Nora K. — Iceland Ring Road, 14 days

“I came back from that trip and handed in my notice. Not because of the van — because of the clarity I found inside it.”

I want to be clear: I’m not saying rent a van and quit your job. That’s not the point.

The point is that I’d been carrying a decision for about two years — one of those decisions that’s not urgent enough to force itself but too important to ignore. I’d talked it through with everyone I knew. I’d made spreadsheets. I’d lost sleep.

Fourteen days of driving through Iceland, mostly alone, mostly in silence, and the answer was just… obvious. It wasn’t a dramatic moment. It was somewhere on a road between Akureyri and Mývatn, with nothing but lava fields on both sides, that I realised I’d known the answer for a long time and just needed somewhere quiet enough to hear myself think.

I handed in my notice three weeks after I got back. Best decision I ever made. The van gets some credit.