In 2011, Brad and Sheena Van Orden departed from Flagstaff, Arizona in their VW van, Nacho. With a loose plan to travel the world over the course of three years, their travels have produced a stunning travel blog and a captivating book, Drive Nacho Drive. We caught up with them in Mumbai for a quick interview:
You’ve been driving around the world for the last two years. Was it intimidating driving out of Flagstaff that first day?
Yesterday we went to the cinema here in India and saw this film called The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. In the film, Walter is a regular guy with a regular job and a boring life. The only trip he’s ever taken was to Phoenix. In a moment of desperation he makes a decision, and next thing he knows he finds himself in a bar in Greenland drinking beer out of a boot-shaped glass. After imagining his friend singing Captain Tom at a karaoke bar, he summons the courage for one split second to throw himself onboard a departing helicopter with a drunken pilot heading out to sea. When you watch this film, and you see Walter standing there on the helicopter headed out to the North Sea in the middle of a storm, and he has that moment when he realizes what he’s just done, that’s what it felt like when we left Flagstaff. The word “intimidating” is the wrong word for it. I’m not sure there is a word for it. We just got in the car and started driving, but the moment we left the driveway we knew that our lives had changed forever and we were doing something that nobody we knew had ever done before. It’s a strange feeling to recognize the moment that your life changes forever. It’s a good feeling.
Many people aspire to hit the road for prolonged travels but never follow through. What’s the secret to making it happen?
To be an elderly person who looks back on life with regrets about things that he always wanted to—had the resources to do—but didn’t, seems incredibly sad to me. I’m not a religious person and I don’t believe in heaven, reincarnation, or an afterlife; I believe that we only get one shot at this. We decided that driving around the world was really important to us, and that this was probably our last chance before we had kids and put down roots. Now would be the easiest time for us to live our dream. So we had to ask ourselves, when we’re elderly, what story will we want to tell? Will we look back on forty consecutive years spent in a cubicle, or will we look back on a life of adventure—driving over Andean passes in the back of a chicken truck, being stranded on a mountain farm in Colombia, watching the sunset with a dozen orange-robed monks while camped in a Cambodian monastery, and sipping tea with sherpas at 18,000 feet in the Himalayas?
We were lucky enough to be born in America, and so it really just comes down to recognizing that you have the ability to do it, and then making the all-or-nothing decision to pull the trigger. You asked what the secret is, well the secret is fear. Fear of leaving something on the table when your number is called. I get a lot of email from people who say that this is their dream, but that their situation prevents them from doing it themselves. These people are fooling themselves and wasting their opportunity. Imagine you’re 90 years old with terminal cancer. Now would you have done it? Because in a blink of an eye you’re going to be 90 years wondering where your whole life went.
Did you know then your travels would be so extensive?
Yes. The idea came to me at work one day, and I asked Sheena if she wanted to drive around the world in a VW bus. That night we decided it would take us two years to make it all the way around, but a few months later we changed our minds and decided that three years would be more feasible. We exercised our savings plan with the goal of staying out for three years, and driving all the way around the world.
I’ve noticed as of late the VW Westy has become a popular platform for many world travelers. What are the pros and cons of the venerable Westy?
Sometimes when we’re having a bad streak of mechanical issues, people ask why we’re so attached to this van, and why we don’t just sell it and buy a Toyota 4Runner. There’s something these people don’t understand about the whole aesthetic of our trip. It was never about driving around the world. It was always about driving around the world in a VW bus. In this way, our vehicle has become just as much a part of the trip as the drivers. As time goes by, I think people become just as attached to Nacho as they do to us. And I think the ability to become so attached to an inanimate object is unique to a Westy. They have their own personalities.
But there will always be the practically-minded gear heads out there who will want to argue objectively. Nacho is a 2WD van from 1984, and we started out with a 2.1L engine with 92 horsepower. It weighs 5,800 pounds, and the odometer reads 318,000 miles. That’s just not smart, objectively.
If we wanted a trouble-free, air-conditioned ride that we could forget about and just drive, then we would have chosen something new and Japanese. But that’s not what we wanted. Westy owners are proud to be well-versed in auto maintenance and troubleshooting. It’s a part of the fun, and it makes us proud. We’re about to finish an around the world drive involving hundreds of hours of hands-on dirty work to keep our van on the road. You have no idea the sense of accomplishment that that gives me. I smuggled a transmission into Colombia in a suitcase, and then installed it in a dirt field without a jack by setting it on my chest and body humping it into place. Please excuse me while I go an sew a “Level One Badass” patch on my jacket, if I may.
It doesn’t hurt that our Westy comfortably sleeps four adults, has a built-in refrigerator, solar electric system, sink, three burner stove, a couch, and a hot shower, and feels like a small but modern Manhattan apartment inside. Furthermore, it can be parallel parked in a standard parking space, fits into a shipping container, gets 20 miles per gallon, and doesn’t involve sleeping in a tent or a camper shell. The fact that it’s ugly as all hell is just a bonus.
Every adventure has unfortunate twist and turns. What was the worst day on the road?
At any point during the journey did you almost pack it in and come home? Our worst day was the day that someone broke into Nacho and stole pretty much everything of value that we had. The whole camera bag, iPod, GPS, e-reader, camping equipment, air compressor, tow rope. We just wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out. It was one of only two times that I really wanted to go home, get into my pajamas, and watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer in a beanbag.
That incident was a shock, where it felt like we’d been punched in the gut. Recently we had another “I want to go home” experience, but it was over the course of many days. We decided to drive from southern India to Nepal on India’s national highway system. What followed were 64 hours of driving the worst roads of my life over the course of six days with an average speed of 21 miles per hour while dodging mentally deranged Indian motorists, pedestrians, and livestock. The feeling for six solid days was one of complete eye-stabbing desperation. Forget about adventure, it was the worst drive of my life.
Your blog is always exceptionally well written and the images are stunning. It was clearly inspiration for your book. How has writing from the road enriched the experience?
Thank you, the compliment means a lot. I used to write technical reports almost every day at work, and creativity was not allowed. When we started the trip it was liberating to finally able to express myself, and to find my style as a writer. I would say that writing from the road has really enhanced our experience. When we have new experiences we make observations through a storyteller’s eyes. We focus on peripheral details that would otherwise be ignored. Sometimes we find ourselves in surreal situations and find ourselves stepping back to watch everything unfold as if on television so that we can retell it later. It would be different if we weren’t holding ourselves accountable for telling the stories later. The fact that we’ve now published a book blows my mind. We’re both really proud about that.
You’ve been to some amazing places, and obviously take the time to immerse yourself in the local culture. Is there a place you feel you most identified with and would like to revisit?
Looking back on the twenty or so countries we’ve driven through so far, there are a few that stand out above the rest. Colombia far exceeded our expectations. It’s on the fringe of the Andes and encapsulates so many different climate zones. The people there are among the nicest in the world, the food is good, and there’s endless exploration to do. Peru is similarly incredible; the best mountains in South America, desert beaches, desolate windswept plains, indigenous tribes, and amazing fauna. It would be easy to get lost for a very long time in Peru.
Nepal takes the cake in Asia. Where else can you stand at 14,000 feet and look around you at jagged glacier-covered mountains towering two vertical miles over your head? Trekking into the Himalayas allowed us to step back 500 years to a time when mountain tribes lived in rock huts, ancient monasteries clung to cliff sides, prayer flags flapped in the thin air over vistas of the most astounding landscapes on Earth.
But lately my mind has been lusting for Argentina. For a couple of months we drove through the Lakes District and Patagonia, where trout streams crisscrossed the valleys while the Andes loomed always to the West. I went flyfishing almost every day and by night we cooked our catch over the campfire. Argentineans love to camp, fish, exercise, and enjoy life. It has a fantastic beer and wine scene and we were in a constant state of pure gluttony. I keep toying with the idea of shipping back to Buenos Aires and spending the next year flyfishing in Patagonia.
You’ve been on the road for so long, I’m sure by now life on the move is second nature. Will it be tough planting roots again when the journey is over?
It’s hard to say how we feel about it. On one hand, I feel like there’s so much more to experience in the world, and I want to go experience it. But on the other hand I’m an engineer at heart, and my mind is eager to start creating again. It’s cliché to say that we’ve grown a lot on this trip, but it still has to be said. Nothing seems impossible any more, and it’ll be exciting to see how that realization can be applied to our future endeavors.
Where to next?
I’m speaking to you from Mumbai, where we’re waiting for a ship to carry Nacho to Turkey. We had wanted to drive through Pakistan and Iran to get there, but our American passports were a road block for us vis-à-vis getting into Iran with our own vehicle. From Turkey we plan to drive into Europe, down to Morocco, and then up to Scandinavia and Benelux, where there is a Trappist monastery waiting with a celebratory beer with my name on it.
You can purchase your copy of Drive Nacho Drive HERE. Visit their travel blog at drivenachodrive.com
