My Family's Crazy Gap Year

Comment Followups:
Tom - thanks for the advice about Toyota LSD's - I couldn't remember if they were good or rubbish - turns out they are rubbish. Oh well - I'm sure it'll get us there.

There's a great program on ABC TV called My Family's Crazy Gap Year. You can guess what it's about.
The common motivation for these families is to show their children how other people in the world live. Check it out.

Security of car:
It's been a gradual lingering concern in my mind surrounding the inability to obtain comprehensive car insurance for our car whilst it's outside of Australia. I've called the big name insurance companies, the little specialist 4WD insurance companies - none of them will cover the car outside of Australia.

The Kingsmill's overland adventure (pictured below) has provide a wealth of information regarding the countries we will be travelling through and just how they did it. It's such a relief to see others have success with our endeavours and the contacts they provide have been invaluable. Here is a summary of their findings: http://dreamers1.com/russia/Practicalities/Russia_Mongolia_Practicalities.htm


You will find by reading that site that they managed to secure insurance in Russia & Europe, but no Mongolia... oh well.

I guess my biggest fear is that we will have everything perfect, the car, communications, supplies etc... we'll stop in for a lunch somewhere and come out with the car missing and everything we have built. We'd be lost in a country with no shelter, money, documentation, communication. With this in mind I can imagine us continually looking out of our hotel window for the car to make sure no one is breaking in or stealing it.
Part of me thinks an immobiliser would be a good idea, but the majority other half of me thinks it will be a bad idea. The only advantage to be gained would be central locking. Apparently they have a factory immobiliser but I'm not quite sure how it works. It's a diesel with no computer, I'm sure the only immobilising it could have is to break the starter circuit.... which I could just as easily do with a hidden switch somewhere.
ok, now that the emotion of it all is out of the way its time to think rationally. On our last overseas trip we both had bags to keep our most important stuff in. Cassie had a roomy shoulder bag (almost 1/3rd the size of one of those satchel bags) and I had a backpack. We took them everywhere. Cassie's bag had her passport, purse, photocopies of my documentation, cash and travellers cheques. Mine was the same but with the addition of a laptop. Thinking about it, there's no reason why we can't do the same this time.

It'll be slightly embarrassing in the sense that mine will be full of technology - none of which would be helpful if our car was lost. We'd at least be able to document our reactions in full 1080p, upload them via a laptop and sat phone ;-)