Breadcrumbs

Encounter Overland Asia 1978 - The start

 

 London to Kathmandu - Europe

Autumn 1978

It was a cold wet autumn morning in London. Was it? I don't actually remember the weather. I had driven the truck down from Wren Park the evening before and parked up. I stayed in the Company flat overnight. Then, bright and breezy took the truck the short distance to Old Brompton Road. All shiny orange, bold as brass, parked for everyone to see as the Expedition Members (EMs) slowly congregated, full of expectation and excitement, for the start of their trip of a lifetime, to Kathmandu, overland.

The issue of the MICHELIN Man

 

Who is Bibendum?

1978/9

Apparently Michelin Man, whose official name is BIBENDUM, has been promoting tires since 1894. I found more about Bibs here, a fascinating story of one of the most recognizable brand ambassadors in the world.

That however, is not our story.

We were camped out in the wild. I am not sure which Encounter Overland trip it was, or even which continent we were on. It was one of three, Europe, Asia, or Africa. So that narrows it down!

Revolution

 

Revolution in Iran

 

How different can the experience of a country be in just a few short years. No visit to a palace this time.

ENCOUNTER OVERLAND ASIA 1978 - Asia

London to Kathmandu - Asia starting with Turkey

Autumn 1978

Which way did we go? To be honest the breakdown managed to wipe out most of the memories of Turkey before it. Perhaps the photos will jog my memory.

Encounter Overland ASIA 1978 - the breakdown

 

London to Kathmandu - Turkey; the breakdown

Autumn 1978

It was early morning. It was cold, very cold. We were in the Eastern Anatolia Region of Eastern Turkey, in the mountains. Everybody was keen to get going. We had been watchful during the night because, at the time, Eastern Turkey was known to have bandits, and westerners were rich pickings. Breakfast dealt with and packed up. Everyone was on board, in their thick coats, still shivering. The engine had warmed up, and we set off. We were on dirt roads that were a lot better than some. We were making reasonable progress. Then we came to an incline. We were in the mountains so that was not unexpected. What was unexpected was that a short while later we came upon a queue of tipper trucks and some roadworks.

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Free counters!

 

 

 

 The flag counter below is for my original travelogue, which is slowly being replaced by this one, but can still be found here.

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News Flash

Change of host Sept 2023

 

Change of host Sept 2023

 

In the begining of August 2023 I transfered my ivanhurst.me.uk sites, including this one from 123-reg to IONOS. It was meant to be a simple task. However, that was to to be the case. The reason for the move was primarily the hugh increase in price that 123-reg was applying regarding email boxes. Previously, the upto 500 of the boxes were included in the various hosting packages I had. Now they were going to charge for each mailbox based on size, and as far as I could make out, this was going to cost me nearly £2,000. This was not acceptable, and I did not get satisfactory answers from support. So I turned of all the auto renews and stated to move sites and domains accross to IONOS.

Travel data problems

 

Travel data problems

This is where it starts to get a little technical.

The site is built on a content management system, CMS, using Joomla. Joomla is moving forward and version 3.10.?? is being discontinued. Future developments are for version 4.??

Similarly, PHP 7 is being replaced with PHP 8.

Part of the migration is relatively simple, I have already changed to a new template which works on the new platforms.

However, some of the helper applications, which work within Joomla are not yet ready.

Fabrik is one of those applications, if fact a significant 'Joomla Custom Website Application Builder'.

Refresh 2021

 

Site refresh Easter 2021

I decided to give the site a bit of a refresh over Easter 2021 and install a new template and some additional functions. One of the things I didn't like about the old site was the delay in text appearing which probably meant some people left before the content appeared. This has been corrected now.