Rasberry PI Travel Router/VPN

For my trip to Peru, I transformed my Raspberry Pi into a secure travel router by installing hostapd and dnsmasq to broadcast a protected hotspot, and wired it to start OpenVPN or WireGuard at boot. Whenever I arrived at my hotel, I simply connected the Pi to their Wi‑Fi, enabled the VPN, and then had all my devices, phone, laptop & iPad join my secure network. This layered setup ensured all traffic was routed through the encrypted tunnel . I loved how it unified protection across devices, bypassed captive‑portal annoyances, and kept DNS requests and browsing private. The biggest challenge was initial setup: configuring firewall rules, installing drivers for USB Wi‑Fi adapters, and occasional troubles with captive portals . With those overcome, I gained dependable privacy and performance, no subscriptions, full control, and confidence when browsing on the go.