One of the most startling travel epiphanies I've had in recent years came on a trip to Burma, when I was counting out small change so I could buy a packet of toilet tissues. The Burmese kyat had recently suffered a jag of devaluation, and when I'd tallied up my toilet-tissue money, I noticed that...

"[Percy] Fawcett was taught not just how to survey but how to see -- to record and classify everything around him, in what the Greeks called an autopsis . There were two principal manuals to help him. One was Art of Travel , written by Francis Galton for a general audience. The other was Hints...

"Tedious journeys are apt to make companions irritable one to another; but under hard circumstances, a traveler does his duty best who doubles his kindliness of manner to those about him, and takes harsh words gently, and without retort. He should make it a point of duty to do so. It is at those times...