A Message from George and Charlie of Dragoman Overseas Travel Ltd.
Hello to you all and can I firstly say, sorry for the silence, it’s been a tough old time, trying to get Drago in the right place to get it back on the road.
BUT Drago has some very good news to announce to all our supporters, friends, crew, staff, overseas partners, agents and travellers. Finally, we can announce that the Dragoman wheels will start rolling again! Later In 2024, the Dragoman trucks will once again start trundling across the three continents that we used to operate in; the Dragoman journey is starting again!
However, this will be a new Dragoman, under new management and ownership, but keeping to the old format and the old beliefs. Dragoman will still get you off the beaten track; still get you into the local communities; still make sure that the trips are active and challenging and still take time to do it properly.
It will be run by a new team and will start much smaller than we were, when COVID devastated the world and with-it international travel and especially overlanding. Dragoman was particularly hard hit as we were spread far and wide and had to leave trucks abandoned around the world.
Unfortunately, we lost many of our trucks for ever, as well as all our crew and staff and our ability to run trips. With no income for over two years, we were forced to put the company into hibernation and to spend the next years rescuing the vehicles and setting up a platform for a restart. We can proudly say that this strategy paid off and we have saved the company from failure. Although we still have a few trucks to rescue, we are now able to hand the business on to others, who with youth and energy on their side, will be able to relaunch Dragoman.
Yes, many of you have already guessed it; the big news is that Karen Brown and Will Thomson at Madventure Ltd. have bought the Dragoman overland travel business and several of our best truck. They, with the help of our past crews and staff and with the handover of our ethos, systems and resources, will be relaunching Dragoman’s overland trips later in 2024.
We believe that Madventure are the perfect team to take Drago on, as they have the experience and the belief in “off the beaten track journeys” and already operate many of the routes that we used to. They also have the right family mindset, as their own travellers are part of their family.
The really important thing is that Dragoman trips will stay completely separate from Madventure trips and will run in the Drago style as when we left off. Smaller groups, off the beaten track, local experience and taking it slowly. We will be helping train them in the Drago ethos!
Then later this year they will launch the new Dragoman Website with a range of new trips, which will take over from the current holding site.
Many of you know George and me (Charlie). On behalf of both of us and the old team at Dragoman, thank you to you all, for your patience and your wonderful messages of support over the last four years. It is now time for us to hang up our boots and to drive off on our own overland adventures in our campervans. The last 40 plus years of overlanding have been a blast and thank you one and all for making it possible. We started the business back in 1981, and now we proudly hand over the reins to Madventure.
To Will and Karen, good luck and we will help you make this work; just never forget, it is still the Journey and not just the Destination.
Charlie Hopkinson and George Durie
PS If anyone wants to contact the NEW Dragoman at Madventure Ltd. please use info@dragoman.com
(don't use info@dragoman.co.uk, as it is not longer monitored and won't BE answered)
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