Quick answer: NO!
On Instagram vanlife is depicted as some sort of utopia: sunny skies, stunning scenery, peace and tranquillity, amazing road trip adventures.
It all looks so incredible.
Don’t get us wrong – vanlife can be like this. Indeed, it often is, but there is a darker side to vanlife that’s too easily overlooked.
More recently on Instagram we’ve been seeing stories of people who blindly went into vanlife without considering some of the harsher realities of life on the road such as…
- The stress of finding a place to park up for the night (unless you’ve found a place you can stay indefinitely – which is pretty unlikely)
- Safety issues (especially if you’re on your own)
- Breakdowns and other appliance failures (things will go wrong in a vehicle which is used everyday)
- Limited space (if you’ve been used to living in a house, things will seem pretty cramped in an RV, even in one of the bigger models)
So, no, vanlife isn’t as good as how it’s depicted on Instagram. Weigh up the pros and cons before diving in at the deep end.
Perhaps hire a motorhome for a week or two to see if you like it before splashing out thousands of pounds.
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