Bebe, our home, is wrecked. We need help getting back to England and rebuilding our lives.

Summary

After five years travelling the world as a family in Bebe, our expedition truck, an accident in Kazakhstan has left her catastrophically damaged. Thankfully, we all survived, but we've lost the home we built our lives around and there is no comprehensive insurance to fall back on. We’re raising £100,000 to help get our family and belongings back to England, deal with the aftermath of the accident and then begin rebuilding our lives.

Our story

We've shared a lot from the road over the years. Thankfully never anything like this, until now.

Just about a month ago, we were in an accident. Our family, Jess, Dave, Isla (our 5-year-old daughter) and Otis (our 6-year-old Hungarian Vizsla), were travelling in Kazakhstan when we hit something. And we hit it hard. It flipped our truck, our home, our lives upside down.

But before we tell you what happened, let us give you a little background to our story.

A little about us

This truck has a name. She's not just a truck to us. She's our home, our office, our school, and honestly, a member of the family.

So, when we say Bebe is dead, we’re not talking about just a vehicle. We mean the place Isla has grown up in, the place we've built our whole life around, the place we’ve had countless adventures in: the place we call home.

You might look at Bebe and understandably think, “They must have a bit of money. Surely they can afford to replace this.” We can’t.

We made a conscious decision six years ago to build our life differently. We did the bricks-and-mortar living for a while, but it wasn’t for us. We wanted to show Isla the world and give her an appreciation for places, people and cultures far beyond English shores, and we wanted to experience more of the world ourselves. So we sold up. We sold everything we had, gave up our permanent home in the UK and put our life savings into Bebe.

We also put everything we owned into it. And we mean that literally. The clothes we had in our wardrobe, the pots and pans in our kitchen, Dave's cameras, Isla's toys – it all came with us. It was our life. The life we had known for five years.

We still work. Our life savings didn’t cover anything beyond buying the truck and the first leg of the journey. We make it work by living frugally – yes, fuel is expensive in something like this! – through Dave's photography and by stopping for weeks, sometimes months at a time, wherever we happen to be, so he can head off for work. The life we have chosen to live involves compromises and sacrifices. We make them because we value the time, experiences and education this life has given us as a family.

So, what happened?

On the way back from picking up some transit visas, we were driving along a road when the front tyre clipped an unmarked concrete plinth from a half-finished toll booth. In the bright summer sun, it was almost exactly the same colour as the tarmac because it hadn't yet been painted with its black and yellow stripes. The tyre blew and we lost control. The back wheel then caught the same plinth. It blew out too. This swung the rear round and catapulted Bebe into an 18-inch-wide metal post, flipping her onto her side.

We extricated ourselves through the broken glass of the cab and escaped up through the window of the driver’s door with the help of some passing locals who stopped. We were lucky they did. Dave was taken to hospital. Thankfully, after an overnight stay, X-rays, CT scans and other tests, it was concluded that he had escaped relatively lightly with concussion, whiplash and a few minor cuts.

Jess was shaken and bruised. Isla and Otis, somehow, thankfully, were completely fine. We’re convinced that Bebe protected all four of us and may well have saved Dave’s life.

After a few weeks of to-ing and fro-ing with the authorities, we have been allowed to have a proper look at the damage. It's catastrophic. The chassis is badly bent, the cab has been shunted backwards and bent out of shape, the cab locks and hinges that keep the cab attached to the chassis are shattered, and the box, our actual home, has been severely damaged, leaving multiple large cracks in the walls and damage to the interior that goes far beyond a simple glue-and-paint repair job.

For those thinking, ‘Well, of course they’ve got insurance to cover something like this,’ the problem is that getting comprehensive cover for a truck like Bebe outside Europe is incredibly difficult. In fact, if you travel outside Europe in a vehicle at all, it’s really difficult to get cover that extends beyond 90 days. We had every type of cover available to us as long-term overlanders, but commercially viable comprehensive cover for a truck like Bebe on a journey like ours simply wasn't available.

It’s a risk that every overlander takes. It’s a risk that we weighed up before we left the UK. We, like many others in our situation, assured our friends and family that we’d be fine. That we’d be safe. We knew there was a risk. But in our heart of hearts, we never expected anything like this to happen.

What happens now?

For those who follow us on socials, this is why we’ve been quiet. We’ve been struggling to process what happened. We’ve been in shock, dealing with Dave’s concussion and trying to navigate the legal system in a country where we don't speak the language. We've also been back to Bebe to collect our personal belongings, while trying to work out how to get the whole family safely back to England. Otis is proving to be a logistical nightmare, but he’s part of our pack and we’d never leave him behind.

Isla asked us, “Why did Bebe have to hurt herself to keep us safe? It wasn't her job.” We didn't have a good answer for her beyond saying Bebe did exactly what she was built to do.

This isn't the first time this year we've had to search for strength we didn't know we had. We were off the road for months at the end of last year and early this year after a death in the family. We are tired in a way that's hard to put into words. But we're also, impossibly, lucky. All four of us are alive, and that is not something we take for granted for one single second.

Where the money will go

We've never been people who ask for help easily. We’ve been lucky that we haven’t had to and we’re very aware and grateful of that privilege. We'd normally be the ones figuring it out ourselves, whatever breaks, wherever we are. But the numbers here are bigger than we can absorb alone.

The costs already exceed the amount we're asking for, and we don't expect donors to cover all of them. We're setting our goal at £100,000.

It's a big number to write down, and not one we ever imagined asking for, but reaching it would make an enormous difference in getting all four of us back to England, back on our feet and, hopefully, back on the road. We’ll be putting everything we can towards the rest of it ourselves.

If you've ever followed along with us, liked our posts and photos from around the world, or messaged us after one of our posts or stories, we'd be more grateful than we can say for every donation or share. Even if you can't donate, please share this with someone you think might connect with our story. Every person it reaches helps.

Right now we’re concentrating on how to get all of us back to England. After that, we’ll work on building a new home. We hope you’ll join us on that journey, and we’ll share regular updates as we rebuild.

Thank you for caring enough to read this far. We are truly grateful.

Jess, Dave, Isla and Otis