Lecture: Making travel our life

During the Overlanders meeting in Ranst, we are on the program on Saturday, September 4, 2021 with our lecture “Making travel your life“, or as it is on the program: Permanent travel.

In this blog I give a summary of this presentation.

Table of Contents

Summary

In our lecture we will talk about how we have made traveling our lives, based on the following topics:

Our life journey so far
Great journeys in our lives
Traveling with Milady Landy
The big travel decision
Travel plans

Our life journey so far

We introduce ourselves with some pictures:

*Sonja was born in Zottegem and after we got married in 1985 moved to the Netherlands. She has worked all her life as a Dutch language teacher for different target groups.*

Gert Jan was born in the Netherlands and raised in Belgium. He studied as an engineer in water and pipelines in the Netherlands and is the proud parent together with Sonja of 4 beautiful adult children.

Great journeys in our lives

We have traveled a lot in our lives, adventure travel was paramount.
This is a selection of our travels:

Rwanda 1995: just after the Rwandan war in 1994, Gert Jan visited the refugee camps in northwestern Tanzania as a water engineer. The impressions in this region later led to the choice of our family to travel to Tanzania.

*We camped in tents with our children from an early age, this is a holiday in France.*

*Sonja in particular went on a bicycle trip with the children almost every year, especially during the May holiday.*

*We also explored our borders in Austria.*

*6 weeks straight through Tanzania with Adam as a guide was for all of us decisive for the rest of our lives. We have closed Tanzania in our hearts and we have all been back there several times.*

Traveling with Milady Landy

After our great adventure in Tanzania I, Gert Jan, decided that I wanted to drive my own car in Tanzania. After a long search I found a Land Rover series 3, the basis for our first Milady Landy:

See also:
Old Milady, purchase, restauration

With this car we went on a trip to France in 2014, Morocco in 2015 and on our big Africa trip in 2016/17.

The big travel decision

The decision

When we came back from Africa we knew for sure, we are going to make travel our life.
During that beautiful trip, we noticed that, even if we’ve been sitting next to each other in the car for 6 months, we still get along very well. We have been together for 35 years and we would like to add quite a few more years to that while traveling.
We take stock of our finances and conclude that we can stop working sooner if we rent out our house.

A new Milady Landy

We buy a new Milady Landy and set her up for our future overland adventures.

Travel to Morocco 2019-20

In October 2019 we will be on our way to Morocco, as the start of our intended world trip.
We travel around Europe for about 3 months. Then we make the crossing to Morocco, a wonderful journey through this versatile and hospitable country.
When we have concluded our intended trip, at the beginning of March 2020, Covid-19 will break out and we will not be able to return to Europe. We find a nice spot in Merzouga, at camping Haven la Chance and stay there for about 3 months. We make new friends and both discover that, with a little creativity, we can keep ourselves busy.

Covid-19 and our plans, Europe

When we are back in the Netherlands at the beginning of August 2020, we decide that we are going to sell our house, renting is not what we expected.

During the Covid pandemic of 2020 and 2021, we mainly travel in Europe. The Netherlands in winter and later, when borders slowly open again, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Italy, Switzerland and Austria.

Until we become grandparents at the end of July 2021.

The financial picture

During our Africa trip of 2016/17 we experienced that we could get by with about €105 per day with 2 people. During this trip we did not cut back on “dining out” and we visited many (expensive) parks.

We started from this daily budget for the financial plan for our trip around the world. In doing so, we aim to reduce costs to about half, which is perfectly feasible, especially outside Europe.

We also have the experience of shipping to and from Southern Africa, RoRo turned out to be between €1,500 (outward journey) and €2,500 (return journey).

Our personal motivation

Curiosity

*This Himba chief taught me that Curiosity is a universal concept. As curious as I was about his environment, he was so curious about where I came from.*

Traveling to the horizon/the unknown

*We travel day by day, always towards the horizon. It is unknown to us what lies beyond the horizon, we allow ourselves to be surprised.*

Pushing boundaries together

*We each push our limits for ourselves. But we also do that together, we enjoy challenging each other and looking for new adventures together, in the world, but especially in ourselves.*

Life without stress/obligations

*We enjoy our free life, we still challenge ourselves, but without stress and obligations*

Travel plans

We have already published our travel plans in this blog.

The planning of that has of course been confused by Covid. We also let the travel route depend on how the world is groaning under the pandemic.