“A virtuous life doesn’t reward you with travel.” -- Rolf Potts I had the pleasure of connecting with Rolf in person this week. I’ve written on his blog since 2012 and we’ve passed a few notes back and forth as we’ve shared the occasional orbit in cyber-space but there’s something different about connecting at eye...

Whenever you go on a trip to visit foreign lands or distant places, remember that they are all someone’s home and backyard. — Vera Nazarian Our first year traveling full time we spent on bicycles. It was a beautiful way to see the world. The drumbeat of pedal strokes become meditation, if you do it...

Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving. — Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of...

“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.” – Aldous Huxley, Brave New World This quote stopped me in my tracks this week. I’m a lover of Huxley’s works and of course Brave New World is a classic. I’m...

“Lost really has two disparate meanings. Losing things is about the familiar falling away, getting lost is about the unfamiliar appearing. There are objects and people that disappear from your sight or knowledge or possession; you lose a bracelet, a friend, the key. You still know where you are. Everything is familiar except that there...

I've been spending a lot of time uncomfortable in Indonesia this month. I confess to being a bit burnt out, a bit gritchy about the things I generally have a sense of humor about (taxi drivers and touts at the top of the list). We flew to Bali for some R&R and to eat our...

"I think to write about jetlag is a way of saying that if you write about travel you're writing about displacement and shock and confusion, and "measure travel inwards", as Thoreau said. And it's a way of saying also that just as magic realism has so enlightened and emancipated our fiction, some of the mechanisms...

"We do these things not to escape life, but to prevent life from escaping us" --Catch-phrase; taken from a 2005 reader email

"Vagabonding is not just moving over the Earth from one place to another in some kind of conveyance. It's not about where you're going, or how you're getting there, or even about getting away from it all. Vagabonds may be male or female, young or old, well-heeled or broke, hip or straight, of any color...

"When people ask me what they should do to become a writer, I seldom mention books. I assume the person has a love for the written word, and solitude, and a disdain for wealth -- so I say, 'You want to be a writer? First leave home.'" --Paul Theroux, Fresh Air Fiend (2000)

"Travel writers are seldom scholars. They are, by inclination if not definition, transients and dilettantes. All that can save the travel writer and redeem his or her often inexpert perceptions of foreign people and places is curiosity, a willingness to be uncertain, an essential emotional generosity, and an ability to write. Even travel writers well...

"Just for a few months of one's life, is it so awful to travel through time with no greater ambition than to find the next lovely meal? Or to learn how to speak a language for no higher purpose than it pleases your ear to hear it? Or to nap in a garden, in a...

"Travel is not really about leaving our homes, but leaving our habits." --Pico Iyer, from "A New Kind of Travel for a New Kind of World", a speech given at the Key West Literary Seminar , January 5, 2006

"Reporting — one of history’s oldest professions, even as it has gone under different names — will survive and prosper, while “journalism” as a respected discipline threatens to dissolve into another branch of the entertainment industry. How will good reporting survive? Individual men and women will slip away from the crowd — away from the...

"For many tourists, the desire for authenticity is rather simplistically expressed in terms of seeking out that which is not contaminated by outside influences—particularly by the presence of other tourists. There are some important things to keep in mind here. First, nearly all tourism experiences are carefully crafted and staged by someone, specifically for our...

"There are people everywhere who form a Fourth World, or a diaspora of their own. They are the lordly ones! They come in all colors. They can be Christians or Hindus or Muslims or Jews or pagans or athiests. They can be young or old, men or women, soldiers or pacifists, rich or poor. They...

"Travel is the only context in which some people ever look around. If we spent half the energy looking at our own neighborhoods, we'd probably learn twice as much." -- Lucy R. Lippard, On the Beaten Track (1999)

"As to scenery (giving my own thought and feeling), while I know the standard claim is that Yosemite, Niagara Falls, the Upper Yellowstone and the like afford the greatest natural shows, I am not so sure but the prairies and plains, while less stunning at first sight, last longer, fill the esthetic sense fuller, precede...

"One of the small marvels of my first trip of Europe was the discovery that the world could be so full of variety, that there were so many different ways of doing essentially identical things, like eating and drinking and buying movie tickets. It fascinated me that Europeans could at once be so alike --...

"Non-travelers often warn the traveler of dangers, and the traveler dismisses such fears, but the presumption of hospitality is just as odd as the presumption of danger. You have to find out for yourself. Take the leap. Go as far as you can. Try staying out of touch. Become a stranger in a strange land....