The Religion of Travel
how Vagabonding shaped my soul
Pick up any Lonely Planet guide, and you’ll quickly discover a country’s top attractions, popular lodging, established restaurants, and helpful details about money, transportation, cultural history, and local customs—all packaged inside a stylish blue paperback. I’ve long adored and relied upon Lonely Planet (and other guidebooks) to orient myself when visiting new countries.
Spend time on TripAdvisor, CultureTrip, or a million different travel blogs and websites, and you’ll find wonderfully niche information: the best coffeeshops in a certain neighborhood of Berlin, crowdsourced reviews for Cuzco’s restaurants, little-known waterfalls in Thailand, advice for changing money on Calle Flórida in Buenos Aires, or how to apply for a Tibetan visa in 2022. The internet is a wild and wonderful place, and it’s an essential way to expand your travel beyond guidebooks.
But because most people only have a few short weeks to travel, all this advice has an Achilles heel: it trends toward checkbox-ism. Go here, do this, eat this, check this box, move along. Travel guides deftly cover the where and what of travel but offer precious little wisdom about the how and why.1
When I voyaged across western Europe at age 19 with three high school buddies, we visited six countries in five weeks, making it our mission to check all the boxes. We each brought a different European guidebook and constantly negotiated about which historical site, museum, bar, hostel, or restaurant deserved our precious time. It was a ton of fun, terribly exhausting, and utterly unsustainable.
That was 2002, long before smartphones and social media—which only added fuel to the fire of checkbox-ism. In my recent trip to Patagonia, hiking to the famous Fitz Roy mountain range, I witnessed a now-common scene: visitors scrambling to capture a perfect picture and then immediately burying their heads in their phones to edit, organize, and evaluate their photos and videos for imminent posting (I assume) to Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat.
After hiking to a breathtaking viewpoint, I particularly recall one man, sitting with his back to the mountains, neck tilted downward toward his phone, for a very long time. He evidently felt no need to further observe this glacier-carved massif. The subject was captured; the job was done. (As Taylor Swift once asked, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to instagram it, does it make a sound?”)
I also snapped a few pictures of Fitz Roy, of course. I too wanted to capture the moment. But this required just a few minutes, leaving me with ample time to sit on my perch, watch the clouds swirl around the peaks, observe my fellow tourists, and wonder why so many people like to put their arms into the air in places like this.
My approach to experiencing Fitz Roy wasn’t inherently superior—it’s your vacation, do what you want!—but it certainly was different. And this difference, I’ve come to realize, applies quite broadly. “Must-see” attractions seldom compel me. Random walks through cities trump organized tours. People-watching, quiet afternoons in cafés, little interactions with strangers, and Couchsurfing produce the most cherished memories. I’m weird in some fundamental way, and I don’t think it’s just because of my personality or because I’ve travel more than most. There’s a deeper undercurrent operating here, a whole different belief system.
The best analogy I can find is: I practice a different religion of travel.
As a lifelong skeptic and atheist, I’ve never taken organized religion seriously. But thanks to the writing of Alain de Botton (Religion for Atheists) and Jonathan Haidt (The Righteous Mind), I’ve become convinced that humans do have a deep need for something approximating religion: something that tells us what to value, how to separate right from wrong, and how to spend the precious time of our lives.
Among the left-leaning communities I find myself a part of, environmentalism and social justice serve as religious proxies du jour. (Even unschooling is quasi-religious.) These issues matter to me, but it’s always travel that calls me home at the end of the day. I travel for work, I travel for play. I consider 12-month leases a form of heresy. The amount of travel research that I do might rival catechism study. In 2022, I’ll be out of the US for six months—and when I’m in it, I’ll mostly be traveling.
Where did this devotion to travel come from, and how did I end up in my particular sect? In this series I’m exploring why “adventure” holds such a tight grip over our psyches—my psyche, in particular—leading me to revisit my early influences.
People embrace long-term travel for a multitude of reasons, but for me, as with my discovery of alternative education, the biggest influence was a book—a “holy book,” if you may. That book was Vagabonding by Rolf Potts.
PUBLISHED IN 2003, Vagabonding couldn’t have found me at a better time: after my box-checking voyage through Europe at age 20, hungry for travel but exhausted by the thought of visiting yet another art museum, I stumbled upon Vagabonding in a Berkeley bookstore and gazed upon its opening line:
Many travel books can help prepare you for an overseas trip, but this book—in sharing a simple and time-honored ethic—can teach you how to travel for the rest of your life.
Travel for the rest of my life? Wait—you can do that? It continued:
This book views long-term travel not as an escape but as an adventure and a passion—a way of overcoming your fears and living life to the fullest.
I want to overcome my fears! I want to live life to the fullest!
Flipping the book over, I saw a picture of the dashing author, freelance author Rolf Potts, sitting outside of (what I assumed to be) some cool café in Southeast Asia with (what I assumed to be) his cool motorcycle. Damn, look at this guy! And what a name! Mormon missionaries may dress to impress, but Rolf Potts had both the looks and a gift for words. Yes, Mr. Potts, I’m ready to hear the Good News.
A slim book, written in simple, direct language, Vagabonding was self-help par excellence: an exquisite balance of storytelling, guidance, quotes, salesmanship, and fact sheets. With punchy chapter titles like “Declare Your Independence,” “Earn Your Freedom,” “Keep it Simple,” “Don’t Set Limits,” “Meet Your Neighbors,” “Get into Adventures,” and “Let Your Spirit Grow,” Potts spoke directly to his audience of young, idealistic, individualistic, and basically privileged Western proto-travelers… i.e., me.
Drawing from his years of backpacking around developing countries, Potts painted multi-month (or multi-year) travel as a straightforward and accessible life choice that would lead to inspiration, insight, and personal growth. Anyone could take this path, Potts enthusiastically suggested, if they simply mustered their courage and creativity, no matter how limited their resources. Extensively citing Thoreau, Whitman, Kerouac, modern travel writers like Paul Theroux, and every major religion (but especially Buddhism and Christianity), Potts also summons uniquely American themes self-reliance, thrift, and frontier spirit, encouraging us to venture boldly forth into the unknown, toward the edges of the civilized world, where there (still) be dragons.
I soon realized that what I held in my hands was no mere travelogue or faceless Lonely Planet—it was an ethical framework, a guide to moving through the world, and a path to spiritual renewal. Like the migrant worker Eric Hoffer who panned for gold and worked on ships for a decade before sitting down to pen The True Believer (a now-classic work of philosophy), Potts felt like someone who had “lived among the people” and then turned around to share his hard-earned wisdom with us, the gentiles, bumbling around with our “to-do” lists. Drop your preconceptions, stop rushing, spend less money, and create meaningful interactions with fellow travelers and locals alike. Do all this, and you too…
…will stand in awe of the ancients at places like Stonehenge, Angkor Wat, and Machu Picchu; you'll wander amazed through the exhibits of the Smithsonian, the Louvre, or the Hermitage; you'll stare in reverence at sunrise over the African Serengeti, sunset on the Australian outback, or high noon in the steamy jungles of Borneo; you'll listen, rapt, to the otherworldly whistle of Mongolian throat singers, stare in amazement at the swirl of Turkish Sufis, or stomp along madly to Irish drinking songs. You will shop for Mayan weavings in the markets of Chichicastenango; haggle for damask in the souks of Damascus, or bargain for brocade in the merchant alleyways of Varanasi. You will bungee-jump the canyons of New Zealand, climb the slopes of Kilimanjaro, or windsurf the Sea of Galilee. You will have impassioned one-week love affairs (with natives and fellow travelers alike) along the Adriatic coast of Croatia, the cobbled streets of Havana, or the neon avenues of Tokyo. You will sip cappuccino in the cafés of the Italian Riviera, eat fresh fruit in the Sri Lankan highlands, or stare blissfully into space along the clean blue waters of the Costa Rican coast. You will quaff ouzo all day on the islands of Greece, dance to techno all night on the shores of Goa, or lose a week's sleep in the Carnival madness of Rio de Janeiro.
Yes, yes, yes. Ten minutes after picking up Vagabonding in that Berkeley bookstore, I was ready to accept Rolf Potts into my heart. Sign. Me. Up.
HERE, THEN, is how to vagabond.2
Get your financial house in order. Cut costs, save up. Cancel your lease, or rent your place to a friend. Put your stuff in storage, sell every non-necessity. Build a travel nest egg by increasingly ignoring the consumer impulses that chain you to your job (which you’re about to quit anyway). Basically—in the words of Jack Kerouac—stop participating in the “system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume.”
Don’t overthink it. Just go. No need for expensive travel gear; fill a small backpack with the absolute basics and pick up whatever else you need en route. Drop your excuses, get a plane ticket, and go. Just like my favorite “how-to” article for those thinking about cycling around the world—get a bicycle, quit your job, and leave—vagabonding is about taking bold steps and making up the rest as you go along.
Choose affordable and quirky destinations. To maximize your “time wealth,” go wherever you can stretch your dollar the farthest: in Asia, eastern Europe, central America, and the Middle East, you can spend less than $1000/month. Stay in hostels, eat street food, and take local transport. Forget “top 10” bucket lists and allow your whims, curiosities, to guide your travels:
An interest in table tennis might take you to China; a rugby addiction might send you to New Zealand or Fiji. The legend of Prester John might lure you to Ethiopia; a passion for butterflies might send you to Costa Rica; a surfing yen might land you in Australia. A curiosity about your ancestry might call you back to Scotland, the Philippines, or Cuba. Maybe your mother’s European hitchhiking trip in the late seventies will inspire you to follow in her footsteps. Maybe you’ll head to Singapore just to see how it measures up to the Tom Waits song of the same name. Maybe you’ll hit Djibouti simply because the mention of this country made you giggle in junior high geography class.
Follow the tourist path for a while (it’s inevitable), but don’t become its slave. Sure, crack open the guidebook. See the “sights.” Check some boxes. But since vagabonding is about long term travel, you’ll soon tire of crowds—so get ready to drop your agenda and look for magic elsewhere:
… never forget that you are uniquely in control of your own agenda. If the line for Lenin's tomb outside the Kremlin is too long, you have the right to buy a couple bottos beer, plant yourself at the edge of Red Square, and happily watch the rest of Moscow swirl around you. If Indonesia’s Kuta Beach feels too much like a strip mall, you have the right to toss your guidebook aside, take a bus inland, and get lost in the sleepy mountain villages of Bali. If the sight of a McDonald's franchise at the edge of Tiananmen Square bugs you, you have the right to jump on a city bus, get off at random, and wander out to observe everyday life in the ancient hutongs of Beijing.
Create your own adventures. Packaged travel experiences are a form of early death. Save money, make memories, and push your boundaries by wandering around and stumbling into adventures. “You don’t ever need a really good reason to go anywhere,” Potts observes, so “go to a place for whatever happens when you get there.”
Which experience, for example, will require more innovation and persistence: buying into a guided expedition up some Andean peak (where you can eat freeze dried turkey tetrazzini along the way and call your family via satellite phone from the summit) or lingering for a few weeks in some Bolivian village to learn a local craft without fully knowing the local language? Which is the real adventure: spending three grand on a mach-one MiG jet ride over Kamchatka, or spending the same sum exploring the cities and villages of Siberia by train and motorcycle? . . . [What] is the adventure in traveling such great distances and achieving such daring acts if (like any workaday consumer) you choose your experience in advance and approach it with specific expectations?
Earn as you go. Critical of trust-fund babies and other deep-pocket travelers, Potts encourages vagabonds to seek out short-term gig work to refuel our coffers on the road. Teach English, pick fruit, work in a bar. As the author Charles Kuralt writes in A Life on the Road, “if you really want to learn about a country, work there.” (Today this list would include many forms of remote work.)
Befriend other western travelers. Because making friends is where the magic happens—and because cultural cross-pollination is downright fun:
Over the years, I’ve sung Norwegian drinking songs in Burma, learned the intricacies of Chilean politics in Latvia, and been tutored in the art of Japanese table manners in Jordan. Traveling with Canadians has taught me more about Canada than I ever learned in my various weekend visits to Vancouver, and my countless conversations with Brits have led me to realize just how confused two people can become while supposedly speak the same language.
Connect with locals. Stroll around with a smile. Chat up people in restaurants, cafes, bars, and tea shops (since “caffeine and alcohol always inspire people to conversation and extroversion”). Play with children in the street, join pickup sports games, and break the ice by sharing physical photos of your family. Learn key phrases in every new country, speak slowly and clearly, and improvise with sign language when needed. Most importantly, maintain a sense of humor and stay humble. Do all this, Potts argues, and you can find endlessly fulfilling interactions wherever you go:
Which encounter, after all, will teach you the most in Punjab: drinking Kingfisher lager with friendly agnostic New Zealanders or sipping tea with friendly Indian Sikhs? Which activity would you enjoy most in Cuba: scuba diving with a gregarious German college student or rumba dancing with a gregarious Havana grandmother? Which of these experiences would you most likely share with your friends when you got home? Which would you remember best in your old age?
Let it flow, keep it spontaneous, and be here now. Potts returns to the point over and over again. Don’t plan too far in advance. Go somewhere and just sit, watch, and listen. Forget efficiency. Forget to-do lists. Slow down. No, really: slow down. Do this, and
…you'll quickly find yourself giddy at how easy and thrilling it all is. Normal experiences (such as ordering food or taking a bus) will suddenly seem extraordinary and full of possibility. All the details of daily life that you ignored back home-the taste of a soft drink, the sound of a radio, the smell of the air-will suddenly seem rich and exotic. Food, fashions, and entertainment will prove delightfully quirky and shockingly cheap. In spite of all your preparation, you will invariably find yourself wanting to know more about the histories and cultures that envelop you. The subtle buzz of the unknown, initially a bit of a fright, will soon prove addictive: Simple trips to the market or the toilet can turn into adventures; simple conversations can lead to charming friendships. Life on the road, you'll soon discover, is far less complicated than what you knew back home—yet intriguingly more complex.
Open yourself to the world, say “yes” more, and trust chance, and let it steer your decisions “in such a way that you're always learning from it.” Potts continues:
Dare yourself to do simple things you normally wouldn't consider—whether this means exploring a random canyon, taking up an invitation to dine with a stranger, or just stopping all activity to experience a moment more fully. These are the kinds of humble choices each of them as bold as bungee jumping that lead not only to new discoveries but to an uncommon feeling of hard won joy.
Drop your high-mindedness, preconceptions, and political correctness. Go to a foreign place to see what’s actually in front of you, instead of what you want to see. Seek to understand first and judge second (if at all).
[No] amount of sensitivity training can compare to what you'll learn by accident. After all, the very concept of "cultural sensitivity" is something we understand through the liberal, democratic, egalitarian taint of our own culture, and these very assumptions might actually be offensive to some ways of thinking. The point of travel, then, is not to evaluate the rightness or wrongness of other cultures (after all, you could stay at home to do that) but to better understand them.
Anticipating modern critiques of political correctness, Potts offers clear moral instruction on how to remain open-minded in the face of culture clash: advice I’ve applied in my approach to both international and domestic polarization.)
This is not to say that holding political beliefs is wrong—it's just that politics are naturally reductive, and the world is infinitely complex. Cling too fiercely to your ideologies and you'll miss the subtle realities that politics can't address. You'll also miss the chance to learn from people who don't share your worldview. If a Japanese college student tells you that finding a good husband is more important than feminist independence, she is not contradicting your world so much as giving you an opportunity to see hers. If a Paraguayan barber insists that dictatorship is superior to democracy, you might just learn something by putting yourself in his shoes and hearing him out. In this way, open-mindedness is a process of listening and considering—of muting your compulsion to judge what is right and wrong, good and bad, proper and improper, and having the tolerance and patience to try to see things for what they are.
Be wary of ethno-tourism and the fetishization of “authenticity.” Writing in 2003, Potts was ahead of the curve. Again, the message is: travel the world to see how other people really exist, not how you hope they exist.
This tourist fascination with the exotic has yielded mixed results. As isolated cultures come into closer contact with modern visitors, they naturally become more and more likely to seek modern conveniences for themselves. The more these ethnic enclaves accumulate radios and motorbikes, of course, the less "authentic" they seem to appear and thus they become less appealing to tourists. In places like Bali, ethnic villages have resorted to "staged authenticity" (hiding televisions and swapping T-shirts for ethnic outfits when tour buses show up) just to maintain their tourism-dependent economy. . . . we end up with these surreal scenarios, wherein tourists from Los Angeles will travel to Thailand to see relatively modernized Hmong villagers don ethnic costumes, yet those same tourists would never think to visit a community of similarly modern Hmong-Americans in Los Angeles.
Regarding the hand-wringing of Western travelers guiltily witnessing the active “development” of developing countries:
One particularly potent strain of traveler pessimism is the notion that modern influences are destroying native societies, or that certain cultures were more "real" sometime in the not-too distant past. According to this assumption, any given society—Kuna or Bedouin or Masai—was somehow better twenty years ago, before it was "spoiled." What such reflexive pessimism overlooks, of course, is that societies have always changed, and that "tradition" is a dynamic phenomenon. . . . much of our concern about the evils of change within premodern cultures is less an interest in the quality of local life than our own desire to experience an "untainted" culture. As anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss pointed out fifty years ago, mourning the perceived purity of yesterday will only cause us to miss the true dynamic of today.
When you get tired of moving around, settle down for a few weeks or months. There’s no need for constant, frenetic transitioning. When you tire, stop moving. Choose a special place where you can read books, catch up on hobbies, find work, volunteer, take language classes, or better connect with locals and travelers alike. (This essentially describes how I’ve lived my life since 2008.)
Remember, it’s all about attitude. Vagabonding is about finding adventure in every experience, including sickness, fear, loneliness, boredom, and conflict. It’s an “ongoing practice of looking and learning, of facing fears and altering habits, of cultivating a new fascination with people and places.” Don’t seek out misfortune, of course, but do accept the whole of life with equanimity. Quoting Henry Miller, Potts reminds us that everything “we deny, denigrate or despise, services to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil can become a source of beauty, joy and strength, if faced with an open mind.”
The ultimate moral trait in the vagabonding religion might be summarized thusly: maintaining an attitude of good-humored open-mindedness in the face of uncertainty and challenge:
The secret of adventure, then, is not to carefully seek it out but to travel in such a way that it finds you. To do this, you first need to overcome the protective habits of home and open yourself up to unpredictability. As you begin to practice this openness, you'll quickly discover adventure in the simple reality of a world that defies your expectations.
Find yourself, over and over again. In the final chapters of the book, Potts draws his most explicit religious connections, describing vagabonding as a “spiritual exercise: a process not of seeking interesting surroundings, but of being continually interested in whatever surrounds you.” Nor is it about becoming “whole”—which would imply closure—but rather about an ongoing process of both self-discovery and the discarding of of “habits, prejudices, even pieces of your heart.”
For those of us who grew up in the west coast culture of self-growth, such language is especially appealing. Who can argue with the prescription to travel, learn, grow, remain curious, and seek the holy in the everyday? Why go to church when a plane ticket and a backpack will suffice?
In reality, there is just as much epiphany to be had in wandering lost through the alleyways of Varanasi, enduring diarrhea on the Bangkok-to-Surat Thani minibus, or playing games with children in the Nazareth town square.
Returning home from a long stretch of vagabonding can feel alienating because—as with any true religious experience—you have changed, and others have not:
Your old friends will offer absolutely no help in this regard. As exciting and life-changing as your travel experiences were, your friends will rarely be able to relate, because they don't share the values that took you out on the road in the first place. You may have shared your soul with a fellow traveler you'd known for two hours in Zambia, but for some reason you'll be unable to get your closest friends to break out of their standard conversation patterns and take an interest in your adventures.
But it will be worth it, in end.
Your travels, you will discover, have awakened you to parts of the world, and awaked parts of the world within you. Experiences and observations that didn't quite make sense on the road will suddenly come into perspective as you once again become a part of your home community. International news about the regions you visited will resonate in a personal way—and you'll come to realize how the mass media can only offer a partial perspective on other places and cultures. As you continue to read, learn, and think about the places you once visited, you'll realize that your travels never fully end. Even in times of solitude at home, you'll feel less like an isolated individual than part of a greater community of people and places, near and far, past and future.
Amen.
VAGABONDING IS NOT a perfect book. Potts giddily (but myopically) claims that Anyone can become a vagabond! if they only set their mind to it:
In reality, long-term travel has nothing to do with demographics—age, ideology, income—and everything to do with personal outlook.
While I’d love to believe that—it wasn’t true in 2003, and it’s not true today. Vagabonding is the domain of young, fit, and WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, And Democratic). Ideology does play a role; I’ve never met a vagabonder who voted Republican. If you’re mired in debt, Potts’ simple exhortation to “work your way out of it” does not help. He assumes a highly robust job market: one in which 28-year-old Rebecca Markey, a Canadian travel quoted in the book, can happily quit her “great job” because “I know there is more out there.” And while Potts does a better-than-average job of representing the lives and concerns of female travelers, the book is unquestionably male-oriented. (One section, titled “Female Vagabonders” smacks of “Female Pilots” or “Lady Doctors.")
Like all writers, Potts cannot be separated from his moment in history—and the early 2000s was an especially fertile moment for world travel. A full decade had passed since the end of the cold war, the global economy was roaring (despite the recent dot-com bust), the Euro had just become an official currency, discount air carriers were on the rise, and tourist infrastructure in developing countries had become commonplace. It really was a golden age—no matter who you were, it was getting easier to travel the world. Some enthusiasm was justified.
I’m a product of my times, too—and what growing up in the 90s taught me was: travel is cool, travel is enlightening, we all should all travel more. But beyond this general cultural milieu, I’m still unsure what tipped me into “extreme travel” mode. Was it the world atlas I perpetually browsed as a child, splayed out on the living room carpet? Was it Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego computer game, teaching me the names of foreign capitals? Or the stories of my parent’s travels, or the international friends I made through summer camp jobs who invited me to visit? Or the simple need to run away from a world in which I couldn’t find my place?
Regardless, by the time I discovered Vagabonding, I was fully primed to embrace its message and moral directives. Almost two decades later, I’m still a believer.
I type these final words from a small café in Cafayate, Argentina, where I am the only gringo around. Momentarily I’ll be joined by my new friend Judit, a 33-year-old Hungarian on her first major vagabonding expedition, 5+ months across South America. (We met on Workaway and decided to travel together for 10 days; it’s been great.) Last week I Couchsurfed with a warm-hearted 70-year-old Argentine pathologist who convinced me to hitchhike to my next destination; I was picked up by a Colombian paleobiologist who also happened to be a competitive trail runner. Next week I’m swinging through Buenos Aires to visit friends I made on previous visits. Then I fly to Portugal to grab my bike, meet two friends in Santiago de Compostela, and together we’ll cycle the Camino de Santiago in reverse.
I’m 39 years old, and I’m still vagabonding. I do almost no sight-seeing anymore. It’s just one adventure after another, following my quirky interests, making friends as I go, trying to stay open and curious, enjoying quiet moments of observation and reflection. Just like Rolf Potts taught me.
If I must have a religion, let it be this. ✷
Another analogy: the Pacific Crest Trail. Near the end of college I became enamored with the idea of thru-hiking the PCT. I devoured books about ultralight hiking, assembled a pack with a base weight of 12lb, trained myself physically, and did my due diligence regarding mileage, resupply points, water sources, and other crucial logistics. Finally, the time came to hike—and I made it all of two weeks before quitting. But it wasn’t the physical or environmental challenges that did me in; it was the mental and emotional challenges. I was well prepared for the material journey but not the spiritual one. (See: Pacific Crest Trials: A Psychological and Emotional Guide to Successfully Thru-Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail — a book I wish existed in 2005.)
Rolf Potts—and Random House Publishers—if you’re seeing this, I apologize for quoting so much of your book… and surely I’ll inspire at least a few more people to buy a copy, right?