,500 metres villages burning cow dung for heat Afghanistan across the river
From Paperwork to Pastures: A Hard Lesson in the Road Ahead	Kazakhstan → Kyrgyzstan → Mongolia → Turkmenistan → Uzbekistan (Bishkek, Ulaanbaatar, Silk Road cities)	lost at the Kyrgyz border visa chaos and forced separation archers, deserts, and broken air-con
All change – people, places and weather	Türkiye (Pontic Mountains) → Georgia (Batumi, Tbilisi, Gori) → Spain detour → back to Georgia → Armenia (Yerevan) → Russia (Astrakhan) → Kazakhstan (Almaty)	snowbound, Stalin Museum, visa limbo, steppe
Back in Saudi and heading for Iraq...	Oman → Saudi Arabia (Al-Ula, Jeddah, Dakar Rally) → Jordan (Aqaba, Wadi Rum, Petra, Dead Sea) → Iraq (Baghdad, Babylon, Samarra) → Türkiye	Petra, Babylon, military escort, desert camps
Leaving Iran and starting on the Arabian Peninsula	Iran (Bandar Abbas) → UAE (Dubai/Sharjah) → Saudi Arabia (NE) → Bahrain → Qatar → Oman (Muscat, Nizwa, Wadi Bani Awf)	oil wealth, malls vs. bazaars, desert shock
Iran	Türkiye → Iran (Tabriz, Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz)	hospitality, mosques, headscarves, paradox
We are off… To an uninspired start	United Kingdom, Europe	Europe dull after Africa, long transit
We are ready to go!	The Scarborough Arms pub, Sunderland Street, Tickhill, Doncaster (UK)	restart, pub car park, community
400 + days and counting	UK (Doncaster; planning: Turkey, Georgia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Caspian Sea, Mongolia)	truck repairs, twisted chassis, waiting
We didn’t have 1.25 million dollars in cash strangely?	Kenya (blocked) → Zambia → Namibia (Caprivi Strip) → Angola → DRC → Congo → Cameroon → Nigeria → Benin → Togo → Ghana → Côte d’Ivoire → Guinea-Conakry → Morocco → Spain → UK	16,000 km detour, gangs, corruption, despair
It’s been a while since the last one…	Tanzania (Mbeya) → Kenya (Nairobi) → Uganda (Kampala) → Rwanda → back to Tanzania	Rwanda cleanliness, Nairobi extremes, fatigue
What is it with Elephants and Chilli?	Zambia (Livingstone northwards; rural maize fields)	elephant deterrents, chilli, maize fields
Hello, I’m Fabulous, pleased to meet you	Zimbabwe (Victoria Falls)	Victoria Falls, resilience, currency chaos
Gimme hope Jo’anna, give me hope	Botswana (Francistown, Maun, Okavango Delta, Makgadikgadi salt pans, Chobe, Kasane)	elephants, lions, salt pans, wild camping
Red Red Wine	Namibia → South Africa (Cape Town, wine country)	vineyards, comfort, repairs, “a different Africa”
Send a bolt of lightning. Very very frightening me!!	Republic of Congo (Congo-Brazzaville, jungle tracks)	storms, rivers, isolation, raw nature
Life is full of surprises!	DRC (towards Kinshasa)	corruption, mud, bribes, survival
It’s life Jim, but not as we know it!	Senegal (Dakar, coastal towns) Angola (Luanda, rural roads, waterfalls area)	first West Africa, heat, traffic, culture shock, malaria talk, police kindness, washed-out bridge
It’s been a while…	Senegal (Ziguinchor) → Turkey, Bulgaria, Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Slovakia → UK	catch-up, road rhythm, settling into Africa, Balkans, war scars, daughter’s wedding
All change!	The Gambia (Banjul) → Guinea-Bissau	border crossing, desert, sense of isolation, yellow fever jabs, visas, constant resets
Cooling down, wind in our hair…	Western Sahara (Atlantic coast) Senegal (east) → The Gambia (Banjul, Atlantic coast)	coastal drive, wind, relief from heat, river country, heat, fantasy cocktails
Hitting the road in Senegal and turning up the heat	Senegal (Dakar, Bassari region, Atlantic coast)	arrival, bureaucracy, intense heat, Bassari initiation, flamingos, village life
Moving on, shipping out	Morocco (Tiznit, Casablanca) → Senegal (Dakar)	shipping the truck, paperwork, waiting game, drone hiding, first separation
Travels through Morocco and Western Sahara	Morocco (Tangier, Tiznit, Agadir, Taroudant) → Western Sahara (Atlantic coast)	long drives, sand, first taste of Africa. Berber wedding, sandstorms, hospitality, visa limbo
Made it to Morocco and 15 minutes of fame	UK (Doncaster, Harwich) → Netherlands (Hook of Holland) → Belgium → Luxembourg → France (Normandy) → Spain → Italy (Genoa) → Morocco (Tangier Med)	arrival, press attention, excitement, media, Channel 5, emotional departure, Covid border dash

A Huge Thank You

The first (hopefully of many) G&T's on our terrace with Lemons from our tree.

After months on the road, we finally reached Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where we watched our trusty truck disappear onto the high seas, bound for Santiago, Chile. Seeing it sail away felt surreal - the end of one chapter and the quiet beginning of another.

In March, we’ll be reunited, and from there we’ll begin the final leg of our journey around the world. South America, Central America, North America, Canada, and up into Alaska. One last great stretch of road ahead.

For now, though, we’re taking some much-needed downtime at home in southern Spain. It’s a welcome pause - time to breathe, reflect, and for me to focus on finishing the book we hope to publish once this adventure comes to its conclusion. So this will be my final blog until the wheels start turning again.

Enjoying the fine food of Andalucia.

We truly want to thank every one of you who has followed our journey so far. Your messages, encouragement, and support have meant more than you know. We hope you’ll join us for this final chapter, which we expect will take about a year to complete… give or take a border crossing or two.

And then? Then it may finally be time to sit in a rocking chair with our cat, Ebano, and look back on what has been the adventure of a lifetime.

With heartfelt thanks,

David, Charlotte and Ebano.

Thailand Pt2: No Alternative Route – Driving Blind Through Thailand’s Floods

“Disaster strips away choice until only instinct remains.”— Joan Didion (adapted).

<<<Previous

Southern Thailand had already been whispering warnings.

We’d walked through the tsunami museum, stood in front of photographs of devastation, then driven along rebuilt coastlines that looked calm, orderly, finished. History felt contained - something that had happened, been explained, and moved on from.

Then the rain came.

As a sailor, I always check the weather and the barometer we have in the truck, unless we are up a mountain and then it doesn’t work.

I remember seeing the headlines about storms in Southeast Asia, but we were on a beach parked safely at the time, and it was one of those “it won’t be us, it’s somebody else who has the problem” moments. As the news gathered pace, I started to think maybe we would be affected, but probably not.

At the bottom of our entrance stair way. Is it going up or down? It was going up.

When we started to head south in Thailand, flood warnings began appearing on Google Maps in the areas we were planning to drive through. My thought was that’s fine, they’ll be gone by the time we get there.

A quiet reminder of the recent past in Thailand and other countries.

As we drove south, unease crept in. We looked silently out at swollen rivers and flooded fields as we passed them. Then we started to see houses knee deep in water, and then bang! we came across our first flooded road. I remember stopping, looking at it, and thinking, shit, we have to get through this. There wasn’t really an alternative route. Turning back wasn’t a clean option either - the rain was moving faster than we were, and whatever lay behind us was likely no better than what lay ahead.

Almost up to our waist deep, we drove through the first flooded road. We anxiously noted that most lorries and all cars didn’t attempt the crossing. I reasoned that our ex-military truck, with diff locks and four-wheel drive, gave us an edge, and we pushed on. 

This was what we saw. Clear roads followed by flooded areas. Can we get through or will this one flood our truck?

One of the scariest things about driving in those conditions was not knowing what we were actually driving on. We couldn’t see the road - or whether the water had lifted manhole covers, or concealed a motorbike we were about to run over. Cars lay submerged at the edges where drivers had drifted off line. The road was supposed to be raised, but it was invisible. A foot or two either way and we’d have been joining them.

We got through what we thought was the worst of it though, and soon the water subsided. But as we drove on, there was more. And the subsequent flooded roads were worse. At one point, I just followed a lorry, one of the few vehicles attempting to get through. We both made it, and at that moment, confidence was high. So we just kept pushing forward.

Looking back, I do wonder if that was the right response. The first crossings felt instinctive; after that, we were leaning more on the fact that nothing had gone wrong yet. Success has a way of disguising itself as judgement. We just kept making the same bet, with the odds getting worse at each crossing, until eventually we reached higher ground.

Still shaken but relieved to have made it through, we headed to a petrol station for the night. The forecourt was tidy and elevated, properly marked, lit up with bright lights and clear lanes - a place with rules, order and authority. It felt solid. It felt safe.

Dry and high, we settled down and slept. We felt we were in control now: we had the truck, we hadn’t panicked, and the decision to push on seemed, at least for the moment, to have been rewarded.

The petrol station where we took refuge. When we parked and went to bed, it was dry and then it got flooded and more flooded.

The following morning, Charlotte woke early and woke me to show me that the water was still rising. It had caught up with us and was now around knee deep.

Processing these moments now in the comfort of a dry 30 degree Malaysian beach campsite (guessing) it’s hard to know what exactly went through my mind.  I ran the “what if we stay, what if we go” scenarios through my head and realised we had the lorry engine to consider, and the generator too, both with exhausts.

Our first instinct was to wait for the water to subside and then move on. But it didn’t subside. It kept rising. And we just sat there trying to keep busy, endlessly checking news reports about the area, looking for reasons to believe we were making the right choice.  We didn’t find any.

As our situation deteriorated in real time, the residue of any confidence left from the night before was washed away. Now it seemed like if we stayed put the best case might be simply us living in our very own indoor swimming pool.  In that scenario, the damage would be catastrophic, maybe beyond repair (Did I ever mention that the truck isn’t insured?). The worst case scenario; well I’m not sure that thought fully surfaced at the time.

We were cornered and had no experience of what to do and, because this was unprecedented, neither did anyone else. So looking out at the rising water a decision was made. We had to make a bolt for it. This was based on nothing more than pure fear and a need to try and take back control and protect Charlotte. I just went into “I have to sort this” mode and probably blocked out the real danger in favour of thinking that if we could just get out, we could carry on, and that this flooding had to end somewhere.

So we left our habitation box and waded through the murky water into the cab, having no clue what was in the water; it wasn’t pleasant.  

And we drove through all of it.  It was horrendous. People waist-deep in water walking to safety, homes and shops flooded. Safety boats manned by police had already been launched and were delivering drinking water and picking up people who needed help.  

Stopping simply wasn’t an option.  In various places, people had appointed themselves as marshals and were telling me to slow down. I didn’t. I just kept on at a pace I thought was the right speed. I’d been told that whilst driving if you keep the engine running, it should push the water away from the exhaust, as long as you don’t stall the engine, you should be fine. And you should be fine in such a well-equipped state of the art overlander. But what about everyone else?

View from the drivers window as we passed through the floods.

We saw people wandering the streets for unknown reasons, and yet, we couldn't help or even feel any sympathy at the time. At times our wake pushed water back into already flooded homes and unsteadied people wading through it - damage caused not by the flood, but by us trying to escape it.  It was a case of each man for himself, and only after did we really reflect on what was happening to others.

I’ve been asked since, when I knew we were safe, but there was no moment. Just fewer flooded roads. Longer dry stretches. And the uneasy realisation that we hadn’t hit the next one. There was no euphoria - only a numbness, and the knowledge that we were safe while others weren’t.  I think we simply didn't know how to process what we had driven through and the carnage that the flood had caused. It was terrifying, but eventually we knew we were safe, and many others weren't.  

Charlotte was quiet after we got out. There was a brief flare of words between us - not anger, just nerves finally letting go - and then it passed as quickly as it came.

Maybe we felt guilty and perhaps your mind shuts down to protect you.  We had been through so much already in China, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, and this was yet another terrifying situation to deal with.

I’m still trying to make sense of it.

What still sits badly with me isn’t that we drove through floodwater, but how easily the first success rewrote the rules. Each crossing felt justified by the last, until instinct replaced judgement and fear took over completely. We got out. Others didn’t. And the difference between those two outcomes wasn’t preparation or skill as much as timing and luck - which is a harder thing to live with than any flooded road.

The rest of Thailand passed quickly.

We didn’t want to hang around in the southern states, which are subject to ongoing insurgency attacks by Malay Muslim groups. Locals accept it as background noise, and visitors are told not to worry. We researched it. Since 2004, more than 4,500 people have been killed and over 9,000 wounded, but we were reassured that Westerners aren’t targeted. That may well be true. After the floods, though, probability no longer felt abstract. We’d had enough reminders of how quickly things can turn.

So we kept driving. Long days, few stops, and a steady push towards the Malaysian border. Not running, just moving on.

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