Travel is an expression of political as well as personal freedom

“Tyrants never like their subjects to travel: as long as there are no grounds of comparison, there is no basis from which to challenge the existing order. Anything that provides images of a different way of life poses a potential threat. The banning of travel goes hand in hand with the banning of books and the censorship of other sources of information. To invite the traveler to ‘examine the laws, manners and customs of different nations, and to compare them with those of your own’, or even just to ‘remove the prejudices of education’, is a risky undertaking.”
–Ian Littlewood, Sultry Climates (2001)