They Built an Off‑Grid Life on a Roadless Island

Marjo and An live on a tiny Mentawai island with no roads, no cell service, and a whole lot of ocean. They’re building a self-reliant homestead from scratch and somehow making it look calm, smart, and surprisingly doable.

The Island With No Roads

Their island is small—about five kilometers across—and completely without villages or roads. Everything moves by water, which means every chore starts with a boat ride and ends with salt on the skin.

Gentle swells wrap a blue-green bay as the shoreline curves like a crescent. A dot of land, palms, and a single stilted home give the scale away: this is a speck in the Indian Ocean, and it’s home.

A narrow wooden boat noses through glassy water, hand-built like all the workhorses out here. That boat is their pickup truck, grocery cart, and moving van.

The weather swings hard and fast in the Mentawais. Storm clouds muscle across the horizon, but their bay sits tucked and calm, the kind of place that lets a small house survive a big night.

How They Got Here

They met working at a surf resort and decided to bet on themselves. At the end of 2020, they quit their jobs, bought a patch of land, and started building a life no one was going to hand them.

The first move was simple and smart: a tiny wooden starter house. It went up fast so they could live on-site while figuring out the big build.

Then came the real project—framing a larger home that could handle heat, storms, and time. Posts rose out of the earth, the outline of a future taking shape board by board.

The Problem That Almost Stopped Everything

Logistics. Nothing arrives easily. Even “local” timber often lives in another bay, which still means a boat, a tide window, and luck with the weather.

They shuttle lumber, cement, and tools on a skiff that rides low when it’s fully loaded. It’s careful work—one sloppy wave can ruin a week.

Anything from the mainland catches a weekly ferry. Miss that window and you wait, which affects everything from roof nails to rice.

No cell service makes ordering its own mission. They motor out until a faint signal appears, fire off a message to a shop, and hope the reply lands before the battery dies.

How They Actually Make Power and Water Work

There’s no grid to plug into, so they built their own. A small generator runs power tools; everything else is rationed carefully until the bigger system comes online.

A compact generator thumps beside a pile of boards, feeding saws and drills that transform raw logs into joinery. It’s noisy, but it gets the job done.

A tiny solar panel and battery handle the essentials—lights and phones—until the permanent array is ready. It’s a bridge solution that keeps the nights lit.

Because the main roof is palm leaf, they’re building a standalone solar shed to keep panels safe and cool. It’s a clever workaround to a very island-specific problem.

Rain is their drinking water. A downspout feeds big containers, and a filter turns storm clouds into something clean and cold.

For everything else, there’s a hand-dug well. A rope, a bucket, and healthy shoulders bring up what the day needs.

Showers are simple—just a bucket by the well. It’s quick, it’s bracing, and it’s exactly what the heat asks for.

Even the dishes have a hack: coconut husk makes a tough, natural scrubber that doesn’t fall apart in two days. When it wears out, it goes right back to the earth.

Dinner Comes From the Forest and the Sea

Staples like fuel, rice, coffee, and flour come from the main island on ferry day. The rest is grown, gathered, or pulled from the water as the seasons allow.

They time supply runs to the overnight ferry and hit the shops while shelves are full. It’s strategic shopping with a boat waiting at the dock.

When the forest is generous, they go walking with baskets. Mangoes, bananas, and wild fruits come home when they’re in season, which makes the kitchen feel different each month.

Protein is local by definition. They head out a couple of times a week to fish, working with the currents and changing weather.

Chickens round out the routine with eggs and the occasional meal. They’re the island’s no-drama roommates.

With no fridge, they use a traditional Mentawai kitchen to smoke what they catch. The fish hangs in gentle smoke—no open flame—so it keeps, and the flavor is unreal.

Even the staples carry a story. Sago palms give leaves for roofing and, from their trunks, a flour that’s cooked in bamboo over coals. It’s resourcefulness turned into dinner.

The House That Can Take a Storm

The main house is mostly wood, with a kitchen and bathroom built more solid. The design leans traditional because what lasts here is what locals already perfected.

The steep thatched roof is the star. It sheds heavy rain fast, dries quickly, and protects the wood below—simple physics doing heavy lifting.

The first thing you hit is a big terrace where the breeze lives. It’s the living room that isn’t a room, and that’s the point in this heat.

Inside, the kitchen flows into the living area with a pantry and a small toilet tucked off to the side. It’s open, practical, and ready for sandy feet.

Upstairs, two bedrooms and a bathroom tuck under that steep roofline. The lines are clean, the timber warm, the vibe easy.

There’s even a bonus room in the attic space—a little hideaway made possible by that dramatic roof pitch. It’s small but fun, like a secret.

They’re down to finishing touches now—paint here, trim there, the last bits that make a house feel finished. It’s the slow, satisfying endgame.

The Part That Really Surprised Me

They still make time to surf. When the tide is right, they drop everything and paddle out. It’s their reset button and the reason they fell in love with this place to begin with.

A clean shoulder peels down the reef as one of them draws a smooth line and kicks out smiling. That kind of joy powers a lot of hard work back on land.

Back home, two wiry dogs and a curious cat patrol the porch and nap in the shade. They’re beach rescues turned island family.

Nature here is beautiful and blunt. Snakes show up sometimes, so nighttime walks happen with bright torches and careful steps.

There’s also a deep sense of respect for the place—an understanding that everything has its own spirit and belongs here. It shows up in how they move, build, harvest, and say thank you to the land.

What Happens Next

They’re not totally alone. Seasonal harvest crews visit from nearby villages, stacking coconuts and fruit before the rains shift again. A few surf camps flicker on and off across the seasons too.

Piles of coconuts sit under palms while small boats idle offshore, a quiet reminder that this island hums on its own schedule.

Still, living this remote can feel lonely. That’s part of the deal. They turned that challenge into connection by sharing their progress, their wins, and the weird little tricks that make this life work.

Evenings end with glassy water and a sky that looks painted on. Tomorrow will be boats and building and buckets again—and they seem perfectly okay with that.