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Rolling retro-style (and doing laundry) in Paris
There was a time when, believe it or not, I thought Paris was no big deal. This was before I had ever been there — back in the days when I was living and traveling in Asia. At the time, I was so enamored with places like Bangkok and Varanasi and Ulan Bator that I [...]
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August 25, 2010
19 London cliches in less than four hours
Less than a day into my journey, traveling without luggage paid off at my very first destination: It afforded me the opportunity to cram as many generic tourist experiences as possible into a three-and-a-half hour London layover. My No Baggage Challenge kicked off the evening before, in Manhattan, where I met up with a few [...]
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August 23, 2010
How to pack for a journey with no luggage
I’ve been vagabonding for so many years now that I can’t remember the last time I put together a formal packing list. In recent years, my packing process has just been a matter of tossing a few familiar items into my Eagle Creek Voyage 65L backpack and closing the door behind me. If for some [...]
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August 21, 2010
Misadventures in planning the adventure (Or: How I was upstaged by my own dog)
I’m in New York at the moment, doing some interviews and a final bit of prep before I leave the city at just short of midnight to begin the No Baggage Challenge. That makes this the final day of an intensive preparation process that began last Sunday night, when my cameraman and traveling companion Justin [...]
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Why Rolf is traveling around the world with no luggage
When I first announced my intention to circumnavigate the globe for six weeks without carrying so much as a fanny-pack, I got a common (and admittedly reasonable) reaction from my friends: Why? Why travel the world with no luggage? Well, for starters — as someone who’s spent much of the past 16 years traveling to [...]
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August 19, 2010
No Baggage Challenge: The Travel Clothing
By definition a no-luggage journey has to operate on a minimum of gear — but it also has to function with a minimum of clothing. Whatever clothes one brings have to be functional and durable enough to wear constantly, yet small and light enough to pack into pockets if need be. This in mind, here [...]
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August 18, 2010
No Baggage Challenge: The Ground Rules
While circumnavigating the globe with no luggage sounds like a clear enough proposition, it can raise a few semantic issues. What, for example, counts as a bag? Can your traveling companion carry some things for you? Are you allowed to buy new gear and clothing along the way? To clear up these issues, I’ve set [...]
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August 15, 2010
No Baggage Challenge: The Route
Starting and ending in New York City, Rolf will travel through 12 countries in 42 days. He’ll make nearly 10 flights (spending over 50 hours in the air), ride countless trains and buses, and maybe even a boat or two. All with no luggage. From New York, the first stop is London before taking a [...]
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August 14, 2010
Q&A with Jonathan Yevin, no-luggage traveler
Though I’ve long harbored vague intentions of traveling without baggage, I wasn’t aware that other travelers had attempted such a feat until 2006, when travel writer Jonathan Yevin emailed me about his luggage-less adventures in Central America. Since then, Jonathan has gone on to take four more extended no-baggage journeys, including trips to Europe, Southeast [...]
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August 13, 2010
A (very incomplete) history of no-baggage travel
Around the world with no luggage — has this kind of thing ever been done before? I suspect that it has been: At some point in history, no doubt, some anonymous sailor or vagabond made his way around the world with nothing but the clothes on his back. In fact, I’m sure that shorter no-luggage [...]
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August 12, 2010