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…
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…
Sometimes you have to travel halfway around the world to find out how American you are.
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…
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…
Friends and vagabonders, January finds me back in India, headed northeast out of Bombay en route to the epic Kumbh Mela pilgrimage on the banks of the Ganges River, near Allahabad. This colossal Hindu sin-cleansing festival takes place every 12 years, and some sources are predicting a turnout of 70 million people (I didn’t tell…
by Rolf Potts When my Vagabonding column debuted in Salon.com, lots of readers wrote to ask me how they, too, could get jobs as travel writers. This, I’ll admit, was a tough question to answer. After all, travel writing is not really something you can study for in college, and there are certainly no travel…
Friends and vagabonders, Welcome to my newly redesigned website! It’s been a long time since I sent everyone an update — June, in fact, when Salon closed down its travel department just as I was boarding a freighter for India. Thanks to everyone who sent messages of support for Vagabonding to me or to the…
Taken under the wing of a Lebanese detergent tycoon, Rolf learns that there’s a fine line between hospitality and kidnapping.
At a 1-dinar cinema in Amman, Jordan, the real story has little to do with the movie itself.
Armed only with curiosity and a stained pair of pants, Rolf tries to make sense of the Islamic Feast of the Sacrifice in Aqaba, Jordan.
