Burst Blog

With the success of your book Vagabonding and its companion site Vagablogging.net why did you create the blog site Vagablogging.net?

Vagablogging was originally set up as an online journal for my Vagabonding book-release tour in 2003. When the book tour was over, I continued to post travel quotes and advice. Eventually, Vagabonding readers rallied around the blog as a place to ponder and discuss independent travel issues, as well as travel literature.

The distinction of Vagablogging is that is has stayed true to the idea that travel is not a mere consumer experience, but an active part of one’s life, something that enables one to explore meaningful ideas as well as territory.

What is your philosophy regarding travel to ensure that the traveler gets the most out of his/her experience?

At the heart of my philosophy is the idea that time — not money or “things” — is the truest form of wealth in this life. Thus, I encourage people to make time for travel, to go slow, and to be open to all possibilities on the road.

What is your favorite place on earth?

I get this question a lot, but I can never answer it. I’m still discovering wonderful places. I can be equally happy in Chilean Patagonia, the Laotian highlands, a souk in Cairo, the 5th arrondissement of Paris, or on my farm in Kansas. It’s all a matter of the attitude that you take into a place.

What new destinations are at the top of your travel To Do list?

Australia probably sits at the very top, since I’ve never been there — but I have plans to go there this fall. Cuba is at the top of that list as well.

In the more long-term future, I’d like to delve more into Africa. Places like Ethiopia and Madagascar have long pulled at my imagination, and I’d like to visit them in coming years.

Why did you join BlogBurst?

BlogBurst seemed like a nice opportunity to extend my ideas about independent travel to an audience that might not normally find me.

Tell us about your experience using BlogBurst. Have you seen pick-up on publisher web sites?

To be honest, I haven’t been able to check my site stats too often, since I’ve been traveling so much this year. But from what I have been able to monitor, I can see that I get a nice amount of referrals from the travel section of SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website). Other publishers show up in the stats here and there, but SFGate seems to have me in a healthy rotation.

What other benefits have you realized from starting the Vagablogging blog?

My blog is an oddly intimate way to keep in touch with my travel audience, to sound new ideas and gain feedback. It requires a lot of time that I might otherwise be able to sink into more remunerative writing, but it has its own, subtle rewards. Even professional rewards, since I doubt, for example, that Yahoo! News would have picked me up as a travel columnist had I not first proven my grassroots reliability in the blog setting.