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

Product Information

Traveling without a strict agenda or bulleted to-do list, you’re led mostly by heart instead of brain. It is believed that this particular jungle holds immense wealth inside, but you will have to find it. There are sections in the book about being a senior traveler, a female solo traveler, getting over the language gap somewhere, what to take with you on a long term trip and so on. Gretchen Rubin, New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Project “In this wise, wonder-struck book, travel-writing legend Rolf Potts distills a lifetime of wandering and reading into a series of irresistible songs for the open road. Traveling from America to India, with many stops along the way, Weiner documents his journey to investigate what true happiness is.

Matthew Kepnes, author of Ten Years a Nomad “Spot on and eminently readable, this is the book I wish I’d had when I started my travel career many decades ago. Why I Read this Book: Travel and exploration is an essential part of the development of a successful and fulfilled life. El mayor mérito de "Vagabonding" fue el de revivir en mi el impulso de recorrer el camino una vez más. He also assumes that all travelers have similar motivations and interests, a strange assumption from a man who has seen so many different cultures and so much human diversity across the globe.

When I was feeling homesick or just sick, down, or in a rut I'd read a bit of this book and it would fire me up and give me ideas of what to do next.

Traveling slowly represents engaging with your surroundings, absorbing a place rather than “ticking it off”, and seeing and listening rather than looking and hearing. If you have already gone on open-ended adventures into the world, the first two-thirds (or more) of this book are a bore. This is not for the person who wants to take a week vacation in Cabo, but for someone who wants to hang out in a country or two or however many for a long time -- several weeks to several years. Well written travel books like these have helped inspire my own personal travel goals over the years — and will continue to do so.He goes into detail on how he’s stayed on the move for so long on a shoestring budget, with tips and tricks coming to life through relatable stories.

Potts concentrates on the philosophy and attitudes, showing not so much how to do it (it being the long-term travel or vagabonding of the title) but rather that it is possible. The only problem is, Indigenous tribes who fled there have warned that anyone who finds the sacred city will die. I don’t like work,” says Marlow in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, “but I like what is in the work— the chance to find yourself.

In The Vagabond’s Way, he distills decades of hard-won insight into bite-sized morsels, and the result is a wise, generous, and deceptively profound book. Potts wants us to wander, to explore, to embrace the unknown, and, finally, to take our own damn time about it.