When Rolf’s parents accompany him on a trip to Mongolia, he suddenly finds the whole parent-child dynamic reversed. But who’s teaching whom a lesson?
Update: May/June, 2002
Friends and vagabonders, Greetings from Kansas, of all places — and thanks to everyone who wrote me after last month’s update with recipes and anecdotes about eating human placenta. Nobody actually volunteered to scarf down afterbirth on television, but I did learn a lot about this bizarre culinary art. One reader, who used to work…
Update: March/April, 2002
Friends and vagabonders, First off, I want to send special thanks out to all my old friends who sent sarcastic “Rolf = David Hasselhoff” e-mails after last month’s Update featured a picture of me running up a beach in a swimsuit. This month, I regret that the Update photo is not nearly so worthy of…
Super Bowl Exile
Rolf reports from Thailand on the difficulty of taking part in a time-honored American custom — watching the Super Bowl — while traveling in Asia.
Update: January/February, 2002
Friends and vagabonders, Greetings once again from Thailand, and here’s hoping 2002 finds you well! Late 2001 was a busy time for me, with various magazine assignments sending me hiking into the jungles of Thailand’s Khao Sok National Park, scuba-diving in the Andaman sea, and exploring the Mergui archipelago in the south of Myanmar. 2002…
Update: November/December, 2001
Friends and vagabonders, Those of you who subscribe to my bimonthly mailing list may have noticed that I failed to send out an update message this month. There are two reasons for this. For starters, the events and aftermath of 9/11 seem to have resulted in a glut of forwarded news and opinion emails, and…
Update: September/October, 2001
Friends and vagabonders, Well, I never thought I’d come to the point where I’d willingly display a photo of myself astride a horse. Maybe this is because I grew up so near the prairie, yet never learned how to properly ride a horse. Or perhaps this is due to lingering resentment over the fact that…
Update: July/August, 2001
Friends and vagabonders, This month I am happy to announce that — for the first time in ages — I have a new travel story appearing online. Actually, it isn’t a new story so much as it is the “Lost Vagabonding Column of 2000” — a Syria-based essay that got lost in the shuffle when Salon…
Anthem Soul
Sometimes you have to travel halfway around the world to find out how American you are.
Update: May and June, 2001
Friends and vagabonders, Late April finds me in Calcutta, poised to make my way into Burma after three months in India. And a wild three months it’s been! Since my last update, I have survived a dog attack in Himalayan snow leopard country, been jailed overnight by the Indian army near the Tibetan border, traveled…
Update: March and April, 2001
Friends and vagabonders, Early March finds me well into my second month in India — a massive and complex country that I am still trying to absorb and comprehend. And, as P.J. O’Rourke wrote, “just when you think you’re getting India, you get it even less.” But even trying to understand this place has thus…