1) What are you currently doing with your life?

I'm currently in the UK promoting Overlanding West Africa and having a little bit of a break after building Aminah our truck!

We have Adventure Travel Live at Olympia and Destinations at Earls Court coming up in the next few weeks in which we hope to raise the profile of our company.

2) What did you do before this?

I worked for Dragoman Overland as a trip leader/driver/mechanic for five years leading trips all over South America, Africa, the Mid East, and Asia.

Before that I studied history at University, and did whatever jobs I could to fund my travel bug. Everything from working in a record shop, to digging graves (!), to fixing catering equipment.

3) What was your moment of truth?

After working for Dragoman for 5 years, I realised my passion was for West Africa.

I found that all the overland companies only offered somewhat limited itineraries in the region, and nobody was showing much interest in expanding what trips they were offering.

So I decided to devise a number of trips in the region that take travellers to the countries everybody else seems to ignore.....Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Gabon, Congo, Guinea Bissau etc.

I found another ex Dragoman employee (Jimmy Corrigan) who shared that passion and together we decided to launch Overlanding West Africa.

4) How did you plan for it?

I looked at a number of truck chassis' for sale, bought one, and then transplanted a body onto the back, extended it, and rebuilt it from the bottom up (see video on You Tube below).

We then built our website and started marketing the trips once we were satisfied that the routes we planned were possible. Travelling in West Africa is not as straight forward as in other parts of the world, so we had to be certain our itineraries could work. To that end we spent days researching numerous options for getting from Senegal to Congo overland.

5) What have been the best and worst things about making this happen?

The best bits have been watching Aminah, our overland truck, take shape over the course of 2011 as we worked long hours constructing her, and building our trip itineraries which take the path less travelled.

The worst bits have been trying to raise peoples awarness of us as a company. We don't have a big marketting budget, and rely upon word of mouth and low cost web based material to spread our message. Though we offer the most comprehensive trips in West Africa that doesn't automaticaly mean people will book a trip with us!

6) What was the best advice you have received

The best bit of advice would have to be from an ex driver called Paul Bowler. On one of those cold winter nights as we were plodding on with building our truck, and wondering what the hell we were doing with our lives, Paul came over and said "don't get disheartened lads, it's important to be able to see what's not there yet"....wise words indeed!

7) What resources or information have you found really helpful?

Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google + and Tumblr have been invaluable in terms of making people aware of us as a company and the trips we run. Without them we would have really struggled to get anything like the interest we have done.