Elizabeth Gilbert on mindful travel

Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love, which takes readers on a spiritual journey from Italy to India to Bali, was far and away the most popular travel memoir of 2006. Before long it will be made into a movie starring Julia Roberts. At her website, Gilbert gives some perspectives on mindful travel that share a lot in common with Vagabonding. Here’s a some outtakes:

On funding a long-term journey:

“…For many years, I traveled on the salary of a waitress or a bartender. I would work every shift for six months, then take my savings and go away to a new place, then come home and start working again. I was able to do this because traveling was such an important force in my life (rivaled only by writing) and I willingly gave up certain comforts (nice clothes, a steady job) to save money for plane tickets. Also, I should point out that while I was traveling for “Eat, Pray, Love,” I met hordes of people of all ages and backgrounds and nationalities (families, even!) who were doing incredible journeys – and not one of them had a generous book advance. Of course it’s true that not everyone who wants to see the world will be able to. People are held in place by all sorts of forces – by commitments to work, by the needs of their families, by ill health, by poverty. Yet many, many more people could travel than do.”

On traveling solo as a woman:

“…I’ve personally never had any trouble traveling alone. I chalk this up to a great deal of luck, combined with a fair amount of common sense (there are certain neighborhoods – indeed, nations! – that I simply won’t enter). In truth, though, my experience has always been that there are more advantages than disadvantages to being a solo female traveler. Mostly the benefit is that people trust you more. Certain barriers fall faster before the face of a friendly woman than the face of a macho man. People know that I won’t hurt them. They let me hold their babies and they show me their gardens and feed me dinner. The grace-filled moments of union have always far exceeded, in my experience, the occasional moments of unease.”

On travel and serendipity:

“…I’ve come to believe that there exists in the universe something I call “The Physics of The Quest” – a force of nature governed by laws as real as the laws gravity or momentum. And the rule of Quest Physics maybe goes like this: “If you are brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting (which can be anything from your house to your bitter old resentments) and set out on a truth-seeking journey (either externally or internally), and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue, and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher, and if you are prepared – most of all – to face (and forgive) some very difficult realities about yourself….then truth will not be withheld from you.” Or so I’ve come to believe.”