Plan and Budget

Planning

We have many ideas and things we would like to do, see and experience. The trip originally was intended to either be an adventure through South America. When the idea of traveling in a van was discussed and solidified, we spoke of driving to Panama and back or staying in the U.S. and exploring the lower 48. Ratha thought it was something that old people do (Will disagrees). We ended up choosing Europe for a good number of reasons. The variety of people, cultures, cuisines, languages and history can change greatly in just a matter of a couple of hours. The diversity in which it will provide is unmatched in the aforementioned categories by any other region in such a similar sized land mass.

Buying a Van

We have not decided on where we will buy a van as of yet. We have explored options of the Netherlands, UK and Germany to date with a likelihood of settling on Germany. We are debating whether or not to purchase a van that is most likely smaller that is ready for the road or to make our own custom version. Will has done a good deal of fantasizing about his dream van. The biggest challenge will be finding a place to work on the van and an affordable place to stay when they arrive. If you have any ideas or thoughts about that, we are all ears. One consideration was starting out WOOFING (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms), and buying a little time to figure out where we could buy a van and figure out where we could work on the modifications.

Budget

For those of you that know us and know Will well, he is a frugal living being, so why Europe? Will found his month-long trip in Europe with his Norwegian friend Magnus to be quite affordable in the food and beverage department when buying from stores. He estimated they averaged about $8 per person per day on food and beer/wine for the month spent primarily in Norway, France and Spain. Luckily, Will was in good company with Magnus and they both had a strong desire to avoid spending a great deal of money on food, though they ate well all the while.

If we are to make our goal of a year on the road with our current resources, we are going to have to adhere to a budget or we will be coming home early. That being said, fuel and food will be our largest costs barring noting serious happens to us, our valuables or the van. The costs for health and car insurance, the van and some gear we need will be a good sum of money up front, but we will hopefully be on coast for a bit after that. Regardless of what happens, we are excited for our adventure and will be ready to embrace the good, the bad and the ugly as it comes, though we are hoping for much more of the former.

Another great idea for prolonging travel using our current budget is volunteering. There are many options to volunteering and some great companies providing resources to help you do so. Here are a couple of resources below:

WWOOFing (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms)

Helpx (Help Exchange)

Work Away

We have not been looking for ways in which to make money as we were going to try and avoid that if possible. Who wants to work these days anyways right? However, we are open to ideas and we have a few of our own we may pursue or keep our eyes and ears out for while on the road. As we are trying to avoid living to work for this trip, volunteer work will likely remain more attractive.

Packing (more to come)

We agree on two things – Pack the camping gear, kayak and the climbing gear. The rest is up for negotiation. “Pack everything, forget nothing” is not a motto we will be following on this trip. To prepare for our journey, we’ve done a lot of downsizing (Will was impressed with Ratha’s detachment from her things) and getting rid of our belongings. Ratha found it such a rewarding and liberating feeling to get rid of so much. Let’s just say she took it to a whole new level. We will be hammering down our pack list in a week and a half and taking inventory of all our gear. We will make sure to post that for those individuals seriously looking to do what we are doing.

*update – We decided against taking the kayak as we realize how limited space we had in the van. A bummer when we saw all the canals and rivers Europe had to offer. But I think in the end, we are appreciating the extra storage space.

Bare Essentials

With very little room we have to be smart about what we pack. We are not saying these are a must for everyone nor are we endorsing them but these are some of the things we will be packing:

Luxury Items