Rickshawallas on parade, ready to strike!! “This is the place where the bodies are burnt. Women cannot access because a few times some of them have jumped over their husbands’ pyres and died. If you see a white cloth, is a man. If you see a red sari, is a woman. I work here as...

There are several notable passages in this interview with Pico Iyer over at World Hum, but here are just a few quotes that resonated with me as someone who is interested in travel and writing. "When I wrote 'Video Night in Kathmandu' I would say, 'I am walking down Clinton Avenue in Iowa City and...

Are you interested in writing for Vagablogging? We’re looking for a few good folks to assist in keeping the blog updated with fresh content: everything from travel tools, gear, articles, blogs, memoirs, news, or anything else floating around the online travel world that fits the vagabonding style. Interested writers should be able to commit to...

Set Tim Cahill loose in Yellowstone with a camera crew in tow, and you’ll get a little something like the following 10 minute pilot episode of Travelers’ Tales , hosted by Michael Shapiro . The two (along with praised nature photographer Tom Murphy , and some unidentified ladies) take a dip in a steaming hot...

“I can’t imagine there has ever been a more gratifying time or place to be alive than America in the 1950s,” wrote Bill Bryson in his new book, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid . As evidence, he included a photo of the Czekalinksi family of Cleveland, Ohio, lined up in front of...

Just a reminder that this Sunday, December 3rd, Rolf will be in Los Angeles performing at Vermin on the Mount , “an irreverent literary-readings series,” held at The Mountain bar, 473 Gin Ling Way . For more information, check out the Vermin on the Mount blog .

Back in September I wrote about Lonely Planet’s curious new guidebook, Micronations: The Lonely Planet Guide to Home-Made Nations ¸ by John Ryan, George Dunford, and Simon Sellars. This week over at Yahoo! Travel, Rolf caught up with John via email to learn more about the micronations of our world , and the necessary conditions...

Over at the Cheapest Destinations blog , Tim Leffel discusses the safety of traveling abroad, and offers up some sound advice for those of you who have a friend or family member that worries about the level of crime where ever you may be traveling to. “… do some digging around and get some stats...

This is the precise reason I love YouTube . Have a look at this clip featuring Jack Kerouac on the Steve Allen Show in 1959 discussing On the Road , and reciting poetry. Awesome. [via boingboing ]

With all the hype surrounding Sacha Baron Cohen 's new movie, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan , Lonely Planet author John Noble sets out to clear up any confusion between the crude, anti-semitic, sexist Borat, and the true people of Kazakhstan. "Horses do not yet have the vote...

Apparently November is “Travel Faux Pas” month here at Vagablogging. A few weeks back I wrote about Rolf’s tongue-in-cheek Yahoo! Travel article on “the worst tourists in the world.” In that same post I offered a link to Budget Travel Online’s “ 10 most common faux pas among travelers .” Today I’m back with more...

If you’re looking to travel long-term and work along the way at organic farms, hostels, home stays, B&Bs and the like, head over to Help Exchange --a network of job listings from around the world. “This scheme is primarily provided as a cultural exchange for working holiday makers who wish to have the opportunity during...

A set of interesting travel photos from London-born photographer, Michael Hughes , has been making its way around the Internet this past week. “Souvenirs” is a collection of images taken of famous buildings, locations, and landmarks from around the world with a postcard or souvenir held in front as to match exactly with the real...

Early in October, Rolf wrote about “ the worst tourists in the world ” at his Yahoo! column, and was met with a barrage of scornful comments from “readers” who merely skimmed the article, extracting the seemingly negative bits (“[Canadians are] exactly like Americans, but more soft-spoken, more polite, less ignorant, and twenty times more...

In 1956, French poet Raymond Queneau compiled a list of books favorited by several famous authors at the time into its own work titled Pour une Bibliotheque Ideale , or (via the Babel Fish translation service) “for an ideal library.” Among the authors featured was prolific American writer, Henry Miller, who contributed 95 of his...

BootsnAll —one of our favorite online resources for everything travel—has recently unveiled four new themed blogs (or “Logues”) as a part of their online travel guide network, LogueIt . “Unlike traditional travel guides that are updated at best every few years, new information and accurate information is added to the logues daily. Logues helps the...

Freelance writer Mark Ehrman has a new book set for release next month, entitled Getting Out: Your Guide to Leaving America (available for pre-order at Amazon ). “Getting Out: Your Guide to Leaving America (Process Books, January 2007) provides an informed consideration for all potential expats: where to go, how to get there, and how...

Of all the holidays, Halloween seems to be the most interesting one to experience at 35,000 feet, next only to April Fool’s, perhaps. I was lucky enough to be on a flight to Las Vegas last April 1st where the flight attendents conviced a majority of the passengers—amazingly enough—to shout their mid-flight drink orders into...

If you’re like me (and somehow I doubt many of you are in this particular case), getting a good haircut is nearly impossible. So impossible, in fact, I was forced to memorize my exact response to “how are we going to cut it today?” from eight years ago—my last successful haircut—in hopes of duplicating the...

Scotty and Fiddy—fresh out of college—recently forestalled their jump into the business world to instead spend 50 days attempting to hitchhike to each of the 50 U.S. state capitals. Naturally, they’re documenting the trip for all to see. “This gives us the opportunity to meet fun people and see fun places all over the USA....