On Rolf Potts’ Vagabonding

It’s become every travel blogger’s rite of passage: a review of Rolf Potts’ inimitable travel tome, Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel (aff). It’s the quintessential RTW traveler’s guide to all things … well, RTW travel related. But every conceivable thing that can be said about Vagabonding has been said about it, so I’ll resort to cliches to describe it in brief:

It changed the way I think about travel.

It’s like he wrote the book just for me!

It belongs in every traveler’s pack.

It’s the feel-good hit of the summer! Sorry, this only applies to Julia Roberts movies.

Seriously though: it’s essential reading for all vagabonds and traveling hopefuls alike. For seasoned travelers, it will renew or revive your travel dreams and remind you of why you set out on the long haul in the first place. For desk jockeys and vagabond wannabes [ahem: me], it’ll undoubtedly light a fire under your ass and provide the inspirational jump start you need to shed yourself of material chotchke and set out around the globe with nothing more than a change of underwear and a backpack over your shoulder.

Rolf Potts’ Vagabonding

During our recent two-day hiatus in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, K and I stumbled upon an awesome travel book store – as in, a store that only sells travel books. Qua? Given Amazon’s firm stranglehold on every long tail niche market, I was shocked and pleasantly surprised that such a real world book retailer existed.

After letting Vagabonding languish on my Amazon wishlist for over a year, I decided: to hell with the $1.24 I’d be saving by buying it through Amazon and why not support a mom-and-pop shop in a small town that I love in the process? So I bought it.

It’s the best $11.95 I’ve ever spent on anything travel-related, let alone a book. It’s simple, accessible, and will no doubt change the way you think about travel and perhaps a few other facets of life as well. It’s relatively short and can be read cover to cover while you’re kicking around the house some weekend.

From the back cover of the book:

Potts gives the necessary information on:

  • financing your travel time
  • determining your destination
  • adjusting to life on the road
  • working and volunteering overseas
  • handling travel adversity
  • re-assimilating back into ordinary life

This isn’t a how-to guide outlining how to accomplish the above points in explicit, practical detail; but rather an inspirational springboard for how to think about travel. It’s filled with quotes and prose from other like-minded travelers and vagabonders such as Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau.

The essence of Vagabonding encourages a fuller, more satisfying travel experience by slowing down and appreciating everything your new host culture and its people have to offer. Of particular note to me was the overall sense of simplifying your life, and thus your travels, to eliminate the unnecessary clutter and fluff typically synonymous with an average Western lifestyle.

As Timen points out in his review, the book is in need of some updating with respect to specific web links, etc. Given the transient nature of all things web, this is to be expected. However, the touchstone points Potts makes are, in many respects, timeless. Made obvious by centuries old quotes proving as relevant and inspirational today as they were several hundred years ago.

Though still a ways off from my own ’round-the-world journey, I can say that Vagabonding has given me a great deal to think about. And I have a feeling that I’ll be reading it again as my journey draws near.

Founding Editor
  1. A book store for travel books? It’s like a dream. I have a hard enough time leaving the small travel section at Borders, I don’t know what I’d do with a whole store. I’d probably have to get a job there. Do you remember what it was called?

    “Of particular note to me was the overall sense of simplifying your life, and thus your travels, to eliminate the unnecessary clutter and fluff typically synonymous with an average Western lifestyle.” Nicely said, and I agree. It is what hit me the most when I read Vagabonding.

  2. I suppose it would be helpful to actually tell people the name of the store, wouldn’t it? =P

    It was Gulliver’s Travels and the owner, Alison, was extremely kind and helpful in the two to three hours that we spent there. That brings up a question: at what point is lingering around considered loitering?

  3. do you just say Portsmouth?? I miss the place so much. I studied there before. Love the place. very relax and easy.. they have a lot of second hand shops.. I bought my first boot at a small shop for 40 pound only..

  4. Portsmouth is beautiful. We’ve never stayed overnight but it’s a very small town so it’s manageable enough to walk the downtown area just to get an overview in a single day.

  5. You hit the nail on the head with that one. Vagabonding and First Time around the world, coupled with http://www.solbeam.com and You Go Girl are the reasons I up and took off 1.5 years ago and rearranged my life to work to live/travel/play. I was expecting something completely different from Vagabonding, but it was more than I could have ever hoped for.

    Gulliver’s Travels sounds like a dream come true! Not sure how far Portsmouth is from Hanover, NH (Dartmouth?) but maybe I’ll get up there this summer!

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