Dear John

19 July 2009

We said goodbye to John, who's been with us since the start but has decided to make his own way through to Australia, after the pleasures of the Beijing 5's little jaunt. Not everyone is cut out for overlanding, fair enough. The rest of the 5 are planning to leave us as well, as they prefer the more traditional backpacking-hostel-flying thing.

It's made the rest of us think a bit. For myself and David, we're having an amazing time and the whole point for us was the actual overlanding, driving across parts of the world no one else gets to and that you just don't see if you fly in and out. And the bushcamping, which I was just slightly concerned about to begin with, has produced some of our most entertaining  stories and experiences—though it's not always a cakewalk. Sleeping in a tent fixed with metal poles in a fierce thunderstorm in the Kazakh desert, how many times in your life does that happen? Possibly not many, and probably for good reason (tent pole=lightning rod?) But still.

We will enjoy the extra space on the truck, and as our trusty blue tent has finally had an Incident (the tent fly zipper committed suicide the other night, resulting in laundry line tying it shut in a windstorm that would have put Katrina to shame) this works out well for us. Rachel and Alan's tent will now be available, complete with zippable fly. We used one of the trekking tents last night, which was actually fine, but not designed for long-term use. The expedition tents we use regularly are terribly sturdy, quite roomy, and the closest thing to home at the minute.

 

Sad to see the others go, and we hope they enjoy their traveling as much as we will.