Rolf Potts

Rolf Potts has reported from more than fifty countries for the likes of National Geographic Traveler, National Geographic Adventure, Conde Nast Traveler, Slate.com, Outside, Islands, Surfer, Outpost, the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, WorldHum.com, The Guardian (U.K.), and National Public Radio. Currently a travel columnist for Yahoo! News (and formerly a travel columnist for Salon.com ), his adventures have taken him across five 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 six printings and translated into several foreign languages. His writing has also been featured in nearly twenty literary travel anthologies , and thirteen of his essays have been short-listed for Houghton Mifflin's annual Best American Travel Writing collection including the gonzo classic " Storming 'The Beach' ", which Bill Bryson chose as a main selection in 2000, and "Tantric Sex for Dilettantes," which Tim Cahill selected in 2006. His writing for National Geographic Traveler and Slate.com garnered him Lowell Thomas Awards in 2003 and 2004, 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 .