Vagabonding By Rolf Potts: When Traveling Becomes Your Life

Vagabonding–n. “(1) The act of leaving behind the orderly world to travel independently for an extended period of time. (2) A privately meaningful manner of travel that emphasizes creativity, adventure, awareness, simplicity, discovery, independence, realism, self-reliance, and the growth of the spirit. (3) A deliberate way of living that makes freedom to travel possible.” Sounds like something that you would want? Rolf Potts wrote a marvelous book about the vagabonding life.

A different outlook on life

Have you already read Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel? It is written by Rolf Potts. He spend his days alone in a room in southern Thailand, putting the book together sentence by sentence. At that time, Potts had no idea that more than 15 years on he would be considered a travel guru and his book a bible. What I love about the book is that it’s not only about travel, but a critical examination of the way we think and how we decide to live our lives.

Excerpt from Vagabonding

The book is a practical guide in many ways; it contains “how to” sections, practical tips for travelers and useful books and websites. However, what makes this book stand out from all other guides out there, is that it promotes an uncommon outlook on life itself. It promotes simplicity, awareness, determination and an adjustment of values. It’s mostly about time – our only real commodity, in Potts’ words – and how we choose to use it. Vagabonding encourages you to loosen your grip on the so-called certainties of this world, and about refusing to exile travel to some other, “more appropriate”, time of your life.

I’m not running away

I find it difficult to settle down, root myself to a place and work day in day out. With the promise of enjoying a questionable liberty during the weekends, holidays, and even the future. For some, my life would be considered successful. I have a nice job, relationship, house, family and friends, and plenty of time for travel in between. I am not ungrateful for what I have, as it’s one of the most privileged lives in the world. But I cannot help but feeling restless sometimes.

Vagabonding by Rolf Potts put into words what I have been feeling for years, and it made me realize that I am not alone in this. Some see long-term world travel as running away from responsibilities. However, for me it’s just a different view on what is important and how I would like to spend my time, in a society that is constantly urging us to do otherwise.

Excerpt from Vagabonding

Traveling for a couple of weeks, or even a gap year, is generally considered acceptable. But those who take their life on the road, who do not come back after a couple of weeks, are often accused of “running way”. From life, from responsibilities, from success, from the future, from “the real world”. However, long-term travel requires a different perspective on what the real world is. I don’t want your job, your house, your domestic certainties.

I want to live and to experience and see the world. To wake up every day to unlimited possibilities of adventure. I choose freedom anytime over 9-5 office life, work commutes and weekend errands. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with wanting or living such a life. But it is not for me. When I get back from traveling, I can last about four weeks of living like this before I get restless. In no time I feel like I am stuck in day-to-day business, rather than spending the short life that I have actually living it.

How to achieve long-term world travel

Of course, not just everyone can get their bags and go. Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel, gives great advice on how to achieve the reality of traveling the world for an extended period of time. Potts writes that: “Even if the practical reality of travel is still months or years away, vagabonding begins the moment you stop making excuses, start saving money, and begin to look at maps with the narcotic tingle of possibility. From here, the reality of vagabonding comes into sharper focus as you adjust your worldview and begin to embrace the exhilarating uncertainty that true travel promises”.

For me, the idea that I am in control of my circumstances and my future really gives a meaningful goal to my daily life back home. I cannot, yet, travel the world for months at a time, but I am saving as much money as I can and arranging my life in such a way so that long-term travel is achievable, and not just a vague and distant idea. The only person who can achieve your dreams is you, no one else is going to do it for you.

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What are your thoughts on long-term world travel?