Book Review: Vagabonding by Rolf Potts
An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel
Dec 9, 2008
This book views long term travel as an “adventure and a passion – a way of overcoming your fears and living life to the fullest”. It is not a tourist or hotel guide or for thrill seekers it is about gaining a wealth of experience through simplicity.
Travel Guide
The author has written an accessible and comprehensive book that structured the content into five parts:
- Vagabonding - Declare Your Independence
- Getting Started – Earn Your Freedom, Keep It Simple, Learn and Keep Learning
- On the Road – Don’t Set Limits, Meet Your Neighbors, Get Into Adventures
- The Long Run – Keep It Real, Be Creative, Let Your Spirit Grow
- Coming Home – Live the Story
This is not a travel guide book in the traditional sense but an explanation of how to indulge a passion for travel in simple ways. Beyond long term travel “vagabonding is an outlook on life. Vagabonding is about using the prosperity and possibility of the information age to increase your personal options instead of your personal possessions”.
Travel in Comfort?
The author endorses Ed Buryn’s “Vagabonding is not for comfort hounds, sophomoric misanthropes or poolside faint-hearts, whose thin convictions won’t stand up to the problems that come along”. Indeed the emphasis is on experiencing a new location as simply [and cheaply] as possible; measuring the time away perhaps in a few weeks but more likely in months or years.
Vagabonding Guides
The author provides useful references and tip-sheets that cover earning money to travel, where and how to travel, travel ideas as well as: Finding Jobs and Careers Overseas, Resources for Lifestyle Simplicity, Vagabonding for Seniors and Families, Vagabonding with Children, Online Travel Research Portals, Culture Shock Overseas, Cross Cultural Resources, Online Travel Health Resources, Socially and Environmentally Responsible Travel, Overseas Work and Volunteering Resources Online, Spiritual Travel Readings
Vagabond Profiles
Many short profiles and quotes are interspersed throughout the text offering their words of wisdoms or direct experience. One theme that does emerge from the author and these people is that these are typically not one-time experiences but become a way of life. The author states at the end: “Keep things simple and let your spirit grow. But most of all, keep living your life in such a way that allows your dreams room to breathe. Because you never know when you’ll feel the urge to hit the road again”.
About the Author
Rolf Potts writes about independent travel for National Geographic Adventure, and his travel essays have appeared in Salon, Conde, Nast Traveller, National Geographic Traveler, and Best American Travel Writing 2000.
Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel by Rolf Potts. Villard 2003. ISBN: 978-0-8129-9218-2
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