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Summary: A great travel book for hard-core long-term travellers
Review: Rolf definitely knows his stuff.Unlike other travel guides that have hundreds and hundreds of unnecessary pages that you'll never read, Rolf sticks right to the point and tells you what you want to know right away. I thought I knew every backpacker travel website out there until I bought this book. In it I found a few great sites. It's short enough to read in a few sittings yet you'll definitely dog-ear and highlight the hell out of it, especially as you get closer to your trip. Well worth the read.
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Summary: A great book for potential backpackers.
Review: Rolf Potts does a valuable service to would-be vagabonders who haven't quite made up their minds to take the big leap and head off into the great wide world. I can imagine such a person, sitting in a cubicle watching their life tick by, quietly pondering the what-ifs of international travel, yearning for the freedom of the open road but not quite convinced to head out, hesitating...until they read Vagabonding. One quick read of this book and they'll be on the next flight to Bangkok or Cairo or wherever. Vagabonding isn't as much a nuts and bolts guide to backpacking as it is a shot of inspiration for potential travelers. I wish this book would have been written when I first began my travels several years ago. Regardless, it's an interesting read for novices and experienced travelers alike. One drawback of this book is that it is written like a script for a formal debate, packed with quotes from travel writers and dreary-eyed idealists to justify the author's arguments. Potts is a good writer and experienced traveler; he doesn't need to shroud his writing in clouds of quotes from the likes of Whitman and Thoreau. I look forward to reading Potts' future travel writing, especially after he ventures off the beaten tracks in the more remote parts of Africa and Latin America.
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Summary: Zen and the art of long term travel
Review: Rolf Potts' book is not only a practical guide to spending extended periods in foreign cultures, but a compendium of the best travel writing, recent and classic. It gives practical advice, profiles of travelers of note and a philosophical grounding for leaving home, not only physically but in your head.
This is not a book for those who plan to hang on to the familiar by bringing a discman with favorite CDs, looking for places to catch CNN and moving from internet cafe to American Express poste restante counter. It is for the traveler who is willing to cut loose from his moorings and dive headlong into a culture.
Rolf Potts has a sparkling sense of humor and a truly staggering familiarity with travel writing past and present. He presents wonderful excerpts from great writing and from the experiences of everyday vagabonders. I am truly impressed with his command of literary works dealing with travel. The book can be read in one sitting but should be savored at leisure over a modest Hungarian white or some South African water buffaly jerky.
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Summary: great little travel philosophy book
Review: Rolf Potts' tome of vagabonding is an inspirational work rather than a practical guide. While the same practical information is contained in other books, this book shines in the area of travel philosophy. Travel is like a religion, where some people are incredibly fervent about it, while others just don't understand. This book makes you realize that long-term travel is not only possible, but desirable and worthwhile. I particularly liked the section on working for travel. As a 9-to-5 worker planning a long-term trip, I needed the inspiration to keep going. I liked being told that working will actually make me appreciate travel more. After all, to afford travel, I have to be here anyway. Throughout the book, there are great little excerpts from famous travellers, philosophers, and explorers, as well as anecdotes from ordinary travellers. Rolf has a particular liking for Walt Whitman, and I may just have to go pick up some Walt poetry now. The literary references in this book let you know that world travel and a simple life aren't new concepts. The only problem I see with this book is that it may soon become dated with its references to specific websites. The book is of a small and convenient size to take on the road.
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Summary: Inspiring
Review: The hardest part of world travel is acquiring the mindset that nothing else matters as much as the journey. Getting to a place where you reduce your consumption of unnecessary stuff, commit your time, and leave your daily routine behind takes a fair amount of work, and it also takes a major shift in priorities. Vagabonding serves as the kick-start that gets you to that mental place --the "I can do it, and I can do it soon" reply to the siren call of world travel. This book is inspiring, clear, and helpful. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to roam, but thinks they don't have enough money or time. I also recommend it for those, like me, who have gone vagabonding before, know what it takes, and just need a nudge of renewal in order to get back out there again. Great book!
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Summary: Save Your Money For Your Trip
Review: There is no doubt that Potts has had some great experiences; it would have been nice if he would have shared them. This book is neither informative as a travel guide nor interesting as a travel memoir. I can see a bunch of young wannabes bonding with it as a philosophy of the month, but for those of us who have been there, we can eat for a week on the $12.00 this book costs.
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Summary: There's a giant beautiful world out there for the fearless..
Review: This book is a great travel preparation book. I am a big fan of Rolfs Salon.com travel diaries, but this book is different. It wakes you up to the reality and shows you that you can see the world and experience life for cheap. You really just need motivation - and that's just what this book gives you. Because once you are out there - you'll wonder why you were so tranquilized by the common 9-5 life. If you are thinking of traveling for an extended period, or know a friend who travels - this book is a great buy.
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Summary: Philosophy Class Meets the Road
Review: This book is essentially about the thought process behind taking time off from your regular life to discover and experience the world on your own terms. If you've been around the world a few times, you'll find it puts many of your fuzzy warm thoughts and ideals into words. If you haven't, it'll probably make you wonder why you haven't taken off already. People who like to plan and be prepared should treat this as a companion to more nuts-and-bolts guides. Others may find this plenty since travel is all an adventure anyway. It depends on your personality and comfort with the unknown. The rarely expressed aspect of Potts' book, however, is the acknowledgement that both work and travel are admirable and that one complements the other. To travel, you must also be productive sometimes. But to be productive, you also have to continually learn and see other points of view. Traveling abroad on more than a one-week vacation makes this possible. An entertaining and inspiring read. Tim Leffel, author of THE WORLD'S CHEAPEST DESTINATIONS
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Summary: Been There. Done That. . .
Review: This is an earnest if somewhat dreamy primer on the subject of extended long term independent travel. It most closely resembles, in both spirit and content, Ed Buryn's classic sixties book Vagabonding in Europe and North Africa but without that author's now dated "groovy" countercultural musings. Potts indeed graciously acknowledges Buryn's contribution (unlike the shamefully disingenuous Rick Steves.) The practical advice Potts offers is solid but also a bit sketchy. For the nitty-gritty of travel technique and practicalities I far prefer a book like Rob Sangster's The Traveler's Toolkit. Still, Potts does provide a very thorough listing of (mostly web-based) resources that will do much to fill in the gaps. In the more contemplative sections on traveling "vagabond"-style, Potts writing is charming and mercifully free of the tendentious ideological dross that often characterizes writing about travels to what were once called "Third World" destinations. My special congrats to him for gently mocking the "traveler/tourist" dichotomy for the silly supercilious parlor games it often engenders. Still, there is a somewhat moony, disembodied feeling to the book. Instead of all the gaseous quotations from the famous and unfamous (used as filler) I would have appreciated some more attention to hazards, dangers, and risks. These can be substantial: from wild auto-rickshaw drivers to leaky, overcrowded boats, from rabid animals to exotic diseases, and (last but not least) from rickety to downright pathological political regimes. The world can be a wild, wonderful place but it can also provide a cornucopia of nightmares for the ill-prepared and underinformed. Potts does his aspiring vagabonders a serious disservice by not leveling with them about the seamy and potentially hazardous underside of "shoestring" travel in exotic lands.
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Summary: Vagabonding: An Uncommonguide to the Art of Long-Term World
Review: Zorba said it best, "Life is trouble, only death is not. To be alive you've got to undo your belt and look for trouble". When I've undone my belt and followed my heart without fear ... no, without letting my fear dictate and control my journey ... I've always found adventure worth remembering, friends worth keeping and returned with no regrets. VAGABONDING is a small, practical and useful guide for the art of "looking for trouble" and living without regrets. Potts writes intelligently from his heart and experience. His book provides useful information, wonderful access to resources (especially internet resources) and reason to examine the choices we make, especially those we use to remain in our comfortable and often dull status quo. My journey has been most fulfilling when I've undone my belt and stepped away from the perceived safety of my status quo. VAGABONDING (whether to distant corners of our sweet earth or the the neighborhood mall for convenient purchases) provides both advice on traveling well and reasons to travel adventurously. This book is a keeper. It will fit lightly in my day pack wherever I choose to journey.
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