It was as if we'd only been gone the weekend. Or had we been gone a lifetime. Part of that was because when you've lived in Alaska, living in other places seems easier, less challenging, less threatening. Alaska had enlarged each of us. No one is ever the same after coming back from Alaska.
Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends.You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things: air, sleep, dreams, sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.
I walked down Paseo del Prado, losing myself to the sights, sounds, and dense magic of the city. There's something weirdly calming about being alone in a big city. It made me feel like the universe was hugely generous, and that my species was so damn smart to have constructed such a beautiful city.
I went to Africa to work. Finding myself and falling in love were not items on the agenda. Those were the stuff of daydreams, borne of long, icy Canadian winters. At age 30, I felt I already knew my priorities, talents and limitations. The year in Africa forced me to question all of these assumptions.
As is often the case when I travel, my vulnerability -- like not knowing what the hell I'm going to do upon arrival -- makes me more open to outside interactions than I might be when I'm at home and think I know best what needs to be done. On the road, serendipity is given space to enter my life.
Leor smiled. “Merci, Monsieur Rusé.”“De rien.” Jean replied, and then he checked his watch. “Our flight will be leaving soon. Are you ready for that adventure? Can you brave the terrors of second class?”Leor laughed. “It depends if I get the window seat.
The South Pacific is memorable because when you are in the islands you simply cannot ignore nature. You cannot avoid looking up at the stars, large as apples on a new tree. You cannot deafen your ear to the thunder of the surf. The bright sands, the screaming birds, and the wild winds are always with you.
There is no happiness for him who does not travel, Rohita!Thus we have heard. Living in the society of men, the best man becomes a sinner… therefore, wander!… The fortune of him who is sitting, sits; it rises when he rises; it sleeps when he sleeps; it moves when he moves. Therefore, wander!
Butterflies have always had wings; people have always had legs. While history is marked by the hybridity of human societies & the desire for movement, the reality of most of migration today reveals the unequal relations between rich & poor, between North and South, between whiteness and its others.
The gift of solo moments is that they are wholly ours. On or off the road, solo moments connect us inward to ourselves with heightened clarity and insight. They also direct our energies out into the world, magnetizing us to new people and experiences we may not have encountered under any other circumstance.
It is my hope that this book will help to demystify the origins of travel writing and show that when thousands of travelers follow a guidebook word-for-word, recommendation-for-recommendation, it not only harms contemporary international travel but can also do serious harm to places in developing countries.
There is nothing more exasperating than reading in contemporary guidebooks disparagements of places that are deemed to be "seedy." Do the writers not notice that such places are invariably crowded with people? When a neighborhood is described as "seedy" by some Lonely Planet prude, I immediately head there.
When sharing your news, you might come across some disgruntled parent-folk. You know, the kind who snort and say ruefully, "If there's anyplace you want to travel to, go now." Don't let them squelch your joy, dear K: these are the kind of people who never went anywhere before they had babies either.
The natural tenderness and delicacy of our constitution, added to the many dangers we are subject to from your sex, renders it almost impossible for a single lady to travel without injury to her character. And those who have a protector in a husband have, generally speaking, obstacles to prevent their roving.
Here's what I love about travel: strangers get a chance to amaze you. Sometimes a single day can bring a blooming surprise, a simple kindness that opens a chink in the brittle shell of your heart and makes you a different person when you go to sleep--more tender, less jaded--than you were when you woke up.
