How it started
The idea was born on beautiful Fraser Island, east coast Australia, in 2007. Fabian drove a 4x4 for the first time ever and realized you can get almost anywhere with this kind of vehicle. Anywhere in the world.
Right away endless routes around the globe were daydreamed...
and nothing happened while others did it instead.
Often we hear people saying something like "I wish I could do the same" or "I want to do it one day...". All we can say with Fabians experience of neglecting the dream for over ten years: If it's your dream and there's the slightest chance of being able to work for it to make it happen - GO AHEAD AND DO IT... NOW! And speaking of work: We both pushed really hard for it to come true.
Getting out there
We are Carolin and Fabian from Munich, Germany. Being both in our 30s we finally took our chances when in fall 2016 we decided to take on the trip together.
It took almost another year to figure out the date of departure and to persuade our employers to give us the leave of absence. Also finding the right car wasn't the easiest of all tasks and took us a good six months of search and research.
We've both travelled extensively but especially Central Asia was a blank spot.
Furthermore the legendary routes
around and through "the roof of the world" had a magical appeal of its own.
That was our starting point.
Journey Preparation
It took us a whole other year to get from the rough first idea of "circumnavigating the Himalaya" and "the Silk Street" to "let's drive all the way to Australia".
This year was filled with researching for visas, routes, security situations, import regulations, weather, shipping possibilities, modification needs and ideas, crossing countries off the list and foremost: Getting our car ready to do the job.
Don't underestimate the amount of planning.
Knowing that a lot of things come out differently than expected you still need a baseline and a fair bit of knowledge.
At least for the heterogeneous, huge and conflict-shaken Asia it takes the biggest part of a year to prepare. It might be a totally different story overlanding in the Americas or Africa.
The Masterplan
In the end mostly the weather situation in certain parts of the route depending on our set date of departure in summer made us choose to drive home from Australia instead of driving to Australia.
We decided to take "The longest way home".
Our route will now take us from Northern and Western Australia to India, Pakistan, Nepal and China (possibly Myanmar and Laos) and then on through Central Asia to Iran, Armenia, Georgia and Turkey back into Europe. We will have to ship twice - once from Germany to Darwin and then from Perth to Mumbai.
We know there will be detours, diversions and unexpected change of plans and routes.
They are all part of the story and we are expecting and embracing them.
But this is our baseline.
where we are
Follow our tracker, find out where we are and see what parts of our trip we have covered so far. When we don't forget to change the battery...
what we've done
We try to keep up with writing posts about our experiences and adventures. For us to remember and for you to be a part of it.
Check out the car
We have put a lot of work into the car. And it has even become a little YouTube star. Check out the rig and also the video from Ronny Dahl.