Countries seen along the dusty way

Shopping

This decision was made sometime in the summer, and by October, we were looking for the right vehicle. First, we went to check out some Toyota Tundras because they were our favorite. But their price, together with the fact that 95% of pickup trucks in the UAE are salvage cars, was against us. We were always looking in Dubai and in Sharjah Car Souq because they have the biggest market, but after a few failed attempts in locating the car we wanted, we felt disheartened.

That was when we had an idea to check Ajman. Right away, we spotted a Dodge Ram that looked perfect and drove to check it out the next day. When we got there, the car wasn’t even washed yet. The fella (car dealer) told us that he just got it recently from the US, and it was just sitting there because he didn’t have time to look at it. I think it was love at first sight. We liked how it drove and agreed with the dealer on some fixes. The price was also perfect because it was about 40% of the Tundra prices since the RAM was only 2×4. We bought the car by the end of November, just before my parents came to visit us, so it was a wee surprise.

We were worried about what was wrong with the car, but we got it checked by a mechanic, and he suggested very few fixes, which was amazing. We were actually the ones who caused some damage! The Dodge was shaking at higher speeds, so we decided to take it for an alignment. That’s when the fellas there started playing with our steering because they couldn’t get it aligned 100%. We had to get that fixed back later and found out that a simple tire balancing was enough to fix the shaking because we found damage on one of the rims and had to get a new one at the scrap yard.

Since we were already there, we went to look for the second most important part, which was the bed cover. This is something that you wouldn’t see very often in the UAE, and so it was very hard to even find any to look at; moreover, some that fit our car or were in good shape. I think we saw like two after hours and hours of searching. That’s when we came back to the first yard that we visited, where we got the “new” rim. We mentioned to them what we were looking for in passing, and they took us to the back corner of the yard. There was an older, white utility shell – something we have never seen before. Unfortunately, it was from Toyota Tacoma and didn’t fit our car bed size.

However, we talked about it on the way back home, and Clare made some great points about the low chance of finding the exact size. On the same night, I went to re-measure the truck bed, and I made a note of the measurements of the shell. It would overhang a bit and needed a narrower bed, but we were back at the scrap yard the next day. The other point that was in favor of this shell was the fact that we got quoted 14,000 AED for a new one, while the fellas sold us this one for 500!

The work

I will start straight away with the fact that we are not great manual workers, but we like a challenge and doing things ourselves. We were really proud of the work we got done on RAMbo.

The first thing we started with was cleaning the shell, removing some unwanted things, and checking if it doesn’t leak anywhere. Next was probably the hardest part of the whole setup. In order to securely attach the shell to the bed of the truck, we needed to add an extended railing to the sides of the bed, because the shell got narrower as it extended to the end of the bed. We came up with a plan where we attached two steel Z-shaped brackets on each side of the bed where the bed was deeper than its edge, and one L-shaped bracket on the end of the bed. These were then holding two 5×5 cm beams, making the whole bed 5 centimeters narrower on each side. We then attached a plank on the beam and the edge of the truck bed to cover the gap between them, flatten the whole surface, and create a platform for the shell. It doesn’t sound so difficult when I’m writing it now, but the main issue was that the extended ledge had to hold the weight of the shell and not move as the car was driving through anything. Luckily, the back of the bed was fully supporting the bed, so not all the weight was on the attached beams.

After we attached the shell, the next step was waterproofing it, and then we started building drawers and a platform for a mattress. We watched several videos online and created a design that fit us perfectly. We made a wooden two-drawer box that spanned the whole length of the truck bed. The left one was our kitchen, so it included a fixed countertop, but also a moving one on hinges, so we could use the space below as food storage. We also included a sliding drawer with a gas stove, and another one on the other side with a collapsible sink. The right drawer was then just split into three equal-sized compartments: one for food, and two for clothes. In the best scenario, they were supposed to be on railings, but a railing of this size costs a small fortune, so instead we waxed the bottom of the drawers with paraffin and let the wood glide on itself. In retrospect, this was a terrible decision! They would glide great, but we were doing these last things in the summer in the UAE, so once it got a bit colder, the paraffin would harden and glue the drawers in place, and we had a hard time opening them.

Since the drawers were enclosed in a box, we had a platform for sleeping. We bought a mattress in IKEA, cut about 30 cm off it, and had a bed. The last thing to do was to decorate our sleeping space, and we added small battery-powered lights in the back.

The shell was overhanging at the back about 10-15 cm, which made a gap that someone could use to get into the bed. So we came up with an ingenious rotating plank of wood that we could use to cover the gap with and secure it with a padlock, and then move it and use it as a shelf at night if we wanted to.

The shell also came with a roof rack (originally used to hold ladders) that we used to mount a waterproof cargo carrier on to store all our camping stuff in. We also bought an awning for shade, and later for rain in Europe.

And that was us ready to go! As I mentioned at the beginning, we were really, really proud of what we were able to build and even more after it all survived the journey and worked perfectly (except the sliding…).

The journey (a summary, I promise)

We worked on the car throughout the school year, and then returned to the UAE in mid-August to finalize some last touches and pack. We set off on our journey on September 16th, 2022.

If you look at the map and ask for the most direct route, it would take you through Saudi Arabia and continue north through Kuwait and Iraq. However, we chose a wee bit different path. We started our journey on a ferry from Sharjah to Bandar Abbas in Iran. We were really intrigued to visit Iran, so we spent 28 days there. The original plan was to then cross to Turkey (actually, the original was to cross to Azerbaijan, but the border was still closed because of Covid), but we liked Iran so much that we changed it and went for 10 days to Iraq, more accurately to Kurdistan. We crossed to Turkey at Zakho and continued north for a wee detour to Georgia for hiking. Then we returned to Turkey and followed the Black Sea coast to Istanbul and further to Europe.

The European part of our trip started for us in Bulgaria (yes, I’m old school and don’t count Turkey or Georgia as part of Europe). We then didn’t take the most direct route because we wanted to visit as many countries as possible along the way, so from Bulgaria we crossed to North Macedonia. From there to Kosovo, Montenegro, and north to Bosnia and Herzegovina. By the time we reached Croatia and Slovenia, it started to be pretty cold. We finished with Christmas markets in Austria and a wee stop in Slovakia before we went for a quick visit to my grandma’s place in the eastern part of the Czech Republic (Moravia).

We were there for the night on the 2nd of December, and were up early in the morning to drive “home”. We planned it this way because on the 3rd, my sister was organizing an annual run in our village. We were a bit lying to them for the last couple of days about our whereabouts, so we could surprise them.

And that was it, 77 days later, about 13,500 km driven, and a total of 13 countries visited, we reached our final destination. To this day (I’m writing this at the end of 2025), this was the maddest trip we have done!