M&R Episode 263: Travel and Rock Climb on $10 per day with Nettie and Dave.

In Episode 263 I spoke with Nettie and Dave the Climbing Backpackers. They have set off on a rock climbing adventure with a budget of just 10 British Pounds per day each. Their goal is to travel at least for the next two years rock climbing everything they can throughout India and Southeast Asia. Enjoy!

Show Notes: @Climbing_Backpackers, Avacado Fingers, Broke Backpacker, Episode 27, Episode 70, Episode 71, Episode 72, Support Misfits and Rejects on Patreon, Get a Misfits and Rejects T-shirt

Episode Transcription: What up all you beautiful Misfits and Rejects out there, thank you for joining me for episode

263 of Misfits and Rejects. In today's episode, I spoke with Nettie and Dave, the climbing

backpackers. I came across their feed on Instagram and instantly connected with what they're doing.

They are living on 20 pounds a day, traveling the world for the next few years, all over

Southeast Asia and India, just rock climbing, doing what they love, following their dream,

and doing the thing they're most passionate about. And what struck me when I found their

Instagram was, again, the way they're doing it on such a small budget. And it instantly took me back

to my time on the road with John, who you know from episode 27 and many other episodes. If you'd

like to hear more about those adventures, I recap them in episode 70, 71 and 72. But just how they're

doing it where they're literally getting off a plane somewhere or a bus and then just walking

to save a few cents. Just again, to keep shaving off as many cents from their budget each day

to stay on the road as long as they can. I really love this conversation because it brought back so

many fun memories for me. And it sounds like they're having an awesome adventure and you can follow

them on Instagram. I'll put their link in the show notes. It's climbing underscore backpackers.

And throughout the conversation, we talk about why they left England and how they're doing it

and all the great details that I like to bring across in all these episodes. So I quickly want

to take a moment to shout out Jeremy, my new patron on Patreon. Thank you, Jeremy, for your

donation. It is super helpful. I really appreciate you and all my other patrons for donating monthly.

It keeps us alive, keeps me motivated. And from the bottom of my heart, thank you very much.

So with that said, please sit back, relax and enjoy this episode with Nettie and Dave,

The Climbing Backpackers. Welcome to Misfits and Rejects, a podcast about the lifestyle

design of ex-patriots, travelers, entrepreneurs, and adventurers. I'm your host, Chape and Cruder.

Enjoy. I didn't fit in America. With cocaine, there's just always too many guns and

too many bad attitudes. Like quit the limiting stories. Really try to overcome that fear.

And right there, for any of your listeners, a lot of what I was to do in the rest of my life

was formulated by the fact I just went and did it. Welcome to another episode of Misfits and

Rejects. Today, I'm joined by Nettie and Dave, The Climbing Backpackers. Guys, welcome to the show.

How are you today? Yeah, good. Thank you. It's a pleasure to have you came across your Insta feed

and haven't done an episode in a month or two now and it just struck me that you guys had a story

that I'm familiar with and I would love to hear your version of how you managed to come to the

conclusion that it was a good idea to travel the world on a budget of what, 10 pounds a day

and try to climb as many different rock climbing venues as possible. Is that kind of the gist of

your story? Yeah, yeah, that's pretty much it. It's 10 pounds a day each. So not completely crazy,

but still pretty difficult. And yeah, just like the main aim is to kind of climb as many places

throughout Southeast Asia as we can on that budget, but then obviously just have like general adventure

in between. They're just sort of the pins on the map is the climbing and then everything else that

happens is just fun. That's awesome. And did one of you come up with this idea or was it a collaboration?

We kind of fell into it, to be honest, like just circumstances just happened. Like everyone else,

we thought about doing it for a while and like, you know, it was a dream and never going to be a

reality. And then it just like, just fell into place so perfectly, really. So where are you guys

calling in from right now as we speak? I'm not even going to try and pronounce it again. You can

say it. We're in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. Okay. And then you're from originally where? England,

basically London, just below. Nice. And so how many months have you been on the road at this point?

We left England on like the evening of August 31st and we landed in India on the 1st of September.

So it's quite easy to go back and see exactly how long, because it was the 1st of the month.

So after saying that, I should be able to tell you how long we've been out for two months and 13 days.

Perfect. And what was life like for both of you back in the UK prior to this big adventure?

We were both pretty much in a rat race. We had our own businesses. So I was running a tree surgery

business. It was quite successful, small business, but with anything like that, you're just trapped

in it. You have to pay the bills. You have to pay the boys. I had a few guys working for me

and had all the clients and all the tools. I had a lot of things that I couldn't really escape for

long. So beforehand, we went on a lot of mini trips, but could never comprehend doing anything

like this. I had for the last five years, a dog walking business. I used to help Dave for a bit

with his tree surgery, but I messed my back up kind of bad. But I still really wanted to work

outside because I just love being outside. And I used to want to be a vet when I was a kid,

but I never studied hard enough for that. So I was just like outside animals, love dogs,

dog walking business. So I built that up for the last five years. But yes, since we were both

self-employed, we could go away when we wanted, but when we were away, we weren't making any money.

So it was like freedom, but also like we had obligations back home that we couldn't leave

for a long time. And also not even just money, like pressure from clients. Nettie felt bad for

leaving the dogs for a while because she thought the clients would find new walkers. And me, I just

had people like just constant barragement of people just needing me to come tomorrow and not

no one has any patience in England. They just wanted me to work done tomorrow. And if I took

one day off, it was almost like a guilt, you felt, for not doing it.

So then when you started concocting this idea to take this adventure, was it like,

let's save as much money as possible or let's figure out a way to make some money online so

we can be location-dependent and have an income stream? The income stream would be the goal,

but it's not what's happening at the moment. We're just living on savings at the moment

and seeing what happens really, playing every day as it comes.

Yeah. So we didn't like plan it, save, and then leave. What kind of happened was

on the 1st of January this year, we flew into Bangkok. And in the evening after that,

we were supposed to fly to Tonsai because great rock climbing there. And in between flights,

we went to a friend's climbing wall, super jet lagged, like been up all night, been walking

around Bangkok all morning. And Dave pulled onto the climbing wall and his Achilles tendon just

fully ruptured. So that was like a huge thing. He was just completely like surgery that same night.

And we did stay there for the two weeks or the, yeah, for three weeks. But then when we came home,

Dave couldn't work and he wasn't going to be able to walk for about three, four months and then

not walk properly for about six months. And the business was to keep the business,

it would be costing him money. So he was just like, I just have to quickly sell the business.

It's kind of the only thing I can do. And then once that all kind of went through, found some

people, he sold the business. And I was just like, I read a book from the broke backpacker. It's like

an ebook. It's called How to Live on 10 Pounds a Day. I just found it and I was just like,

that's interesting. And it was at the same sort of time that this happened. And I was just like,

we could just do this. Like, I'll just quit my job as well. Because it was kind of getting to

the point with my business where if it got bigger, I'd have to start hiring people myself. And then

I'd be even more stuck in my business too. So instead, I just set a date, also sold my business.

And then, yeah, that's kind of how it like that happened. And then it kind of just all happened

at once. Wow, that sounds intense. Was there any like fear and apprehension? I mean, it sounds

like you had a nice safety security net. Obviously, Dave, your kind of business,

everything fell apart when you ruptured your Achilles. But Nettie, I mean, you had a safe,

secure job. And obviously, growing clientele was giving that up difficult for you. Was there any

fear and apprehension behind that? Loads of people ask that. And I feel like there should have been.

But pretty much from the second I asked ChatGPT what climbing there was around Southeast Asia,

and it gave me a list. I've had like no other thought, like just completely nothing other than

I want to do this. And like there was no, I couldn't wait to go. And I'm still thinking it's

the best decision ever. Yeah, no apprehension whatsoever. I told my family and thought that

they'd be like, Oh, you want to go for a year or like more or whatever. And they were just like,

finally, like we thought you were going to do this ages ago. So no apprehension whatsoever.

That was my next question. And so your family was cool. Nettie, how about your family, Dave? Were

they okay with you selling your business and moving out of the country?

Yeah, I think so. I didn't really ask them to be honest. But yeah, yeah, like they're all happy

for me. I've been doing this sort of lifestyle for a while. So like, it wasn't really a huge,

huge step to not come back, you know. In my personal eyes, I think I'm just like

saving fuel emissions from airplanes by not coming back. And that's really the only difference.

Got it. Got it. So yeah, the major thing that seems to be running your Instagram or that possible

lot is obviously your budget. Like that seems to be something that you are very clearly describing

how much you spend every day to your followers. And you guys sound like you're being pretty strict

with that. Was it 10 pounds per person per day? So 20 pounds a day, roughly, right?

Well, that's 26 pounds, $26, right? I think so. It's close to that. Yeah. So 20 pounds a day total,

10 pounds each. Yeah, that's the budget. And can you take us through an average day?

I mean, obviously you just came from India. So I'm assuming it was a lot cheaper and easier

to fulfill that. Can you take us through a day in India versus a day in Kuala Lumpur?

A day in India is you will not spend 10 pounds each day if you don't, like you would actually

have to try to spend 10 pounds a day. You can pick the cheapest options. You can pick sleeper

class on a train instead of first class. And that's going to cost you, I think the train from

Mumbai down to our first climbing destination. It was about 12 and a half hours and cost us under

four pound each for the sleeper class. Where we've landed in Malaysia, we've only been here for,

I think this is a fifth day now, but obviously this is a city. And how do I explain? You

don't have the option of having, the cheap option doesn't exist. Like we've been into the shops

and everything's branded. So it's like you're getting the version of something which costs

what it costs. There isn't like a off-brand version that we can buy. We can't buy the cheaper bus.

It's like there is one bus. The cheaper train, there is one train. Although to be fair, the

trains have been pretty cheap. But yeah, in India, it was hard to spend 10 pounds a day here. It's

like we've really had to start thinking about it. And the first day we were like, oh my God,

this is going to be really difficult. But the next three days, we've got a grip on it as the

days have gone on. We're working it out. Yeah. It is definitely possible and we're doing it now,

but that first day we were a bit worried. It's actually quite fun to be in a city and

look for the cheaper options, find the dirtbag way in such a populated built-up place

with everyone spending money. It's actually quite fun to find the cheap,

but there's a free bus service here. And basically we've been walking like four hours a day.

I don't know how much more we've done. It's been ridiculous. This city is not built for pedestrians,

really. That stuck out to me looking at your Instagram when you got off the plane and then

the bus, and then you had to walk something like four kilometers or two kilometers with all your

gear. Yeah, I think it was two miles with like 40 kilograms worth of gear just because we were

just like, we already paid for the bus. We only have so much left today. Yeah, that really resonated

with me. That's what my friend and I would do. We'd just walk for hours and you learn so much

about a city so quickly. Obviously with that kind of weight, it's a struggle, but you see so much

and you find those little cheap options and the little ways that you can just shave a few cents

off of every single day until you can make your budget work.

And also I've been traveling for quite a while and Netty makes me feel old school on comparison

because I used to just do that. I used to just walk around, find out what's happening and go

from there. But Netty's just finding people online, just finding communities. A local told

us about the free bus. It's just so interconnected how she's doing it. It's so cool just to meet

new people via the internet basically. Yeah, it's so efficient. And sometimes like

for myself as well, the old school mindset I have doesn't even adorn on me that you have that wealth

of information at your fingertips. If you have a smartphone or an internet cafe that you can find

all those people willing to help and give you that information. That's so cool. Yeah, especially

with the climbing community. It's just like, as soon as you talk to someone, like you're talking

to everyone. It's crazy. That was my next question. So the climbing community just obviously

embracing you everywhere you go. Can you just help us understand because I'm not a climber,

but I am a surfer. And like the surf culture is very tribal and not as helpful I would say

when it comes to like new spots. We keep most spots a secret if they are kind of

not well discovered and not easy to find. Is it the same within the climbing community?

No, I would say completely the opposite. People really want more people to come to their areas.

So as soon as like a crag is established, people welcome you with open arms and want you to

advertise it basically, video it, get more people on it. I think like the thing as well with climbing

is when you first establish a route, it's very mossy and very chossy, meaning like the rock can

fall off. So the more people travel on the route, the cleaner, better the line gets. And then it's

like a lot nicer for everyone, especially the locals. So like it's very like climbing is crazy.

Like people just want us to so friendly and just want to meet up. Like it's just so cool.

I think also they need people to come in because they need like funding for like if they get more

and people knowing about them and they can maybe get some sponsorships and it costs money for like

the bolts and the equipment to actually build up the crags. So some of the places that we've been

like, where would be the best example, the Navla. And so there's a place called the Navla in India,

which was pretty much the last place we were. And they have like an indoor gym, like a little indoor

gym where they've got some sponsorship kind of from the community. And then there's a couple of

guys, or there's a few guys that basically have these, the local kids can just come in for free,

climb on these walls. They're going to like competitions in India and the climbing outside,

they can only have like so many lines up because they only have so many bolts. And if they can

build that up so that it's more popular and more people know about it, then maybe they can bring

more of that in and they can build it up more. And it's just better for them. And it's better

for people that want to come. So yeah, climbers generally, unless it's already a really busy

place like Kalymnos, so that's just in Greece, it's just, it's getting very, very busy.

In the smaller places, it's good for them to have people come in. It's like exciting for people to

come and check out what they've established. I see. I see. And then Southeast Asia and India

was on the radar because of the amount of climbing and it was going to be conducive to your budget.

It wasn't on there at first. It wasn't really on there. Yeah, it's more like

just, it was the closest place to England. So it's kind of like, we just went there first,

we could see a line from India all the way around Asia. So we just kind of stuck to that.

But it was such a good choice because of the Indian culture is just so welcoming.

And they just like, we didn't pay for accommodation once. People just welcomed

us into their homes and it was just great, lovely. Yeah, we didn't pay for accommodation

the whole time that we were in India. Not just because people were inviting us into their homes,

but like we said, so the first month and a half, I think we, you know, work away.

I contacted somebody through work away. And so we were there basically putting up some ropes for

beginners and like teaching some beginners every four, probably every four days or something,

because it's not super busy there. So for free accommodation, we would basically help out a bit

and we'd do some advertisement for them on their Instagram page and things like that.

And then we would use couch surfing as well. So couch surfing, obviously, just chilling with

someone. So a couple of workaways, some couch surfing, and then a couple of times some people

just took us in and they were like, yeah, you can come with us for a couple of days. But yeah,

it worked out. I think it was 69 days we were in India and we didn't pay for accommodation,

which was pretty crazy. And the people who were inviting you and who weren't your couch or you

weren't couch surfing with or work away were just climbing community members or was it random people?

Yeah, it's people, when we're in Badaumi, the first location, it's quite popular for the

Indian culture, Indian climbing culture. It's not very popular for anyone else. I don't think

the Western world would know about it. But people were coming from all over India

to climb there. And everyone was just so psyched to see basically Westerners climbing there and

advertising it. And they were just, we got invites to go everywhere in India, I think,

from climbers in the first two weeks we were there. And we got so much more places to go

when we go back. There's so much more potential for us to do in India. But we needed to get to

Malaysia. We were on a schedule. A bit of a schedule, a very loose schedule.

I've had conversations in the past with a lot of guests about India because it's a country that

most people find extremely overwhelming with your senses. Did you have the same experience?

Were you overwhelmed and needed to retreat at one point? Or could you have stayed

more than three months or two and a half months or whatever?

My first thing is I was there 10 years ago. I was only there for two months.

And the difference between then and now is crazy. The hecticness is still there,

and the amount of people and everything. But the hygiene has definitely got a lot better

in the areas I went. And because everyone's got a mobile phone now, it's crazy. The data out there

is pennies. It is so cheap. You're going through the middle of nowhere on the train,

and you've still got phone signal, and you look out the window, and there's a farmer with sticks

on their head, this type of farmer. But they're still on the mobile phone having a chat with

someone. Everyone's connected. I think the culture is changing a lot. But I would say in the cities

and stuff, it's still overpowering. And even in the small towns, it's just so, so noisy.

So noisy. But there is a lot of unknown remote places you can go to. And you still see

few people here and there, but it's completely different. I always thought of India as one culture,

but it's so multicultural. You can find remote places where it's ridiculously peaceful. You don't

have to stay to the cities. How about you, Nettie? Did you feel in any way that

that culture, the male side, was aggressive toward a Western woman? Because when I was there 20 years

ago, I was traveling with a Swedish woman. They were very aggressive sexually towards her.

I think if I hadn't been with Dave, I would have been a lot more uncomfortable.

But people would address Dave before they would address me. I think that kind of cut

the aggression a little bit. I don't know that I would have felt comfortable in the

majority of the places that we were on my own. But yeah, I don't know. I think it's still

definitely difficult. If I was a solo female traveler, I probably wouldn't do it, honestly,

which kind of sucks. So I wanted to go and be like, oh yeah, it's fine. I would definitely

go on my own. But in reality, I personally wouldn't feel super comfortable, no.

Yeah. It's interesting you say that, Dave, because I was there long before the cell phone boom.

Then recently in the last few years, I was in Myanmar and getting off in the middle of nowhere

off a bus and getting on my mobile and calling an Uber was the new norm, which took away a lot

of the adventure because a lot of times you would just pray that a taxi was going to take you where

you needed to go. And now you feel so safe getting from point A to point B without getting robbed or

having them take you for a ride and drop you in the middle of nowhere. Technology has changed

the travel game by a lot. I think it also makes people more liable as well.

Everyone knows that if they do something wrong, you can just whip out a phone

and just film them now. And then a couple of times we had light harassment, I would say.

We would go to the climbing wall, the outside rock, and some guys would demand that we start

climbing for their entertainment. And we would translate saying, we are not here for your

entertainment. We're here to climb for ourselves. And then they would carry on. But as soon as we

got our phones out and started filming them, they just ran away. They just knew that I could

put that online and everyone would see them. So I think that's changed the culture a bit as well.

That's really cool. Yeah, weaponizing it in that way. I've definitely met a lot of female

hitchhikers who, before they take a ride, they film the individual picking them up and

obviously send that to their loved ones. And that face is just blasted everywhere,

so they feel a lot safer. At one point, I did put something online. That was just one time.

But some guys were just following us and screaming selfie at us. It was a group of teenagers.

Mostly people are fine, but when it's young guys in groups, I think that's where it gets like,

I think that's the same everywhere, but when it's amplified. And I just filmed them a bit.

They didn't actually care that I was filming them, to be honest. But I put that up just saying,

people need to chill with this. The selfies was pretty crazy. Most people were really nice,

but some people would just come over to you, hand you their child, grab you and be like,

and then you'll just set up for this photo. I didn't say that you could take my picture,

but I guess we're in this now. A lot of the time, we just went with it. But if you say yes to one

while you're in a crowded area, you're doing a million selfies. You just have to try and get out.

Yeah. With your guys' budget and you're still going on your savings, how long do you have?

And what is your plan moving forward? Are you going to go back? Are you going to try to really

make your product on Etsy, what's it called? Avocado Fingers, your primary source of income?

I don't think it would become our primary source of income. That was something that will hopefully

just kind of help a little bit. The dream would be to build up our social media enough so that we

could somehow make this into what we do. Maybe get into bolting new lines somewhere, so like

new clients and things like that, or maybe some sponsorships. Basically anything that we can do

while doing this kind of traveling that we're doing now would be really, really cool. Because

if we make £20 a day, we can just keep doing this, which is not a lot of money. I'm sure we

could find an online job where we could just do that. The worst-case scenario, we just have

a giant page of all the memories, as long as we don't get deleted. I've got the videos saved

because this has happened to me before, but we have a big archive of all the memories we make

on this trip. That's worst-case scenario. As for how long we can last? When I sold the business,

I was in a bit of a rush because obviously everything was costing money to keep running.

I had to still pay the staff, I had to pay for the yard, I had to pay for the insurances and stuff

like this. I sold it in a bit of a rush. I sold it just for the price of the tools, so not very

much money. But the guys who bought it couldn't pay me outright, so we settled on a small amount

every month. That's why that kind of works out perfectly for the £10 a day. Basically, we're

getting paid by my old business for the next two years to do this, and then we can just see what

happens from there. That's also a very big comfort because we're not really digging into our savings

that much. If everything works out in the same two years later, we'll probably have the same amount

of money in our bank account, which will be nice. Again, the next two years are going to be spent

primarily jumping between all the countries in Southeast Asia and India. What's the itinerary,

roughly, if there is one? I'm living day by day. Nettie's got a bit more of a plan, but I'm happy

here today. I just looked at the map, saw India, and then I knew I was climbing it. I asked Chat

GBT where the climbing was, and it gave me the places. I was just like, how do we loop these

together? Everything's kind of touching. We've got Malaysia, from here we'll go up through Thailand,

and then the very loose plan was to just go through land through all of the countries there,

so up through Thailand into Laos, or Laos, down through Cambodia, which has no climbing,

but it seems like a shame to miss it out, and then up through Vietnam, and then you've got

Philippines, Indonesia, and that's kind of everything that's on the radar at the moment,

but we don't know exactly when we'll be in these places and if we'll hit them all, because

there's seasons we need to be in places if we want to climb, because there's obviously in the

rainy season, which I didn't realize, but it's literally just coming into the rainy season here,

which was kind of stupid. We've been really lucky with the weather. We need to catch places while

they're dry, basically, but yeah, we don't really have too, it's a very loose plan,

but there is a kind of like, just know where we want to climb, basically, and try and make it there

before it's too wet. For me, the best thing about traveling is like, the worst thing about work is

you're fixed. If someone says, do you want to do something tomorrow? No, I'm really sorry, I have

to go and do this job sort of thing, but the best thing for me about traveling is the fact you don't

have a plan. If someone says, do you want to be in a movie tomorrow? You can go, yeah, I'll do that,

but if someone says, we'll go like a big bunch of us going to China, we can just pop along with

them and go to China with everyone else, as long as it's within our budget. But that's what I love,

we could do something crazy tomorrow and not have any idea about it today. That's the appeal for me.

That's so beautiful. That's so beautiful. Really inspired by what you guys are doing.

One final question for each of you, which you can answer separately. Nettie, I'll start with you.

If you could give our audience just one bit of wisdom, parting words, something to inspire them

to maybe think about their life situation, and maybe take that step towards a trip,

quitting their job, quitting the relationship, they're unhappy, and what would you say to them?

I think I'm biased because I wasn't worried about it before I did it, but doing things

the cheap way is a lot less scary than it would seem, and usually things kind of fall into place.

If you do it the way we're doing it, where you try and meet locals and things, you're going to be

taken into communities and get to see the real side of things. You just have to maybe push your

comfort zone or try and be quite low maintenance for a while, but it's not as bad as you might

think it would be. The discomfort isn't really discomfort. It just makes, when you get the

comforts, the comforts are like, we have a bed right now for the first time that's not on the

floor, and we're just like, we have a bed for the week, but we weren't upset when we had the bed on

the floor. It's just that this bed now is the best thing ever because we've gone without, but it

wasn't really without because it was still great then. I don't know if that makes sense, but that's

mine. The more this comfort you have, the better comfort feels. Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. Dave,

do you have anything more to add to that sentiment of Nettie's? What I would say is if you are at

home and you're stuck in a rat race, you don't have to do this big scary jump, which most

people think, especially not in my situation anyway. If you have a dream and you actually

have a dream, you have a goal, a focus, the bits just fall into position eventually. I never

planned to do this, but I could have just done my Achilles tendon and then just been like,

right, I'm resting and going back to work. But because I had these ideas already in place,

I was like, oh, look, it's all falling into position. It's all falling into the way it's

supposed to fall. And because of the idea was there, it kind of just happens. So the first thing is

just to have a dream and just enjoy it. Beautifully said, guys. Thank you so much for your time. I

really appreciate you. Cool. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Awesome, guys. Thank you so much

for joining me. I really appreciate your time. I loved hearing about your adventures. It just

brought back so many fun memories for me. Folks, check them out at Climbing Backpackers on

Instagram. It's in the show notes. And as well, if you are interested in supporting Miss Fitz and

Rejects, you can do that on Patreon. Head over to patreon.com, search Miss Fitz and Rejects,

and any monthly donation is greatly appreciated. As well, you can head over to missfitsandrejects.com

backslash shop and pick up a Miss Fitz and Rejects t-shirt. That also helps as well.

Thank you for joining me, folks. Looking forward to seeing the next episode. Take care. Ciao.

Thank you for listening to Miss Fitz and Rejects. I hope this inspired you to think about your life

situation, where you're at, and possibly make a big decision to choose something different for

yourself if you're unhappy with where you're at in life. I hope these people that I interview inspire

you to go out, spread your wings, and try something new. To live a different lifestyle that maybe your

whole life people were telling you was the wrong one, but when in fact it's the perfect one for you.

And I'll see you next time.