Our new home

Thomas:

A car is similar to a house. You buy one and then you find out it needs renovation or optimization since you feel it can or has to be customized according to your likings. So the inside of the Toyota Land Cruiser was a little too conventional with 8 seats and only little storage space but it has a 180 litres fuel tank. What we needed was a small living room, a bedroom, a kitchen, a workshop and a rooftop terrace with a view and all this on approximately 2 m². What a challenge! However, the internet gave some good ideas how it could look like.

Measures of the car are quickly taken and a plan drawn. Removing 6 of the 8 seats of the car is a task of one hour or maybe it was two plus. How to implement the plan is easy said, harder to do and took much longer than expected. The idea was to put boxes in the back of the car to store the belongings and also allow sleeping on them (bedroom) in case the weather is bad or for other reasons if it is more appropriate to sleep inside. To figure out the details how to do it was basically a lot of looking around in Dubai and I had to visit Hardware stores, used car markets, 4x4 shops, IKEA, and so on and so on. The decision was to build it from plywood and have it done by professionals. So the wooden boxes I found at IKEA and I was so proud of didn’t get the approval of the carpenter. So let’s do it all in plywood (there is enough in Dubai). Adds a few kilos but will be for eternity and for sure last longer than the car.


Fixing an appointment in Dubai is a challenge. So after the 3rd trip to Satwa the right carpenter is found and is available. As we implement the plan, we adjust it a little here and there and improvise where required. German engineering/planning skills meets local practical implementation skills. That has to be good at the end. After 6 hours the boxes are in the car and customer and carpenter are happy. Next came the real test, a short camping trip to Mussandam (Oman), which reveales that the current setup can be further improved. Two more short visits to Satwa and me spending a couple of hours in and under the car does the rest.

The next step is finding a solid roof carrier, which is not available for the Toyota Prado, but why not take one for another Toyota Model and fix it for the Prado. Here goes again a day of work with the professionals. Rest is then tinting the glass in the back (for privacy reasons) since we want to sleep in the car and Claudia likes it dark. Moreover a 2nd spare tire is needed, which everyone recommends. Getting it can be easy, just going to Toyota and paying AED 2000 after discount for the alloy-rim without tire or going to the used car market and get it new with an original tire for AED 800.

The rest is then packing, unpacking, sorting, packing, optimizing, packing and hoping that in the end we will find what we are looking for if we need it. Claudia mentioned the highly sophisticated excel-based packing list we have for this …. Where did I store this bloody part again – ‘six weeks ago’?????

Finally packing is over now. Tomorrow we will leave Dubai for Oman…