I am convinced that for many, including myself, the most passionate image of a Land Rover is still that of a Discovery or a Defender in a yellow-orange tone which is barely visible due to the thick layer of mud that covers the body. Caravans of all-terrain vehicles crossing rivers, jungles, deserts.
Many of us grew up dreaming of one day enjoying those fantastic adventures that traveled all over the world, the most inhospitable places, movie sets, at a time when the closest we could get to those places was watching them on our television. And low-cost airlines did not yet exist, the portals in which to organize a trip to the Amazon, or the plains that Genghis Khan unified into a nation, becomes a mere procedure.
The Camel Trophy is an adventure that arose in 1980 and that only a year later it would inexorably unite its path with Land Rover, in an association that would last for 17 years and in which its entire off-road range came to be present, as participating and support vehicles.
The Camel Trophy was an off-road adventure that traveled the world for almost two decades, making several generations dream of replicating those adventures through the most inhospitable places on the planet.
Those wonderful years of the Camel Trophy
Nowadays and thanks to Youtube it is relatively easy to find material to remember those years, the material that the Spanish Television produced telling us about those feats with the invaluable presence of Miguel de la Cuadra Salcedowhich also made several generations of children dream of adventures and expeditions around the world, with the Ruta Quetzal project.
And although the material we find on YouTube (and in the videos embedded in this article) does not always enjoy the best quality, we must feel fortunate that initiatives are still carried out on Spanish public television, such as recovering those footage and preparing programs as vintage connectionwhich recovers those stories and our nostalgia by remastering and editing the graphic material.
And that’s how by zapping one finds authentic jewels like this one. An episode of Vintage Connection broadcast these days in which we can travel 23 years in time and remember the 1990 Camel Trophy, also known as Siberia 90, a thousand miles from Perestroika. An episode in which, even when approached very lightly, it can be perceived how this adventure was often involved in environments that were not only inaccessible by nature, but also due to politically turbulent moments.
The Vintage Connection program recovers the original footage and locution to remind us of the 1990 Camel Trophy that toured the Soviet Union, over the Siberian permafrost until it reached Lake Baikal
Vintage Connection: Camel Trophy, Siberia 90
The presentation, produced recently, carried out by the journalist Paco Grande to maintain the line of archive images, does not prevent – quite correctly – that we can listen to the original locution of the images that were broadcast 23 years ago now. An aspect that will not only cause us greater nostalgia, but will also allow us to immerse ourselves in the style of the time and, above all, in the life and vicissitudes of the Spanish and the places covered by the Camel Trophy, in those years.
He Vintage Hookup show: Siberia 90, a thousand miles from Perestroika It can be seen from the RTVE website itself. Although if we want to enjoy the program on our television, the ideal thing to do is to download the RTVE Play application and free up our schedule for 1 hour to calmly enjoy the program while sitting on the sofa.