Life on the Road: Exploring the Great Outdoors

What if you could pull back the curtain to a new view each day? Call the Alps your office? Or head off-road into the sweeping sand dunes of the Sahara for a few days of total peace? And, as the sun starts to set, return to the comfort of your compact roving home?  

Every day on the road is an adventure, and never has it been more possible for us to seek this out for ourselves. Van life is the search for a more fulfilling life outside of dense city centers. It offers an escape from a static life of commutes, work hours that exceed the nine-to-five, and a few weeks a year to unwind, if you’re lucky. 

It's a downscaled, but high-potential lifestyle that has emerged in response to skyrocketing housing prices in our modern cities and the increasingly prohibitive cost of living. These shortcomings of contemporary life have been especially laid bare in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, with swathes of people leaving the city, in search of fresh air. 

Van life provides the chance to seek lasting connection: with nature, with others, and ultimately, with ourselves. Life led on the road is about slowing your speed and tuning into the minutiae of the world around us - for within these moments, is where the adventure truly lies.  

(Photo: Courtesy of Conor Lowndes / @our_venturing_van, The Getaways)

The Getaways is a compendium of the world’s most fascinating vans and four-wheeled residences, showing that home really is where you park it. Let the creative fit-outs inspire your own van-venture, and join the journey with illustrated maps that take you across snowy mountain passes and along sunny ocean roads. Van life is a movement for all seasons, so throw off the shackles of modern life and join us as we hit the open road.