Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel

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Through these stories, it shows you how profoundly travel can influence your perception of yourself. Diehl has spent the best part of 10 years exploring the world in countries many Westerners couldn’t even place on a map. The journey helps him find who he really is and what freedom means. Vagabonding is about taking time off from your normal life--from six weeks to four months to two years--to discover and experience the world on your own terms. Veteran shoestring traveler Rolf Potts shows how anyone with an independent spirit can achieve the dream of extended overseas travel.

Excitement and inspiration are some of the words that come to mind to describe the feelings that go through the reader’s body as they hear of Rolf’s adventures throughout the world. Whether it was his 9-month adventure through Southern Asia, his experience hitch-hiking through Russia or simply a curious conversation he had a with a farmer in Africa (there’s no doubt he has done all of these), there is something to learn from each. Some of his stories are extreme and have you reading in disbelief whereas just as many make you realize the simplicities in life that we so often let pass us by. Vagabonding involves taking an extended time-out from your normal life — six weeks, four months, two years — to travel the world on your own terms. Why I Read this Book: Travel and exploration is an essential part of the development of a successful and fulfilled life. Rolf provides an awesome and inspirational guide.Vagabonding is an attitude — a friendly interest in people, places, and things that makes a person an explorer in the truest, most vivid sense of the word." "[Vagabonding is] the ongoing practice of looking and learning, of facing fears and altering habits, of cultivating a new fascination with people and places."This mentality isn’t reserved just for long-term journeys; it can be achieved by looking at the everyday world with new, curious eyes. It’s about seeing things for what they are, and not for what you think they should or want them to be. It’s about being intensely curious and observant about about the lives around you at the moment, whether that’s your neighbor from Ohio, your hostel roommate from Chile, or the local Latvian you meet at a bar.

Like most things, long-term travel starts with taking ownership of your actions and fate. It won’t happen unless you make it a priority.The biggest challenge in embracing simplicity will be the vague feeling of isolation that comes with it, since private sacrifice doesn’t garner much attention in the frenetic world of mass culture Later, I got to briefly meet Rolf in Portland at a Christmas party and then again while roaming around Paris, France. There’s nothing like vagabonding: taking time off from your normal life—from six weeks to four months to two years—to discover and experience the world on your own terms. In this one-of-a-kind handbook, veteran travel writer Rolf Potts explains how anyone armed with an independent spirit can achieve the dream of extended overseas travel. Now completely revised and updated, Vagabonding is an accessible and inspiring guide to Vagabonding is about gaining the courage to loosen your grip on the so-called certainties of this world. Vagabonding is about refusing to exile travel to some other, seemingly more appropriate, time of your life.