Potts' travel writing has appeared in venues such as Outside, National Geographic Traveler, Slate, and The Atlantic. Poets & Writers later noted that, 'the story, far from being an account of a simple-minded stunt, was actually a fantastic narrative mixed with meditations on the 'shadowlike ironies of travel culture,' Walker Percy's 'traveler's angst,' and 'the greater struggle for individuality in the information age.'' In 2022, more than two decades after 'Storming 'The Beach'' went viral, Uproxx noted that it 'ushered in a new era of young, avel writing that influenced a generation.' His essay about the experience, 'Storming 'The Beach',' was chosen by Bill Bryson for inclusion in The American Travel Writing 2000. In 1999, while traveling in Thailand, Potts attempted to infiltrate the film-set of a Leonardo DiCaprio movie called The Beach.

He later taught English in Busan, South Korea before embarking on a pioneering multi-year digital nomad journey, writing from-the-road travel dispatches for such dialup-era online outlets as (which later became ). The son of schoolteachers from Wichita, Kansas, Potts' earliest vagabonding journeys included hopping freight trains across the Pacific Northwest, and taking an eight-month 'van life before #VanLife' Volkswagen Vanagon journey around North America in the early 1990s. The lifestyle philosophies he outlined in Vagabonding are considered to have been a key influence on the digital nomad movement. He has written five books, including Vagabonding (Random House, 2003), Marco Polo Didn't Go There (Travelers Tales, 2008), Souvenir (Bloomsbury, 2018), and The Vagabond's Way (Ballantine, 2022). Rolf Potts (born October 13, 1970) is an American travel writer, essayist, podcaster, and author. Rolf Potts talks about his book Marco Polo Didn't Go There

Rolf potts books