A woman has taken living off the grid to the extreme. Couple Marjolein and An live on a remote island in the Mentawai Islands that has no roads or other infrastructure.
The island is located in Indonesia. Despite living on a remote island, Marjolein still manages to document her life on YouTube through the channel Exploring Alternatives. There, she opens up about living on the remote island.
"[The island is] about 5 km in diameter and there's no villages or roads on the island so all the transport is done by boats," she said. Although they live completely off the grid on the island, she said there are several other islands around them. She said, "The Mentawai Islands are a chain of around seventy islands."
Living On A Remote Island
Overall, she said that she loves living on the remote island. Marjolein said, "What I love most about living here is the sense of independence. We can provide our own electricity, our own water, our own food and that's pretty cool."
"To actually order stuff from the mainland, we have to drive out with our small boat, find some better signal try and send a message to the shop on the mainland," Marjolein said. "[Then we] hope that they're online wait for a reply and yeah... that can take days just to order one little thing. So that's why things don't really go so quickly here."
Additionally, they also face environmental challenges as well. This includes deadly snakes, bad weather, and just the general ruggedness of the outdoors. It can also be quite lonely living out there by yourself. In fact, solitude may not be for everyone.
Marjolein said, "Since we live so remotely it can definitely get a bit lonely at times and that's not always easy. I would say for me that's definitely one of the biggest challenges of living here."
