About the Book This collection of rollicking travel tales is from a young writer USA Today has called Jack Kerouac for the Internet Age. Potts documents his funniest and most hair-raising trips, from getting stranded in the Libyan desert without water to learning the secrets of Tantric sex in a dubious Indian ashram. Book Synopsis Marco Polo Didnt Go There is a collection of rollicking travel tales from a young writer USA Today has called Jack Kerouac for the Internet Age. For the past ten years, Rolf Potts has taken his keen postmodern travel sensibility into the far fringes of five continents for such prestigious publications as National Geographic Traveler, Salon.com, and The New York Times Magazine . This book documents his boldest, funniest, and most revealing journeys--from getting stranded without water in the Libyan desert, to crashing the set of a Leonardo DiCaprio movie in Thailand, to learning the secrets of Tantric sex in a dubious Indian ashram. Marco Polo Didnt Go There is more than just an entertaining journey into fascinating corners of the world. The book is a unique window into travel writing, with each chapter containing a commentary track--endnotes that reveal the ragged edges behind the experience and creation of each tale. Offbeat and insightful, this book is an engrossing read for students of travel writing as well as armchair wanderers. Review Quotes Potts is one of the best travel writers to emerge in the last decade. Intrepid and thoughtful, hes a Paul Theroux for the backpacker generation, and Marco Polo reflects this. -- San Francisco Chronicle This hilarious collection of stories provokes because Potts asks the serious question of how to travel in a discovered world. ...If you aspire to be a travel writer, read this book. -- The Guardian (U.K.) Potts isnt so much a travel reporter as a story teller. ...Hes more about getting under the skin of a place -- detailing a cast of characters that would either enthrall or scare the hell out of most travelers, depending on where they come down on the trust-paranoia continuum. -- Orange County Register An equal mix of humor and enlightenment...Potts shows travelers and would-be travelers the joy of immersing oneself in a foreign culture. -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch Best Books of 2008 Potts, Internet raconteur and travel-advice sage, is the kind of guy you wish the pubs had more of: well traveled, generous with funny stories, eager to listen to yours. You feel envious that you werent with him in Cairo to share the convivial squalor of a backpacker hotel, or at an Indian ashram to study Tantric sex, or even in the Libyan Desert, in the dark, out of water and lost. And hes able to draw insights from all that without draining the fun out of the conversation -- difficult to carry off in a pub or a book. -- The Washington Post Armchair travelers will get an enormous kick out of this thoroughly entertaining book. -- Booklist