It began with a straightforward pre-Covid trip to Croatia, but also for Nick and companion Mathilde, it wound up being the begin of a life-altering, globe-trotting trip to see almost every edge of the Earth.
“On our way down we just enjoyed it so much we thought, ‘Why don’t we just keep going?’.
“We really did not also understand what overlanding implied at that time,” Nick told Yahoo News Australia.
The couple, both 31, had ” typical work” in Paris and Brussels but did some research and soon decided to throw caution to the wind.
“We assumed it would certainly set you back a great deal which’s why everybody does it at retired life,” Nick said. “We observed it had not been as pricey as we assumed it would certainly be if we stayed in the automobile, prepared in the automobile and really did not most likely to dining establishments or resorts and things like that.”
They are now ‘overlanding’ their way around the entire globe — a style of self-reliant adventure travel to remote destinations where the journey itself is considered the primary goal. The couple have just finished the Australian leg of their world tour after travelling our dusty continent for the past nine months.
While the distances in Australia took some getting used to, ” there are many excellent locations to see,” Nick said. “Tasmania, Cape York, Karijini, Gibbs River Road, N’gari, Alice Springs and Uluru, Esperance, Ningaloo Reef and the Daintree rain forest, those have actually possibly been our favorite locations.”
Speaking to Yahoo from Darwin, they had just put their truck in a shipping container bound for Dili, East Timor, where they’ll pick it up after a jaunt through New Zealand over Christmas and the New Year period.
According to Nick, the endless travel costs including everything from shipping and insurance works out to be roughly $60,000 a year in expenses, with that being an average over time between poorer and wealthier countries.
Nick and Mathilde are able to fund a vast majority of their costs by sharing their journey on social media and monetising the accounts. They left with some savings and about a thousand followers on Instagram, and just a couple hundred on YouTube. But have since grown that significantly to help pay their way, with their content “taking off” when they were travelling in Alaska.
“Today, we’re practically at 90 per cent funded by our social media,” Nick said. “Which is a lot of work, it’s probably 20 hours each per week of work … but it doesn’t stop us from travelling.”
What was originally conceived as a three-year trip has now blown out to five years, simply because there is simply no need to rush it. “It’s honestly just so much fun,” Nick said.
removing”>The trip: 5 years – 7 continents – 88 countries – 300.000km. Source: NextMeridianExpedition
Travellers thrilled by find on outback road
When it comes to entering a new country, the couple typically have a bucket list of places and local wildlife they want to see. And in their last remaining weeks in Australia, they were lucky enough to finally see the only one that had to that point eluded them — the thorny devil.
“This truthfully so much enjoyable,” they wrote online after luckily spotting one while driving.
“We caas-figure “>King Canyon, But, Outback,
” the couple shared on social media. Source: Facebook
