IT’S NOT THE DESTINATION. IT’S THE JOURNEY.

For months, I had been thinking about ending a season with one of those huge Top Gear-style road trips. In 2023, I chickened out and found an excuse not to do it. By the summer of 2024, I was out of excuses. Instead of spending €1,000 on a flight somewhere, I decided to spend less than €1,000 on a car and drive it to the North Cape.

Finding a car for under €1,000 was a battle until a 1998 Fiat Marea popped up fifteen minutes from home. €900. I bought it almost immediately. Before I even left, it had stalled several times and somehow lost first and second gear. Four days later, with no proper inspection and without even checking the oil, I pointed it north.

The original plan was to scrap it in Tromsø. Everyone following the trip hated that idea, so I said I would give it away instead. Nobody showed up. Two weeks later, I went back for it. After crossing Finland and taking the ferry to Estonia, I had the thought that changed everything: “I’m going to drive around the world in this car.”

Three months later, I quit my job, rented out my apartment, and left Barcelona for Tokyo. I was scared as hell. My passport was still in Russia for a visa, Iran was turning into a paperwork nightmare, and my Carnet de Passage still had not arrived. I had put off half the paperwork because I was terrified of actually leaving. But now I was on the road.

I posted the departure video at eight in the morning. By that evening, as I reached Monaco, the Marea’s temperature gauge was already in the red. Not even 24 hours in. The next morning, Instagram stopped working just as the account started exploding — 60,000 followers became 125,000, then 200,000, then 250,000. For days, I could barely get in long enough to post.

Twenty-nine days after leaving Barcelona, I was sleeping in the Marea on a street in Bukhara, Uzbekistan, refreshing my profile as it went from 999K to 1M. By the end, the trip to Japan had generated close to a billion views. It was the most intense, uncertain, fun, and extreme thing I had ever done. I would do it all exactly the same way again.

After a month back in Barcelona, it was time to go back to living without knowing where I would sleep, what would happen the next day, or who I would meet. I love traveling with the Marea and turning each day into a little film, but months with the intensity turned all the way up can wear you down too.

The plan was simple: get to Toronto, pick up the car, take it to a shop I trusted in Binghamton, New York, for a proper service, then start heading south. No point thinking too hard about the thousands of miles still ahead. One day at a time.

The road eventually took us from the far north all the way to Patagonia — across borders, breakdowns, cities, deserts, mountains, and thousands of miles. Another season where the plan mattered a lot less than everything that happened between point A and point B.

There is no round-the-world journey without Australia. After Europe, Asia and the Americas, the Volata World Rally has reached one of the farthest places from home we can possibly get to.

The Marea has travelled from Sydney to Perth via Tasmania and the Nullarbor. Next comes the north, with the goal of returning to Sydney around the other side of Australia.

The journey began on 2 September 2026. Stages are adjusted along the way; the detour to Uluru is still undecided. The map distinguishes the completed journey from the planned itinerary.

That is what makes this chapter special: how far both the Marea and I have made it. What started as a drive to the North Cape in a €900 car is now almost literally on the other side of the world. Season 04 ends in Australia. The next chapter begins in February 2027.

SEASON 04 · NOW

AUSTRALIA, AS IT HAPPENS.

The Marea is crossing Australia along Highway 1. The season is published almost in real time: the road, breakdowns, people and changing plans. These are the first chapters in photos.

PHOTO JOURNAL

Two carousels. The journey so far.

OPEN CAROUSEL 01 ↗︎

OPEN CAROUSEL 02 ↗︎

FOLLOW THE JOURNEY LIVE

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