Back in 2015 we started plotting our escape. The following year, three years ago, we sold most of our belongings and bought an old campervan to live in and travel around for a while until we could find a new home.

I craved change, freedom from the life I knew. I felt trapped in a consumerist lifestyle. I needed to break away.

We took off on an adventure, embracing a lot of changes and challenges, it was mostly an inner journey for us both. It did not look like a #vanlife instagram feed, nor did it feel like one either.

We travelled for about a year and a half before we settled down in the swedish woods. The days in the van  felt very personal, I now see it as spending time in a cocoon. The fact that we greatly limited out internet and electricity access also contributed to this feeling, for us it was a period of being disconnected from the world at large.

Living in the woods for 8 months was a good and slow transitioning period, I hatched out of my cocoon unhurried. We've now moved to the city and I'm still figuring out how this new version of me fits into civilisation again. It's been quite a long process of metamorphosis.

Now is time to let go of my cocoon, the van.

I'm incredibly grateful for this journey and the van, which played such a role in it and for what it has allowed us to achieve.

Here's to happy new beginnings!

— D&

This is the story of a long journey. Little did we know about all the places it would take us when it started.

So many places, so many people -- and yet the only constant is us. Wherever we move, we take all our baggage with us.

We did not always feel welcomed everywhere throughout our travels. But as our journey was as much an inner journey, I'm wondering if that was because we didn't welcome ourselves. What were we running away from?

I know now that we had to leave everything behind and start traveling. Otherwise we could have never settled down. Have we settled down though? It seems like we never will.

I feel melancholic and nostalgic sometimes when I think of our time on the road. But the journey continues within us.

— &D