A couple months back I read a New York Times story ( posted below ) that reported on a

The juxtaposition here cracked me up, especially after having just traveled in Latin America. This image of Che Guevara (the head part, that is -- not the Bart Simpson part) is so ubiquitous on the t-shirts and knick-knacks of backpacker ghettos that it has become as recognizable a "brand" as anything generated by corporate America....

I learned from Jen Leo's blog this week that public radio's Savvy Traveler program has gone off the air. This is sad news for travel radio buffs -- and doubly sad for me, since The Savvy Traveler gave me my first opportunity to do essays for public radio. The favorite pieces I did for the...

Since I

Travel writer Paul Theroux made the shortlist for the annual Bad Sex Awards, which humorously honor bad and overwrought depictions of sex in fiction. The excerpt comes from Theroux's recent novel, The Stranger at the Palazzo d'Oro , and can be found (along with other shortlisted winners) here .

I was astonished to discover today that singer-songwriter Elliott Smith died in an apparent suicide late last year. I'm not sure how I missed out on the news before; I guess you miss these things when you're traveling full-time. I first saw Elliott Smith when he was fronting the punk-influenced band Heatmiser in Portland, Oregon...

Being on the road in South America, I don't have any time to check up on web readings, but Mike Marlett recently sent me a link to " The American Canon Of The Choose-Your-Own-Adventure " by Matthew Collison and Chris Mccoy, which recently appeared in McSweeney's Internet Tendency . This satire shows how the works...

After three years of monthly interviews with travel writers at RolfPotts.com, I was finally able to track down a longtime favorite of mine, Tim Cahill. I will feature an interview with him on the site in January, but -- in the spirit of the holidays -- I wanted to give Vagablogging readers a sneak preview,...

Though I've been on the road since early November, I'm still updating my Writers page with profiles of professional travel writers. In November I talked with Islands in the Clouds author Isabella Tree , and this month I interview James Sturz , a novelist and travel writer who teaches travel-writing classes for MediaBistro . Be...

I don't usually comment on the comments to this blog (at least, not on the main page), but I was intrigued by a recent post by Nyle Walton, a 70 year-old reader who logged a comment on a quote by Richard Halliburton . "I first read Halliburton at age 14," Walton writes, "and he influenced...

This month in the RolfPotts.com Travel Writers section, I interview guidebook author and southern South America expert Wayne Bernhardson . This interview is worth reading for Bernhardson

This month at the RolfPotts.com Writers Page, I interview Melissa Rossi , who -- in addition to writing a rock biography about Courtney Love -- has reported for National Geographic Traveler , and is the author of the recent book, What Every American Should Know about the Rest of the World . Rossi made for...

Late last week, humorist Dave Barry (with a little cajoling on my part) linked my " Power-Struggle Between Butter and Margarine in Germany " interview to his weblog. If you haven't yet seen Dave Barry's blog , you're missing out on one of the finest daily link-collections of humor, bizarre news, and downright nonsense to...

In the event you have a spare moment in the office, this is very funny.

The suggested "Summer Reading List" is a longtime institution in the book sections of major North American newspapers -- and this summer I'm pleased to see that Vagabonding has landed on a travel reading list in Toronto's Globe and Mail . The roundup , which was assembled by Laszlo Buhasz and Alison Gzowski, includes classic...

This month on the RolfPotts.com Writers page, I'm happy to feature an interview with Lonely Planet founder Tony Wheeler . In addition to giving insights into the history of his legendary guidebook company, Wheeler lays out the challenges of what it's like to be a travel guide writer. "Writing guidebooks is like a combination of...

I don't deal much with religion issues on this blog, but religion does intrigue me -- and that's why Elaine Pagels's new book Beyond Belief , (which is about the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas) is on my reading list. It'll be awhile before I get a chance to read it, but I did catch a...

Back when I was first writing Vagabonding , I checked into buying the vagabonding.com Internet domain -- and I was somewhat alarmed to discover that someone already owned it. Who, I wondered, had reserved vagabonding.com, and what were they going to do with it? Naturally, I was afraid the domain might be used as, say,...

For those of you who missed it in the New York Observer last month, here's Ron Rosenbaum's entertaining dissection of the word "Dude" in popular culture. As for the 2003 LebowskiFest (imagine a festival that mixes Big Lebowski motifs with Star Trek-style fan-devotion and Rocky Horror Picture Show -style participation), news and photos from the...

Ever since the Taliban fell in late 2001, I've been curious about when tourism would return to Afghanistan. Apparently, it's beginning to. In a recent Mammoth Times article entitled The Rebirth of Afghanistan , Bill Altaffer optimistically describes what he saw on a recent package tour to Kabul. "You won't find hordes of tourists, fancy...