Travel, at its best, is braided together with life itself

“All I know is that I want to live somewhere I’ll have to relearn everything: how to cross the street, how to order coffee, how to deal with people whose modes of thinking are utterly, intriguingly foreign to my own. I want to be uncomfortable, to be an outsider not just in my own mind but in the eyes of everyone who glances at my awkward, bumbling self. I want to figure it out all over again, to savor the small good moments, and I want those tiny triumphs (and inevitable failures) to mark my days, and I want them to add up, over the years and the miles, to a far, far larger victory — that of experience, memory, and language over the unstoppable decay of time. To be clear: this is not wanderlust. Travel is not something separate from the rest of my life, something I need to “get back to.” For me, I’ve come to understand, travel and life are so intricately braided together that they cannot be teased apart.”
–Matt Gross, The Turk Who Loved Apples: And Other Tales of Losing My Way Around the World (2013)

Posted by | Comments (2)  | February 2, 2015
Category: Travel Quote of the Day


2 Responses to “Travel, at its best, is braided together with life itself”

  1. TravlinGal Says:

    That is the best comment on travel I’ve read in ages, maybe ever!

  2. Roger Says:

    I like it too. Here’s one by Bill Bryson, several years ago, that has a similar sentiment that you may agree with: “I can’t think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can’t read anything, you only have the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can’t even reliably cross the street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.” –Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There (1992)