VLADIVOSTOK, Russia -- No, Peter and Eileen Crichton were not to be mistaken for the U.S. couple making a millennial tour of five continents in a lemon yellow Mercedes-Benz "off-roadster." Nor did they have anything to do with the two Germans who had just crossed Russia in a 1963 Citroen 2 CV.

"Oh, they're going around the world too, are they?" Peter Crichton, a native of Edinburgh, Scotland, said when he ran into a reporter at his hotel. "I saw their Citroen out in the car park."

Actually, the Crichtons were merely a British couple who had driven from Saudi Arabia to the Sea of Japan, the first leg of a global tour in a Land Rover Discovery.