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Rolf Potts is a celebrated travel-writer and best-selling author (over a million books sold!). Besides writing best selling books, teaching writing in Paris each summer, occasionally hosting a television travel show, and inspiring the polymath, phenom Tim Ferriss to embrace the Vagabonding philosophy (as well as give Potts’ book of that same name the coveted spot of “first book in the Tim Ferriss book club”), Rolf Potts lives in rural Kansas and saves for extended world travel. And there’s also the gangsta rap project.
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A philosophy of life, travel and seeing the world.
Vagabonding and the “time-wealth” value-adjustment from which action naturally follows.
(video by Tim Ferriss)
Time is treated as a commodity but thinking of how we will spend our days and our lives can poorly reflect a life we really want and actualize time well.
Travel is not an expensive indulgence. Freeing up the time to travel can be the greater obstacle (mind-frame) for living well.
“time-wealth”
Seeing Time as the true wealth of our lives.
5:20
The repercussions of “the selfie stick” for the modern traveler.
How technology affects how we travel.
6:30
Technology can have you living through a screen instead of traveling or living at a firsthand level.
Tourists of everyday life. Is performance engaged enough?
7:40
Counting selfie sticks in Paris.
It can advertise that you are there to harvest photos. (The least obtrusive selfie stick I could find, in case the temptation for better shot is too much.)
Comic book Wenamun the ancient Egyptian travel story.
If we get bored, lost, or lonely while traveling you are forced to be more imaginative and be more engage with the people and place where you actually are. These are gifts of travel.
10:20
Discipline and the ability to wean off technology and allow life to happen can give us richer experiences. More surprises and more vulnerability can make for a better trip.
Put the smart phone away.
12:10
Asking people where to eat who actually live there.
14:40
How he has evolved as a world traveler?
16:00
Being a Korean ex-pat for a few years and understanding how cultural is a gut-level thing that helps to learn while living there so that the abstractions change into lived experiences.
18:30
Rolf on having a provincial perspective and how it has been a benefit to him because he appreciated the smaller towns and places and not judging the place for their perceived lack of sophistication. People have more time for you in small towns. Big cities can have more arrogance toward other more rural places.
21:00
His recent travel adventure: Renting a car in France with a 100 page road atlas but no guide book. Seeing the beautiful town and eating Beef Burgundy.
Ladder of abstract in writing. We meditate the world through abstractions. Root myself in the concreteness of travel and use my 5 senses.
25:00
The crap shoot of how he choses where to travel.
Visiting friends feels less like travel than it does like reunions.
On traveling alone and winter traveling.
29:20
Places with bad reputations can be the best places to travel. Syria, though, has become too dangerous, but had been one of his favorites.
Egyptians are very accommodating except near the pyramids where it’s very tourist-heavy.
China is a giant country with many things to experience.
Russia also has a lot to experience.
32:00
Less traveled parts of the world can be more interesting and people can have more time for you.
New projects:
Comic book (Wenamun) inspired by reading about travel in the ancient world. The anti-hero is Wenamun who bumbles through his travels. Proceeds go to help Syrian Refugees, Save the Children Fund.
Gangster rap was about the crack-era urban decline of certain areas.
Gangster rap in the 1980s and 1990s was the first black music form in the 20th Century that wasn’t appropriated and sold “with a white face”. Authenticity was so important in the art form is was done differently.
40:40
First exploring the 5th Ward in 1995 and going on a police patrol ride-along and seeing the crime from that vantage point and coming back in 2015. People ride horses in parts of the 5th Ward. The inner city in often a troupe. In Houston, the ghetto is place-specific and Rolf enjoyed writing about the history of it too.
Investigation of place.
44:30
Where to find Rolf, his writings, his books, and travel photos: rolfpotts.com
visit roofpotts.com to view more
May you see world travel in a different way. It is accessible.
Sorry, this is only a partial recording! The LIVE viewers got a great Q & A with Rolf. Don’t it out on the next one. Show up on TUESDAYS at 8pm EST / GMT -4 for the guest of the week.
Managing a wine tasting room is a great job for a writer because, when it’s not too busy, you can become a kind of social scientist: observing people and trying to see why humans do what we do.
You can even allow your curiosity to navigate some of the deeper questions about the human experience.
One recent observation:
The “poison apple” of the smart phone has changed how we do things alone–eating, drinking, or traveling, in particular.
FACT: People rarely come to taste wine by themselves (at our place).
That may seem obvious. Wine tends to bring people together, right? Maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised that people only rarely come alone.
But it IS strange.
Think about it like this:
Shopping for food or clothes alone isn’t considered weird and people tasting wine are really just shopping for wine.
The only difference perhaps are presumptions, previous experiences, or maybe subterranean social exceptions.
• Feeling low…solo
When people visit the tasting room alone, I can usually sense their social discomfort. They might suddenly offer me a reason why they are alone this time or they might neurotically use their phone to look busy or connected.
The alternative, of course, would be to interact with and absorb the environment they are truly in or look for ways to subvert social fear through some modicum of meaningful interaction: friendliness, conversation, inquisitiveness, for starters. So terrifying is the prospect of looking lonely at a winery, that many solo customers barely experience it at all.
• Confronting fear
This observation got me to thinking of ways I try to numb or avoid these fears or points of discomfort in myself and in my life. What am I missing that I shouldn’t be. The default is to use technology to connect, but at what cost?
When I interviewed Rolf Potts, famed travel-writer and best-selling author, he talked about his own wrestling with the seduction of “not being where he was” by engaging with technology. One of the most memorable things he said was this:
“When you travel alone you are forced to confront your own loneliness and boredom, and interact with your surroundings in ways you can’t [when you’re] with a companion.”
We miss our chances for new experiences with the advent of constant so-called “connectedness”, don’t we?
The habit forms quickly. Only thoughtfulness will heal this malady.
(Here’s the video. He covers that bit around min 2:40.)
Do you question how you use technology and confront what it might be stealing from you?
Encountering our loneliness more deeply could create epiphanic moments of self-discovery and new insights into what we fear and what makes us each unique.
Maybe it’s time to do something alone to test your social fears, deepen your healthy sense of self, and develop a new sense of social, and even spiritual, courage and strength.
Maybe leave your phone is the car for the 30 min you shop, eat out, or exercise. Good things could happen.
If you like what you’ve read, consider getting my in-depth but consice weekly correspondence, starting soon. Learn about it here.
By way of a recap, I’m suspending my blogging for a while, but I’m still going to post a few more interviews. I hope you enjoy them.
The bio of Rolf Potts reads like a who’s-who of celebrated travel writers. His NO BAGGAGE Challenge last year highlighted the idea that travel can be much simpler than we tend to think. He trekked over 30,000 miles without a single bag to weigh him down.
The same mentality can be helpful in life too, according to Rolf. Enjoy watching this short chat we had, (and subscribe to the youtube channel for more great stuff).
Besides his website that contains some great articles, blog posts, and case studies in vagabonding–here are 2 of Rolf’s book that make great reading:
Rolf Potts is arguably one of the best travel writers in a generation. (According to media outlets and what Rick Steves says anyway.)
Rolf Pott’s newest book “Marco Polo Didn’t Go there” explores more than decade of his extensive travel to 5 continents.
Last year, Rolf went on a No Baggage trip challenge, traveling 30,000 + miles with no luggage, and it got me to thinking how this type of perspective can be applied to everyday life.
His feat begs the question:
What do we really need to have to live well? It turns out, not much.
Fascinated with his pure and simple approach, I contacted him to do a Ninja Interview. He responded positively within minutes to my request. So, stay tuned for what looks to be one of the most interesting people the Ninja Interviews has “attacked”. I get the feeling Adventure is Rolf’s middle name. Visit his site, and see if you don’t agree.
By the way, how many of you know that I went backpacking around Europe? Yep. 11 countries in 28 days, with just $500 and a Eurail pass. In Prague my diet was 85% ice cream cones (because they were ¢15 a piece). Crazy, but true. Hum. Maybe I should share some of those crazy tales sometime soon.
