I caught up with the vagabonding vagabond blogger, Rolf Potts, via email and he kindly agreed to answer a few of my questions for Vagobond readers about life, travel, authenticity and himself.
Category: World Travel
Extraordinary Vagobond – Tarzan of Manisa
I never expected to find out that Tarzan came from Turkey!
Vagabond Explorer – Sir Richard Francis Burton
Explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton was quite possibly the greatest vagabond in history. In his lifetime he lived diverse cultures, broke boundaries, and did most of it without much in the way of resources or travel money.He is this week’s Extraordinary Vagabond.
Ibn Battuta – Moroccan Vagabond
The greatest adventurer of all time for me is the Moroccan vagabond, Ibn Battuta. He not only traveled everywhere in his known world, but he wrote about it in ways that no one before him had. Ibn Battuta’s journey lasted 29 years, so by Moroccan standards, my wife should be understanding of this current journey I’m on.
Greedy Vagabond – Conquistador Hernando Cortez
He conquered an entire empire. Sure, it was shitty for Montezuma, but for Cortez? It must have been cool.
Cross Dressing Vagabond – Isabelle Eberhardt
Traveling the world used to be a game that only the men played, but as in all fields, brave pioneers broke out of the Victorian conception of women as meek and mild and showed that even the hardest travel makes no distinction among the sexes. Isabelle Eberhardt was one of these extraordinary feminist vagabonds.
Vagabond Anarchist – Emma Goldman
Her life was filled with constant movement from city to city and town to town.
Papa Vagabond- Ernest Hemingway
When it comes to famous vagabonds, people often forget that respected writers now often had their roots as shiftless vagabonds. Ernest Hemingway is no exception.
Extraordinary Vagabonds: Harry Franck, Pioneer of the Vagabonds
Harry Franck’s willingness to travel with no money, his keen eye for the details of his journey and the societies he recorded (some of which soon disappeared) make him a welcome addition to our list of Extraordinary Vagabonds.
Extraordinary Vagabond – Ed Buryn – Vagabond King
Travel is not just moving over the earth from one place to another in some kind of conveyance. It’s not about where you’re going or how you’re getting there. It’s not about getting away from it all, at all. In fact, more the opposite … a way of getting to it all. Travel is a metaphor for life, a way of experiencing it more intensely and self-consciously. Traveling is not so much an action as an enlightened state of consciousness, opening you to fresh experience, to fresh looks at the world and yourself in it.