Ep. 305: How This Full-time Traveler Makes Family World Travel Sustainable with Sasha L.
In this episode, I speak with Sasha who is a full-time traveler with his family for over 1 1/2 years. They have traveled to 50 countries across five continents overall. They spent a year traveling across the U.S. in an RV to 25 national parks and have spent the last year traveling while working remotely, living for a month each in some of their favorite travel destinations.
They have now created a website, Off the Beaten Travel, for hidden gem destinations around the globe, and users will be able to input their favorite off-the-beaten-path locations.
Listen on to find out how Sasha makes family world travel sustainable.
Listen Below:
RELATED EPISODES
Ep. 302: How This Freelance Guru Helps Others Create Freedom Through Gig Work with Dorothy Hollabaugh
Ep. 301: How This Russian YouTube Content Creator Became A Digital Nomad with Lana Glushkova
Ep. 300: How This Third Culture Kid Sustains A Nomadic Lifestyle with Natasha Ibrahim
Transcription:
Debbie:
Hey, everyone, thank you so much for being here. I’m so excited to speak with my guest today.
I’m here with Sasha. Hi, Sasha, how are you?
Sasha:
Hi, Debbie, how are you? Thanks for having me.
Debbie:
Thank you so much for being here, can you tell us about you and why you live an offbeat life?
Sasha:
Sure, well, thanks a lot for having me. Yeah, I mean, I live an offbeat life because I’m a full time traveler which is then a big adventure and a lot of fun, over the last year and seven months or so. My family and I decided to change our lifestyle after probably getting a little burned out from work and suburban life back in Washington DC area and we decided to take a big RV trip across the country, so that entailed kind of a whole year of preparation and then we ended up traveling for a whole year.
We bought a used RV, kind of fixed it up and had a funny name called, Lazy Days, and we work just a little bit part time last year but really we’re out on the road, kind of, you know, camping in the wild and saving a lot of money and living cheaply and then we realized we liked it so much, we went to 37 states and 25 national parks and we realized that we liked it so much that we wanted to make travel life sustainable, so this year, I’m kind of working 3 or 4 different jobs, in different ways and my wife went back to work full time but remotely, so now we are living, continue to travel but spending a month of a time each in some of our favorite places or places that we thought were our favorites. So that has been really interesting so we are on our, I guess, 8th place now.
Debbie:
Wow.
Well, that is a big leap from where you were before because you had the traditional job, how did you decide, why did you decide to do this and just kind of live life nomadically?
Sasha:
Yeah, I was at my job for about 12 years, it was a wonderful organization, it was first called, “The Enough Project” then turned into “Sentry”, it’s a human rights organization works in Africa and, but I’ve been at it a long time and so I think that I was getting a bit burned out from it and we moved from Washington DC, from the city to the suburbs, we moved in Northern Virginia and I think we just kind of thought, “Well,”, you know, “Is this it?”, like right?
We sort of had accomplished everything we wanted to, we had good careers, decent salaries, we were doing well in our jobs and then you know, we thought, “Well”, you know, actually, we want more out of life and we always had this idea to go on a long term road trip, we got engaged in Bolivia in, at Lake Titicaca and we met this Canadian family who were living out of a truck camper and homeschooling their 4 year old, I can’t remember how old the kid was, but homeschooling their kid in the morning and traveling in the afternoon, that was back in, I guess, 2012, and we were like, “Wow, that’s incredible!”, and this is before we had kids and then we had this idea, “Well, let’s take a year off sometime and travel the Silk Road by road”, like you know from Turkey to China or the other way around and you know, we kept scratching our heads on how to make that happen and it just, you know, the idea was a year, then 6 months, and 3 months and just, nothing was really working and I think covid kind of woke us up to the possibility of doing bigger travels.
And I think that the key – spark really, was actually sitting down and opening that horribly boring program called ‘Excel’ and writing a budget, actually, you know, figuring out that as a matter of fact, once you shave, once you really adjust your expenses quite a bit, from living in a sticks and bricks house to being on the road, that we could actually do it and that was a huge eye opener, so yeah, it’s been wonderful so far, we hope to keep it going as long as we can.
Debbie:
I mean, there’s a lot to unpack there because, and there’s so many things that I’m interested in, first, you are not only traveling just you and your wife, you also have children that are going along with you, is that right, Sasha?
Sasha:
Yeah, we have one 5 year old, we started when he was 3.
Debbie:
Oh my gosh, so how do you make that work? Because when you have children a lot of people have this misconception that it’s a lot harder to travel, it’s going to be more expensive, what did you do to make this work for you? Was it really that hard? Or is there a lot of misconception with traveling with children or with a child?
Sasha:
Well, the best part about it is we get him used to very long car travel at a very early age, so, we laugh, our friends can’t take their kids on like a 1 hour car trip and I’m like, “Oh, well our kid could sit on the road for 9 hours at a time.”, so, you know, get him used to it early, no, but really, I think that we started at the age when he was in preschool.
Now he’s kind of at a kindergarten stage, with the idea that sort of experiential learning is so valuable for kids and so we were always committed to doing some book learning and then we’d increase that as he’s gotten older but really, you know, showing him the world, showing him the San Diego Zoo, showing him Yosemite, you know, getting him into climbing, you know, he’s learning how to surf, he’s a, tons of hikes, we’ve taken him on overnight backpacking on multi day backpacking trips several times, you know, he knows what the redwoods are and how old they are and all that sort of thing so, actually it’s been really great.
I think that only thing that is the drawback is having, you know, consistent, long term friends like he sees regularly but actually we are able to get back home once in a while and then we’re able to connect with some of our friends who live in different places too, and so he’s able to build friendships that way, so it’s been great, I think we can continue that, yeah, thanks.
Debbie:
Yeah and that’s really interesting because there’s like, it’s kind of like it’s really wonderful to do that with your children because they’re not only learning from books, but they can actually learn from real life and that’s one of the best ways for a child to do that and even as adults, right?
When we travel the world, we learn something new, you’ve just see the pictures of it or you’ve just read about it but to see something in person is another level of learning and seeing the world and it really changes you, but like you had mentioned too, having connection and that’s also really important, and I know as your child gets older that becomes more important, right?
Because when they’re young it’s you know, they don’t really understand as much, so do you think your traveling will be different once they get older, once they become like teenagers or even pre-teens, because it becomes more, I guess it depends on your child too, how they take life in the road or if they would rather stay and have something that’s there for them, like having that type of relationship as well.
Sasha:
For sure, yeah, great question, Debbie, I mean, I think we’re kind of taking it one day, one month, one year at a time, it’s been a really great so far, this whole travel experience, we are slowing down, well, we did slow travel last year but it was, we spent a few days in each location as opposed to just one night, this year it’s even slower, spending one month in each place.
We may end up spending a full year next year in another place, just to have him sort of, you know, develop longer term friendships and so forth, I think we’ll see how it goes, we’ll see and of course as he gets older he gets some more voice in the equation as well, but yeah overall, I think the whole experiential learning is super valuable and everything that we learn in a book or look at in a book, he then can see in person, we just spent 2 weeks in Hawaii, you know, he got to see the whales and swim with the turtles and identify the fish in the water, the eels, etcetera, so now we look at a book and he’s like, “Oh yeah, I know what that is”.
So I think that is really cool and he can learn all these things that other kids, or at least when I was growing up we didn’t do, we spent a month in San Diego County and he learned how to skateboard, he’s learning how to skateboard and surf and snorkel and that sort of thing so things that are normal in certain places but they weren’t normal back in the northern Virginia area when I was growing up so.
Debbie:
Yeah it’s so funny because your child is only 5 years old and he’s already done so many more things than some people or a lot of people, right?
Sasha:
Yeah.
Debbie:
And you’re like, “Oh my gosh, he’s super adventurous.”, but that’s because you guys took the time to actually take him to places and have all these experiences and I think that’s a really great way for a child to understand what they do like and what they don’t like, you know, it’s a lot easier to figure it out, I think if you’re exposed to so many different things so I think that’s a really great thing to do when they’re that age.
Sasha:
Yeah, he’s either going to absolutely love continuing to travel when he grows up or he’ll absolutely hate it, so, we’ll see what happens, the jury is out.
Debbie:
Yeah, but at least he’s experienced it, you know, it’s not just from hearing it from other people he’s actually done it so that’s a good thing.
Sasha:
Absolutely, absolutely.
Debbie:
So now one of the things you also talked about, Sasha, is sitting down and actually understanding budget and budgeting this type of lifestyle because that’s another thing that a lot of people are concerned about is – how can you afford this? How can you make this sustainable? Because although we like to travel, we love to experience all these things you also don’t want to be constantly worried about money or where your next meal is coming from, you know, how did you make sure that you’re able to do this long term and not just, you know, for a week or two during the year like most people do?
Sasha:
Sure, and that’s probably the biggest question or sort of puzzling look I get from friends when I tell them what we’re doing. Is it like, oh, you must be rich. And it’s like, no. So yeah, the biggest wake up call was really that when I sat down with this ultra boring Excel file and did the two columns like, you know, cost of life at home, cost of life on the road is that you spend so much money when you’re actually just sitting around the house between either your rent or your mortgage and your utilities and just kind of random things that you think you need when you’re sitting at home, but most times you actually don’t need them or you just kind of spend money out of, I don’t know, stress or boredom or something like that, like clicking on Amazon with your thumb or renovating some bathroom or whatever. These costs are so exorbitant, especially with escalating inflation in the US and then when you compare that to going to so many destinations, particularly outside the US that are so much cheaper or living in the road, like if you’re going to RV campgrounds or free camping, which is so common out West and not common back East, you realize there’s such a dramatic difference and you can save so much money by just getting out of your house.
The other thing I think is the common misconception is how expensive vacations are because usually people have this double expense of like paying your rent or mortgage and then additionally paying for hotels and every meal out when you’re on vacation. So it’s so exorbitant. We don’t do that at all anymore, right? We have a house back in DC and it’s rented out. So we’re not paying anything back home.
The mortgage is taken care of, but on the road, we’re staying in cheaper places and so there’s no double costs and there’s certainly no utilities and that sort of thing. So it’s a major kind of mindset issue and I’m not sure kind of why people have that mentality. I certainly did for many years. Maybe it’s, I don’t know, but anyways, once you actually sit down and do the budget, you can, it’s a huge dramatic cost. I think people have this misconception like, oh, I have to make six figures otherwise I’m never gonna make it in life and actually when you get on the road, our budget was, I have to go back to it, but I think it was 36,000 for the whole year for our family of three and there’s no way we would have lived on that back in the DC area. We didn’t, but we stayed on budget. It wasn’t really that hard.
Debbie:
And I think a lot of that misconception comes from, first of all, your fear, right? Because that’s what a lot of people, especially when you have parents that are very conservative and they’re thinking, they’re like, oh my gosh, you’re gonna end up homeless, you’re not gonna have anything or it could be because you’re comparing it to your current lifestyle and if you’re living or you’re creating a lot of income, so my husband and I are from New York City and New York City is really, really expensive and sometimes you kinda are thinking that way. You’re comparing it to the lifestyle that you have now to what you’re going to have and there’s just a huge discrepancy there because like you had mentioned, Sasha, you guys had budgeted at 36,000 and in New York, oh my gosh, that’s not even good for one person. So it’s a whole different world and I think that’s also another thing is that we’re not familiar with that. So it becomes really scary, but I love that you sat down, got bored, even though you got bored doing it, like you just really sat down to do it, but at 36,000, that seems like nothing. How did that come to that, Sasha? Because I’m like, what about gas? Like how is, because now gas is like ridiculous, you know, and then the food that you eat, like do you eat out? Like how do you balance all of these things?
Sasha:
Yeah, gas I think is a vastly over-exaggerated cost and we had an RV and towing a jeep moreover, so our gas mileage was definitely not great, but if the price of gas goes up like a dollar, okay, which it did, yeah, I mean, then you’re spending a couple hundred extra dollars overall, like it’s really not. But anyways, you know, the major factors really are not paying utilities anymore, making sure you’re not, again, you’re not double paying your rent and some place, and then you figure out the right places to stay.
So in the RV world, so we inhabited that for a year, we still have the RV, by the way, hope to use it again in the future, but this year we’re taking our car around, which is saving on gas, but in the RV world, you have a big choice, you can stay in kind of like a hundred dollar a night RV parks, which are usually actually ironically, the most boring places and you’re kind of cramped in like sardines with other people, but people sort of like, oh, I need my full hookup and whatever, or you can camp for free in places and now there are apps to help you assess like whether a place is good or bad and people give ratings to them, so it makes it much, much easier than in years past, or you can stay in kind of national parks or state parks, local parks, regional parks for 10, 20, $30 a night, that sort of thing. So that’s a big factor.
Eating, as you mentioned, was a big one. During COVID, we stopped eating out, obviously like everybody, and I think we realized that actually we really liked our home cooking and I do a lot of grilling, so I actually brought a grill with me on the road. It was like a gas grill in case there are fire bans and there was, so that was useful. And then eating local, like local produce, local shrimp, local steak, local strawberries and raspberries, et cetera, et cetera. That’s one thing we really learned to love on the road. So when you’re not eating out, you’re not paying utilities, and you’re staying at campgrounds that are either free, or I think the average cost is like 25 to $30 a night for our RV, so that ends up to be like $800, $900 a month. That’s your essential rent, I guess. And the longer you stay in places, the cheaper it is, because then you’re not spending the gas money. I mean, before that and the whole year before, as we really, I think, took a full year to do it, we were trying to save and invest money. So we would, you know, we weren’t eating out, we weren’t buying as much on Amazon, et cetera. But we did some investments like in our homes, so to increase the potential rent, and that ended up working well. And then, you know, we invested some in sort of just basic index stocks, and that helped at the time.
Obviously, the market hasn’t done well for the last year, but in general, it goes up. So whatever we saved, we invested either in our home or the markets. And so then, you know, it was that kind of triangle, like save, invest, and travel cheap, right? So, yeah, okay.
Debbie:
Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of things that you can definitely do, and I love that you budgeted for that, because sometimes it’s, you know, you’re really concerned, we’re all really concerned about making it sustainable for us, but I love that you were able to do that, and also you found ways to make it work around your budget, work around your schedule. But the one thing that I am really interested in, because now you and your wife are back working, and you’re doing it remotely, what about internet? Because that’s, you know, you need to have that, and when you’re traveling around, that’s kind of your bread and butter to make this sustainable for yourself. How do you make sure that you have internet wherever you go?
Sasha:
Yeah, well, I mean, I don’t know how we would, I guess our travel, just to rewind, I guess our travel is a bit of a function of the time that we live in, right? Like, you know, the whole working remote thing wasn’t really a thing 10 to 15 years ago, or wasn’t a mainstream thing, and internet was far, far slower. So I guess, you know, the fact that we’re able to do this is just a function of the age that we live in. I mean, for better or for worse, right? Employers sometimes, you know, they love the fact that there’s internet everywhere, so they can always get ahold of you. But yeah, I mean, so obviously, we book mostly AirBnBs, and we make sure to contact them ahead of time, and say, you know, how is the internet here, blah, blah, blah. You can run into circumstances. Sure, you heard about these mega storms, once in a lifetime storms that hit California about a month ago, or it was just a few weeks ago, I guess. Anyway, so we were there then, in central California, and it was quite a mess. Thankfully, my wife had a work retreat, so she was back in DC, but we lost power for several days, which was, you know, okay for me, but not ideal.
Apparently, some areas lost power for weeks, so that would be kind of a disaster. But mostly it’s fine, mostly it’s manageable. And of course, the revolution on mobile internet nowadays is Starlink, right? These satellites they put up, and now you can have satellite internet, provided you have a clear space on the top of your RV or your home. So, you know, we were considering working from Hawaii, for example, and, you know, Hawaii internet is not great, but with Starlink, it’s something like 100 times faster than it is with just a normal connection, and it’s not that expensive, actually.
So a lot of RVers are now using Starlink, which slows it down a little bit, but it is really a revolution. And Starlink is actually spreading to other countries, too. I have a friend who’s setting up a network in Brazil with Starlink out in the Amazon rainforest, and, you know, apparently it works super well out there, too. So the world is changing.
Debbie:
Yeah, it’s amazing. I know my husband was talking about that, too, because we are actually thinking about, you know, doing like road travel, too, and we both work from home and work remotely, and we were like, how do we make this work? Because there are certain areas, because we love to hike, and we love to go in, you know, parks, national parks, too, like you do, Sasha, with your family, and we’re like, oh my gosh, how do we make this work?
And he was like, well, there’s always Starlink, but there are certain places that it doesn’t actually work. But I think most of those places are like city areas, which makes sense, because probably they want to make it where internet is not reliable and make that helpful. But don’t quote me on that, because I’m pretty sure it changes every time.
Sasha:
I think the thing with, you know, so of course there was nomad life before Starlink, and there are a couple different devices that we saw people using. It’s their sort of, you know, signal boosters and that sort of thing. They are functional, not, you know, 1000%, but you know, we met many people out in the middle of nowhere in Arizona, New Mexico, Montana, et cetera, who were using those kind of things, and they worked full-time jobs. But with Starlink, I think it basically has to do with, you know, what’s above you physically, right?
So you can’t use it in a forest, and that would sort of make the most sense for, in terms of tall buildings and cities. I think that’s probably the reason, but yeah, don’t quote me on that either. I haven’t used it yet, but you know, in my RV community, people swear by it, so yeah.
Debbie:
Yeah, I mean, I’m sure, and I bet it’s just gonna keep getting better, so when year starts to go by, it’s just gonna keep getting better and better, and then pretty soon, you can even get internet underwater or something. So it’ll keep, it’ll be good for travelers, for sure. You also mentioned, Sasha, that now you ditch the RV traveling, and now you’re just doing car traveling. Why did you decide to do that switch?
Sasha:
Mostly because we, in order to make this travel life financially sustainable for ourselves, we needed the stable internet and good, and sort of a more dedicated office space that was like, we have a 26-foot class C RV, so that’s kind of what most people would think of sort of as a midsize, like a Winnebago style, if you will, and that’s just really not conducive for a regular nine-to-five job or an eight-hour-a-day job. One cool thing about our travel life now is we’re trying to stick to the West Coast, but we work East Coast time, right? So starting at around six and ending around two, and that is great for maintaining some kind of a travel aspect to your life, right? So every afternoon, we’re outside and doing a hike or swimming in the ocean or whatever’s nearby. Right now, I’m in the middle of the Redwoods in West Sonoma County, so probably this afternoon we’ll hike in the Redwoods.
So that is a great aspect to it, but yeah, I’m sorry, you were asking another question. I lost track.
Debbie:
No, I think you answered it. So you decided to transition to car travel because it was just more conducive to your schedule and work and making this more sustainable for yourself.
Sasha:
Yes, yes, yes, and actually, the other thing that’s been really nice about the car travel, of course, saving gas, but also just paring down our life. Our whole life is now in my Honda Accord, and that is great. I love that. People are like, what, how do you do that? I’m like, that’s the best. Less is more, people. Everything we need. We always tell my kid, it’s like, oh, can I have this tour? I’m like, no, we have to fit it in the car, so what are you gonna throw away? Or if I’m gonna buy a new shirt, right? Or my wife’s gonna buy a new something. We’re like, okay, well, what are we gonna get rid of? Because we have to fit it in the car, and we absolutely love that aspect, that it’s so much more freeing that way. Sometimes we’ll go to people’s houses and they’re like, their toy chest is like a whole room, and we’re like, oh, well, we play with sticks and rocks in our home. Yeah, well, your kid has the world as a playground, so I think you guys are doing fine. He appreciates it. Oh, he does like to go to other kids’ houses. He’s like, look at all these toys.
Debbie:
Well, yeah, that’s an experience too, but I love that. So, Sasha, let’s move forward to maybe 30 to 40, maybe 50 years from now, and you’re looking back at your life, what legacy would you like to leave, and what do you wanna be remembered for?
Sasha:
Wow, that’s a great question. Yeah, I mean, I think that I would like to be remembered as somebody that tried to do some good in this world, and also, yeah, both through my work in Africa, as well as kind of lending some inspiring ideas to people who wanted to expand their horizons through travel.
My professional life, and a huge part of my personal life, has been dedicated to human rights in Africa. So I lived in Uganda for two and a half years and worked on this issue of child soldiers, and I founded an organization that helps rehabilitate child soldiers. It’s called the Grassroots Reconciliation Group. We’ve been around for 16 years now. I co-founded it with a Danish guy called Kasper Egger, and we’ve helped over 2,500 former child soldiers and members of their communities recover, kids who were abducted as young as seven or eight years old and now have kids of their own, but are severely traumatized, and so we helped them with trauma counseling and economic projects and just basically hope in life where they kind of had none, and so it’s been a big journey to keep that organization going.
A lot of people will found a nonprofit and then kind of let it go, but we’ve been going strong for 16 years. We have kind of just a steady backbone of funding for my own money and core donors that we have, and we’ve gotten grants from time to time. We won an award from the United Nations a couple years ago, an Innovation Award, so that has helped, so I wanna make that part of my legacy as well as I’m starting a new travel website. It’s called Off The Beaten Travel, and I was shocked that the domain was available, offthebeatintravel.com, and it’s basically there to be a hub for hidden gems. That’s kind of how I love to travel and have always traveled, been to 50 countries between my wife and myself and have lived in a few of them, and that’s kind of what we do wherever we go. I think the idea behind this website is to put our own ideas in there, like top hidden gem countries, top hidden gem coffee shops, top hidden gem wineries, we love to drink wine, and then, but also to be a hub for other people to add their ideas and their blogs, and so I’m talking to all these people about guest blogs and you have your submission form and that sort of thing. I think the idea, I mean, it’s very ambitious, I guess, is to sort of be the Atlas Obscura for hidden gem travel, the Atlas Obscura being really obscure things, and so ours would kind of be more mainstream hidden gems, but we’ll see how it goes, so right now we’re drafting a bunch of blogs, and it should be up in the next couple weeks, I was hoping to have it up by today, but that’s okay, it’ll be up very soon, we have a mock-up, and anyway, it’s getting started, so maybe you can help us then.
Debbie:
I love that, that sounds so exciting, there’s a lot of things that you have done already, and now you’re going off into these new adventures and you’re sharing it, and I love that, and yes, definitely keep us posted, so if our listeners want to learn more about you, Sasha, where can they find you?
Sasha:
Okay, well right now I do have a website up, it’s my photography website, I’m an amateur photographer, it’s called Image Journeys, imagejourneys.org, my nonprofit, the Grassroots Reconciliation Group, is grassrootsgroup.org, and the travel website, which will soon be up, is offthebeatentravel.com, I’m also on Instagram, Sasha Traveler, so that’s pretty easy, so that’s probably my main link.
Debbie:
Thank you so much, Sasha, for being here with us, we really appreciate you for sharing your journey with us.
Sasha:
Thank you so much for having me, Debbie, I really look forward to getting to know you better too.
Follow Sasha:
