Great Journey 🇸🇪 Day 532
Is it beginner's luck or is winter vanlife really that beautiful?
In Sweden we encounter far fewer campers than in the summer months, also far fewer mosquitoes. Both very good side effects of anti-cyclical travelling.
We love and live from the encounters, these too are clearly fewer. Our assumptions: the people "up here" are a different breed. Besides, life doesn't necessarily take place outside on the street. Sure, with the temperatures. And thirdly: we are now "only" vanlifers, no longer motorbike travellers.
After more than a year on the bike, however, we enjoy the peace and quiet, the togetherness, the introspection in our Felix and don't miss the "where from, where to, oh so long?" short conversations at the roadside one bit at the moment.
We love to just stand somewhere free, spontaneously jump into our winter clothes and start hiking. We are in love with the moment of arriving "home" and celebrating our hot chocolate.
We are self-sufficient for about 5-8 days, at temperatures around -29 degrees only 4 days. After that we need new gas. We need much less water than expected, diesel even less and Felix seems to get wiper water from sources unknown to us.
We would probably improve that on another winter tour:
Drains must be heatable, because currently the heatable grey water tank is useless.
️ Diesel heating instead of gas, this gas dependency is annoying. But a diesel auxiliary heater would be an option.
Nice-to-have would also be:
️For our first trip snow chains were okay, but we are thinking about studded tyres
Dry separation toilet.
A second hot water bottle.
A stronger charging booster and perhaps a larger battery. You can never have enough power.
Gerd still dreams of an air-suspended chassis with levelling feet (or wheels?) to stand up straight. The two of us would like to have self-making beds, self-cleaning and clearing away dishes, and I dream of our daughter giving us back the temporarily borrowed Thermomix. Except for the last point, everything seems possible.
