Back in December 1999, I decided to quit my job, forget about my 2 university degrees and explore the world. There was something magical about the year 2000, a time for big changes. I found myself a rusty 1967 4WD Mercedes truck and had the crazy idea of driving it from Belgium to India.
I was always intrigued with the Woodstock times and decided to make it a kind of peace and love mission. How to turn that rusty old vehicle into a mind-boggling message-to-the-world transmitter?
I had enough crazy artistic friends to get that done. One friend had become a famous tattoo artist and another was a secret graffiti artist. Yes, I do love fusion and the result was astonishing, have a look yourself.
As you can see, there is this old-school tattoo style in the banner with crazy spray graffiti art in the background.
Looking at that painting, I saw myself on my mission already, what a piece of art to drive around with, what a childish dream taking off right at that moment.
The most amazing aspect of working with spray cans is the speed of creation. In barely 5-6 hours, these 2 artists painted both sides of my truck. With no questions asked, they went straight to the back fulfilling their own desire to leave not 1 spot unpainted.
They sprayed what they saw as my portrait, a huge heart with the cap of a mad man on top, what a final gift!
Once you set off on a journey like this, you should go where the path leads you and accept what the path has to give to you. I arrived in India 6 months later with a pregnant girlfriend and we never came back.
My 2 children grew up in the truck but after 7 years, the truck became a bit small for a family of 4. We also had 2 big dogs so it became really crammy inside.
7 years is a beautiful cycle, maybe it was time for a change…
One of our last trips in India consisted of checking out some strange flyer hanging in a Gokarna beach-shack, “Building an eartship, volunteers wanted”. Some crazy chap @eco-alex had a vision of constructing some gigantic self-sustainable house with tyres and other crap straight from the garbage.
His choice of land was excellent. At 2000m high in the mountains of South-India, a baba was sitting on a lot of land and renting out plots for lifetime for almost no money. There are no building regulations in India so you can realise your wildest imaginations.
We also fell in love with the place and we have built our own sustainable place about 500m from the earthship. A beautiful stone house with loads of wood. We have a waterfall and pool 50m from our house, paradise exists!
If you want to know everything about earthships, you can follow @eco-alex, he finally found a medium – We love Steemit - to start blogging his experiences, @eco-alex/diary-of-a-first-time-eco-builder-or-the-creation-of-my-life-s-dream-a-totally-off-grid-self-sufficient-home-earthship-karuna
This post is a bit my story of how I ended up at the earthship and especially a tribute to @eco-alex. Thanks to him, I build my own sustainable offgrid little paradise and last but not least, I would never be on Steemit without him :-)
Here and now, we are again 7 years further, our children are now 10 and 13. They are the most amazing children but they are a bit tired of sitting on a mountaintop with no other children around.
7 years is a beautiful cycle, maybe it is time for a change…
We are currently looking to move back somewhere to South-Europe, our ears are open for the whispering advice from the road ahead. Do you know where to go in South-Europe?
Take care,
bub
ps: Check out the ecoTrain highlight posts, showcasing our amazing passengers every week
@eco-alex/ecotrain-post-highlights-5th-july-12th-august-2017-more-amazing-content-every-week