GREATEST Overland Trail in the World?

[Matt P]

Merry Christmas to you all! If anyone’s looking for a family-friendly Christmas movie, maybe you could chuck this in the mix?

 

[bigleonski]

Blatant self promotion!!!
Love it.
Thanks for the Christmas present Matt and Leah!!

But everyone knows the best Christmas movie is Die Hard.

 

[Steve.B]

Wow Matt and Leah that was fantastic, thank you for sharing.
I think your children are very lucky to have you two for parents, what a great and unique start in life for them.
Have a great Christmas.

 

[Matt P]

Blatant self promotion!!!
Love it.
Thanks for the Christmas present Matt and Leah!!

But everyone knows the best Christmas movie is Die Hard.

That made me laugh and I’d agree with your Die Hard comment!

To be fair, some people who aren’t into the off-road side of things may not have seen the latest video as it’s in the off-road section.

I saw this Video thread was a new section and for Christmas they might want to watch it when bored at home..

If they’re not into off-roading then they might not enjoy, but it is a Grenadier so maybe… If the admins need to delete, I totally understand. Happy Christmas

 

[Matt P]

Wow Matt and Leah that was fantastic, thank you for sharing.
I think your children are very lucky to have you two for parents, what a great and unique start in life for them.
Have a great Christmas.

Thanks for the kind words Steve! Glad you enjoyed it! We’re just trying our best to give our kids the best foundation in life, just like every other parent is. Happy Christmas!

 

[anti]

great video and adventure!!

 

[Matt P]

great video and adventure!!

Thanks so much Anti! Glad you enjoyed it! More coming soon…

 

[Zimm]

I caught about 4 of your vids so far.

SheZimm walks by and says “where do people get the money to do this”

Me - I do the 5 minute rundown of all my assets, not including hers or inheritance, the return on 7% in an index fund, what we will get with SSI in say 10 years, and the chunk still left over at 95 (men in my family shit the bed at 65, so my countdown has started already anyway)

Me- “see, there’s still a chunk left over, I’ll order the Unicat tomorrow, as I know you’re done with tents”

Her - “you’ll need to do it by yourself with half that amount”

So… sometimes it’s more the lack of will, than the lack of a way.

Keep having fun with your youth fella!!!

 

[Matt P]

I caught about 4 of your vids so far.

SheZimm walks by and says “where do people get the money to do this”

Me - I do the 5 minute rundown of all my assets, not including hers or inheritance, the return on 7% in an index fund, what we will get with SSI in say 10 years, and the chunk still left over at 95 (men in my family shit the bed at 65, so my countdown has started already anyway)

Me- “see, there’s still a chunk left over, I’ll order the Unicat tomorrow, as I know you’re done with tents”

Her - “you’ll need to do it by yourself with half that amount”

So… sometimes it’s more the lack of will, than the lack of a way.

Keep having fun with your youth fella!!!

Hope you've enjoyed them so far. The more recent ones are the better ones as you'd probably expect, based on a typical learning curve. Your little conversation with your Mrs made me laugh a lot! "I’ll order the Unicat tomorrow, as I know you’re done with tents" We've had very similar discussions!

This was a big sacrifice and leap of faith for us and like you say, you never know what's going to happen and you only live once! We've just accepted we'll probably not have as much later on in life as we've taken a career break at statistically, the worse time (in terms of earning potential) but that's ok, we'll just live a simple life and we're fine with that. I'm a great believer that where there's a will, there's a way...

 

[Zimm]

I have a question for you.

I’m not going to get into the personal evolution of my travels other than to say I did the m416 trailer/rtt a couple decades ago and it worked when decoupling for challenging fun wheeling but otherwise was a comparative source for anxiety on long double track. (Turning around for some reason, a dead end, or oncoming traffic) For the type of traveling you’re doing, and for the duration of travel, do you need the extra off-road ability of the Gren (or any other suv) and would you choose this setup again, or would a 4x4 van have appeal for its near capability but ease of foul weather use?

 

[parb]

I saw the video. That destroyed bridge crossing was epic, and I loved the tea with the locals. Great adventure!

 

[Matt P]

I have a question for you.

I’m not going to get into the personal evolution of my travels other than to say I did the m416 trailer/rtt a couple decades ago and it worked when decoupling for challenging fun wheeling but otherwise was a comparative source for anxiety on long double track. (Turning around for some reason, a dead end, or oncoming traffic) For the type of traveling you’re doing, and for the duration of travel, do you need the extra off-road ability of the Gren (or any other suv) and would you choose this setup again, or would a 4x4 van have appeal for its near capability but ease of foul weather use?

Good question. The trailer has its pros and cons that’s for sure. If we were two people, I don’t think we’d have the trailer again for what we’re doing, but with a family, it’s a tight squeeze in one vehicle and so this works for us. It’s also nice to live under canvas with lots of windows rather than in a box - you’re more connected to the surrounding environment.

With the trailer, you just have to do your research and think ahead a lot more. Even doing all that, we still get ourselves in some tricky situations… I don’t think we’d want to do what we’ve just done with a trailer which was any bigger in dimensions or heavier. Certain places like Northern America, Australia, Mongolia would be fine but not where we’ve just been… (we’re still quite far behind online)

The beauty of the trailer for us is how long you can be offgrid for and how easy it all is despite the limitations mentioned above. It’s very easy to set up and put away and the Patriot is seriously capable off road and just goes where the Grenadier takes it. This is a big one, if you don’t have a top notch trailer, it will fall apart over time if you’re doing the amount of off-roading that we are. The main limitation then becomes how much food and fuel you can carry, as long as you have a water source. To have that amount of water, a good loving space

Inside and out (when deployed we have an outside play area for kids undercover), good sized kitchen (important for the Mrs when cooking for a family all the time), storage etc without having to touch the original vehicle is a massive pro for us. Going in a single vehicle, heavily modified and untested in that exact configuration, potentially top heavy, when we’re mainly off-road, and therefore all the added stress on all the components would potentially lead to more overall problems. If it was proven and tested properly, in an exact configuration, that’s a different story, and I know there’s options out there, but they’re pricey. We considered building the first Maltec Grenadier but it was way out of our budget… and we would have had to delay our departure. If budget wasn’t an option and we had the time, I think we would have possibly gone down this route.

A 4x4 van is a great option to consider, especially for foul weather. Some of those Sprinters are beasts. Foul weather at night for us isn’t an issue as we have great sleeping bags but cooking outside when it’s raining / snowing / freezing / windy etc gets a little old after a while. When we bought our setup during Covid, the 4x4 vans were crazy money, the good ones especially and so it made sense to do what we did. Even now, I think I’d still rather have what we have. Leah may have a different opinion

Like most people doing this sort of thing, we’re always talking about other setups, especially when you bump into people and talk to them about their decisions. A lot is down to budget, personal preference, priorities and the type of travel you’re actually going to do. (And being honest with yourself about that) I’m not convinced a van would go where we’ve been on this trip unless it had quite the lift (which makes things top heavy and has its own issues), lockers and very good tyres and even then, there’s places we’ve been that the van definitely wouldn’t be able to go, just down to it’s overall size and wheel base. Some of these occasions, we had to leave the trailer but we could still go, which is another pro with this setup.

We haven’t done a great job showing it, but we’ve done some pretty serious trails. I would want the capability the Grenadier provides for what we’re doing. You also never quite know what situation you’re going to find yourself in. We’re very remote in some cases and the weather around the world is getting more extreme and unpredictable… I’d rather have a Grenadier than something average, especially with my family. If it was a boys trip, I’d be game for a bit more hardship and things going wrong..

Hope this helps

 

[Matt P]

I saw the video. That destroyed bridge crossing was epic, and I loved the tea with the locals. Great adventure!

Glad you liked the latest video! That bridge was a bit dodge but it was all good in the end. You definitely have to check these things before just driving over them like some people do! You can’t beat a good old Chai with the locals!

 

[parb]

we loved it. The shepherders spoke russian to you as they invited you to tea and i thought that was lovely!

 

[AngusMacG]

Wow! Very jealous of this adventure! My goal is to do a trip, like @globalgregors, thru Canada and the US.

 

[globalgregors]

Wow! Very jealous of this adventure! My goal is to do a trip, like @globalgregors, thru Canada and the US.

Don’t neglect Mexico, we’re having a brilliant time here.

Very little matches majestic Tajikistan and the Pamirs however. Wonderful video, @Matt P ! Amazing photography.

Jane ran well at altitude? We had a bit of time getting over the Kushgar Pass in Disco.

 

[Matt P]

Don’t neglect Mexico, we’re having a brilliant time here.

Very little matches majestic Tajikistan and the Pamirs however. Wonderful video, @Matt P ! Amazing photography.

Jane ran well at altitude? We had a bit of time getting over the Kushgar Pass in Disco.

Thanks so much! All good at altitude, the highest we've been so far is 4693M but we plan to go higher fairly soon...

 

[Matt P]

Wow! Very jealous of this adventure! My goal is to do a trip, like @globalgregors, thru Canada and the US.

Do it! You only live once. Perhaps once you've done Canada and the US, you might want to wander a little further afield, or perhaps not... Canada and the US are pretty epic!

 

[globalgregors]

Thanks so much! All good at altitude, the highest we've been so far is 4693M but we plan to go higher fairly soon...

Oh, excellent - thank you! That’s been weighing on our minds a bit, we’ve not heard of one operated anywhere near that altitude to date.

It was great to see the Batang Valley imagery.

We went through the Pamirs East-West and were looking to explore the Wakhan Corridor into Afghanistan so took the Southern/Panj River route.

Unfortunately the Ishkashim market was attacked the day before we came through and the border was locked down as a precaution.

I still get spine tingles thinking about cresting that last ridgeline out of Kushgar to see the Hindu Kush rising like a wall before us.

Thank you for documenting your journey like this and bringing it all rushing back. With you in spirit, safe travels!