Rolf Potts

This image, taken a few years ago at the Go Viral festival, a SXSW-style “influencer” gathering in Kazakhstan, evokes an anecdote I share on page 166 of The Vagabond’s Way. I had been invited to Almaty to talk about digital nomadism and travel storytelling to the assembled audience of Central Asian artists and entrepreneurs. Since…

Internet cafes were so central to the lives of long-term travelers 20 years ago that my memories of vagabonding through Asia in the late 1990s and early 2000s are inseparable from occasional stop-offs in these little storefronts full of dial-up-connected computer terminals. At the time, internet cafes felt revolutionary in their ability to connect travelers…