I left France on the 26th of January 2022.
And one year ago today, I was arriving in Italy, somewhere in snowy mountains, for a first night surrounded by wolves. What do I remember most about the first night of this expedition? I had no pee box yet and I wanted to pee so bad…instead, I decided to dance all night long, in my duvet, and to forget about the wolves screaming around.
Since then, I never stopped driving, and talking to myself. But not only. Living on the road taught me so much (and I keep learning still). You actually learn how to be less demanding and picky because let's face it: you don't have many options anymore.
In the wild, there’s no comfort zone except the comfort to be free.
The rest is fun: I sometimes shower once a week, I discover interesting smells from my body, I learned how to create weapons (my socks -full of holes- are killers), I abuse of African massages while driving on gravel roads and walking barefoot, living outside makes me start to hate the cab, rolling into the dusty load bed to grab the boxes, to put disgusting shoes inside the tent because of scorpions outside, cutting my body in four just to fit the passenger seat for the night, no more battery on my torch at night, my fridge often doesn’t work but I keep eating my yogurts (god bless my stomach), driving in snowstorms, driving back to Germany (from Eastern Turkey) in just five days, the load bed top came off in a game reserve in pitch dark, to sleep in the tent surrounded by lions, to stay at the border with DRC with militaries, to date malaria for a few days, being physically assaulted by police, to eat always the same stuff, to love strangers like your own family, to say goodbye, to get lost….to have no choice but the one to live in the present, to feel alive, vulnerable and small, to be nobody but you, to have that passport to live your own life, to feel lucky, to have courage, to be wild, to be ready to fight, to be ready to love…
One year, 33,000 km and one big lesson: BE HUMBLE.
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