redditmarmot

Hi Rolf—huge congrats on hitting the Amazon bestsellers list, the Tim Ferriss marketing machine seems to be firing on all cylinders! I've got four questions for you (sorry to be greedy):

1. I love that your approach to travel is less about pre-planning activities and more about adopting a certain state of mind, for example you suggested that the simple willingness to improvise whilst travelling is more vital, in the long run, than research. How do you increase the odds of finding something interesting or worth writing about ahead of time? Do you have any tips for maximising these serendipitous experiences whilst on the road?

2. In your 'Indie Travel Manifesto', one of the most popular topics was 'Options over possessions'—what sparked your own decision to stop focusing on accumulating more stuff and instead accumulate life experiences?

3. Reading ‘Marco Polo Didn’t Go There’, I laughed hard when I read that many of your 'travel stories begin as an attempt to impress pretty women’! For my benefit the benefit of any unattached vagabonders, where in the world have you had the most success charming beautiful women?

4. You encourage vagabonders to, ‘dare to play games with their day’ and to avoid setting limits on what is and isn’t worthy of their time. eg. indulging in ‘half baked flirtation with alternate futures’—what is the most interesting story that never happened to you?

Thanks!