The Nomads Bus

Almost 2 years ago I heard about this Belgian couple who had imported an american school bus from the USA to Belgium and planned on converting it into a pow and wave chasing hostel on wheels.

Wait? What?!

Yes, my thought exactly. This project had me curious, jealous and excited at the same time.
I wanted to be a part of this! Unfortunately, at that time, I was living in Sydney – Australia. So not much I could do at that stage.

Fast forward 1.5 years later and my travels brought me back to my home country Belgium for a short visit. I checked out the Let’s Be Nomads website and found out that the bus was still in Belgium. The owners, Val and Tim had struggled for almost 1,5 years to get the bus accepted for the european roads.

I went on and read all of their blog posts from the past 1,5 years and found out about all the issues they had come across along the way – which made me even more excited since they I could really be a big part of this very first trip since the bus was ready now.
Ready to chase snow and waves, ready to take guests on board, ready for a project! Even a double project!

The same day I saw their blog post announcing that they were about to hit the road (in April 2016) I called Val and introduced myself and sold her my photography and video skills over the phone.

You see, the bus can take 5 guests + 1 Media Nomad, who, in return for a free stay on the bus, is responsible for filming and photographing the adventures. I was willing to scrap a big part of my Belgium project (Adventure in Belgium) and use my available funds (thank you Olympus AU) to travel to wherever the bus would be.

It took a little last minute planning and some early goodbyes with friends and family but shortly after I was boarding a flight to Switzerland to then join the bus in the French Alps.
We spent a bit of time exploring around the Lac Monteynard-Avignonet including some rainy hikes and a few nights of wine testing before we went to sunnier Les-Deux-Alpes where we did a ton of activities:

Downhill mountain biking, snowboarding, hiking, outdoor movies, skateboarding, watched the EU cup, and some more wine tasting and then there was the delicious, organic homemade food by Val… well I’m not much of a foodie, but you’ll have to book your stay if you want to find out.

To make the most of my time on and with the bus I worked on 2 projects at the same time: photography and a short film.

The idea was to make the sequence to the video that got me excited about the bus in the first place. Here the final product. But you can expect a full on behind the scenes / how it was made blog post very soon – since I think this deserves it’s own blog post. Stay tuned.
Until then, turn up your speakers, click play, sit back relax and enjoy the ride.

I was in the beautiful Alps doing all kinds of fun activities. The goal was to capture what these amazing mountains are all about.

I’ll let my 25 favourite images do the talking here.