I believe it’s all perception anyway and has been since before ancient times.

When Ted Simon broke his leg he just waited, he knew someone would be along as people lived in the area. Let’s face it, there’s not many places on earth where humans don’t live and even the inhospitable places are travelled across by some trader or delivery driver.

Histories of pioneer travellers have been written from their own perspective - but humans lived in Africa and the Americas long before the white man got there so food and fresh water was available - actually in abundance.

Of course this doesn’t mean that overlanding is not an achievement, it is certainly a pastime that all of us enjoy and get great satisfaction from or we wouldn’t be on this forum. But I feel that comparisons of any kind are impossible and counter productive in this arena (obviously Philosophising in the pub is fine ).

Just an example of perception:
A friend of mine used to do 4x4, extreme Off road racing in Russia. It was so extreme that all the cars were hand built, from scratch and there’s at least 1 death every race - and it’s a small field. Nobody asked him about it or seamed remotely interested, even though it was a major achievement every year made more amazing by the fact that he was a privateer with no money and did everything himself and was on the podium occasionally.
A few years ago my wife and I rode round the Balkans and into Greece for our summer holiday. Loads of people wanted to know all about it, “could you get petrol? Were the roads tarmac? Was it dangerous?