Choosing a vehicle for Overland 4WD travel

When first joining the overlanding community, especially as a complete novice, you are faced with many questions, but without doubt the most gobsmackingly obvious is 'Which vehicle shall we take?’ We thought this over for about four months before reaching our conclusion, but we would recommend taking as much time as you can.

For us it came down to two big decisions. Sleep inside the vehicle or in a roof tent? We choose the roof tent because we thought as we got older we would be more inclined to live inside the vehicle, so whilst we still had it in our bones we would try to be adventurous. So the next decision was Land Rover or Toyota. There are plenty of other 4wd vehicles to choose from, but with the minimal research it becomes apparent that this is the obvious choice.

This time our decision was based almost purely on the romantic image of the expedition Land Rover. An old adage we heard was 'Take a Land Rover as you can get/fashion spares anywhere in the world, or take a Toyota as you don't need any spares!'. This is most probably true, but also we spoke with a lot of other overlanders and the general opinion was as long as you take the correct precautions and are in no hurry then breaking down is all part of the fun. Who knows whether we will agree with this come the time, but we are happy with our decision, and are prepared to go to the other end of the world with our 1992, 180k miles, 200tdi, 110 Land Rover Defender, Dino.

To explore Dino further we have created a clickable guide on our website:

http://www.jollyfollies.com/Vehicle/Landy_Guide.html

Follow along as Jenny and Ollie of JollyFollies.com prepare for and set out on their first around the world (RTW) 4WD travel adventure.