Sam Watson

The issue of interaction with wildlife on an overland trip is often the stuff of dreams. Many of us imagine the thrill of bouncing across the plains of East Africa in the middle of an endless herd of wildebeest, zebra and lions as we are awestruck spectators to the Great Migration. Others dream of the…

Learning languages to help communication when traveling overland is a multi-sided issue. On the one hand it opens doors and makes friends if you can chat to someone with even a few words of their own language, on the other hand it can get you into trouble fast, and then leave you high and dry…

Regular visitors will know I’m a great lover of Nepal, and this last month I was able to finally return to that beautiful mountain land after the hiatus of Covid. I flew into Kathmandu with the intention of visiting the eastern border region where Nepal and India meet, and specifically the small village of Manebhanjhyang.…

As many will know, I have long had a fascination with the original Shepheard’s Hotel in Cairo. I returned from Egypt recently and have been able to string together some more findings about the place, burned down in 1952 but living still in the stories and legends of the Desert War. It is perforce limited…

Five years ago when I lived in Cairo I was part of a group of friends jokingly called the Sand Rovers. We all had Defenders, we all travelled into the Sahara most weekends and we otherwise all met up at a small workshop we rented to kick tyres, drink beer and talk nonsense. Our Land…

So sorry all – I’ve been very remiss again about keeping up to date here In the summer I was able to navigate the reefs and currents of idiotic bureaucracy during COVID and get to Malta, to meet up with some Land Rover-owning friends there and do some exploring. The rugged Fortress Island of Malta…

As the world slowly rallies to deal with the idiocy of Coronavirus, it has become possible to travel once again. My first trip for several pandemic months happened in April, with a return to the beautiful land of Zimbabwe. As readers may know, I have a Series One Land Rover in Zimbabwe, a 1956 107″…

Shepheard’s Hotel was the “place to be” in pre-war and wartime Cairo. Definitely a place for the well-heeled and the influential, haunt of Lawrence, Churchill and Kitchener, it was also a place where the senior ranks of the LRDG and SAS went to stay – and to drink. Cognoscenti today may be aware that the…

For almost half a millennium the alcoholic spirit Rum – specifically dark “navy” rum – has been associated across the English-speaking world with war and adventure. Since the English conquest of Jamaica in 1655, rum was part of daily rations issued to the British Royal Navy – that is, until “Black Tot Day” in 1970…

Sorry. That was terrible. Hope everyone had a good Christmas and New Year – or as good a Festive Season (of whatever variety) as we can manage at the moment. Many apologies for being a terrible correspondent – the stats for this Webpage show that many kind folk are still reading it and putting up…

At the end of June I flew home to Yorkshire in northern England with no real picture of how life would be. COVID of course is embarrassingly prevalent in the UK and the government has successfully bungled and mismanaged the social circumstances for the British people so nobody is really sure how to approach the…

A strange time for the world – “unprecedented” gets used a lot at the mo – and its true. At least two of my friends have this COVID 19 wretch, one in China and one in the UK, and the ructions it causes globally are evident – less so are the ones it will continue…

My friend Mark Woodward is setting up Classic Safaris, a self drive safari company which uses Series 1, 2 and 3 Land Rovers to explore the northern deserts of the UAE. I’ve become informally involved as a safety car / desert mapper / beer tester and this last couple of weeks he’s been setting things…

I’m lucky enough to have the friendship of Mark Woodward, a Rhodesian living in Dubai, and, through him, that of Khalifa Al-Ghafli, an Emirati who lives in Umm Al Qawain. Khalifa has an enviable collection of over 100 Land Rovers, ranging from Series Ones to Defenders, with all kinds of variants within – including two…

So I’ve finally grown up, and bought a ‘proper’ Land Rover. It’s all very well overlanding with a turbodiesel, GPS, coil springs and cupholders, but after I travelled with Ben Stowe and his 1949 80” through Europe and up into the Italian Alps, with the roof down and the doors taken off, I knew there…

The Camel Trophy was an annual automotive sporting event that ran from 1980 to 2000. A cross between an expedition and a rally, it took place in some of the toughest terrains around the world – from the frozen lands of Siberia to the jungles of the Amazon. Sponsored by Camel cigarettes, the first Camel…

The Discovery was the vehicle that saved Land Rover, but also changed it forever. The marque began as a maker of purely utility vehicles for a reconstructing post-war Britain, and the original “Land Rover” established a reputation as a tough go-anywhere workhorse for farms around her native islands but also explorers, travellers and soldiers in…

As my project to stretch my Defender 110 “Elsa” progressed, it became clear that I’d have enough bits left over to make another vehicle. Elsa was stretched by taking my existing 110 Hardtop and combining it with parts from a donor 130 crewcab. So logically there would be plenty of stuff left in the mix…

So for over a year, along with Ben Stowe at Black Paw 4×4 in York, I’ve been developing and working on the rebuild and refit of my faithful old 1991 ex-Army 110 “Elsa”, now 400,000 miles old and a veteran of African and European overland trips (as well as the war in Kosovo!) She started…

In October I was lucky enough to visit Lebanon again – one of my favourite places in the world. For me, it combines the best parts of the Middle East and Mediterranean Europe, a land rich with history and culture (it is, after all, ancient Phoenicia) and with a progressive, friendly and welcoming population. This…

I was lucky enough to travel round the beautiful, world-weary southern African state of Zimbabwe in the summer (which was the southern hemisphere winter!). The purposes of the trip were several – to research ex-Rhodesian (“British South African”) Police Land Rovers, to find Series Land Rovers for my friend Mark to potentially buy, to visit…