I'm Eva, and I've spent
the last three years of my life traveling solo to some of the world's
most remote and off-beat places. From horse trekking alone in Mongolia, to living in Pakistan for a year and spending the first
three months of the pandemic stuck on a remote island
off the coast of Yemen before making my way
back home on a cargo ship, it's been one hell of an adventure, but recently I decided
it's time for a change. I've been dreaming of being completely free and independent with
a little nest of my own, so I bought my dream
truck, a Land Rover Defender, and started converting it into an
off-road overlander slash mini camper. This morning I got attacked
in a real freak accident, leaving me with a few
stitches right here on my face, but before I tell you all about that,
let me give you a quick scoop on everything that I've been up to in
the last few days camping and overlanding in a beautiful little country in the south
of Europe that nobody ever talks about. Welcome to Montenegro,
or Crna Gora, or the black mountain, in any case, however you want to call it, it's a tiny Balkan country that's
got the mountains, it's got the sea, it's got the lush greenery,
it's got everything. I immediately fell in love with this place. So one of the things that
we all kind of need to live and to survive and I need as well is water, and obviously, you know, when
you're staying in a nice hotel room you've got a tap and a sink, and
you can get bottled water everywhere, but kind of one of my main goals with
this new lifestyle is to never buy water, like bottled water you know,
so how the heck do I get water? Well, I've got a water tank, I'm
going to show you later how it works and then I drive around
from campsite to campsite asking if I can buy
some water off of them. They usually say, yes you can have it for free,
but this time I've got a little adventure because the campsite owners directed
me towards an actual water spring. A spring in the mountains that they said has
amazing cold freshwater from the top of the hills, so I'm trying to see if I can find it in
one of these villages here in Montenegro. Let's see. All right, there's a church
there, that's where they say it is. All right, they said that it's
somewhere next to a church. I see a church, but
I don't see a spring. Okay, I just asked the locals who
live here another house down there, and they said that the water is a little bit
further down the hill, so I have to go back. I think I know which spot they're talking
about because I think I saw it on my way here. All right, back into the car, let's
get some of that mountain water. Here we go, there it is, see it. I know it may not look
amazing but trust me, this water is coming out from the mountains,
straight from the mountains. This is the real deal. It's so good, it's so good,
it's so cold, it's so fresh. Yes, that won't work. I think I need a lighter
thing to hold the water. I just found my better solution,
just the bottle and pull it in. I know this is going to take forever, but I don't see another solution right
now, so I'm just gonna keep going. All right, I've put in about 20 liters which
should be more than enough for a long time to come because since moving into my Defender,
I've been using very little water. Now let's find a home for
tonight. I think I have an idea. I'm just switching to low gears right now, which means that I can go uphill,
downhill in a really difficult terrain, and this is one of the main
features of a good solid 4x4 is this other sort of lower gearbox that
allows you to just swim on rocks, mud, sand. Let's see how this goes. Right, this is where the road
gets really rough, quite steep, super rocky, a lot
of stones and scree. I would not come
here in a normal car. Odyssey, you can do this! Turn, turn, turn, turn, turn! I really hope the GoPro doesn't fall off
the windscreen, it would be such a shame. I don't know if I should
have risked coming here. But you know what, after all... As I like to say, maybe I may not be
able to go fast, but I can go anywhere. There's nobody here! I had found this secret
beach on Google Maps, liked how remote it looked and
decided to go and check it out. Finding beautiful destinations
can be as simple as that. It seems like this ride was a
little bit too much for the curtains. My dear, dear curtains that I love
and spent an eternity making. All right, you know, this is not the only time
and not the last time that we're gonna do this. You better hold up. Don't let me down. Most importantly, don't
let yourselves down. See what I did there? It's been a really intense few days
driving all the way to Croatia from Poland, then down south to Montenegro,
so I feel like I just haven't stopped. That means I now deserve
a proper nice dinner. I've got something from home here. I got this just when I was
leaving Poland from my aunt, so I'm really excited to crack
this open, add some pasta and just enjoy a nice dinner
as the sun sets over the sea. Okay, the pasta is ready, and now it's time to add in some of
this sauce that I brought from home. This looks so good. I'm just gonna use it all. It's ready, and it looks
so good and so satisfying. Now I'm gonna take this entire pot with me
and go over to the other side of the rocks, where hopefully sunset
is still waiting for us. I hope we're not too late. Well, it seems like sunset was
behind that outcrop over there, and I don't think I can go
quite so far so as to catch it still, so I'm just gonna sit here
and enjoy my amazing dinner before setting up the rooftop tent for
the night which I know you're gonna love. This is the most luxurious
restaurant in the world. You know why? Because is beautiful,
natural, homemade, and free. Free in both senses of the word. I think it's time to put up the tent. It's slowly, slowly getting dark, and I want to make sure that I have
shelter ready once the night falls. I'm gonna set you up
somewhere around, yeah. Before I go to sleep, I just want to
take a moment to appreciate this. Like, if you asked me four years
ago what my life would be when I'm 30, I don't think I would
have had any idea, any, any idea at all
that it could look like this. I think I would have told you that I'd
be working in a big media corporation somewhere in London or New York, and that would have
been my dream, but things change, dreams
change, we change and here I am on a tiny
secret beach in Montenegro in my house car, villa
on wheels, that's crazy. Life is crazy, life is crazy. Remember, always leave it
better than you found it, and if you're a smoker, just remember that
flicking your cigarette butts is also littering. All right, I know it looks
like I'm always on holiday, but I actually need to head to town
to do some serious work on my laptop, ideally in an air-conditioned cafe,
so yeah, let's get out of here. Okay, back up that monstrous hill. I can't seem to switch on the lower
gears, which is a bit of a problem, and there's a bee in my
car no, no, no, no, no, no. Yes, got it, crisis averted. Low gears are on, which means
we can get going up that hill. After spending some time on the coast,
I decided to head into the mountains to stay at a cute little hippie
camping spot in the middle of nowhere. Little did I know that this is what
would happen the following morning. You're not gonna believe this story. I'm gonna tell it to you in a minute, but five minutes ago I was
completely covered in blood, my face, my body, my arms,
everything was covered in blood now there's this left, let me clean it
up and then I'll tell you all the details. It was so bad just a few
minutes ago, honestly. Still doesn't look great,
looks like it's an open wound. A taxi will come in 25 minutes. We just went to the local clinic
to have the wound cleaned up, and they cleaned it
up, and it hurt a little bit, but they can't do stitches
in that specific clinic. They said that I have to go to an
actual hospital, like an emergency room, so that's where we're headed
right now with a local taxi driver. He's been very kindly
taking care of me here, so let's see what happens next. I'm back from the hospital
with a couple of stitches up here and a big funny looking bandage, and I bet you want to know
what happened this morning, so let me show you, let me
recreate the scene for you. I'm sitting here in the morning, standing
there next to the car making coffee, and I see this cow grazing up
here and picking leaves off the trees. There's a dog running
around her and barking, and I didn't think that maybe the cow
would have been annoyed at the dog or angry because of the
dog, so I walk past her, and because I love cows,
I pick a twig of the tree, and I offer it to the
cow as a peace offering, and I'm just walking past
and I give it to her like this, and she takes it and then
instead of saying thank you, you know, I don't eat
cows, I'm vegetarian, instead of saying thank you, she rams
into me, pushes me down, and I fall, and this cow is standing here over
me, and she's moving towards me closer and closer and honestly
at that moment lying in the ground I thought I was going to die. I actually thought I was going to die under
the hooves of this massive giant animal. Like, I don't know, there was this rush of
adrenaline that I experienced, and I just... The cow was like here, and
I just roll up, and I ran here, I ran over here because there
was a camper van parked out here that belonged to a German
couple that I didn't know, but they happened to leave the
doors of their camper van open while they were having
breakfast over there. So, by the way, this is the dog
that was barking at that cow. Anyway, so I see this van and it's open and
without thinking I just jump into the van and the moment I jump into the van I realize
that there's blood streaming down my face, my shoulders, my arms,
there was blood everywhere, and I was like, oh my
god I guess that's me. Meanwhile, the cow is standing by the
entrance to the van, not letting me leave, probably would still attack
me if I tried to leave the van, so I was just sitting there
looking at all this blood, and I distinctly remember thinking, I really wish that someone
would come and help me. Hey you, I'm not very happy with you. Eventually... You're biting me.
Are you kidding? What is with these animals today? Eventually, a couple of the
other guests of the campaign came and chased the cow,
chased the cow away. I realized that I had a wound on
my forehead thanks to the cow's horn because she at some
point hit me in the head, which sucks, but it's
not life-threatening. However, what is life-threatening are
cow attacks, cow attacks are a thing. More people die every year
from cow attacks than from bear, wolf, lion attacks
combined, it's true. I think this means
that I deserve a day off and I'm gonna stay here at this
campsite for another couple of days because I just need to like rest and recover from the shock of
my actually near-death experience. It's been a super crazy week
traveling all across Europe, and I think maybe this was my sign to stop
for a couple of days and just take it easy, so that's exactly what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna do my laundry,
and relax, and rest. No! Oh my god! Guess who's back? Oh man, it's the same cow. Remembers me, look
at her, she remembers. Who knew I would have to be saved
from cows on two consecutive mornings. Well, this time, I am behind
a fence, so that's better. Yes, nothing quite like laundry that's
dried out in the sun, it smells so good. I have to be honest with you guys. I know that us travel
YouTubers especially are sometimes guilty of making it
seem like everything is always perfect, like everything is
always so manicured, obviously that's not always
the case as you've just seen, but I think that an attitude that I
like to take in situations like this is kind of accepting
the reality of the situation and just moving on
as fast as possible. I don't mean like
toxic positivity, like, great a cow hit me in
the face, wonderful, no. That's definitely not what I mean. What I mean is like being
like, okay, well this happened, and how do I find a solution to
the situation that I'm in right now? I'm not happy that I need stitches. I'm not happy that I had this incident, but I did get to spend
a nice couple of days out here in Montenegro
relaxing, which was great. So, all in all, I think it worked out well, and it gave me a chance to plan ahead for
my next steps towards the south of Europe. If you don't want to miss it, make
sure you subscribe to my channel. Meanwhile, keep exploring, and
I'll see you for the next adventure.
bit of a wardrobe malfunction at 16:00 ? Surprised she left that in.