Kicking off my pan Europe roadtrip
Inspired by my pan India roadtrip, I had always wanted to do the same in Europe. I got the opportunity between jobs & coincidentally, exactly an year after my India roadtrip :).
Back in 2021 March, I started on pan India solo motorbike trip . I was relocated to the UK for work & the first idea was to do a India to UK roadtrip, which I could not do because of Covid & countries closing their land borders because of it. My wife & I considered various variants of the roadtrip; shipping our car to Iran & driving from there or landing in some Europe city, hiring a car & then do a Europe circuit. Unfortunately, none of them worked out & I decided to do pan India trip instead.
In Jan 2022, I had quit my London job & by Feb 2022, had finalized on a new job. I also had got a Schengan Visa in Dec 2021, so now I have all the reasons to relive my dream of doing the Europe roadtrip.
I had checked out a few used motorbikes & was close to buying one for the roadtrip. But then, I had got a few friends interested to join me in various parts of roadtrip. So I decided to buy a car instead. I bought a 2002 ULEZ compliant Nissan Almera for 1050 GBP. It seemed pretty great to drive but I am no expert when it comes to car. Well I was a novice with motorbikes as well & picked a lot of stuff during my pan India trip, so I wasn’t as ‘scared’ this time to take my chances. As usual, my move to buy an old car met with a lot of skepticism from people in my circle but as usual, I decided to take my chances with the car. At the time of writing this post, I am in the 15th day of my trip & it surely turned out to be not great a decision but there probably a lot of roadtrip still left, so lets see :).
As for inspirations/plan behind the roadtrip, they are pretty much the same as of my india solo motorbike trip, on this post . It has to be impromptu, solo & without much planning. I figured it was much easier to do in India, unlike in Europe where prices closes to D-day skyrocket. Roadtrip can still help you keep those issues in check as you have your car & you dont have to pay insane flight/bus/train prices. Also, the hostels dont jack up prices either.
As for preparation, I did not do much except for doing a longish ride on my car to Brighton to make sure it holds well. I also did a interim service hoping the guys would check it well. But unlike India, I could not get much information about my car from the service guys. They were pretty much by the books, this is checklist & this is what we do - end of story. I was like - ok, I will probably manage :). I did take a Europe breakdown cover alongside the car insurance as a backup. Plus decided to keep my tent & sleeping bag in the car, just in case, I get stranded midway & had to spend time next to the road.
I also researched a bit to figure out that driving in Europe (particularly France) has requirements in terms of carrying various items like a reflecting jacket (it need to be kept in the car & not in the boot), a reflecting red square that you place behind the car if it breaks down, breath analyzer kit, a first-aid kit etc. There is one available online from RAC & I got one for myself. You also need to stick a UK sticker on the car as it indicate to folks that the driver is on the right side of the vehicle unlike rest of the Europe.
I started on my roadtrip on March 11. As for the plan, it was first to drive to Paris, where I would meet Anand (one of my friend from India) & his brother Aditya. We will figure out where to go from Paris. Closer to the trip, we figured that Anand is coming but Aditya has taken a week’s off. So he would be with me for a week.
Aditya suggested that we should drive to south of France & then to Switzerland border & stay there to do some day trips to Switzerland. He suggested that as stay in Switzerland is expensive. Once his vacation is over (1 week), we will drive back & I will drop him to Paris & continue with my roadtrip. I had not made plans as to where I would go. I thought I would head north of Paris, maybe to Belgium, then Netherlands & then to Denmark. I spoke with Vinay, a college friend of mine, few days before starting the trip & he was insistent that I should visit him in Copenhagen (he stays in Sweden but very close to Copenhagen). I figured I had good month (or more) in my hand & I should be able to cover Western Europe if nothing else. 15 days into the trip, I have actually covered more of Eastern Europe than west & my car has been with a mechanic in Paris as I write this post :).
I also thought a lot on starting the travelogue as a paid newsletter. While the idea was to get some amount of sponsorship for the trip, it was also to test the water if something like can sustain me in the long run and maybe, I adopt it as my career. When I started on my India roadtrip, I wrote about a lot of pointers around accommodation, food etc which would help others to find something on ease, if they happen to be doing a solo trip or happen to be in the area. But then, over time, I figured that people liked reading about my emotion as a traveller more than anything else. I wanted to test if they would be willing to pay for these interesting, unedited & honest reads. There is no better way than to actually test it. So I made a section in substack ‘Pan Europe Trip in 2022’ & decided to add all these posts under the section. Also, make the access to the section paid.
I also figured that very few people like to subscribe for my newsletter as they are concerned with spam & Substack eventually selling their emails for a price. Valid concern. The only way I can assuage it is - I am signed up with my primary email on Substack & Subtack has honored all my choices so far. There is no conclusive evidence that Substack has sold my mail id but guess I using my primary email should be a good enough evidence for you to sign up as well :).
If you are still on the fence, you can try one of the ways below
Subscribe with your secondary email & setup a forward from ‘pocha@substack.com’ to your primary email
Subscribe with an email like ‘your-primary-email+substack@gmail.com’ so that if you ever get bombed with some random marketing email, you know that Substack is the culprit.
Btw, I also have access to all the emails under Subscribers section but I can assure you I am never going to export & sell those email ids :).
As for the newsletter price, Substack mandates minimum of $5 per month. I can’t set it to be any lower. But what I can do is
I can add you as paid subscriber if you do not want to pay for subsequent months, so that you have access to all paid content. There is no commitment that I would be publishing frequently post the Europe roadtrip.
If for any reason, you still like to read content without paying, drop me a word & I would be happy to add you as a free subscriber. You do not have to give a reason as to why you dont want to / can not pay :). Please be aware that this step would still be manual & I would have very little time during my roadtrip. So it could get delayed significantly.
At any point, if you are not happy, you can request a refund of your fees. It would be returned without any questions asked :).
What you will get by subscribing
Daily dose of coffee time read of a traveller’s emotions during a solo roadtrip which is fairly unplanned & in the region where he does not know anyone. I will publish one post for every day on road during the trip.
Tips around accommodation, food & sight-seeing of the places I visit. You will also get to see pics of the places etc.
If you ever need help in any of your future trip planning, I would be happy to spend half an hour of my dedicated time with you. If you need more, I would be happy to. You need to ask for it :).
P.S. my posts are fairly unedited, full of grammatical mistakes etc. It is just too much of work if I have to edit posts while writing them during the trip, as these are fairly unplanned trip & I just plan for one day in advance. You have been warned :).
Let the Europe roadtrip begin.
P.S. at the time of writing this post, I am already 15 days into the trip, hired a rental car in Croatia & had done a circuit of Balkan countries - Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Montenegro & back to Croatia. I am now heading back to Paris & probably will do a roadtrip of Western Europe now.