Rolf Potts has reported from more than fifty countries for the likes of National Geographic Traveler, National Geographic Adventure, Conde Nast Traveler, Slate.com, the New York Times Magazine, Outside, Islands, The Believer, The Guardian (U.K.), and National Public Radio. A veteran travel columnist for the likes of Salon.com and the Travel Channel's World Hum, his adventures have taken him across six continents, and include piloting a fishing boat 900 miles down the Laotian Mekong, hitchhiking across Eastern Europe, traversing Israel on foot, bicycling across Burma, and driving a Land Rover from Sunnyvale, California to Ushuaia, Argentina.
Potts is perhaps best known for promoting the ethic of independent travel, and his book on the subject, Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel (Random House, 2003), has been through seven printings and translated into several foreign languages. His writing for National Geographic Traveler, Slate.com, Lonely Planet, and Outside garnered him Lowell Thomas Awards in 2003, 2004, 2006 and 2007; and he's been cited as an expert on independent travel by publications around the world, from National Geographic Adventure, to TIME Asia, to Italy's La Stampa daily, to the Australian Financial Review.
Though he keeps no permanent residence, Potts feels somewhat at home in Bangkok, Cairo, Pusan, New Orleans, and north-central Kansas, where he keeps a small farmhouse on 30 acres near his family. Each July he can be found in France, where he is the summer writer-in-residence at the Paris American Academy.
Read Rolf's inspiring book: Vagabonding - An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel
