Sam Watson

I’ve been quiet for a while – sorry! Life gets in the way sometimes. Quite a bit to report. I’ve been investigating various bits of interesting new gear – not least of which the Kamp Rite Tent Cot from the USA; Basically this is a flat-pack tent on a camp bed chassis. It sets up…

I hope this is entertaining. I’m lucky in that I have a life that allows me to indulge a love of beautiful and interesting places, and the purpose of this blog is to share the memories and inspire others to ‘get out there’ and live before you die. It’s all too easy to allow oneself…

Just back from another tremendous Nepal trip. Went to stay with Miles Chadwick, mate who runs Land Rovers Overland, and he kindly arranged a drive out across the west of the country, a thousand-odd miles which covered most Nepali landscapes, – from the urban chaos of Kathmandu to the green Kathmandu Valley, from the heat…

Just packing up for Nepal, heading out shortly. I will update this blog as and when I can, but we will be in pretty remote areas paralleling, and in amongst, the Himalaya with very little signal so I may be quiet until back in Kathmandu on about the 5th April. Stay safe all

Life continues apace. Trying to get this trip organised Nepal – India – Bangladesh – Bhutan. Bhutan has been the sticking point as we have been wanting to get in with a combination of British Diplomatic, British Army and UK privately-owned Land Rovers, so as you can imagine the paperwork issues have been traumatic. So…

With a big trip to the deserts of Oman coming up, there is now an imperative to get the Camel Trophy Discovery ready for work. Mechanical issues (she needs new wheelbearings, a full service, new engine hoses and a few other bits and bobs, plus some wiring needs finishing) need parts, and getting these is…

So. After four months’ frustration, endless donkey work between offices in different Emirates, rushing about with bits of paper and fluent swearing, the Camel Trophy Discovery is finally registered and legal in the UAE. Massive costs – I was given an insurance quote of 400 dh in December, yesterday I ended up paying 1700 dh…

…back in Cairo – the city of a thousand faces, the City Victorious. Cairo the Red, seat of Mars…. all the epithets she has conjured since Roman times. Strangely, as I have spent more than ten years of my adult life there, a place that I almost call ‘home’. Just got back to the UAE…

…. hasn’t started yet. I went into Dubai with the Disco on a flatbed at the weekend to get the registration finished, to discover they’d given me the wrong form before Christmas. So another inspection and another form ensued. Then back to Fujeirah – the police station closed at 2.30pm so I reckoned that, getting…

Hoping to resume the application of cudgels to register Bumblebee the Camel Trophy Disco here in the UAE when payday happens (today!?). She still languishes in a friend’s garage here in Fujairah as she is not road legal. I went to check her out the other day and all is well – started first time,…

Apologies for the absence over the Christmas period – things got a bit frenetic! Back in the UAE now after spells in Russia and Saudi, and, of course, home in Yorkshire in the UK. Events of note – not very many. I went on the Christmas Pudding Run over the Yorkshire Moors with the Land…

So another run out to Nepal and time with Miles, Tom and the Land Rovers Overland team – a great bunch of guys. We headed out of Nepal this time to Pokhara, famed as a Gurkha recruitment centre, and then north up the Kali Gandaki gorge. Because it’s between Annapurna and Dhaulagiri it counts as…

Finally, progress. After sundry faffing about with de-registering her in Dubai, Bumblebee the Camel Trophy Discovery is now almost legal here in Fujeirah. She passed the local equivalent of the MoT this last weekend, and now is ready to be registered and plated in about ten days. I have to pause the process as I’m…

So back in September I drove through a yellow light here in the UAE. It went red as I passed, which means I ended up with a £200 fine and the car (the Ford) being impounded for 15 days. I took the Ford into the impound yard last week to serve her time. This means,…

Yessssss 🙂 Finally, a real car. Thanks to the very excellent Mr Nick Derbyshire I am now the owner of Bumblebee, a 1996 Camel Trophy Edition Discovery. Nick has done a lot to her to augment her LR Special Vehicles Gulf spec – she is Camel Trophy Edition rather than Camel Trophy event car (my old…

Love this 🙂

I spent the previous weekend on two jobs – a recce for a more full-on visit to Wadi Shawka in Ras Al Khaimah, and more work on trying to sort a decent Land Rover. There has been some rain recently in the UAE and this has resulted in flash floods. Fujeirah is the most mountainous…

Getting back from a trip always causes a slump in morale 🙂 The Salalah run was pretty full-on, with about 37 hours of driving in three days – almost sensory overload in terms of new places, contrasting landscapes and sorting the logistics of it all. Then suddenly back to reality 🙂 Especially since I got…

Oman is a beautiful country with many contrasting and absorbing biomes. The north has a semi-desert coastline fronting a mountain range, the Hajjar, which can get quite wet. The centre holds the Jiddat Al-Harasis, a large stony desert strewn with meteorites and home to oryx and gazelle. The south is Dhofar, and it’s green! Very…

I’ve just got back from a week in Nepal, a recce trip where I wanted to explore the possibility of a couple of long overland journeys through Nepal, Tibet and the closed kingdom of Bhutan. What a friendly, welcoming and cheerful people the Nepalis are. I stayed in Kathmandu, in the Thamel district at the Khangsar Guest House…

Just got back from a run out to an interesting looking wadi in Ras Al Khaimah – Wadi Shawka. A long twisting wadi that has been cut out of gabbro and basalt by a flashflood-fed seasonal river. Really picturesque and a good site to camp, although there are poisonous water snakes and also scorpions in…