Unconventional travel writer talks about hitting the road in the Internet age

San Jose Mercury News (MCT) - Rolf Potts has been called the "Jack Kerouac for the Internet age" by USA Today. The 38-year-old Wichita, Kan., native has posted dispatches from more than 60 countries on six continents (once driving a Land Rover from Sunnyvale to Argentina) and coined the term "vagabonding" to describe a life of rootless, long-term world travel; it also was the title of his first book.

His second, a collection of essays recently published by Palo Alto's Travelers' Tales, looks back on Potts' first decade as a travel writer, which began with an effort to crash the set of Leonardo DiCaprio's movie "The Beach." His story about that experience turned into a recurring gig on Salon.com, and his work since has appeared in the likes of Conde Nast Traveler while becoming a staple of the "Best American Travel Writing" anthologies.

In between appearances promoting his latest book, "Marco Polo Didn't Go There," Potts took some time to answer questions about his adventures and his philosophy on travel. Here is an edited version of his remarks.

Q. In the subtitle of the book, you call yourself a "postmodern travel writer." What's postmodern travel?

A. I use the word to describe the increasing placelessness that accompanies any information-age journey. Many recurring themes in my book _ the weird gap between expectations and reality; the challenge of identifying "authenticity" in post-traditional settings _ are the result of this dislocation.

I was drawn to the book's cover photo because it seemed to underscore the "postmodern" aspect of my book. Here we have a traditional exotic image _ Thai monks in saffron robes, praying _ but one of the monks is also pointing his video camera at the scene. It underscores how travel writing can no longer get away with a one-way perspective on the rest of the world. In this multipolar world, the old exotic assumptions about how other people live don't necessarily apply anymore.

I also find "postmodern" fitting to describe my own writing career, since my earliest travel tales debuted online in venues like Salon and World Hum. Whereas previous generations of travel writers enjoyed comfortable stretches of editorial time and geographical space to achieve a romanticized distance from their stories, I never had that luxury. Mention in an Internet travel story that your Cambodian guesthouse owner served you twako pork sausages, and you're bound to get an instant and bewildering array of e-mails _ from the British academic who notes that "twako" is an incorrect transliteration; to the Arizona vegan who insists that pork is murder; to the Cambodian guesthouse owner himself, who now fears all his guests will demand complimentary sausages. In this environment, it's difficult to offer up travel stories as authoritative, self-contained universes.

Q. Everyone wants to discover an untouched paradise, but just about every spot on the globe has been well-trod. The exception is your essay "Toura Incognita," where you discuss the first effort to explore a remote part of Laos. What did that feel like, to be at one of those last frontiers _ and to know it was soon to be changed forever?

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A. One of the most heart-rending aspects of my original visit was to witness the events surrounding the death of an infant in a village called Ban Na _ something that could have been avoided had these people had more resources and contact with the outside world. I'm guessing this kind of thing doesn't happen as much now that tourism has arrived. At the same time, I'm guessing the village doesn't have the feeling of magical isolation it did when I visited several years ago.

That is, of course, the flip side of magical isolation: The people who live there don't always consider it so magical; they'd like the same access to health care and telecommunications that we have. Tourism carries potential for good and bad change, which is why it was interesting to visit Ban Na so early in its tourism cycle.

Q. Your book also has a "special commentary track," which is something we normally associate with DVDs. What was the thinking behind that?

A. The "commentary track" consists of endnotes that follow each story. The endnotes reveal things about the journey that _ for the sake of good storytelling _ one can't reveal in the main text. They question my portrayal of places and people I invariably knew only for a couple of hours, and they remind the reader that the laws of nature and the laws of storytelling are separate entities.

Q. It feels a little like a magician revealing his tricks.

A. You're right. Most all of the endnotes reveal insights about the writing of the story itself. In this way, "Marco Polo Didn't Go There" might serve as a quirky travel-writing textbook, since each story is offset by a peek into its own creation. It's something I always wished David Sedaris or Susan Orlean or Tim Cahill would have done _ reveal all those little true details they couldn't quite get into their stories.

Q. You say in the book that you decided to try to become a travel writer while teaching English in Korea. How did you end up there?

A. Right after college, I found work as a landscaper and used the money from that job to travel across North America for eight months _ my first real vagabonding journey. I came home inspired but broke. I had college friends teaching English in Pusan, and eventually they talked me into coming out and joining them. The experience was both challenging and transformative. It also paid well, and enabled me to travel Asia for two years.

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Q. I spent 14 months "vagabonding" after college and know how exhausting it can get. You now seem to have settled into a slower pace, stationing yourself in a handful of places for months at a time. Was that driven by family? By age?

A. I think my travel decisions are very situational and specific to who I am and where I am in my life. To an extent, there's a bit of pressure to travel full time, since my first book is a celebration of long-term travel, and many people see me as a role model for staying on the road and making travel happen. But the heart of "Vagabonding" was about making travel personal, making your journey express your own sensibilities. Some people find ways to travel non-stop for 10 years and are perfectly happy. Others travel for six weeks and are ready to return to their jobs and home lives. I think it's all great, so long as you're challenging yourself and fine-tuning your sensibilities.

For a number of reasons, including family and age/experience, I felt the need to settle someplace about three years ago. Had I not been close with my family, I might have ended up in Thailand or Argentina or New Zealand. My home base is in Kansas now, and I couldn't be happier. I still travel for much of each year, but I love having a place to go home to. And one thing I've learned from traveling is how much family is a part of people's happiness everywhere you go. So my intention to live close to my family is actually an extension of what I learned on the road.

Q. People must ask you all the time, "Where's the cool place I should be going right now?" What do you tell them?

A. I usually tell them any place is a cool place to go. Not just Paris and Cape Town, but your hometown. Down the block. I've always believed that the destination is less important than what you find along the way. And while there are many places I love to go back to _ Paris, Mongolia, New York, Laos, Argentina _ you'll see from the stories in my book that sometimes my most memorable experiences on the road have come from places nobody has ever heard of _ including me, until I stumbled upon them.

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© 2008, San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.).