Vagobond is a site dedicated to the spirit of adventurous travel. Not all vagabonds are traveling on a tiny budget and not all vagabonds are going huge distances. It’s a matter of world view.
As you no doubt know, a Vagabond (spelled with an ‘A’ – sometimes scarlet:)) is a person without an obvious source of income who wanders from place to place. Since the 1920′s the term has been used to describe a type of travel that doesn’t break your budget and that generally brings one into contact with local people, cultures, and landscapes. (Check out what’s new with Vagobond for 2012 here!)
Harry Franck, a pioneer in cultural travel without giant budgets such as those provided by organizations like the National Geographic Society wrote numerous books about his travels on every continent. (To learn more about Harry, you can visit here. )
In the 1960′s American Ed Byrne set out to explore not only the USA but also Europe and North Africa with a very low budget and a desire to get to know the people. His books and down to earth writing style inspired people like my parents generation and those who followed after them to spend more time than money. Ed is the original slow traveler. (To learn more about Ed, go here.)
During the 1990′s and 2000′s people like myself, Rolf Potts and many others were inspired by Harry, Ed and those greats who came before us to hit the road and learn to travel in a different way than most people were doing. Not just the backpacker trail which had consisted mostly of hippies and dope seekers in cheap places like Thailand and Eastern Europe, but to really see the world and get to know the people in it.
By no means was the idea original even when you go back as far as Ibn Batuta or Herodutus (-more about them and other extraordinary vagabonds here) but it was different than just about everyone else was living. Rolf’s now classic manual for living the road life “Vagabonding” hit the shelves in December of 2002 and in May of 2003, my own “Rough Living: Tips and Tales of a Vagobond” was published.
Since then, travel has changed immeasurably. The internet has become a fundamental part of travel and rather than sending postcards and letters things have become very different. In the 1990′s I started to use group emails to update friends and family, then in 2000 I moved from Yahoo Groups to Blogging. Today nearly anyone embarking on a vagabond adventure starts a blog and postcards, letters, and even group emails are things of the past.
Vagobond began as a way to share my travels and adventures with friends and family and before long, it had become a place where I was sharing travel tips and stories with strangers too. It was just a matter of time before I began to meet other vagabonds and share their stories too and today, Vagobond has become a place where you can find unique world travel stories, discover amazing vagabond trips, regular travel tips, and fun features like ‘Extraordinary Vagabonds‘ or even plan your trip around the world.
This is where our paths hopefully intersect. Although, Vagobond started as purely my adventures, it is my hope that you will not only discover but share your discoveries with me and the other writers here at Vagobond. I encourage you to not merely view stories here but to interact with them, escape the box store mentality, learn from what is shared here, pass it on to others, and contribute your own thoughts as your read about adventures that are here to inspire.
As always, this is a site that is focused on exploration, discovery and sharing the things that make travel wonderful…or in some cases awful. I hope you will share the journey with all of us here.
About Vago Damitio
In case you were wondering. I’m Vago Damitio, hence the reason for Vagobond having an ‘O’ instead of the correct spelling with an ‘A’.
I’m an American born in the Pacific Northwest and raised in California. When I became old enough to choose my own hometown I decided to choose two of them. Bellingham, Washington and Kailua, Hawaii. Both places share the mountains and the sea, two things that make me calm and happy to be alive.
Rough Living was written while I was trying to figure out how to live for maximum happiness. I thought money was the problem so I decided to see if I could live a happy life without it. In the process, I traveled to fourteen countries and then moved from my hometown of Bellingham, Washington to my hometown of Kailua, Hawaii. Not bad for a guy with no degree, no job, and no money.
The thing is though, I didn’t find what I was looking for. The more I looked around, the more I saw that money is important and that it doesn’t have to be evil even if it really is the root of most of the horrid things in this world. I started pursuing the ‘American Dream’ and managed to live in a Bungalow a stone’s throw from the most beautiful beach in the world, travel in four star luxury, and stay in beautiful resorts eating beautiful food with beautiful people. But you know what?
That wasn’t what I was looking for either. I kept meeting people with college degrees that told me education had pointed the way for them, so I enrolled in the University of Hawaii and borrowed enough money to get a degree in Anthropology. I wanted to understand more about the people and the cultures I was interacting with. Here’s a piece of advice though…if you are going to borrow money to get a degree, try to get one that will actually earn enough money to pay the loans back.
My education pointed out one thing to me. I didn’t want to be a typical American grinding away in a job and living paycheck to paycheck. I didn’t want to put profits over people. In fact, I didn’t want to sit around and watch the train wreck that my country appeared (and still appears) to be heading for. That wasn’t what I was looking for.
So, I left in 2008. Since then, I’ve traveled a lot. I’m not a country counter but I feel like I’ve seen more than most people get to in a lifetime. Not only that, I met the girl of my dreams and married her. My wife is Moroccan, so it makes sense I had to go to Morocco to meet her. Since our marriage we’ve moved around quite a lot both internationally and here in Morocco where we live now. We are expecting our first child in a short time and at the moment, I don’t have the desire to be anywhere but here. We’ll see how long that lasts though…the GO in Vagobond is an active verb. Luckily Mrs. Vagobond is active too and no doubt it will be a struggle for both of us to keep the Vagobaby from going full speed ahead.
I”m very happy that just as I settle down for a while, the many other voices that have come to Vagobond are starting to make themselves felt. Of course, each story makes me that much more ready to hit the road again too. This, my friends, is a very dangerous life and I hope you find some of what you are looking for here at Vagobond.com
For more info on me you can find me at G+ or follow my quest for the perfect garden at Garden Vagobond.
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