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Title: Vagabonding : An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel by Rolf Potts ISBN: 0-8129-9218-0 Publisher: Villard Pub. Date: 24 December, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.56 (16 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Vagabonding: An Uncommonguide to the Art of Long-Term World
Comment: Zorba said it best, "Life is trouble, only death is not. To be alive you've got to undo your belt and look for trouble". When I've undone my belt and followed my heart without fear ... no, without letting my fear dictate and control my journey ... I've always found adventure worth remembering, friends worth keeping and returned with no regrets.
VAGABONDING is a small, practical and useful guide for the art of "looking for trouble" and living without regrets. Potts writes intelligently from his heart and experience. His book provides useful information, wonderful access to resources (especially internet resources) and reason to examine the choices we make, especially those we use to remain in our comfortable and often dull status quo.
My journey has been most fulfilling when I've undone my belt and stepped away from the perceived safety of my status quo. VAGABONDING (whether to distant corners of our sweet earth or the the neighborhood mall for convenient purchases) provides both advice on traveling well and reasons to travel adventurously.
This book is a keeper. It will fit lightly in my day pack wherever I choose to journey.
Rating: 4
Summary: Been There. Done That. . .
Comment: This is an earnest if somewhat dreamy primer on the subject of extended long term independent travel. It most closely resembles, in both spirit and content, Ed Buryn's classic sixties book Vagabonding in Europe and North Africa but without that author's now dated "groovy" countercultural musings. Potts indeed graciously acknowledges Buryn's contribution (unlike the shamefully disingenuous Rick Steves.)
The practical advice Potts offers is solid but also a bit sketchy. For the nitty-gritty of travel technique and practicalities I far prefer a book like Rob Sangster's The Traveler's Toolkit. Still, Potts does provide a very thorough listing of (mostly web-based) resources that will do much to fill in the gaps.
In the more contemplative sections on traveling "vagabond"-style, Potts writing is charming and mercifully free of the tendentious ideological dross that often characterizes writing about travels to what were once called "Third World" destinations. My special congrats to him for gently mocking the "traveler/tourist" dichotomy for the silly supercilious parlor games it often engenders.
Still, there is a somewhat moony, disembodied feeling to the book. Instead of all the gaseous quotations from the famous and unfamous (used as filler) I would have appreciated some more attention to hazards, dangers, and risks. These can be substantial: from wild auto-rickshaw drivers to leaky, overcrowded boats, from rabid animals to exotic diseases, and (last but not least) from rickety to downright pathological political regimes. The world can be a wild, wonderful place but it can also provide a cornucopia of nightmares for the ill-prepared and underinformed. Potts does his aspiring vagabonders a serious disservice by not leveling with them about the seamy and potentially hazardous underside of "shoestring" travel in exotic lands.
Rating: 1
Summary: Save Your Money For Your Trip
Comment: There is no doubt that Potts has had some great experiences; it would have been nice if he would have shared them. This book is neither informative as a travel guide nor interesting as a travel memoir. I can see a bunch of young wannabes bonding with it as a philosophy of the month, but for those of us who have been there, we can eat for a week on the $12.00 this book costs.
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Title: First- Time Around the World (Rough Guides) by Doug Lansky ISBN: 1843530570 Publisher: Rough Guides Pub. Date: 28 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The World Awaits: How to Travel Far and Well by Paul E. Otteson ISBN: 1566912431 Publisher: Avalon Travel Publishing Pub. Date: 30 January, 2001 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Globetrotter Dogma: 100 Canons for Escaping the Rat Race and Exploring the World by Bruce Northam ISBN: 1577312163 Publisher: New World Library Pub. Date: April, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Traveler's Tool Kit, 3rd by Rob Sangster ISBN: 0897323416 Publisher: Menasha Ridge Press Pub. Date: November, 2000 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: The World's Cheapest Destinations: 21 Countries Where Your Dollars Are Worth a Fortune by Tim Leffel ISBN: 1591132495 Publisher: Booklocker.com Pub. Date: December, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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