OVRLNDR x The Field Notes Podcast EP001

We've been building OVRLNDR for about six months, and somewhere along the way it dawned on us that most of you don't know who's behind it. Two blokes, two Land Cruisers, a lot of late nights, and a shared habit of staring at our rigs in the driveway.

So we sat down in front of a camera and did what we'd normally do around a fire. This is why we did it, and what stuck with us afterwards.

Everyone starts in the wrong vehicle

Neither of us started with the "right" rig. One of us had a Nissan NP300 that wasn't a 4x4, and found out the hard way on a sandy road behind a West Coast beach. The other started camping in a VW Golf and learned its limits fast.

Looking back, that's the part we like most. Nobody works out what they need from a spec sheet. You get it a bit wrong, get stuck once or twice, and the next rig gets better. Most of the gear and advice worth having comes from someone who's been through that.

Your rig changes with your life

We've both owned a proper list of vehicles, and the honest lesson is that the "best" rig depends on where you are in life. A Prado that was perfect until the Namibia packing list got serious. A Defender that was a pleasure right up until it was towed back across the Namibia border.

That one stuck. When you're on your own, a breakdown is a story. With family in the picture, it's a very different feeling. Peace of mind started to outweigh the badge, and we both ended up in 76 Series Land Cruisers. We don't think there's a right answer here, only the one that suits your life right now.

The scene has changed, and we're part of it

Twelve years ago, overlanding felt like something retired people did. Today it's varsity students heading to Namibia in the July holidays, soft 4x4s with rooftop tents in the Karoo, and strangers chatting on the radio on the way home from a cold winter weekend. We love that. More people out there is a good thing.

The flip side is that good campsites are harder to book. Around Cape Town you have to book months ahead, and wild camping is limited because most of the land is private or state owned. That's a big part of why we care about campsite information being easy to find, and honest.

Why we built OVRLNDR

It started with a frustration most of you will recognise. Buying and selling overlanding gear meant sifting through a lot of noise on Facebook Marketplace, with no real way to know who you were dealing with. Other interests have a home of their own. We thought overlanding deserved one too.

It began as a marketplace and grew into something bigger because we kept wanting more of it ourselves: a place to see how people have built their rigs, a forum to ask questions and do your research, and a campsite map built by people who've slept at the spots they're recommending. We'll say it plainly, we've also met plenty of good people through Marketplace. We just thought they deserved a better meeting place.

Where we want to take it

The goal is simple. When you're planning a trip to Namibia or Botswana, we'd like OVRLNDR to be the first place you open. Gear, campsites, routes, and honest advice from people who've done it.

The more of you who add your builds, campsites and questions, the better it gets for everyone. We'd also like to bring you along on our own trips, because we do this for the love of it. It's a side hustle, so things move at the pace of weekends and evenings.

We closed the episode with a rapid-fire round, including a very important question about tyre pressure on tarmac versus corrugations. We'll leave that one for you to watch.

What are you driving, and what should we talk about next? Drop a comment on the video