Nick Taylors blog

I’ve been an “overland” traveler for way over a decade, and simply an avid traveler all of my life. There are a number of reasons for this, and as I see more places and interact with more people whose backgrounds are very different to mine I can feel my reasons for traveling are slowly changing (that’s a whole other story). Although I love my Land Rovers (I refer to them as “pets”), and I’m a fully-fledged tech-guy, both the vehicles and the technology are simply enablers for me to travel to the places I want to go, experience them in many different ways and to communicate from them and tell stories about the people and places when I return home.

This time, I’m just back from the 2nd Overland Expo. What a great event! Even though I was involved in the 1st Expo and was asked at that event to present and do some driver training this year (by Graham Jackson of Overland Training), it wasn’t until I rolled into the event that I fully understood the scale. It eclipsed last years event in many ways, many more vendors, better training facilities, much better rooms for AV presentations, a knockout team of staff, instructors and presenters and finally a fantastic audience of folks who love to travel. I couldn’t believe how many great vehicles were parked in the car park.

It’s not really about the vehicles though. I know a great many of us enjoy building them, tinkering with them and driving them, but really they are just another companion on the journey. A great many of the vendors realize this (and they realize we spoil them), and are on-hand to help us do this. My personal favorite piece of vehicle kit was the Kaiser / Nekarth Differential Locker, a much simpler and more elegant approach to locking differentials than the Detroit and ARB solutions. I saw this demo at the Expeditioneers booth.

The Expo is not just about the vehicles (and they ranged from pedal-bikes, through motorbikes, regular 4×4 vehicles to huge ex-military and custom built behemoths) and their parts and accessories. Other vendors offered medical equipment and training (and Remote Medical International staged some great demos), guiding services (notably No Limit Expeditions offering adventures in Belize and the rest of Central America and Safari Drive based in various African locations), clothing (including one of my favorites, Mountain Khakis – recommended!), tents (roof-top and otherwise), all sorts of camping/expedition gear (including Bug Out Bagz), the list is long and distinguished.

Seminars and presentations are a key part of the Expo, and if you just attend one or two of them you would realize that “overlanding” isn’t just 4×4 driving – and very different from what usually pops into peoples minds when the outdoors and 4×4 drivers meet… I talked about staying online and in touch while on an international overland trip, and driving through the Sahara in a VW Golf! Other presentations and panels discussed medical responses, overlanding with dogs, solo overlanding, cooking demos (very popular I understand), and some great overland movies courtesy of Austin Vince and the Adventure Travel Film Festival.

Groups and clubs are also prominent at the Expo. It’s always great to see the Disabled Explorers and their WAVE Sportsmobile, really giving folks the opportunity to get out and explore who normally may not have the chance to. I love the ideas behind both the Carbon Neutral Expedition and the Vanishing America Project (Overland Society’s Expedition Flag ambassador for 2009), and again, the Muskoka Foundation is making a difference around the world.

My favorite part is the opportunity to see old friends and meet new ones. One moment sticks in my mind, during a basic vehicle overview session I was one of the instructors. After the other instructors had said their piece, I was my turn to add something. Trouble was, three of the instructors were Tom Collins, Duncan Barbour and Jim West, 3 Camel Trophy luminaries, and a hard act to follow! Having the opportunity to talk to people like this is wonderful – and the chance is there for everyone who attends, especially at the ever-popular happy hours each evening! I particularly enjoy spreading the word, or “preaching the gospel of travel”, as a friend once told me. I think retelling great stories and sharing experiences really gets people fired up for that first trip. Helping them over the “well, it’s a dream I’ve always had, but I just can’t get the time off work” is usually the first part, and not that difficult in the environment the Expo creates.

Once people have traveled off the beaten track they come back home with new eyes, none more so than Americans (not a dig, just an observation). Through their new eyes they see people, politics and the Earth in a different light. A more tolerant, understanding and sympathetic light. An ability to put themselves in the other persons shoes and see that there are many more sides to national and international issues than you’ll ever see on the typical “never mind the quality, just look at the quantity” news channel (which is why I refuse to watch television news – that’s another story). Anything which opens peoples minds and makes for a more tolerant and understanding society clearly should be encouraged; I’ve always advocated international travel for this purpose and the Overland Expo is the ideal platform to encourage people to embrace this.

Note: I only use this type of stove when camping out of my Land Rovers. When hiking or backpacking, I use small and lightweight stoves like the MSR PocketRocket. When on the motorbike, I use an MSR DragonFly, so I can use the petrol from the bike and utilize a single fuel source.

I’ve been a JetBoil fan since they became available in 2001. When camping, my cooking philosophy is “just get it done’, nothing complex, usually something I’ve pre-made or something out of a packet (I actually like MREs, usually warmed on the manifold). And being English, I mandate several tea-breaks throughout the day, so really I just need a fast and efficient way of boiling water. That covers about 90% of my cooking requirements.

One of my more lightly-used JetBoils failed recently (a JetBoil PCS – Personal Cooking System). The seam attaching the inner part to the outer part (which interfaces with the burner) broke away. I noticed that it was spot welded and the newer JetBoils have an updated design – so they clearly know about this issue. I took it back to REI to get it replaced and while in the stove section I had a longer look at the MSR Reactor, clearly their answer to the very successful JetBoil. It’s of a similar design, slightly wider and the burner interface section has a number of fins which gives the pot a larger surface area and speeds up heating. The burner itself is very large, in terms of area (but quite compact), and is quite quiet in operation.

On a recent camping trip in Utah, I had the opportunity to give the stove a decent field-test. Of course, I boiled water for tea and washing, I boiled milk for porridge (Mornflake Lyle’s Golden Syrup flavour – imported from the UK), which is rather messy, I made soup, warmed some pre-cooked steak and cooked-up some pasta. I noted the following pros and cons.

Pros:
1. It’s extremely fast, I boil a lot of water so this is a huge win for me. Subjectively, it takes around 1/3 less time to boil water versus the JetBoil. This is due to the more powerful burner and larger surface area on the burner interface.
2. It packs small, and as it’s wider than a JetBoil, you can pack a 220g (7.8oz) gas cylinder inside it, whereas the JetBoil can only contain a 110g (3.9oz) cylinder internally (so I always packed an additional large 450g (15.9oz) cylinder).
3. It comes with a small packing cloth which stops the insides getting scratched when the burner unit is packed inside (yes, you could easily make this yourself, but it’s a nice thought to provide one).
4. The whole unit it the typical good quality you’d expect from MSR.
5. It’s wider than the JetBoil, and that makes it easier to clean.

Cons:
1. It’s more expensive than the JetBoil ($160 vs $100 using REI prices in April 2010).
2. Simmering is difficult, if not impossible. The burner is so powerful it seems to have only two settings, off and “supernova”!
3. No piezo ignition! It’s a pain to use matches or a lighter.
4. Bigger burner means it goes through gas faster, though as you can pack a larger cylinder internally it may not be an issue.
5. It is slightly larger than the JetBoil, the diameter is larger but it is shorter.
6. It has a fold-out handle, the JetBoil is insulated so you can simply pick it up with your bare hands even when hot.
7. As the diameter of the pot is wider than the JetBoil, it is slightly more difficult to pour into narrow containers.

In summary, I like the Reactor, I doubt anything on the market can boil water as fast. However, until it adds both piezo ignition and a way to simmer I still recommend the JetBoil (especially as the Reactor currently demands a $60 premium).

I’m slowly fixing up my collection of websites, and today added a couple of wikis to the mix.

wiki.http://nickt.com will become the place where I store all the information about my vehicles, for example I’ve added my 300 TDi D90s specifications to start the ball rolling. I’m keeping this closed to contributions as it’s just a convenient place to store my personal data. Anyone can read it though.

The codex exerro will contain more general overland vehicle information and as it’s not a personal thing, it’ll be open.

I’m running MediaWiki and hosting them at Media Temple.

A trip by Land Rover through Morocco, Western Sahara and Mauritania in 2000.

Northwest Africa Trip, 2000 from Nick Taylor on Vimeo.

In September, a few friends and I spent a few days in the Maze District of Canyonlands National Park. It’s a wonderfully remote area, and if you like Desert solitude it’s really worth a visit.

I’ve started using animoto to build slideshows, and here’s the result of the high-quality version, uploaded to Vimeo.

A Trip to The Maze from Nick Taylor on Vimeo.

I spend a lot of time in the desert, including the Sahara, Rub’ al Khali and less exotically the Colorado Plateau (ok, not a desert, but semi-arid (Köppen BSk) and mostly empty of people so it’s close enough for me), and the people and the places fascinate me. As a traveler, I have an interest in navigation, in fact I used to teach Navigation a long time ago…

I came across an article via Tristan Gooley’s blog (Tristan runs the Natural Navigation school in the UK) , which mentioned the 1974 article by Clinton Bailey, “Bedouin Star-Lore in Sinai and the Negev” (PDF link). 

It’s a wonderful article, clearly a precursor to his book “A Culture of Desert Survival“, and full of navigation and climatic information in the poetry of the Bedouin.

My favorite is

In tila’ Suhayl-Id tdmin is-sarjl—law kdn ‘aqdb il-layl

Or in English

If Canopus rises, don’t trust the flood

And finally the practical application:

Don’t camp in the wadi!

Canopus was frequently used as a Southern Pole Star by those in the Northern Hemisphere until it fell out of usage when the magnetic compass became popular. The Bedouin also saw Canopus as a coward, as it would dip seasonally below the horizon – unlike Polaris, the steadfast. 

It’s particularly moving to remember that these traditions have persisted until the 21st century through an oral history that pre-dates Islam.

I like the quality of videos from Vimeo, so I’m thinking of uploading my HD content there. The following video, while not HD, is just a little test.

Don’t Let Lee Drive! A Desert Driveby. from Nick Taylor on Vimeo.

For years I’ve used the Garmin GPSMAP 478, it’s got me across the Rub ‘al Khali, seen service in the Sahara and been all over the USA. It’s a fantastic piece of equipment, rugged, robust and reliable. I’ve not had a single problem with it in the last 3 or 4 years. It’ll do turn-by-turn navigation and chart-plotting – an essential feature not just for mariners, but also for those of us who explore the more remote parts of the world. The 478 has served me well and I have no hesitation in recommending it highly. I only had two minor criticisms - it’s be nice to have a slightly larger screen and let’s stop using the proprietary Garmin Data Cards. 

Well, there’s a new kid in town. The Garmin GPSMAP 640 looks like it’s going to be the new favorite of overlanders. It addresses both of my issues with the 478. It takes SD cards, and the display is a 13.2 cm (diagonal) with a resolution of 800×480 WVGA (the 478 is 9.4cm on the diagonal and has a resolution of 480×320). It’ll calculate faster than the GPSMAP 478, with SD cards it can support more memory, but it is a bit bulkier (15.0 x 10.2 x 4.8 cm vs the 478 at 14.5 x 8.1 x 4.8 cm). 

There is also a GPSMAP 620, which is physically the same at the 640, but doesn’t support the XM Radio and XM Weather (which I use frequently, very handy having radar overlays when you’re in the mountains in the summer), and doesn’t come with any maps preloaded. It also costs $200 less at MSRP. 

For XM Radio and XM Weather, you’ll need the new GXM40 antenna (with the very odd MSRP of 267.84). It seems the old GXM30 won’t work with the 640, and you’ll have to transfer your existing XM subscription to the new antenna. 

The GPSMAP 640 isn’t available until Q1 2009, with an MRSP of $1199 (but already available for pre-order from around $950).

As soon as Ram Mounts have their brackets ready, I’ll get one ordered.

Na’in, Iran. A wonderful small town in central Iran, on the edge of the Dasht-e Kavir (The Kavir desert).

Kristy and I visited here as part of our “Persia Overland” trip, in April and May 2008. 

As well as walking the perimeter of the Narin Ghaleh (the large castle in the center of town), we also got to meet and spend a little time with the weavers of Na’in, in their underground chambers.

It was a wonderful place to visit, and very much off the beaten track. I wrote about it briefly over on exerro.com. Recently, Kristy forwarded an article to me, written by Ryszard Antolak and published on the Persian Journal website. The article, “The Hollow Hills of Na’in” is a well written piece on the fate of the weavers in their underground workshops. It captures the sadness that we both felt when we visited, clearly the men weaving that day were the last of a very long line (in fact, my original quote dating the hills to CE1000, is a thousand years out – they are 1,000 years older than that). 

Even though the article is a little sad, it ends with a delightful thought:

I stand and listen, carried away by the tide of his tales. In the music and cadences of his voice, I recognize a serenity and dignity that has all but passed away from the world: a dignity not bestowed by wealth or privilege or birth.

My friends Mark, Mike and myself thought that the Land Rovers and ourselves should get one last camping trip in this summer. We’d camped near Water Crossing 3 on Halfmoon Creek earlier in the year, and decided to camp a bit further up the trail. Given the weather forecast of 15F/10C and snow, the wives declined, so it was just a boys camp. 

Anyway, it was cold, wet and overcast when we arrived in Leadville, much the same as it was in Denver. Still, we had bourbon, brats, sushi and Snow Peak Chopsticks, so we were happy.

After out sushi lunch and setting up camp, we drove further up the trail to Champion Mill where we took some photos of the mill in it’s decaying state. It’s a shame to see such a wonderful place making its last stand against the elements. 

 As the elements were making an appearance, we had a quick look inside (be careful – don’t fall through the floor), before heading back down to our 11,110 ft campsite. 

Back at camp, we had some brats and bourbon and given the sleet and cold we turned in early.

The next morning dawned crisp and blue, and made the drive back to Leadville wonderful. 

Next camping, err, June!