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Long-term travel 101: Matt Kepnes on how to save money on an extended journey
Long-term travel 101: Matt Kepnes on how to slow down and save money on an extended global journey
A true story about the historical persistence of the “diversity brochure” trope
For more than a generation now, the promotional literature for American universities has painted a picture of diversity that rarely corresponds to actual diversity on campus. Pick up any brochure for any U.S. university, and its glossy photos will show a vivacious mix of white, black, Hispanic and Asian students smiling arm-in-arm on the quad.…
One person’s ‘adventure’ is another’s vocational duty
One humbling aspect of climbing Borneo’s Mount Kinabalu is that the rest houses on the mountain are supplied by indigenous Kadazan-Dusun porters who use the same trails as recreational hikers. Hence, while Kiki and I were climbing the mountain in waterproof hiking apparel and light backpacks, we regularly ran into local guys wearing t-shirts and…
Some masks sold to tourists in Bali are designed to satirize tourists
Kiki and I didn’t set out to find a satirical Balinese “tourist” mask (which appears 30 seconds into the video below) in the workshop of I Wayan Muka & Mang Mega Mask Product in Ubud. In fact, I might not have stopped by this Balinese craft workshop at all, were it not for Kiki’s interest…
Travel memoir lab: On blending travel narrative with a broader memoiristic life-narrative
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Travel memoir lab: How to blend travel writing with a broader memoiristic life narrative
Dinosaurs (1978): A PDF download of the 76-page “science” book Rolf wrote/illustrated at age seven
While my first book had published was Vagabonding in 2003, and the first travel book I wrote (but did not publish) was Pilgrims in a Sliding World in 1995, the first book I ever completed was Dinosaurs, a whimsical (yet completely earnest) hand-illustrated science book that I wrote in 1978, at age seven. I have talked…
Depicting a place (like Ubud, Bali) beloved by tourists means not cropping out the tourists
The shift from spending a few weeks traveling in Vanuatu to spending a few weeks traveling in Bali made for a curious transition. Not just experientially, but also visually, in terms of choosing what to post on places like Instagram. In Vanuatu, our travel was difficult, frequently uncomfortable, rarely tourist-friendly, and mostly unique to itself.…
How a journey on the Hippie Trail changed Rick Steves’ life (and influenced Rolf’s travels too)
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How a journey on the Hippie Trail changed Rick Steves’ life (and influenced Rolf’s travels too)
A partial list of “best of” lists where Vagabonding landed on the list
When my first book, Vagabonding, hit bookstores early in 2003, it didn’t make many bestseller or Top-10 lists — though it did find an enthusiastic word-of-mouth following that has slowly grown in the two-plus decades since it first debuted. This grassroots success has been so resonant that Vagabonding has, in the past ten years or so, landed…
A travel writers’ Super Bowl special: Pico Iyer and Rolf discuss NFL football from the global perspective
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A travel writers’ Super Bowl special: Pico Iyer and Rolf discuss NFL football from the global perspective
The time Kiki spent her birthday on a Vanuatu ferry designed more for cargo than for passengers
If there’s one twist to our taking a 16-hour industrial ferry from Port Vila to the South Pacific island of Malekula when Air Vanuatu went out of business, it’s that — if we wanted to leave the country as scheduled — we had to find a way to get back to Port Vila. For us,…