I MOVED INTO MY 4x4 TRUCK FULL-TIME (Difficult Beginnings)
I'm Eva, and I've spent the last three years of my life traveling solo to some of the world's most remote and off-beat places. From horse trekking alone in Mongolia, to living in Pakistan for a year and spending the first three months of the pandemic stuck on a remote island off the coast of Yemen before making my way back home on a cargo ship, it's been one hell of an adventure, but recently I decided it's time for a change. I've been dreaming of being completely free and independent with a little nest of my own, so I bought my dream truck, a Land Rover Defender, and started converting it into an off-road overlander slash mini camper. All right, these curtains, finally.
This is the first test, I really hope they fit because I swear this has been the most time-consuming part of the entire van build, van build, Defender build process. Okay, all right, so far, so good. Roll them up. Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.
Let's see if my artistic concept actually works. Oh yes! It's perfect! Oh my god, it's so nice! Now I just need to find something to keep this up. I had a bit of off-roading fun the other day with some friends, and now I'm planning to put some stickers on the Defender before leaving, but first, I think she needs a proper clean.
Yeah, I'm gonna have to admit it, I have not cleaned this car since getting it two months ago, not even once, so it's high time. I feel like I'm probably one of the messiest people alive. I'm not a hoarder, I just have no organizational skills when it comes to cleaning stuff up, you know.
My mom always tells the story of how when I was a teenager, and she would enter my room in the house, she would have to like push the door real hard because there were so many clothes lying on the floor up against the door blocking it that she just couldn't enter the room. Yes, that hasn't changed. So dusty, so dirty. So, here's the thing, I've had these stickers for about three weeks now, but I told myself that I would only put them on the Defender once I'm ready to go, which is kind of now, so let's do it. We've been building out the Defender for the last six weeks, and I've been really, really impatient throughout all this time, and I'm gonna tell you why, because six weeks is actually not a very long time to prepare a car like this for a proper expedition. But I've been impatient because I've been finding myself back at home, staying at my grandparent's place where I haven't lived since childhood, and starting to feel comfortable.
I entered a comfort zone, and comfort zones for me are the worst, scariest places I can imagine. In this comfort zone of home, I found myself dreaming of adventures, thinking of adventures, planning adventures but not actually going anywhere. And while planning and dreaming is nice, planning and dreaming is not living, and living is what I really want to do. How can you claim that you've lived if you've never felt truly alive? This is why I do all this stuff. Not because I'm a hedonist pleasure seeker, not because I don't have a life plan, not because I have nothing to live for, not because I have no responsibilities, it's because I know that the real point of life for me is to feel alive.
Here we go, it's the big day finally. So I spent the last six weeks living with my grandparents and keeping them company as I've been converting the Defender into a livable full-time home, and the day has finally come to pack up and go. Can you believe it? I can't.
So here is all the stuff, and here is the space we're gonna be working with. I'm so excited and so curious to see what the Defender actually looks like when everything is inside, when it's an actual home, so I give myself an hour and a half to pack all of this stuff. Let's go.
First of all, things that I'm not going to need every day, such as car repair parts, spare parts, little bits and pieces like an extra tent, that kind of stuff I'm going to bury all of these things in the deepest recesses of the Defender. Next up, toiletries, my towel and a portable toilet. This cupboard right here is going to become my bathroom from now on, so I've picked this one because it's close enough to the back door, to the exit, and I guess that I'll be doing most of my washing and cleaning outside, so it's going to be nice, and convenient and easy to reach in here. Done, and there's plenty of space left. Next up, the kitchen.
Very important spot, and it's going to be really important to have easy access to the kitchen because I'm going to be cooking outside, right here, and that's why all the kitchen stuff goes in the corner, oops, if it fits. All right, please go in. Yes, perfect. All right, let's see if the cooker fits. No, no, it doesn't, it doesn't. I'm gonna have to find a different spot for the cooker. Next up my wardrobe.
These are all the clothes that I own. All the clothes in my life fit into this one single suitcase. This wasn't always the case. In fact, a few weeks ago, I did like a total cleanse, I sorted through all of my clothes everything that I owned, and I donated like 40 kilograms of stuff that I just wasn't using, and I wasn't going to use, so that makes my task a lot easier right now. I need to reduce the contents of this suitcase to a third of that, maybe half of that, so that it fits in the Defender. Socks and underwear.
I made a huge mess. Does this make you uncomfortable? Because I thrive in chaos. Let's see if I can fit my entire wardrobe into these two boxes. We just accumulate so much junk throughout our lifetimes, and then you go to the mall, and there's like a sale on, and the sale is stupid because how can things be on sale if you're supposed to be paying as much as they're worth. Get what I mean? I made my own curtains for the Defender, and you know how long it took me, it took me like two days to make curtains.
I remember when I was a bit younger, a bit more innocent, and a bit more clueless as to what I wanted from life, I just bought stuff to make me feel better about myself. I just bought stuff, it was like retail therapy I guess is what you call it, it's a thing and I just got more and more stuff and had more and more stuff to wear and thought that it would make me happier and happier but obviously, spoiler alert, it didn't. I'm not the world's most fashionable person, as you can probably tell but let me tell you why. So I have a whole bunch of little tank tops like these only in black and white, and then I have a whole bunch of shirts like this only in green and blue, and then one kind of like more fancy checkered one, and the reason behind this lack of variety in my wardrobe is because I just I hate having to think about what I'm going to wear.
I get such awful decision fatigue in the morning whenever I have too much of a choice in my clothing that I just can't deal with it, and I hate I feel like, for me, it's a waste of time. I know there's a lot of people who love fashion and that's cool, I don't, and that's why I've decided to limit my wardrobe to like two options basically, and I've been very, very, very happy about it. Oh, and one more thing, I also have a bunch of t-shirts also mostly in black and white. Trousers and tops. Here's the moment of truth. Will it all fit? All right, the trousers fit, looks good, but you, oh my god, millimeters, literally millimeters, oh absolutely perfect.
Jumpers, winter stuff, and scarves, yeah. Running shoes. Behold my private library. Five hours, it took five hours to pack everything, not an hour and a half, five. It's time, by the powers vested in me as the Defenders sole owner and driver, I hereby name you Odyssey. It's not alcoholic beer.
Cheers Odyssey, yeah, here's to adventure. Odyssey it is. It's a little bit scary, honestly, because the only thing that's left to do for me now is to get in the car and drive off, and that feels completely surreal, and I think it feels surreal because the moment I get in the car and drive off that's the end of this whole Defender build, that's the end of that beautiful honeymoon period where I was comfortable at home and just getting the car ready, now it's ready, and now the expedition begins, and soon in one of the next episodes, I'll tell you where I'm going. I have no more excuses, just no more excuses.
Goodbye home. Hello, adventure. I'm absolutely fascinated that this is a country border. This is literally just a forest road, like a single lane, a little forest road, and apparently, a country border crosses through here.
I love the EU. Anyway, leaving Poland right now apparently and entering the Czech Republic where I'm gonna stop for the night in about 50 kilometers because I'm tired, it's getting dark and I just want to spend the whole day tomorrow driving towards my next destination. Okay, I've just arrived at a campsite recommended to me by an overlanding app, and it's cold and rainy, and there's a storm outside, and there's nobody here, all the lights are off, it's empty, I don't know where I'm.
I'm quite tired, so I'm just gonna make myself cozy back there, have some food and sleep, long way to go tomorrow. I have to say it's a little bit creepy out here. I feel... I feel just a little bit uncomfortable.
So much so, in fact, that I'm not even gonna do the whole bed. I'm just gonna sleep on this little portion of the bed, wake up early and leave. The good news is I've got food from my grandma here. It's a vegetable stew with tofu, and it's still warm. Oh yes.
Well, I guess this it, this is my first night of overlanding life, and I have no clue where I am, and there's a raging storm outside and rain, and there is just nobody around. I hope this is not a sign of things to come. The food is great.
All right, I'm gonna finish this up, go to sleep, get some rest, wake up early tomorrow, and I'll see you for the next leg of the journey. Good night. Good morning. Good morning from I don't know where actually.
Let's take a look, shall we? Okay, I need to put a quick pause on the romanticism of all these scenes because right now, I just need to go to the supermarket to get some food because I'm starving. Not every single moment of overlanding life is extremely romantic, but I do think that there is definitely some romance to eating a cheese and tomato sandwich in a supermarket parking lot. You know, it's all about perspective.
The next morning, I drove out of the mountains and crossed several countries on my way to Croatia. This is where I woke up the next morning. So, this is where I woke up today.
Pretty beautiful, isn't it? I'm gonna see if I can go for a swim in that sea in just a few minutes, but Croatia is actually not my final destination here on this trip. You'll find out what the final destination is in the next episode, I guess, or the one after that, I'm not sure. I don't know how long it's going to take me to drive all the way there. In any case, this is a good spot to grab some breakfast, grab some coffee, and rest a little bit.
In the next episode, I will continue my expedition alone to a very misunderstood country in the south of Europe. If you don't want to miss it, make sure you subscribe to my channel. Keep exploring, and I'll see you for the next adventure.
2021-08-04 03:52
