S5E13: The Gates of Hell - Rolf Potts: Author | Vagabonder | Traveler

How do you become the traveler you know you can be? What is the first step on the road to travel? Rolf Potts has the answers to these questions in his back pocket, and he’s more than willing to share; in fact, he’s been giving people this advice for years. Rolf is also one of the reasons Hayden himself got into travel, as Rolf and his book, Vagabonding , crystallized what Hayden had been thinking about travel for his whole life until that point. It gave him the push to become the traveler he knew that he could be all along. 

Rolf Potts - travel writer, adventurer, teacher, vagabonder, and legend - is the one you want to be at your side when you need that push into travel. He knows that vital first step to becoming the traveler. 

Rolf Potts revisits us to tell a story about the people you meet when you travel - both those you want to meet, and those you dread meeting. Rolf traveled to Namibia, which he had heard was quite isolated and severe. What was most famous was the sand dunes, of course, but Rolf was intrigued by the Skeleton Coast, also commonly referred to as the Gates of Hell or the Land God Made in Anger. The road basically disappears, so it is pretty much impossible to drive the entire way along the Skeleton Coast to the border, and, as such, Rolf didn’t expect to see many people in this place. The coast is lined with shipwrecks, each of which has its own turnout off the highway. Ruin after ruin, all the way up the coast, giving a haunted, romantic feel to those who view the rotted ships and those very human feelings. Rolf visited one of these particular ships and encountered Namibian guys who wanted to sell him souvenirs, tribesmen who sell polished rocks to tourists to make a living. 

He had a great conversation with a group of them that granted him an even deeper human feeling than the ships had, through the grace of human connection. He had never dreamed of this part of Namibia, this very real village life, until he turned away from the shipwreck and started talking to people. Rolf Potts, Vagabonding, and Saying Yes to Adventures Rolf Potts, author of Vagabonding , the book that helps you along your path, doesn’t want to tell you who to be. Like travel, he doesn’t try to change you; he just wants to help you be a more authentic you. When you’re around people, you’re not your authentic self. If you go somewhere you’ve never been before, however, without anybody you’ve ever met before, you can get out of your comfortable and protective patterns and help reveal your true self as you change over time. Breaking out of typical patterns and thinking about the important parts of who you really are are inevitable results of travel. Saying yes to things can help contribute to this, as well, but you should analyze the reasons you might say no, and use those reasons to see whether yes would be a good idea first. 

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