Life After the Sahara Expedition: Adjusting to Home and What Comes Next

- You can probably tell by now that I'm no longer in the Sahara, right? (chuckles) In fact, I am back home in my little wooden cabin in the Carpathian Mountains. We're both home, and I think we're both very, very happy to be home. The expedition was incredible and kind of life-changing in some ways, but also extremely difficult. So, in today's video, I wanna kind of transition us out of the expedition. I wanna tell you a little bit about what it was like to get back home, 'cause it was not easy. Then I wanna tell you a little bit about the highs and lows of the expedition itself, and would I do it again?

I don't know. And also the real reason why I stopped the expedition 'cause I stopped it a little bit early. I'm also gonna give you a little update on my love life, and I wanna tell you guys about what's coming up next. So, without much further ado, here's what it was like to get back home, (laughs) from sand straight into snow. Honestly, I couldn't wait to get back home after the expedition. I couldn't wait to be back in my own space, in my little cabin, in my little cozy nook on my own land, in my safe haven. But things were not to be easy, because a couple of days after I got back, we had an actual snowmageddon here in the mountains.

It was about a meter of snow that fell in less than a week, so everything was completely covered in snow. It was impossible to drive up to my property in my UTV. I had to climb up, (laughs) as I have done a million times, so no big deal, but sometimes carrying shit (chuckles) up to the mountain hut in the snow is not that easy. Anyway, a very, very big change from the Sahara. Just as a reminder, there is no power and no running water in the cabin, so whenever I wanted to have power in the cabin, I had to charge my Jackery somewhere else, and then bring it up to the property on foot.

It's about 10 kilograms, so it's not that light. I almost forgot just how easy it is to get workouts in living out here. I've got, like, 15 kg on my back. Got another seven here. Another three or four with the camera and the tripod. Oh my God, I'm gonna get so fit. Just need to focus on the positives. Yeah. What about you? You happy to be back in the snow? Yeah. (laughs) (Vilk barks) Let's go, let's go.

Get it. Come on, bring it. (Eva chuckling) Let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go! Come on, let's go. I'm not complaining. I'm just saying that the realities of living up here in the mountains are quite challenging, quite tough. I love them, (chuckles) and it's always a good workout, but it's not always easy. (Eva chuckling) (indistinct) (Eva chuckles) What's that on your face? (chuckles) If you told me 10 years ago that my life would oscillate between living in my truck

in the Sahara Desert and not having running water or electricity, and living in the mountains in a wooden cabin with no running water and electricity, and that would actually be my entire life, I would not have believed you. I probably would've said, "You're absolutely insane 'cause who on Earth would wanna live like this?" Well, as it turns out, a lot of us do. (gentle guitar music) I wanna take a moment to wrap up Expedition Sahara, because obviously, it was a big moment of this year for me, and I think for a lot of you who followed along. And I just wanna say that before I set off for the Sahara, I had my doubts.

I wondered whether I would even be able to do any of the off-road trails that I ended up doing. I wondered whether it would be too difficult. I was really anxious about the logistics of such a trip, because obviously, if you're going into the desert on your own with your dog in a 20-year-old truck, things are bound to break down and fall apart, and of course, they did so many times. But if there's one lesson that I wanna take away from that expedition is that sometimes, things look a lot more scary from the outside than when you're actually in the midst of doing them. And once I was out there doing it,

it was kind of like I didn't really have a choice. I just had to find ways to deal with situations. And you know, I have this slightly delusional belief that, in the end, everything always works out. I know that some of you might say that's really naive, but I think I really believe in it. I mean, I've traveled all around the world for over nine years, and I know that everything always works out. (Eva chuckles) There's this really amazing concept that I read about in a book called "The Comfort Crisis" once, and it's called misogi, and misogi is basically a really difficult challenge that you undertake to kind of test yourself,

to test your capabilities, to test your skills, to test your resilience, to test your character. And misogi is a very specific kind of challenge, so it could be an expedition that you believe is gonna be very, very difficult for you. It could be some kind of athletic challenge, for example. The important thing about a misogi is that when you think about it, it can't be something like, "Oh, yeah, that seems doable." It has to fill you with fear. (laughs) So, for me, thinking about Expedition Sahara before I did it was a misogi because it filled me with fear.

It felt so terrifying, so scary. I didn't know if I could finish it, I didn't know if I could survive it, but I went ahead and did it anyway as a test of my own skills and resilience and character. And of course, coming out on the other end of it, I really do feel like I came out stronger, and that is the point of a misogi. Let me know if you have a misogi planned for this year, because I've also got a couple more, and I'm really excited to hear yours. Okay, I wanna give you the lowest and the highest moments of the expedition, and then we're gonna go onto my romantic life.

Ha! The lowest moment of the entire expedition, in fact, there were two. The first one came after I published my video about Western Sahara. I got so much hate from a lot of Moroccan accounts, a lot of trolling. Now, just so you understand, the relationship between Western Sahara and Morocco is extremely tense, and this topic is very, very, very controversial. So, I said what I said, and for that, I got a ton of hate from the Moroccan, the dominant side of the conflict. I'm not gonna go into this conflict anymore in this video because I am done, but that was a very scary moment because I got a lot of threats, a lot of trolling,

telling me that they would send the police to me, that I would be arrested, that I would spend years in prison. Really horrible things. And I didn't know whether they were just saying those things, whether, you know, they're just paying lip service to the cause, or whether they actually meant all those things. I had no idea. But the trolling went on for over a week. It was extremely intense. I had to limit interactions on my Instagram, I had to close the comments section on that video, and I had to monitor comments as well for the entire duration of that kind of trolling campaign.

It was very scary, and I feel like I understood then very well why influencers, I hate that word, why influencers stay away from political topics, is because, A, you will always get hateful, you know, whichever side you stand on, and B, it could realistically affect your chances of returning to a country. Say, if any of those threats had been true, maybe someone did report me to the Moroccan government and maybe the Moroccan government wouldn't have let me back into Morocco. Anyway, that was a pretty low moment, but I said what I said, I stand by it. Let's move on. The other low moment had to do with Odyssey.

A couple of videos ago, you saw me having to drive to Nouakchott, which is the capital of Mauritania, and spend a few days there waiting for Odyssey to get fixed. And I feel like that was a very, very difficult, low moment, even though it didn't really look like it. I mean, I knew that the car would get fixed somehow, eventually, and that I would've eventually be able to get back home. That wasn't really the issue so much. It was more having to sit in this Airbnb that was perfectly good in every single way, but I hated being there so much. The Airbnb was great.

It had air con, it had fiber-optic internet, it had electricity and hot water, and really nice shower and a really nice bathtub. It was amazing. The place was amazing, but I hated it. I was so miserable there because I was just thinking about how much I wanted and longed to be back in the desert with no power and no running water and no fiber-optic internet and no air con. (chuckles) There was just something so drastic about being taken out of this desert environment, this beautiful, natural world where I could be myself, and being thrust into this luxury apartment that had all the hallmarks of civilization

that I was trying to get away from. And I know that probably sounds ridiculous to a lot of you, and it would've sounded ridiculous to me years ago, but being in that, yeah, nice apartment that I was paying, you know, over 100 bucks for every night, felt very, very miserable, and I just couldn't wait to get out of there. (chuckles) Top moment of the entire expedition was probably meeting those two ladies out in the middle of nowhere, (chuckles) and being dressed up by them and you know, buying the beautiful melhfa from them, and then them giving me a little ring as a gift. That was so sweet.

Just that whole little exchange was amazing. And of course, the whole exchange didn't end up in the video. I was there for about half an hour, just chatting with them, just playing and laughing and giggling and trying things on. It was just so much fun, and it really reminded me that whenever I've met other women on my travels, no matter if it's, you know, back home or at, you know, 10,000 miles away from home, I always find a thread of understanding with other women, and I think that's probably most women's experience, is that we always manage to find some kind of communication, some kind of way to relate to each other and each other's struggles and challenges, and I really loved that. In a way we shared, you know,

a few words of each other's languages, but in a very different way, we didn't even need to really verbally understand each other to get each other. And in terms of my favorite place of the entire expedition, ooh, there were so many, but I feel like it has to be the oasis, probably the last oasis that I stayed in, which I found completely by accident just by scrolling through the map on Google Maps. I was just looking through satellite maps, and I spotted this dark spot on the map, and I thought, "Well, that looks suspicious.

It looks like water maybe." So I literally just drove there, and what I found was this incredible oasis. Now, I've tried this satellite map method in a million different places, and sometimes it leads me absolutely nowhere, or at least nowhere very interesting, but this time, it really paid off, mm! So, would I do this expedition again? Yes, 100% I would, but I feel like next time, I would probably go to some other parts of the Sahara, like in Tunisia and Algeria, potentially Libya. I don't know. Maybe this is something that will happen next year, maybe not, I'm not sure, but I would love to explore a little bit more.

It's such a magical place. And to be out there, self-reliant in your off-road vehicle is so incredibly special in a world where off-road trails are disappearing to be replaced with tarmac roads and where, honestly, it's just becoming more and more difficult to feel free and be by yourself in truly wild places. So, yes, I'm definitely hoping to do another expedition in those parts at some point in the future. (relaxing guitar music) So, I got some rock wool, which is a kind of material that you can use to insulate things, and it insulates things quite well.

Honestly, I should have done this last year, but I just kind of ran out of time, so I'm gonna do it now. I'm just gonna grab some of this stuff and fill some of the gaps. Now onto my love life. Spoiler alert, there's nothing going on, really. I just had some interesting insights on my expedition that I wanted to share with you. I've been single for a little while, and in fact, it's more than just being single, because for about a year, maybe more than a year, two years, I've been actively de-centering relationships and guys from my entire life. At some point, I just discovered

that being single gives me a lot more peace of mind than being in a relationship with someone. But more recently, I've been kind of second-guessing myself and kind of questioning whether my perspective was really right, that perhaps it would be better, nicer, and easier to have someone up here with me on my land, kind of working this big piece of land together, you know, doing the thing together. And I realized being on the expedition that no, that is not the case. (chuckles) That is still not the case. So, I wanna share something with you that I also wrote about quite extensively in my book, but I don't think I really ever shared here on YouTube, and that is that you don't have to be in a relationship to be happy.

Some people will be much happier in relationships. That's great, good for them. Some people might be less happy in relationships. There might also be times in your life where a relationship could make things more difficult for you. And we all go through stages where a relationship could be a really beautiful enhancement to our lives, or where a relationship could actually distract us from certain things and be detrimental to us. And one more very important thing is that not every romantic relationship is good.

Just because you are in a relationship doesn't mean that's good for you. There are great relationships, there are also bad relationships. And just being in one for the sake of being in one is also not necessarily a good thing. Anyhow, I was just thinking about the whole fact that I don't wanna have kids and that I'm very much single these days, and I realized that perhaps that's just gonna be my life forever. And when I thought about that, when I imagined myself being single forever, that thought didn't scare me. It actually made me feel like, "Oh, hang on. That's gonna give me a lot of time to do other things like, I don't know, take care of horses, build out my land, my property, go traveling.

Focus on writing books in the future, on creating cool films and documentaries." And the idea of being alone felt quite exciting and quite freeing, and it didn't feel scary. So, I don't know if that's just me running away from commitment, (laughs) but it genuinely doesn't feel like it on the inside. It's not that I'm scared of being in a relationship, it just feels like I definitely don't need a relationship to be happy, because I am genuinely very happy, and that feels really special to say. (lively guitar music) (logs cracking) (lively guitar music continues) (Vilk barking)

And all of that actually brings me to the last portion of this video, which is, what's coming up next? So, I just told you guys about, you know, being able to take care of horses and writing more books and da, da, da, and all of that ties into what's coming up next. So, at some point this year, I wanna bring horses onto my property. As you all know already, I do have a horse called Shaman. Shaman is a beautiful seven-year-old half-paint, half-American quarter horse, and he's a very special boy. But my friends also happen to have their own horses, and together, we figured that it would be nice if all of those horses that are currently living

on their land could come to my land and chill out here. So, at some point this year, that's what I wanna do. That's what I really wanna focus on, is building infrastructure here that can accommodate horses. But before any of that happens, unfortunately, I'm gonna have to leave my beautiful cabin and my land for a little while because yes, you guessed it, we've got the book tour coming up. So, I finally got all the details of the book tour. I'm gonna be doing a whole bunch of amazing events and meetings with some of you in the UK and in the US, so, the locations, I'm gonna post the link here so you can check them out. And also link below to all the events.

Right now, I am signing these little cards with a little message in my name, and they're gonna go inside my books. Not all of them, but a limited selection, so this feels like a really nice task on snow day. (chuckles) (calm guitar music) Every event is gonna be a little Q&A. I'm also gonna talk about some of my experiences of writing the book. I'm gonna be answering your questions. I'm gonna be doing a book signing. So, there's a lot going on, and I am so, so, so excited. I have an idea. I'm gonna sign one of these cards with a little smiley face.

It's gonna be the only one with a smiley face in the entire world, so if one of you gets it, you're gonna have to email me about it and send me a picture. I can't wait to find out who it's gonna be. Also, the book is gonna be coming out in Dutch at the same time as the English translation. There'll be an event in Amsterdam. And there will also be Polish and German translations coming out in October, and a small book tour that will follow in those countries as well.

I actually don't know how many of these I ended up signing, but it's a bit of a bunch, but I know they're gonna end up in good hands, so it's all worth it. (bag crinkling) I'm so excited for you guys to hold the book in your hands, like actually have it in your library and read it. Okay, that's it for me. I know this was a pretty short video and a little bit different from what you've been used to over the last few months, but I really wanted to give you just a general update on everything that's been going on

and move into the next chapter of this year. I am so excited for spring, I cannot wait, but for now, I'm gonna go and chop some wood. (Eva laughs) That's my life now. I'm a lumberjack. (upbeat rock music) Okay, guys, thank you so much for tuning into Expedition Sahara. It was so awesome, such an amazing experience. I'm really glad that you stuck around. And if you have any questions about the expedition or about what's coming up next, let me know in the comments below.

Thank you so much, and I will see you in a week or two. Bye. (relaxing guitar music)