I've been thinking for a while what inspires me most when it comes to overland travel, and how I could best pass this inspiration on to others. I love the HUBB and other sites - very useful in the planning stages. I love to read about the travel of others - Sam Manicom and Ted Simon spring to mind.

The thing that inspires me the most, however, is watching trips and seeing different places / how the person interacts with locals / getting a feel for different cultures / etc. I'm going to get it out of the way and be done with it; I loved watching LWR / LWD. Both gave me a starting point from which I discovered HU, and everything developed from there! I've loved watching 'Aim for the Horizon' with Rob and Dean; I thoroughly enjoyed Adventure Spec's Moroccan DVD, although it's not quite my type of overland travelling. I've loved watching Mondo Enduro and, especially, Terra Circa.

The aspects of these films I enjoyed the most are that you get to see a great deal of the country in which the traveller finds themselves, I get to see how travellers interact with locals (either just to chat or because something's broken!), I get to see how the journey affects the traveller themselves (that they go on more than one type of 'journey', for want of a better phrase - sorry if it's a little cheesy) and that I feel as though I could be doing the same thing - I just needed a little push to get started.

What I'm interested in, after this lengthy pre-amble, is what do other people want from 'films' of travel, however long they me be. Does the focus need to be more on the scenery / countries, or the characters travelling? Is there a useful ratio between the two, based on your experiences?

I'm definately going to start small, but I would like to develop this aspect of my trips - not as a way to make money (although many do, and I'm not ruling it out!) but more as a way of inspiring others. As many others have said in the past, if I could inspire even just one person, it will have been all worth while . . . .

My favourite has to be Twice upon a caravan, Robert Fulton who rode around the world on a Douglas in the 1930s. This is a time I most would have liked to have travelled in as travel and communication were both reasonably modern but traditional cultures had not been changed by progress or the second world war. I also liked Robert Fulton's attitude to the different people he encountered, for somebody from such a privileged background he was open minded and accepting of other peoples cultures.

My personal favourite overland travel film is Mondo Enduro, I love the rawness of the trip, it was my first viewing of overlanding on the discovery/men and motors channel a few years ago, iv'e also read quite a lot of the books that are about
(Ted Simon , Lois Pryce etc) and watched a few more dvd's since but Mondo is the one for me, it always inspires me.