🌍 Episode Summary: Rolf Potts on Traveling in Syria

Travel writer Rolf Potts joins host Ari Shaffir to discuss Potts’s three-week solo backpacking trip through Syria in 2000—a time before the civil war and the country’s later devastation. The conversation explores the people, food, travel experiences, and everyday encounters that stayed with him.

Important context: Potts describes a Syria from 2000. The country has since undergone major conflict, and the episode does not present his experience as a recommendation to travel there today.

🇸🇾 What Syria Was Like for Potts

• Syria was part of the overland backpacker circuit, though less visited than Egypt. Travelers often exchanged tips in person, recommending places to stay and visit.
• Potts remembers Syrians as warm, curious, educated, and hospitable. People he met were often eager to talk with an American and hear about life elsewhere.
• Syria’s cultural mix stood out: different Muslim and Christian communities, Kurdish regions, multiple languages, and a long history as a crossroads.
• Everyday conversations ranged from NBA basketball and Reader’s Digest to family ties in the United States—reminders that people’s interests can differ from what outsiders expect.

🏔️ Staying at Deir Mar Musa

One of Potts’s most memorable experiences was visiting Deir Mar Musa, a Christian monastery in the mountains near Damascus.

• The monastery offered hospitality to travelers, including backpackers.
• Guests helped with chores such as washing dishes and cleaning animal pens.
• Potts recalls simple living conditions, meals shared with others, and conversations among Christians, Muslims, and international visitors.
• He reflects on how travelers can arrive thinking an experience is extraordinary, while it may be an ordinary part of life for the people hosting them.

🚌 Food, Music, and Small Moments

Potts’s stories emphasize the unexpected details that make travel memorable:

• He enjoyed inexpensive local foods, including falafel, ful (fava-bean dishes), fruit, and Middle Eastern coffee with cardamom.
• He tried a sheep-brain sandwich—an unusual food that he found edible but not especially memorable in taste.
• Watching Con Air on a bus to Damascus became a lasting memory: Potts laughed at the film while fellow passengers watched it earnestly and enthusiastically.
• Hearing James Brown in Aleppo and the Pixies in a Cairo cinema made familiar music feel powerful after time away from it.
• He recalls conversations and hospitality in Kurdish communities near the Turkish and Iraqi borders, including a local who offered to help him reach Iraq.

🧭 Potts’s Main Travel Advice

1. Slow down. Don’t pack your itinerary so tightly that you miss discoveries, conversations, or opportunities that arise once you arrive.
2. Stay open to changing plans. A walk, a sound, or a chance encounter may lead to a better experience than the one you planned.
3. Pack light. Carrying less forces you to make useful choices—and many items can be bought or rented at your destination.
4. Accept hospitality graciously. In some cultures, refusing an offered meal or gesture can be more awkward than accepting it.
5. Pay attention to ordinary moments. A cup of coffee, a bus ride, or an unexpected conversation can become as meaningful as a famous attraction.

📚 Books and Podcast

Potts discusses two travel books:

• Vagabonding — A practical guide to long-term travel.
• The Vagabond’s Way — Short reflections and ideas about the experience of travel.

He also hosts the travel podcast Deviate.