About the Vagabond Network and Wade Shepard

Wade Shepard

Travel is a romance with the world, and the Vagabond Network aims to frolic in this affair by digging into and exposing both the obvious and hidden treasures of this planet called Earth. Our modus operandi is to research anything that titillates our curiosity, which is to say, anything makes our ears perk up and our eyes open up wide with intrigue and wonder. This network is part journalism, part travel writing, part research project, part travel guide, and part travel instruction as we aim to chronicle the current events, people, and places of this world at ever shifting moments in time. It is our goal to show the world from street level, through our own observations and experiences. We are all travelers on a mission to explore as much of this planet as we possibly can, and the Vagabond Network is where we file away the results our intrigues.

VagabondJourney.com is currently the flagship of the Vagabond Network, and has been growing rapidly each year. It is now made up of 11 large sections, 12,000 pages, and is currently bringing in more than 90,000 visitors per month.

Vagabondjourney.com is divided into 12 main sections:

World Chronicle- This section is made up of articles about culture, geography, ecology, current events, and, yes, the art of world travel. Multiple articles are published daily showing a wide swath of impressions and opinions about the world we live in spoken from experience.

World Travel Guides- Thousands of guides arranged by topic for every country in the world.

Travel Photos- Thousands and thousands of photos from around the world.

Family Travel- Tips and advice on how to travel the world as a family.

Featured Articles- In depth reporting from around the world.

Travel Tips- Hundreds of travel tips covering everything from airport security to cooking food for yourself on the road. This is what you need to know to travel the world.

Travel Questions Forum- Ask your travel questions to the Vagabondjourney.com community here.

Travel Book Reviews- Reviews of the best of travel literature.

Travel Gear Reviews- Travel equipment reviewed.

Travel Help- Ask Wade travel questions, get answers from a tried and tested travel veteran.

Travel News- Keep up to date in the world of travel.

About the founder and editor

Wade Shepard

Wade Shepard is a heavily tattooed, graciously bearded travel writer from the countryside of western New York State in the USA. Since 1999, he has been wandering around the planet perpetually, having not yet stopped anywhere for over four months at a time. He is most often sighted in China, Mexico, Mongolia, India, or in various haunts of E. Europe, but has been known to show his face from time to time in the Middle East, Africa, Central and South America, Southeast Asia, and — when funding allows or work abounds — W. Europe. Wade prefers to travel slow, ideally staying in each destination for a period of time of two weeks to three months, stating that fast travel provides the feeling of adventure but to really learn about the world you need time — lots of time spent in each place, regardless of how glamorous or un-glamorous it is.

Shepard attempts to scrape the great minds of his time (or anyone who will answer his questions) for any piece of knowledge or wisdom that he can get. As a personality, he is an interrogator in the classic sense. The results of which often show up in the pages of vagabondjourney.com.

In terms of education, Wade possesses a B.A. degree in Global Studies as well as Journalism from Global College, Long Island University. Throughout his university years he studied in China, India, Japan, Morocco, France, and throughout Central America.

Wade Patrick Shepard

Wade founded what would become VagabondJourney.com in the spring of 2004 in Kyoto, Japan as part of a mission to share his field notes from the road with other travelers, as well as to attempt making a living from writing. He had no idea at that time that this project would turn into such an obsession, but the full time work days, the thousands of articles, hundreds of travel tips, and the daily writing marathon began paying off in recent years, and he is now able to travel the world on the site’s revenue.

Prior to making a living off of VagbondJourney.com, Wade worked in many different trades in order to continue his onward journey around the world. He worked as an archaeologist for eight seasons (15 US states, Honduras, Ecuador), found work at various intervals as a gardener (Ireland, Maine), a hostel receptionist (Hungary), a hotel manager (Guatemala), a farm hand (Maine), a magazine copy editor, a web designer, and a freelance journalist.

Vagabond Explorer Magazine

In the summer of 2011, Wade started his own magazine, Vagabond Explore. This was the cumulation of a long standing dream of being the editor of a one of a kind magazine about vagabonding the world. Download Vagabond Explorer Magazine now.

Publication record

In addition to writing for his own publications, Wade had his work featured in many print newspapers and magazines, as well as on other top websites from around the world, including Today’s Zaman (Turkey), Glimpse Magazine, Abroad View Magazine, Big World Magazine, Cafe Abroad InPrint, Hobotraveler.com, among others.

His photos have been featured on the History Channel, in FHM Magazine, SPACE Beyond Luxury, and the Journal of Latin American Geography.

Family Travels

Wade Shepard and family

In the summer of 2009 Wade married the Jewess, Chaya Kates-Goldman, and had a daughter, Petra Hendele Adara Shepard, in August of that same year. He now travels with his family, and has not yet found any reason to turn back yet.

For more information visit the Vagabond Journey press kit.