Waikato based Iranian couple Amir and Azadeh are in the finishing leg of building a dream overlander. They choose a Toyota Landcruiser 78 series as the base vehicle and have transformed ‘Chaapaar’ into a thing of beauty. Grab a bevvie, or a cuppa, and sit down for a long inter-web geek out. The couple have documented EVERY part of the build on their own blog. Rather than repeat things, just go check it out, it’s such a valuable information and inspiration source. [link at the bottom of this post]
Before you do, Amir gave us more background on the why…
About 10 or maybe 12 years ago we applied for Combodian visa during our Laos trip and the Cambodian embassy rejected our request because of our original passport, for no other reason! We seriously started to think about moving out from Iran, our home country, to somewhere to be able to live free internationally and get another citizenship, somewhere to do not limit our future world traveling because of a passport title. We searched a lot to see where we can find related engineering job again and finally this beautiful island, its passport power, plus being far away from most of the world’s troubles caught our eyes to move here and leave everything behind.
Back home in Iran we had our ute and were overlanding with our old good friends. We had always been active going out and exploring our backyard in Iran.
From green lush forests in summer, to amazing wild yellow forests in autumn, to the central desert and then up north snowy mountains. We have lots of memories and great experiences and here we followed that passion and for exploring other countries. Specifically this build was our best decision for our life.
We explored NZ with rental vans on two good trips in North and South. We have plans to test the build in some more areas both South and North again and enjoy the beauty of this great natural habitat more for sure. For other countries we still planning and saving but we are not limiting to only one specific trip and this build must serve us for different routes really and will be all over the planet hopefully. There is no end to it, except you limit it. If covid limitation for borders ends soon we plan to go from Australia on the route to the east and central Asia then Middle East. But if not, for the first route we might decide to start from South America then bring the Troopy back, then plan again for other routes.
The budget so far….
Well, I rather not answer this question, everyone could get into it at a different price range. To start really is the important thing – just to start it. We saved hard, we spent a lot for building the dream, as we now do not care about anything else other than exploring the world. I know an Italian couple who are living in their old, I think 2006 Prado, full time for about 6 years now. They are exploring the entire planet and that is so encouraging for all with a very low budget. Their rig is so minimal but practical and that is something to consider; its not how others got into the traveling by only looking at their high end rigs.
We cannot recommend it enough, check out every part of Amir and Azadeh’s build on their blog HERE
