How to quit your job and drive around the world
1 Have enough money: Rapp budgeted around $50,000 for the year-long trip.
2 Plan wisely: Every route Rapp considered has problem areas. The Darien Gap, for example.
3 Learn how to fix your truck yourself: No Pep Boys in Angola.
The day before Thanksgiving, Nicolas Rapp drove across the Mexican border.
It wasn’t any ordinary crossing for Rapp, 33. It was the transition into the “real” part of his expedition and his mission: to drive around the world and chronicle it on his blog, Trans World Expedition (http://transworldexpedition.com). Yes, drive. In one year. Around the world. Crazy? No, just French.
Rapp, a Parisian by way of Brooklyn, left New York City Nov. 14. In life before the expedition, Rapp was an art director for The Associated Press. But the idea for an epic journey kept him up at night while working his desk job. So earlier this year, after cashing in his savings, he bought a Land Cruiser and spent the next six months souping it up. His new home is a tent fixed to the top of his Land Cruiser.
Rapp’s itinerary snakes south from the Big Apple to Buenos Aires, where a cargo ship will take the vehicle to South Africa in February. Rapp is cautiously optimistic about completing the trip, which involves crossing Iran and Pakistan sometime next year. His solution? The kindness of strangers.
“Already, I feel this trip will be so great because of all the people I will meet,” he said after a stop in Texas. “When I was stuck behind my computer, I met as many people in the last year as I have in the last week.”