[Ragul]

Good stuff! This has been baking in my mind for a few years now with me watching a fair share of overlanding videos over the years. So yes, I’m next in line to prep my Gypsy for overlanding. I was only just alerted to this thread.

I would like more close-up shots of the roof rack design and fitment and also the 40 ltr tank. I prefer a very large tent so I will not be going for a roof top one. Just the roof rack for things I want to pack out of the way like shovel, sand tracks, water tank, mini gas cylinder, and tent and car cover material - light weight stuff except the water tank.

Be aware that you might be carrying more load of the roof than safe - with 40kgs of water + 20 kgs for tent and weight of roof rack and other stuff. While static load carrying capacity may be good when parked, in off-road situations your tilt angle will have to be lower than regular. That is if normally your jeep can safely tilt 40deg without toppling, now your safe limit may be just 20deg. Therefore the tilt indicator should now be a compulsory fitment on your dashboard. One of my learning’s from the more experienced expedition-farers videos is that one cannot have a hard-core off-roader that is also a Tourer. Compromises have to be made.

I also want to know how you stow the cylinder and kitchen table and stuff so that in the event of a crash it does not become a deadly missile.

[DirtyDan]

This sort of thing is very popular in North America. Lots of big pickup truck owners buy or build caps, put them in the bed of the truck and head for the great outdoors.

There is a Bollywood dudette...Gul Panag...who we have seen bopping around here in her modified Mahindra Getaway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUS_ziPii24&t=58s

Good way to get to remote places and see nature without the hassles of worrying about hotel rooms and such like.

Nice and high, you don't bed down with uninvited critters. Invited critters are optional.

Every few days you can check into a hotel to do the 3 "S's", the last two of which are shower and shave.

[Ragul]

RTTs are something one fancies at first glance but there are many downsides to them. Here is just one of the many YT videos discussing the cons never talked about. There’s a whole series of them from different folks if you search.

https://youtu.be/ZCVavqvwYvw

And I agree. Beside that I am done with roughing it out in cramped quarters. The kind of roughing it out that is normal in your twenties has no more appeal to me at my age. If I have a car to carry the weight I would rather do glamping in a 4 (wo)man tent with a porch even if it’s just 2 people on the trip. Which is not feasible with RTTs and saves me the trouble of worrying about gross laden weight high CG and lower driving safety. Forget the headache of fabricating a heavy duty roof rack with local jugaad fabricators using an unscientific approach and non-measurable dynamic load carrying capacity that might fail at the wrong moment.

[DirtyDan]

The universal popularity of doing this kind of thing speaks for itself. The pros and cons are rather obvious, no mystery. People do it because they like it and it works for them. I personally would not want to have any apparatus on my vehicle that I couldn't EASILY take off and store away in 10 minutes. But that's me.

I spent 1 full year living right on the ground, no nothing, in the leeches, snakes, centipedes, scopions, rats and weather in the Army. Winter, summer, monsoon. This Jeep looks like a hotel to me. Do I think it's for everybody? No.

By the way, you can buy..."thrones" for camping. They make these portable folding chairs for old folks and you can get them at big chemist shops. Some come with built in reading lamps, TV, stereo and hot and cold running wine. Or, you can just buy a seat at a local plumber shop and hammer it to a couple of suitable planks. Necessity is the mother of invention.

Minimalist jeep camping does have the added advantage of being a RELATIVELY pandemic-safe way of traveling these days. Hotels with prior and current guests leaving their sundry medical histories behind in the rooms, lobbies and restaurants, do not appeal to me all that much right now. Tents? Yeah, possible, too.