I have a number of friends who have done very similar to what you have described, but by boat.
The sailing community calls it dropping out. A conversation at the sailing club (Ok, yacht club) would go:
"Hey I haven't heard from Larry and Kiki in a while, whats up with them?"
"Oh they dropped out for a year."
"Really! Where are they?"
"Last I heard, they were at anchor in the Azores waiting for a weather window."
How it works is sort of mustachian/anti mustachian.
1. Live on the cheap for a while and build up a stash
2. Sell your house and all your possessions worth anything and live in an apartment.
3. Buy a boat (prices vary incredibly widely from about $5,000 to millions) up to the task of sailing away, and then put everything at home on hold and move onto the boat.
4. Refit the boat and make repairs necessary. Go on test sails to be sure of the craft. Do heavy weather testing. Take any sailing, navigation, weather, communication, first aid, or repair courses that you need to keep yourself alive.
5. Enlist friends to take your mail or have it forwarded to the yacht club. Apply to work for an extended leave of absence or retire or quit.
6. Set up a side gig as a travel reporter or as a writer for Nat Geo. Or as a photographer etc. A very few folks are able to keep their old careers but spotty communications and absolute inavailability for an emergency conference call usually kills this.
7. Point your boat East, make a left at Gaspe, and go straight ahead until the butter melts.
8. See the sights, send postcards home. It is an incredibly cheap lifestyle once you are on the water. The only time in port is when you run out of food, otherwise stay at anchor for free. Fish for food. No accumulation of crap or you have no living space. Make relationships with other boats to form a loose safety net between ports.
9. Come home and publish a book to recoup costs (often just a triplog - ie. google "Dove by Robin Lee Graham" or "Author Hal Roth")
10. With equity invested for X years while you were away, buy a new home.
11. Sell boat.
12. Return to life as normal. Or drop out again.
Hal Roth is (was) likely the best at this. His yacht (Whisper) came to be fairly famous and his repeated voyages and writing style were able to support him quite nicely. I wish I had the right spouse to do this, or something like it, but alas, I do not.