When you've taken the plunge and went from that dreaming stage to the actual planning stage of a RTW trip , it can be overwhelming to consider all the possibilities. I know when my wife and I first started planning our RTW trip, we (wrongly) assumed we would be able to go everywhere. For someone...

As independent travelers we discuss the best light weight gear or how to save pennies. But what about something that weights nothing and can’t be bought: common sense. Like, pavement is more slippery when wet. Rolling down the highway earlier today, I recalled a lesson my Grandfather taught my mother. “Drive five miles slower when...

When it comes to the vagabonding life, you're quite literally going on the path not taken by most people. As we get older, sometimes the itch to answer the question "what if?" becomes more urgent. Although not strictly related to travel, this GQ magazine article got me thinking: Eric Puchner finds the cooler version of...

Let’s face it, finding time and discipline to write well on the road can be really, really tough. Traveling takes a lot of mental stamina. At the end of a long day, once you’ve found a dinner and settled into the hostel, the last thing you have the mental juice for is thoughtful writing about...

On the left, just inside the main door of the Lund Cathedral is a wooden astronomical clock built around 1424. Tangled within a euphoric stare five years earlier, I’d marveled at the intricate details, inhaled the aged wood, and relished the silence which filled the air. The experience rooted such a vivid impression that I’d...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjY_hJL3nxY Planning a trip can be a logistical tangle. At any one time, I'll have more than half-a-dozen tabs open in my web browser, each a different website. For example: Wikitravel - Get general info. Air Asia - Find cheap flights in Asia. Hostelworld - Book hostels. Urbanrail - Look at subway maps. Travelfish -...

As someone who is now in the travel business, I often think back to those first few weeks of planning after my wife and I decided to take a RTW trip. We were clueless on where to begin, and everything seemed completely overwhelming. So when going over article ideas in our editorial meetings at BootsnAll,...

Travel is taking an active stance. Society funnels people from school to career to family. However, when you travel, you're making a conscious decision to stop following the script that you're given. Instead, you start to write your own script for life. On the personal finance blog "I Will Teach You To Be Rich" (sounds...

Yesterday I came across this article that addressed updating Child Labor Laws in America. And tried desperately to wrap my brain around a logical explanation, why restricting youths from agricultural involvement was a good idea. After a period of extreme frustration with the absurdity of the issue; I settled with the fact at its core,...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxfZkMm3wcg Travel is like life, amplified. Your senses are heightened, experiences are vivid, and time becomes your biggest asset. In that spirit, you can watch the inspirational video by Casey Neistat. The story in the video was that Nike hired Casey to make a promotional film. Instead of doing the job, Casey took the money,...

The love of travel usually starts somewhere. Some grew up in a family that traveled all the time, and it seems like second nature to many to make travel a part of their lives. Others may not have traveled much as kids, and maybe that first trip with friends in college was memorable and planted...

This article is the fourth in a series of posts explaining how to bring your music on the road and get to travel with it. Read the series’ introduction , Post#1 , Post # 2 and Post #3 In the last article of this series I mentioned that a band may decide to book their...

We can be fascinated by the evil and the scary. Certain countries just scream, "Danger!" which only makes us all the more interested in them. One such nation is North Korea. This article in The Guardian UK will go down as one of the most memorable articles I've ever read: How one man escaped from...

When we're away from home, it's tempting to cut loose and forget our inhibitions. A recent piece in The Guardian UK points out the dangers in partying: Vang Vieng, Laos: the world's most unlikely party town . The article explores how the small Lao town has blown up into a hotspot on the Southeast Asia...

Over at BootsnAll, we like to promote long-term, RTW travel. We hope to inspire others to make their travel dreams come true and take a trip around the world. But a recent article challenged the thought that everyone wants to take a round the world trip. The author posed an interesting question, " Is RTW...

When you think of places you've visited, do you remember the sights--or the people? In this article, it was the latter that made the lasting impression: I couch-surfed across America . The vivid and quirky cast of Couchsurfing hosts the writer encounters provide enough fodder for its own TV sitcom. An excerpt: Bill, our host...

This article is the second in a series of posts explaining how to bring your music on the road and get to travel with it. (Read the series’ introduction and Post#1) In my last article I was stressing on the necessity to improve your bands’ live performance by playing as many shows as possible ....

In how many languages do you know how to say "hello"? If you can answer, "11 or more," you qualify as a hyperpolyglot, according to this article in The Economist : Foreign Languages: The Gift of Tongues . The article starts with a historical figure, Cardinal Mezzofanti of Bologna, Italy. He was famed as a...

Recent buzz around the web has suggested big changes in travel, but these trends are much more complicated than gradual increases in tourism as discussed last week by Chris and Marco . We know we can expect at least one billion tourists by 2012, but not everyone is joining the great migration. A controversial New...

Travel is an iterative process of experiencing, ruminating, and growing - with the growth often occurring long after we've returned from our adventures. Through the sites and sounds and smells of the unfamiliar we test our assumptions and lose the loosest notions of our long-held beliefs. In leaving the familiar we willingly leave behind who...