Welcome to TravelFreak. Please Prepare for Take-Off.
Travel smarter, adventure better.
Once serving as a personal travel blog, the TravelFreak team has grown to include a roster of some of the world’s most knowledgeable and well-traveled individuals. Our team includes professional adventure guides, full-time digital nomads, and former product engineers.
TravelFreak is a reservoir of expertly curated travel knowledge, providing adventure-seekers like you with practical and actionable advice about where to go, what to do and how to best prepare for your trips.
TravelFreak’s guides are the result of personal experience, extensive research, rigorous analysis, and testing and comparison. Our destination guides are the product of extensive travel in those regions. Our gear guides are the result of real world product testing, industry expertise and research, and our proprietary rating and scoring systems.
We aim to provide research-backed advice that is actionable and digestible.
At the core of TravelFreak is a commitment to delivering in-depth information and meticulously planned destination guides that prioritize practicality and well-informed decision making.
Why Trust TravelFreak?
We fundamentally recognize that most people feel overwhelmed by underwhelming content. We’ve made it our mission to provide readers like you with straightforward, industry-leading expertise and research-backed advice.
Our team has spent decades on the road. We’ve spent years of our lives living and working abroad. We’ve traveled on shoestrings budgets and have stayed in some of the world’s most lavish hotels. We’ve taken chicken buses through the countryside and travel hacked our way to business class. We’ve traveled with both backpacks and suitcases for weeklong and monthlong trips alike. We’ve traveled carry-on only and we’ve checked bags to the other side of the globe. We’ve scootered around Asia and cruised through the Bahamas.
Needless to say, we’ve done a lot. And we want to help you do a lot, too. Every article on TravelFreak is rooted in decades of experience of travel, exploring the globe and relentlessly testing gear along the way (and at home in our lab, too).
Nothing is more important to us than the trust of our readers. Our business literally depends on it. We take very seriously our responsibility to provide the best information and recommendations possible.
Every piece of insight we provide on TravelFreak is based on first-person insight from a member of our team. And through of years of travel, we’ve come to develop a core set of values under which we operate.
We believe that life is best lived extraordinarily. We believe in rejecting the status quo and creating a fulfilling and impassioned life through travel. We believe the best trips are the ones with surprises. We also believe in preparing for those surprises as best we can.
We believe that investing in high-quality gear is a better choice than buying cheap stuff that breaks after a few trips. We believe in supporting small business and independent brands. Not only is it easier on your wallet in the long run, but it also keeps landfills from overflowing with throw-away junk. Buying quality is a way to combat a culture of overconsumption.
We also recognize that budgetary constraints are very real, and we always aim to make affordable recommendations wherever possible.
We believe that what’s best for the planet and for humanity is what’s best for us. Those of us who travel are blessed. Stunning wild landscapes and vibrant cultures around the world are things worth preserving. We aim to do our part by supporting brands that have a positive impact on the world, whether that’s through philanthropy or sustainable manufacturing.
And finally, we believe that experiences are more important than gear. It’s easy to obsess over the details (and, really, we just love to do that), but ultimately, the goal is to get out there and experience the world. Gear is a means to an end, and the best piece of gear is the one that gets out of the way and lets you focus on the moment.
Editorial Policy
Every article on our site goes through a rigorous editorial process. The writers on our team have extensive real-world travel experience, and are committed to providing factual and valuable information, reviews, and recommendations.
When doing research, we only depend on reliable primary sources of information for our articles. Wherever possible we seek out information from academic research and government databases. We tell you where we source our information—both to give credit where credit is due and to provide transparency.
We periodically review, fact-check, and edit every article on our site to ensure the information we are providing is accurate, relevant, and up-to-date.
If you make a purchase through the links on our website, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Our recommendations are not swayed by financial incentive. We earn a commission no matter what, so it doesn’t actually matter to us which product(s) you choose to buy. We only recommend gear that we actually love.
Of course, we have personal preferences, and we always disclose those alongside our objective reviews.
We are currently reviewing gear with what we believe is the world’s most comprehensive and detailed rating system. We use dozens of specific, objective metrics to evaluate every product on the site.
Internally, we have a database of hundreds of products that we’ve personally tested. Containing more than 10,000 data points, we regularly run analyses on this database to objectively inform our recommendations.
Our aim is to build the gold standard for what a brand and its products should strive to be. By setting the bar high, we hope to raise the travel industry to new levels.
Meet the Team
At TravelFreak, we aim to help you make the most of your adventures by providing research-backed advice from experts in the field. That expertise comes from real-world travel experience, work experience, and a lot of mistakes. We don’t follow the rules, but we carve our own path utilizing the tips and tricks we’ve learned along the way.
Though started independently, TravelFreak has grown to include a roster of the some of the world’s most knowledgeable and well-traveled individuals.
Founder & CEO
Jeremy Scott Foster
Jeremy Scott Foster is a serial entrepreneur and the Founder of TravelFreak. Though not much of a country-counter, he’s lived in a handful of countries and visited about 50 more. Jeremy spent nearly ten years as a nomad, working as a world-traveling bartender, travel photographer and travel writer.
Jeremy is an adventure addict and gear junkie. He’s spent the better part of the past decade flying around the world, testing hundreds of backpacks and many dozens of suitcases. He’s hiked, camped and driven campervans all over the United States, learning what gear works and what simply doesn’t.
Today, he lives in Los Angeles and is incubating multiple companies. You can usually find him at a coffee shop, smoothie joint or riding his e-bike along the Venice boardwalk.
If you’re anything like me, you don’t believe in living life on someone else’s terms. You don’t believe you were born to build somebody else’s dream, pay your bills and die.
You believe in making the most of every opportunity, every day, and living the life you want to live.
But opportunities to do that don’t always just jump out and present themselves, do they? (Hint: they never do.) They have to be created.
The Vision and The Mission
My name is Jeremy Scott Foster, and I started this website as a way to connect and reach other people who also don’t resonate with the status quo. I don’t believe that there’s just one way to live your life. There are an infinite number of ways to lead a fulfilling life—you just need to create them. Or at least give them a nudge.
Whether you want to work abroad, travel forever, become a digital nomad, or simply book that trip you’ve been dying to go on, you’re in the right place. Traveling can help you live a life that you’re more passionate about.
I want to help give you a push to both the far reaches of the globe as well as your comfort zone. Because it’s there—when you’re the least comfortable—that remarkable transformations start to take shape within.
And that’s when the good life really begins.
I truly believe that…
Travel forges connection, inspires transformation and imbues discovery of both the self and the world around you.
If you’re new here, these are some of my most valuable and essential resources on the site, and a great place to begin browsing. I can give you the tips and point you in the right direction—the rest, however, is up to you.
How My Life of Travel Began
Graduating from college in 2009 on the five-year plan—and into the middle of a recession—you could say I had very little in the way of options.
Nonetheless, I consider myself one of the lucky ones.
Soon after graduating and coming to grips with my reality, I realized that, if I wanted to live any kind of extraordinary life, I was going to have to do something different.
If the United States was having an economic crisis, wouldn’t it make sense to go somewhere that wasn’t?
With less than a year in the professional workforce under my belt and measly excuse for a savings in my bank account, I bought a one-way ticket to Australia.
My journey started with a two-month jaunt up the east coast of Australia, which left me fulfilled, intoxicated by life, and completely, utterly broke.
I wanted to travel forever—or at least for as long as I could. So I picked up a job at a local nightclub and started saving some cash. Along the way, I realized that, if I played my cards right, I’d never have to work another desk job in my life. I could pick up travel jobs and work and travel at the same time!
For the next five years, I traveled the world as a bartender, working in some of the best craft cocktail bars around the world. I was a blogger by day and a bartender by night.
I lived in New Zealand for more than a year, traveling the country and working in bars in Queenstown, Auckland and Wellington.
I took a break to teach English in China, and then moved to Beijing to work in the best cocktail bar in the country.
I traveled in South America, the Middle East and spent a summer backpacking across Europe from Athens, Greece to Berlin, Germany. I hitch-hiked through Albania and wrote a love letter to the Balkans which received a fair bit of attention.
It was at this point that my blog was starting to gain traction. Unfortunately, at the same time, I was diagnosed with a debilitating case of Lyme Disease. I stayed home and fell off the map, so to speak. The entire trajectory of my life just changed—again—almost overnight.
With half a working brain and a lot of time on my hands, I started thinking about how I started this travel blog and how I could keep it running. Could I make money online while simultaneously using my experience to help others get out into the world and make a positive impact on their lives?
It turns out, I could. And I did.
Eventually, just before turning 30, I made the shift to full-time digital nomad, travel blogger, and online influencer and entrepreneur. This was before Instagram was even a thing!
Since then my travel advice has been featured by The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Forbes, National Geographic, Travel + Leisure, INSIDER, BuzzFeed, The Boston Globe, USA Today, and more. I’ve also personally helped people from all over the world recognize their dreams of traveling the world—and help them come true.
So What Now?
Recognizing that TravelFreak has become a platform that literally changes lives, I’ve made it my mission to help as many people as possible.
Of course, I’m not that green 24 year-old anymore. I guess you could say I’ve been around the block. Travel changed me in the biggest of ways. I went through it. Heck, I still am. But I’m in my late-thirties now with almost 15 years of travel under my belt.
I still travel, though differently and less often. I spend more time focusing on my health and continue to do my best to provide value through this website to all you travelers out there!
While I was grounded, I started getting out into nature more. I learned the rules of hiking, drove across America while sleeping in my car. I’ve spent more time in one place, taken more domestic trips by overlanding or renting a campervan. And I got really into travel gear.
I’ve tried every cheap flight hack, tested every backpack, reviewed the world’s best luggage brands, and made every mistake out there (it’s my preferred method of learning). Alongside my trusted team of extraordinary travelers, adventurers, and life-livers, we’re sharing every piece of knowledge we can about how to handle your next adventure like a pro.
Over the past ten years, I created a lifestyle for myself which suits my strengths while giving me the creativity and freedom to do and roam as I please.
No, you don’t have to quit your job to live a more passionate and fulfilling life (but you can if you want to!). You can still maintain your home life and a life of travel—you just have to want it bad enough to create it.
And what’s more, it’s probably a lot more easy to do than you realize.
Sure, it’s going to take some risk and you might have to pick up a few new skills along the way. But, as human beings, I truly believe that we are intelligent and resourceful enough to manifest anything in the world we truly desire.
My intention is to help you do exactly that.
Editor-in-Chief
Jakob Thygerson
Jakob Thygerson is an outdoor adventure seeker who collects sunburns, National Park maps, and trail miles. He loves anything that gets him outdoors, whether it’s on foot, on skis, on a bike, or on the open road.
A native of the Mountain West, he’s most at home in mountains and deserts with clear air and bright stars.
He has a background as a product design engineer and knows the ins and outs of materials, design, and manufacturing processes. He loves using this knowledge to analyze outdoor equipment and is an unrepentant gearhead.
Tara is a full-time traveler and part-time street food addict. Currently an expat in Germany, Tara has a special place in her heart for Southeast Asia. When she’s not blogging about her adventures, you can find her sipping a glass of wine or slurping a bowl of hot noodles.
Candice Walsh is a travel writer, blogger, and destination marketing specialist living on the North Atlantic in Newfoundland & Labrador, Canada. She has spent over 10 years traveling the world and is happiest when she’s on the Mediterranean with a glass of wine in hand.
Mia is a freelance travel writer with a passion for adventure, wildlife, and water (not necessarily in that order.) She has traveled the globe to follow her dreams, fight for the environment, and swim in some of the world’s most beautiful places.
Nicole Jordan is an adventure guide who leads backpacking, hiking, sea kayaking, and snowshoeing trips. She’s on a lifelong pursuit to climb as many mountains as possible and sleep under the night sky in all of the National Parks. When she’s not traveling internationally you can find her living out of her Subaru Forester, exploring the best of the United States.
Your privacy is important to us. At TravelFreak, we value being open and transparent about how we run our business and how we handle your information. Please view our Privacy Policy to read our full disclosure of what data we collect, how we use that data, and our use of cookies and affiliate links. We make this information available so you can make informed decisions about how you use our site.
Contact Us
Want to ask a question, recommend a piece of gear, or just say hi? We’d love to hear from you! Please head over to our Contact Us page to send us a message.
Address: 4030 Wake Forest Road, STE 349, Raleigh, NC, 27609, USA Phone: (919) 635-0425