The story of Gal Schiller, 28, a content creator originally from Tel Aviv:
“Since Oct. 7, I’ve been through two difficult years. I served in the reserves in a unit responsible for recovering the bodies of fallen Israelis. After that, I volunteered with the Hostages and Missing Families Forum and prepared food for families. I was 25 and felt like I couldn’t breathe. Two years later, I still found myself unable to breathe. I felt I had to do something alive amid all the sense of death I felt inside me and around me.
I set out on this journey with my dog and my little car, a Hyundai i10, last year. It was a dream I had been carrying around in my head for years. My approach is: Go with what you have. If I waited until I had enough money for a camper van, when would I ever do it? Besides, I like experiencing nature, and I feel that with a camper van, you’re taking your home with you, including the sense of separation that I don’t want.
I packed clothes, books, notebooks and paints, and bought a few things on Amazon, such as window covers so people wouldn’t see me sleeping in the car. During the first month, I was carrying three times as much gear as I have now, including a collapsible pink cooler and a huge crate for Milo. The stuff took up an entire seat. When you don’t have much space, you feel the presence of every object, and it can determine whether I sleep sitting up or lying down, so I simply got rid of a lot of things.
“As someone from north Tel Aviv who, until the army, had only left the city to go to Eilat or Ben-Gurion Airport, there was so much I didn’t know about the country and the people who live here.”
My family and friends weren’t surprised. After the army, I traveled around South America for a year and lived in the Arava and Gush Etzion. It’s not as though I went straight from north Tel Aviv into a Hyundai and started traveling. Before the war, I returned to Tel Aviv to study philosophy and business administration at university, but I dropped out after a year, when I finished my reserve duty.
When I set out on the journey, I didn’t tell anyone. I quietly got organized and prepared everything because I knew that telling people would make me second-guess myself. At the beginning of the trip, I still kept my family updated on how I was doing, but at a certain point, as part of the personal process I’m going through on the road, I set a boundary and took full ownership of and responsibility for my life. I don’t need to ask for permission or provide updates.
“I do find myself in extreme situations, but I also like things to be interesting.” Gal in the car with Milo
'I do find myself in extreme situations, but I also like things to be interesting.' Gal in the car with Milo
(Photo: Private album)
When I first set out, I tried to find some kind of anchor to get me started, so I signed up for a stargazing session during a meteor shower at night in the Golan Heights. I told myself I would take it from there. “By chance” — though there are no coincidences, and when you’re wandering you see divine providence so clearly — I met someone else there who was with his dog, and we continued together to a nearby campground. Now I don’t plan ahead. I let God take us where we need to go, when the time is right. Over the past year, we traveled from north to south along the coastal plain, then headed back north via Route 90.
As someone from north Tel Aviv who, until the army, had only left the city to go to Eilat or Ben-Gurion Airport, there was so much I didn’t know about the country and the people who live here. I get excited about discovering new places. I travel around Israel because after the war, it’s clear to me that there is nowhere else I want to put my money and energy.
There’s a fear that comes with setting up alone outdoors when you’re a woman, but the journey, in its wisdom, gives me a little more courage and confidence each time. I’ve slept in an Arab guesthouse in Nazareth where all the other guests were Palestinian men, slept in a tent on the beach in Eilat with missiles flying overhead and dealt with a TikTok follower who began following me in real life too. I do find myself in extreme situations, but I also like things to be interesting, to see how resourceful I can be and how I can get myself through them. And I take care of myself. If I upload a video from somewhere, it’s always the day after I’ve already left.
I always prefer to manage on my own. If someone offers to let me shower at their place but there’s a beach shower available, I’ll choose the beach shower. A lot of people have helped me along the way, but I don’t look for help, and most nights I’ve slept in the car, in a tent or in a sublet I chose to rent.
People ask me how I manage financially. I’ve dipped into my savings, and somehow I manage. My expenses vary, so it’s hard for me to say what my monthly costs are. When I’m somewhere crowded with the car, I might prefer to go to Aroma and buy a sandwich, but someone who cooks all their own food will spend less, and someone who doesn’t move around as much will save money on gas. I don’t have a refrigerator or a washing machine. That means I have to spend money on those things.
I document my and Milo’s journey on TikTok and Instagram. He’s really happy on the road. He went from being a dog who spent at least a few hours alone at home every day to being with me all day long. He meets calm kibbutz dogs and swims in streams. We have an amazing community following us and really sharing the journey with us. When things get difficult, I have people to talk to.
I feel like I’m on a mission and that I’m doing something meaningful, which is why I film and post on social media, even though I don’t always feel like being on my phone. I enjoy sleeping on the ground, making campfires, picking leaves and making herbal tea on a camping stove. We’ve forgotten that we’re animals and have shut ourselves away too tightly within four walls.
For many years, I felt misunderstood, and suddenly there are people who understand why I’m doing what I’m doing and want to do it too. I get messages from people saying I inspire them to get into the car and start driving, or simply to say, “Fuck it,” and let go, without fear, of something they no longer want to do.
“If someone offers to let me shower at their place but there’s a beach shower available, I’ll choose the beach shower. I’m not looking for help.”
This past Passover, I went to the Keshet (Rainbow) festival in Mitzpe Ramon. You show up with your own tent, you don’t have to buy a ticket and you meet a large nomadic community. I didn’t feel like I had come home because everyone was different from me, but it was cool to meet people who also live in cars and tents. Until then, I had been the unusual one everywhere I went, and suddenly I was the normal one because there were so many people like that there. They gave me tips about places where I could sleep and where I should head next.
I met a few men along the way. It’s nice to experience intimacy after many days alone, but I’m fiercely protective of my freedom and of continuing the journey. Sometimes I felt that was a problem for them, which is understandable. I want to tell the women reading this that I believe self-fulfillment comes at a significant cost, especially for a woman in a relationship. I’m focused on myself and Milo, on being strong and becoming even stronger, rather than staying small and nonthreatening so that some man can feel comfortable around me.
Will I go back to a conventional life? I’m not sure. I set out for myself and found myself, and there’s no going back to something else. An academic degree isn’t important enough to me, and neither is a job with good benefits. I want meaning in my life, and if I can’t get that, then I’m not interested in the conventional life I used to have. I want to keep moving. When everything is so safe and fixed, there’s no room for surprises. A lot of women say there are no men while sitting on the couch at home watching TV, but how many of them have ever sat alone at a bar? I want to experience life, not watch it pass me by.”
Bottom line: “Most people have predictable lives because routine is too deeply entrenched. It doesn’t have to be that way.”