Home About Us

About Us

Hi and welcome! Glad to have you here!

We’re Sam and Veren, aka the Alternative Travelers. 

What does traveling alternatively mean to us? In a nutshell, traveling slowly on a budget while following a sustainable, vegan lifestyle.

We want to help and inspire others to travel - and live - in a more sustainable, ethical, and mindful way. We aim to empower travelers to think differently about their travel and lifestyle by reducing harmful habits and increasing positive ones.

The world’s current trajectory means that sustainable, responsible, and ethical travel is more important than ever. That’s why we’re on a mission to make these kinds of conversations and this kind of travel mainstream. Every traveler must be a sustainable traveler, taking actionable steps, and practicing what they believe.

We strongly believe that positive change starts within. That’s why we want to help travelers learn how to create positive change in both themselves, and as a result, the communities they visit. In other words, we want to inspire and teach others to live and travel in alignment with their core values of ethics, sustainability, and mindfulness. We found freedom to live the life that we truly desire, in alignment with our values, through house sitting! 

For the full story of how we became digital nomads, check out the first ever episode of our podcast, The Alternative Travelers Podcast: 

Subscribe and listen to The Alternative Travelers Podcast on Apple PodcastsGoogle Podcasts Spotify , Stitcher, or any podcast app to stay informed and updated on our latest episodes.

OUR HOUSE SITTING STORY

We left New York in early 2016 after realizing that it'd be cheaper to travel than live in one of the most expensive cities in the world. After two years living in Madrid, Spain (and house sitting all over Europe), we are now back to full time traveling via house sitting!

We've fallen in love with the house sitting lifestyle, and since we started house sitting in early 2016, we've house sat across the U.S. and Europe. House sitting has taken us to a wide variety of situations: from an off-grid, solar powered house in the Caribbean taking care of 17 animals - to apartments in global cities like New York and London!

Now, we teach fellow prospective house sitters how to live their dream lives through house sitting. We've even written a whole book on our experiences and strategies to help you every step of the way!

Click here to learn more about The House Sitting Handbook

DIVE INTO OUR MOST POPULAR BLOG POSTS:

THE ALTERNATIVE TRAVELERS PODCAST

In 2020, we started our podcast, The Alternative Travelers Podcast, to spread the responsible travel message even further, and to have long form, deep dive conversations into everything alternative, responsible travel. The Alternative Travelers Podcast features thoughtful conversations about living a meaningful life with travel at the core. These are conversations that will challenge conventional notions about travel, and make you think about travel and mindful living in a whole new way (at least we hope they will)!

Our podcast is available wherever you get your podcasts (just search The Alternative Travelers Podcast), or for streaming right here on our website.

Check out some of our most popular episodes: