Traveling light takes on new meaning when jumping trains, as does the limited battery life of mobile devices – just like the rest of us, hitchhikers and train hoppers these days increasingly see the web as as invaluable resource. The underlying story of nomadic life on the rails is surprisingly consistent in some ways: people, generally young, using the nation’s railways to travel the country. The details are, however, revealingly different – analog hobo codes have given way to digital hobo coders.

Like many 30-somethings, Huck has experienced life with and without a pervasive internet that answers all questions. This transitional generation knows to rely on conventional knowledge and hard research as much as spoon-fed answers. In the extended interview below, this reddit user (/u/huckstah) and long-time /r/vagabond participant shares stories from his nomadic lifestyle. Images here by Molly Steele illustrate some of the everyday wonders of illicit train travel as well. Per Hobos of Instagram , these travelers are trading their flip phones for iPhones, starting Instagram accounts … and bringing an age-old tradition of trainhopping and tramping into the Information Age.”

Online resources provide help in all kinds of ways, including some websites dedicated to helping the (often intentionally) homeless and misfit travelers as they hitchhike or dumpster dive. At the same time, there are many ways to also turn ordinary resources toward new ends, like using Google Maps to scout the layouts of train yards for security gaps and best access points.

Beyond transit, maps are also helpful for finding public restrooms, camp grounds, power outlets, showers and other essentials. Kindles (or other devices using less power than phones) are critical to stretching battery life, too. Ultimately, the information flows both ways: travelers turn around and share their adventures on Instagram, Vine, Facebook and other social media sites.

Those on the road more often than not find themselves looking for remote digital work or seasonal employment, again aided in part by websites like Craigslist and otherwise. YouTube videos help guide people through various processes of actually getting on and off trains, as well as finding the best boxcars on (or in) which to travel. Of course, none of these reduce the real, physical-world risks and dangers associated with train hopping, including but not limited to injury and arrest. Some naturally worry that the spread of this form of transit to the internet will increasingly lure people who are not equipped for the lifestyle to try things better off watched on Vimeo or read on reddit.

You may have seen some strange and unique accommodations on AirBNB, but few hosts can boast something as unusual as Faktum Hotels, an unreal room-free resort in Sweden.

Their offerings are entirely out in the open air, doubling as an awareness-raising campaign for the city’s homeless and and actual alternative sleeping space for those same citizens.

So if not rooms, then what are you actually booking? A sleeping bag, or simply a secluded space … everywhere an actual vagabond or vagrant might occupy, including park benches, public restrooms, abandoned buildings, bridge underpasses and below bleachers.

And how much to reserve one of these temporary hobo hostels? The rate for each of these 10 surreal pseudo-spaces is just 10 Euros per night … proceeds of which go to charity work supported by Faktum Magazine.

This project tackles what is probably the last place anyone expect to find a digital-age intervention: the centuries-old tradition of the mobile and homeless communicating via shorthand markers, left to denote different risks and advantages to illicit living spaces.

From its creators at Free Art & Technology: “These stencils can be understood as a covert markup scheme for urban spaces — providing directions, information, and warnings to digital nomads and other indigenterati. We present these as modern equivalents of the chalk-based “hobo signs” developed by 19th century vagabonds and migratory workers to cope with the difficulty of nomadic life.”  (Hobo signs via Sources: Fran DeLorenzo (left),Wikipedia (right).

But it also goes beyond the conventional messages once conveyed: “Indeed, our set of QR stencils port a number of classic hobo annotations to the QR format (“turn right here”, “dangerous dog”, “food for work”) as well as some new ones, with a nod to warchalking, that are specific to contemporary conditions (“insecure wifi”, “hidden cameras”, “vegans beware”).”

As ingenious as this all is, the question, of course, remains: even in an age where almost everyone has a cellular phone, how many truly nomadic peoples have one? The answer, though, may be: more than we realize.