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Travel memoir lab: How to blend travel writing with a broader memoiristic life narrative
Travel memoir lab: On blending travel narrative 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,…
Ten more “Reverse-Bucket List” experiences (2024 edition)
Last year around this time I wrote a post called “Rolf’s Top-10 ‘Reverse-Bucket List’ experiences from 2023,” in which I confessed that I’ve near really been one to create “bucket lists” so much as decide, after the fact, that a given experience was extraordinary enough to have retroactively qualified as bucket-list worthy. Many of these…
Pico Iyer on how solitude, stillness, and silence play an essential counterbalance to the traveling life
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Pico Iyer on how solitude, stillness, and silence play an essential counterbalance to the traveling life
Taking a Kansas grassroots vision global, to a far-flung grassroots community in Malekula, Vanuatu
From the moment I left home for the South Pacific, my intention was to give my gray One4Us cap away to a local person who I felt embodied the inclusive vision of the brand. My interest in One4Us flows out of my four-decade friendship with its CEO and founder, Tony Johnson. The stated ideals of…
Life changing travel experiences: Memories of traveling to Syria, 25 years on (with Ari Shaffir)
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Life changing travel experiences: Memories of Syria, 25 years on (with Ari Shaffir)