Once upon a time, I was just like many of you, dreaming about traveling the world. That’s when I stumbled upon a book that changed my life – "Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel" by Rolf Potts. This book was like a revelation, putting into words all the thoughts and feelings I had about travel. It helped me overcome my fears and take the leap to quit my job and start my journey around the world.
If there was a bible for long-term travel and backpacking, this book would be it. No other book has ever captured the philosophy of long-term travel as this one. I still have my original copy and often revisit its chapters.
Over time, Rolf and I became friends, which is pretty cool considering his words had such a profound impact on my life. This month marks the tenth anniversary of his book, and to celebrate, Rolf is re-releasing it in an audio format. It’s also the first book in the Tim Ferriss Book Club.
I had the chance to interview Rolf again (I first interviewed him in 2009) and asked him how he felt about his book turning ten. He said it felt great, especially since more people are reading it now than when it first came out. The response to the book has exceeded his expectations.
When asked about how he felt creating a book that people view as the bible of long-term travel, he said it was humbling. He recalled the months he spent alone in a room in southern Thailand, crafting the book sentence by sentence. The initial response to the book was encouraging, and it wasn’t until a couple of years later when he started hearing about pirated copies of his book being sold in Vietnam that he realized it had really caught on.
Rolf didn’t initially set out to become a travel guru. He was just answering questions from readers of his Salon articles about how he managed to travel for so long. His advice was more philosophical than practical, focusing on cultivating a mindset that made vagabonding possible. This caught the attention of an editor at Random House, and that’s how "Vagabonding" was born.
The success of the book shaped Rolf’s desires as a writer. He didn’t feel the need to compete against himself or live up to the expectations created by his first book. Instead, he took his creative life in new directions, working on video and graphic narrative projects, doing long-form reportage for Sports Illustrated, and teaching writing at Penn, Yale, and the Paris American Academy.
Rolf’s experiences in the book happened when he was young, but they still resonate with him. He believes that early travel experiences are the best ones to draw from when writing a book like "Vagabonding", as those are the experiences readers will identify with.
When asked about how traveling and backpacking has evolved, Rolf said it’s become less intimidating with each passing year. There’s so much more information out there now, and so many gadgets and apps that make travel easier. However, he does miss the old difficulties and hardships that made travel so surprising and rewarding.
Rolf believes that the desire to experience something "real" is a mythic fantasy based on humans’ innate desire to discover. He encourages readers to embrace reality, as that’s what will deliver the complex and challenging and utterly amazing experiences that make the journey worthwhile.
His number one piece of advice for new travelers is to slow down and enjoy yourself. With technology, it’s easier than ever to know what you’re missing in 100 other places and thus miss out on where you are. Slowing down and improvising your way through each new day on the road is the best way to break out of the habits of home and embrace the amazing possibilities a journey promises.
Rolf’s book was extremely influential in my development as a traveler. If you haven’t read it yet, I strongly encourage you to do so. "Vagabonding" will leave you confident that your decision to travel was the right one.
