Off the grid
Staying online is becoming almost a necessity while on the road. With services like Data Roam we can stay online 24/7, wherever we go. This makes the moments we are offline, out of reach of any transmission towers, with the nearest WiFi days away, real unique experiences.
Those moments are different than the one complaining you’re ‘out of reach’, in a tunnel or in a corner of a building where the coverage is just a little bad. It’s a complete different experience, and something that is rapidly becoming more and more uncommon. Thanks to the online world ‘getting lost’ lost its adventurous and sometimes dangerous feeling. But when you are at a place out of any cellular reach, we still can have the real ‘lost’ experience.
My last and best unique ‘offline experience’ was 5 years ago when I visited this place I can’t imagine going back now. That place was Libya and the Libyan Sahara–at this moment one of the trouble spots of the world, which makes it a real unique experience. At that moment it wasn’t allowed to travel the country on your own so we organised a trip for 10 days with a guide and a car. After a flight from Amsterdam to Tripoli and a small domestic flight from Tripoli to the small desert town Sabha, ‘my team’ welcomed me. And instead of the expected one guide with his car, there were two old Toyota Land Cruisers, two drivers, one cook and one guide–for me only…
A breathtaking expedition between rocky hills and sand dunes, from Mars-like panoramas to scenes well-known from The English Patient, it was all there. With contrasts like freezing nights versus sandstorms with 50Cº during the day. Every night after we installed our simple tents, we sat down around the campfire,complete darkness around us, no artificial light for miles and miles, no sounds than just the little crackling noise of the burning branches we found along the way. No living soul than just the five of us and absolutely no cellular coverage, no satellite phone whatsoever, for 10 days long.