We Tried Van Life in the Middle East (full tour)

[Music] good morning from Oman the little country on the corner of the Arabian Peninsula this 1985 Unimog with an incredible camper conversion is going to be our home for the next week as we explore this country's epic nature Best Day Ever this is day two from beautiful Coast lines to massive deserts rugged mountains and even hidden Oasis this is amazing this country has it all but the best part is wild camping is legal throughout the entire country another epic spot we'll hit the road soon but first let me catch you up on how we got here and give you a full tour of our new [Music] home this is awesome hey little girl so this morning when we woke up we could see this herd of goats on top of the mountain across the valley and they've spent the morning making their way all the way over to where we camped last night all right car's attempting to make friends what could possibly go wrong swe thought you new guy shepher Cara is watching over her flock she is loving this also that's my phone that she has in her hand which means I now have 10,000 photos of goats on my phone to go [Music] through all right so two days ago we picked up the Unimog from a company called Freedom Overland in Dubai they're the ones that get credit for the incredible build and we are super grateful for them letting us use it for this trip I'll be honest when we originally planned this trip I did not realize how big big the learning curve was going to be for driving a unimod so the day started with a driving lesson which if I'm being honest was pretty intense especially on the busy streets around Dubai it's hard to find play there we go this thing has eight gears and it drives unlike any vehicle that I've ever driven before then it was time to make the 2-hour drive to the Omani border which just happened to coinside with rush hour traffic in Dubai this is such an intense place to drive something this big for the first time thankfully we breeed through the Border like almost a little too easy that's it we'll see when I drive away if they come to uh search the car our goal for the night was to make it all the way to the capital city of Muscat but we quickly learned that the time that we saw in Google Maps needed to be doubled because the top speed of the Unimog is 49 mph and going uphill it is incredibly slow we going to make it up this hill I don't know we're losing speed so fast from there all that was left to do was drive to the top of this mountain where we are currently parked but this isn't where we intended on camping our first spot was quite a bit lower than this it was a Lookout Point and we literally were parked right next to a Toyota Corolla but then I saw this little dirt road going up a mountain that looked pretty intense but I decided what's the point of driving a Unimog all the way to Oman if you're not going to try to get to the most epic camping spots oh gosh this is actually nuts so yeah thankfully we' survived last night we have an epic place to Camp I breathed a deep I relief when we finally made it up here last night but I don't feel like I've been able to fully exhale because we still have to make it down this morning but first we'll give you a tour our friends are still here by the way we have lived in a lot of vehicles over the last few years we spent 2 years living in this van during Co and we've tested out a lot of other setups but this has to be the coolest looking vehicle that we have ever lived in plus there is one super unique feature that takes this thing to the next level that we will show you at the very end I'm going to show you around the outside and then Carol will show you around the inside this thing is from 1985 we're pretty much driving an antique Overland vehicle around Oman these lights also feel like they are from 1985 you can't see anything driving at night which is pretty dangerous considering how many camels there are wandering around Oman but I'm excited to get into the desert and test out these light bars they're illegal to use on the road here boom boom wow right coming on the side check out how tall these tires are so we got Mass military grade tires on this thing that we put to the test yesterday afternoon we're pulling a house up the world stev road so this might sound kind of dumb but when I was looking at this online I actually thought it was smaller than our van something about the way it's shaped and the way the photos were taken it just looked like this this little cute vehicle but this thing is a monster it is literally three times bigger than it looks in the photos so it turns out the Unimog is 3 ft taller than our van but it's 2 ft shorter so that's why it has this really funny but super cool looking shape so this is the original Unimog like this is the 1985 vehicle and everything you see on the back half here was custom built from aluminum by Freedom Overland and it's all powder coated in this super cool silver color with red accents this is our 90 L diesel tank and then these are our Max tracks that we can use in case we get stuck in the desert that was terrifying but what I really like is this holder also doubles as an outdoor table so as you can see where you enter the camper is quite High compared to the ground so we've got these extendable stairs which are a little bit of a pain but once you finally get them set up they're a lot sturdier than they look plus the stairs make it feel super homey so the back has a super unique design the entire top half opens up and then down below you have a spare tire and these back boxes for extra storage there's a generator in the bottom in case we need more power and then we're not even using this because there's so much storage space in this thing coming around to the side more storage down here on the bottom right now we're keeping our our air compressor hose in here another Super unique feature that I like about the way they've designed this Unimog is they've actually done a conversion on the air compressor that's used for the brakes and you can attach that hose to the air compressor underneath to air back up your tires if you need to so that's a pretty cool design once again I don't think this is going to work but I just got to drive inside this little storage compartment we have our lithum batteries we have 340 amps of batteries which feels a little small for this vehicle but it also has an alternator char charger which means that it charges as you drive and I think we'll be driving every single day so power is definitely not going to be an issue for us on this trip and back here we have all the rest of the electrical setup this electrical setup is so pleasing to the eye compared to the mess of a cabinet that we have in our van this thing is amazing lots of cool design choices and a few questionable ones one of the questionable design choices being that in order to turn on the inverter you actually have to come outside and hit that button there should definitely be a way to do that from inside here we have our gray water tank and our black water tank both of which are 100 L which are huge we may not have to dump these throughout the entire trip but if we do there are buttons underneath the steering wheel that make it super easy it's always a good thing you don't have to carry your pea bucket through your home oh I need your help okay put the camera down I need your help all right now let me show you around the cab which is honestly I think super cool because of how old it is so these seats remind me of the old seats that are in my grandfather's VW which I really like and then all of these old physical buttons there's something so satisfying about getting like a real click when you're turning on and off the headlights this giant steering wheel makes me feel like I'm driving a bus and there are eight gears in this thing which makes it a little challenging to drive especially because when you're downshifting this won't mean anything to you if you haven't driven a stick shift but like let's say you want to go from 5ifth to third or from like 7th to third so like you were going fast and then you're coming to a stop you have to go into fifth and then go over into third it's a pretty complicated setup it took a lot of getting used to but after 9 hours of driving from Dubai I think I finally have the hang of it there we go this is how you switch from Two Wheel to four-wheel drive we do have AC in this thing which is really nice but apparently they couldn't get the old AC working so like none of this here actually functions it all comes out at car's legs which is great for me I guess because I'm so close to the engine here like the front of this thing is really short there is a lot of heat that builds up under here and I have to have Cara put her legs up on the dash so that the air can actually flow over in my direction this is a backup camera which is essential because of how big this thing is so down here there are a few more things that increase the learning curve this is parking brake this is Ford in Reverse I've never had Ford and reverse on a giant lever like this normally when you're driving a stick shift there's just like a gear that you put it in here on the handle so in my jeep that I drove growing up I always had to go all the way to the right and then up and that was reversed so I've tried to do that a few times muscle memory is such a fascinating thing Nate has not driven that jeep in over 10 years and his brain still wants to put it in the same reverse spot as his Jeep and over here we have the glove box which I really like because it has this little nod to the Past on it the Unimog actually started out as a military ambulance so it's cool to think about the life cycle of where it started and where it's ended up next to a herd of goats on top of a mountain in Oman all right let me take you up top whoa I'm serious I have almost fallen out of this thing so many times because I go to step and I just don't realize how far down it is not really a good way to get get all the way on top a little terrifying especially with this wind okay for how much space we have up here there's really not a whole lot going on we've got a vent for the bathroom one 2 3 400 WS of solar and that is an air conditioner okay and now I'm getting down because I feel like I'm going to get blown away good morning from the future me and my goat friend would just like to thank our sponsor for today's video which is ag1 who we absolutely adore well you think you want to try it buddy I mean how could you resist whoops this is just a slight preview of what to come trust me you're going to want to keep watching because somehow Aman just keeps getting better and better let's just say road trips don't bring out the best version of myself when it comes to nutrition we like to call ag1 our nutritional Insurance because it fills in the gaps in our diet when we're doing stuff like this just in case you haven't heard just one serving of ag1 contains 75 vitamins minerals and Whole Food sourced ingredients that support whole body Health from your digestion and gut health to energy level I so thankful we discovered it when we did gosh four years ago now and we've been drinking it ever since all you do is mix one serving with a little bit of cold water preferably and that's it well hi do you want to try ag1 this might be the cutest ag1 ad ever what do you think H I think these goats eat grass which contrary to the green color this doesn't taste like grass it actually has a sweet fruity flavor to it like I said Nate and I absolutely love a W and I think you will too so if you scan our QR code on the screen or click our Link in the description below with your first purchase you'll receive this Shaker the jar and they'll even throw in wait for it a free bottle of these vitamin D3 K2 drops which we also take every day here's proof that's all we have left and you'll get five of these travel packs for free I'm so excited to show you around the inside this is one of my favorite builds we've ever lived in there's so many things I love about it there are a couple things that I would probably do differently it's very apparent to me that this was designed by men but I'll get to that later let me start with the biggest most beautiful feature and that is this door one of the reasons we're so excited to Overland Oman is just the campsites themselves we know we're going to have some really cool spots and we're just going to be able to back into an epic spot and then simply open this door and boom like Nate said the Unimog is 2T shorter than our van but it seriously feels we have double the space and a huge reason for that is because the bed is above the cab which just opens up this entire room but the best part is that's not the only bed if you had more people this bench turns into a second bed and it is so simple literally just turn these knobs and boom it's huge you could easily fit four people in here maybe even five if you have a small person small child lays here two adults lay here I mean this just blow blows my mind but the fact that it's so easy just makes it a million times better the bed and our man takes forever to set up and take down and so we just never do it it's just a bed all the time which takes up more than half of our space ow so easy I'm still learning obviously now if you've seen any of my tours in the past then you know that I love storage and this is like the storage of my dreams it is everywhere we unpacked everything from our huge suitcases into this place and we bought the entire grocery store and we still have leftover storage Nate has all of his clothes up here and I have all of my clothes up here I can fit more if I wanted to plus there's some hidden storage beneath this bench nobody would ever know it was there so we have some important things down there like our passports backpacks and then there's also so much space under this bench now let's talk about the kitchen this is another one of my favorite spots of any van build and they did an awesome job but like I said definitely designed by dudes because they didn't prioritize um the cooking we have this um what do you call this we have this little camp stove it's portable the whole thing folds up and goes into this drawer which is actually really nice and in the short time that we've lived in here I've actually come to enjoy this quite a bit I like that you can put it away and have all the counter space back if you're not using it and if you wanted to cook outside on that little extra table you could do that so I'm coming around to it by guys thanks for hanging out honestly that's one of the highlights of the trip for me already I don't know how it gets any better than this we're parked on top of a mountain all alone overlooking the ocean with mountain goats I think they might just be regular goats oh we have all the food we bought up here in these cabinets we have all of our drink related things in this drawer plus our produce a few glass things that I didn't want to like fly out from up there just in case this drawer is what we have over plates and bowls and utensils I don't even remember what this oh there's literally nothing in this drawer except for an apple and a pair and that should technically go in this drawer this is crazy here we have a dtic fridge which literally just ate all the groceries that I put in it yesterday there's a teeny tiny freezer here we have a decent Siz sink and beneath the sink do I even need to say it look at all this storage we have our trash down here some cleaning stuff towels and a 10g water heater also I love how all these drawers have a lat so they don't fly open when we're driving oh no what drawer flew open now across from the kitchen we have a microwave which is pretty cool but honestly I'm a little scarred from living in hour van and running out of power a few too many times I'm sure we could use this for a minute or two and be totally fine but I'm going to try not to use it because we're going to be in some pretty remote places and I do not want to use all of our power so just in case we need some more storage I'll just put stuff in there speaking of things that suck up power we have an air conditioner which we do not have in our van but once again I don't think we're going to be using it just because it doesn't really seem worth it plus after sleeping on the beach and sleeping on top of this mountain with this ocean breeze we have not even needed it it feels amazing on this wall we have our control panel and I love how simple and accessible it is up here we have our freshwater tank levels so we have 200 L of fresh water and we can see exactly how much we have left in our van our water tank is hidden beneath the bench and we don't have this so we're just guessing how much water we have left like we never actually know which could be a little stressful beneath that we have the gray water and blackw tanks which once again in our van we don't know if our gray water is full until it starts literally leaking onto the road so this is just so nice to have now this screen is all things power battery solar stuff we have 340 amp hour so right now we have 294 left which means we have 87 % of our power left we're bringing in a positive 5 amps I don't know why the screen's flashing that just happened recently hopefully that's not a bad thing yeah moving on into ow the bathroom yes we have an entire bathroom it is shockingly Big you just push it not so sure about this door I'm sure it was great when it was new but follow me I feel like there are houses with bathrooms this big there's like a normal shower head a nice big sink this toilet is like a marine toilet you use it like a normal toilet it's great doesn't sink most importantly I also love the floor in here it just feels nice it really does oh also there's a fan that bends which is always a good thing in bathrooms in small spaces going back to the dude designed theme there are two things in here that are missing two two very important things in my opinion there's no mirror even in the bathroom this could be a full length mirror easy this could be a mirror this could be a mirror we got it we got it can't check my fit fit check I'm just saying the second thing I would think is a little more important to every gender and that is a table we technically have a table it's just in here and it's made to go outside yeah so we have outdoor table and chairs which I'm sure we will put to use I've actually found myself sitting here like in the mornings with my coffee my little breakfast this kind of acts as a table but for one person but yeah Nate doesn't really have anywhere to go I know not a big deal for this week long trip but just thought I would point it out now last but not least the bed it's pretty tall so they've provided some stairs that surprise each step can open up I have all of my toiletries in this top one this drawer we've put all of our electronics and when it's time to go to bed we've just been using them to get up here like this I'd say this is about the width of a double bed pretty good m mattress not very tall as you can see if you're claustrophobic this might be a problem especially if you're on my side it gets even lower however the length is great like I have at least 2 fet down at the end so if you're tall this is not a problem at all unless you mess it up my favorite part though is this window right here that opens I've woken up 2 days in a row to the Ocean Breeze in my face conveniently right next to the bed which I always appreciate we have two USBS to charge our phone and these run off of the 12vt battery which means the inverter doesn't even have to be on for these to work but all the other plugs this one this one and this one those all run off the inverter that pretty much does it for the inside now let us show you what is without a doubt our favorite part of this whole Camp let's see if I remember how to do this are you ready for this yes we have a balcony this adds like 5T at least this changes everything all right before we drive down the mountain Cara is going to make us our last supper Nate I mean lunch you cannot say that is it going to be that bad I don't know I genuinely don't know we don't do stuff like this think we are not professional off-roaders I trusted the Unimog and kind of got myself in a little too deep to turn around last night for some reason going back down feels more intimidating than climbing up tahini yesterday we stocked up on all of these beautiful locally grown fruits and veggies I've made us little um kind of like tacos I don't know what else to call it flatbreads maybe and then salads pretty much all the same things but in a ball GL you're enjoying that last meal stop all right you ready for this no put these on so you can't see the fear in my eyes let's do this bye goat bye goat wow what an adventure this is a pretty intense start just getting up over these rocks I'm not even hitting the brake the gear the gear is just holding us I'd be burning up The Brak if I was using the brake all right it's about to get exciting at least I'm distracted with these beautiful views this looks like a roller coaster it just disappears oh my gosh this is terrifying oh this might be the most intense part of the whole thing holy crap all right we got this we got this woo oh my gosh there's no way you can appreciate how like this we are right now mhm wo that's just as exciting as I thought it was going to be take your your seat belt off you know where the door handle is yeah I don't like it when you say that we're just crawling down gosh nothing does this Justice you have no idea how sketchy and scary this is we go down go down wow we're so IAL right now oh my gosh all right we're so close literally we're so close Jesus Take the Wheel we made it it was all worth it my heart is pumping that's gross are you having to pick that up yes that's all used toilet paper I don't be touching things Rose what watch out you see there's a dumpster right at the bottom of this mountain making it the world's best campsite thank you all right let's find some gas let's go more goats I hope people watching this video like itats that's a awesome truck oh thank you so one interesting thing about Oman and I'm assuming this is because it's an oil rich country is that the gas prices are actually fixed so the sign by the road where you would normally see the price it's just a logo and right now the price is fixed at25 Omani Ral so we put in almost 66 L and it costs 17 Omani Ral to basically fill this thing from a quarter of a tank to full okay now we are heading to our our new campsite for the night Google map says it should take 2 hours which means it'll probably take 4 but that's okay get out of the road little guy check out this [Music] Oasis we're driving through our first Like official mountain town and it's just amazing we're surrounded by these gigantic mountains and all the homes are so ornate and beautiful there's also something about the white houses contrasted against the dark mountains we're just going to be getting more and more remote from here on out so we just stopped to get some cash at the ATM and run a few more errands and I'm so sad that we're here during Ramadan because I love stopping to get a coffee on road trips and there are three coffee shops in this one strip they're all closed cuz they're all fasting I don't know I might not be getting any uh local coffee in Oman how cool is this town these houses are H what is this place wow so cool also believe it or not we've actually been to Oman before it's been several years but we came here for 5 days back in 2018 okay yep and we just rented this little car and drove as much as we could because that's all we could afford at the time it has been our Dream to do this trip for 6 years since the first time we came to aan because we couldn't afford a camper and everyone that we talked to that was like sleeping in a rooftop tent just had the most epic stories it's been on our bucket list ever since and it is living up to the height so when we first started traveling and set our 100 country goal there were a lot of people that gave us a hard time about traveling so quickly and I always said that we were young and the goal was to see as many places as possible so we could go back and spend more time in the ones that we enjoyed most and we're actually doing it if you would have told 2018 carara and Nate who were in who had just hit 100,000 subscribers that we would still be traveling 6 years later and we would be back in this country in this vehicle things went way better than we expected yeah was driving through such an epic Camp the walls are tightening in they're getting steeper this is incredible let me see hold on we're going for it no I'm kidding I'm kidding no idea if we can fit under this bridge okay I'm ready all right car is literally up on the ladder making sure we don't scrape this bridge we're doing it we're good yeah hopefully it's the same height all the way through so crazy no problem we did it this better be a good beach that was nice in 600 M you will arrive at your destination just driving off of the side of the highway towards the beach wa very uh why are all our campsites so dangerous wow this is sweet so so the app that were using to find most of our camping spots is called eye Overlander and I was reading some reviews about this spot and it said at night they are bioluminesence in the water what I thought you were going to say goats hello world how good is this what a day turns out we have a dining room after all some reason kind of feel like want to fall off yeah it is a little scary wa look at the sky wow honestly if we just turned around and went home now it was all worth it this is everything that I hoped that it would [Music] be all right all right we're heading down to the beach may may not be going on a night swim oh this is going to be good I can see it in the waves already look at that there like a glowing string of Neon Lights being washed up on the beach we've seen bioluminescence a couple times at this point in our lives but I've always had to like go in the water and like Splash really hard with my hand to see it it gets even brighter when you step on it it's like stars on the ground all right let me see the bottom of your feet my God I wonder if this W that was a good one this is so magical wo I'm not sure if you can see what's happening right now but we're just kind of moving our feet around in the sand and it's just uncovering all of this bioluminescence I'm sure there is science to it but it just feels like magic right now I've never seen anything like it I'm just mesmerized what a start to the trip Best Day Ever this is day two looks like the Milky Way on the ground you're not supposed to feed Wildlife blah blah blah I just wanted to give them a little bitty bite of bread so they would love me they wouldn't take it I definitely should have uh finished fin my drink before we turn on this gravel roope for the next 20 km turns out a goat sneeze sounds like a fart God tell me before you do something like that [Music]

Channel: Kara and Nate

Views: 1,091,699

Keywords: van life, expedition vehicle, expedition truck, mercedes unimog, rv life, van tour, unimog camper, truck camper, camper truck, off road camper, van life build, van life tour, van life vlog, kara and nate, oman, overlanding, overlanding oman, overlanding unimog, unimog, unimog tour, 1985 unimog, unimog conversion, kara and nate van life, kara and nate oman, best things to do in oman, where to camp in oman, overlanding dubai, middle east, off road

Id: mrUe7JmecNQ

Length: 28min 43sec (1723 seconds)

Published: Sat May 11 2024