About us

Vagabond Trips

A vagabond is a wanderer — someone who travels with no permanent home and no fixed destination. That is where the name comes from.

Vladimir on the bonnet of an old jeep on a mountain road in the Karakoram

About me

My name is Vladimir Arsentyev. I have lived in Czechia since 2013. I moved here at seventeen and caught the travel bug almost straight away — I set myself the goal of seeing the whole world.

Even as a child I wanted to see different peoples and cultures with my own eyes, and to take apart the stereotypes and myths we get handed about them. Studying and working left me short of time, and often short of money — but I never turned off that road.

Today I have eighty-four countries behind me.

I was always drawn to the places nobody sells tours to. Crossing the Sahara on the legendary Mauritanian train. Driving the length of Iraq, or riding South Asia on a scooter. Going through Afghanistan alone, hitchhiking across the hard country of the Pamirs, sleeping out in the wild Algerian desert under the stars, and opening one of the most closed doors in the world — Turkmenistan. The number is secondary, really. What matters are the stories, and in this life you write those yourself.

How and why I started Vagabond

At some point I realised I wanted something of my own — a project I was building, rather than a job working for someone else. So I asked myself: what am I actually good at?

And what I am good at is travelling. Over all these years I have built up an enormous amount of experience putting together vivid trips on a small budget.

Beyond that, I genuinely enjoy solving that kind of problem: how to do it properly, beautifully and unforgettably.

So I can organise trips with confidence, share what I know with other people, and change their lives.

From that moment on I knew I was ready to give the whole of myself to it.

That is how Vagabond Trips began.

I wanted to create not just tourist trips but real adventures — with a sense of daring, freestyle, freedom, and the feeling that you never know what happens next.

It took off fairly quickly. Within a month the hikes were filling up completely, and the first trips abroad followed.

Little by little, couples, friends and people who go on travelling together grew up around the project — a whole family formed.

It turned into something far bigger than I could have imagined at the start. Something that ended up changing a lot of lives.

Right now I am set on making even better trips — done properly, done interestingly, and for as many people as possible.

English-language routes are next. I want anyone, of any nationality, anywhere in the world, to be able to find me and come along on the next journey.

What is a vagabond?

For me, Vagabond is freedom above all else.

What mattered was getting exactly that style across: adventure, complete freestyle, travelling without a fixed plan, a hint of risk and a fair amount of mischief.

That feeling you had as a child, when you could simply walk out of the house and head wherever your eyes took you.

A little mischief. A little carefree abandon. And a lot of freedom.

All of that is Vagabond Trips.

From our trips