"Strangely, few people (even Lonely Planet-clutching "independent" travelers) think to stray from the accepted travel routes. It's almost as if the tourist trail has become some kind of science fiction force-field -- a web of attractions, amenities and infrastructure from which only intrepid heroes can escape." --Rolf Potts, Vagabonding (2003)

From Abroad (1980): "As I have said, it is hard to be a snob and a tourist at the same time. A way to combine both roles is to become an anti-tourist. Despite the suffering he undergoes, the anti-tourist is not to be confused with the traveler: his motive is not inquiry but self-protection and...

"Our world harbors an uncharted territory, no longer white spaces on the map but black spaces, erected by political terrorism, defended not by insurmountable chains of mountains and impenetrable jungle, but by dogma, blood-lust and modern weapon technology, all of which are again closing the doors our curiosity had opened.

"Many are concerned about the monuments of the West and the East -- to know who built them. For my part, I should like to know who in those days did not build them -- who were above such trifling." --Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)

"When you're headed out with your happy travel dreams, the guidebook is your magic key, it's your oracle, where all the answers await. Problem is, the book is the ideal, that marketing image of grass skirts or exotic temples or jungles that stretch on forever. But the world has its own agenda of trains that...

"How does one see the thing better when others are absent? Is looking like sucking: the more lookers, the less there is to see?" --Walker Percy, "The Loss of the Creature" (1954)

"Schedule a day of rest every now and then. Contrary to what you might read, sudden insights seldom happen at the summit of a mountain, at the moment the whale is sighted, or in the face of some overwhelming bit of landscape. You haven't yet assimilated the experience. Look for epiphanies on those days when...

" Rule 11 : Eat what is put in front of you. They are not making fun of you. The rooster's head floating in the soup really is given to the honored guest. It is impolite not to eat it. If you're a picky eater, stay home. Rule 11, corollary 1 : Take the usual...

"There are places where you are expected to bargain and sharpies who want to take advantage of you. Unfortunately, too many people who think of themselves as 'world travelers' become obsessed with money. It's loathsome to see some young trekker arguing for an hour with an elderly woman over a fifteen-cent charge for an afternoon...

" Rule 7 : Read guidebooks. Guidebooks, books on the country, and books by local authors can help you refine the nature of your quest. * Rule 7, corollary 1 : Expect the books to be wrong or out of date." --Tim Cahill, Hold the Enlightenment (2002)

" Rule 6 : Stop whining. If you're cold and wet, it's a good bet that everyone else in your party is too. Why should they listen to you talk about what they already know? Travel is boring enough as it is. * Rule 6, corollary 1 : This can't be stressed enough: No one...

"Boredom greases the cogs in the machinery of marvels.

"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...

"What keeps the traveler in motion is the possibility that over the next hill, round the next corner, across the next frontier there is something even better. In this pursuit of fantasy, escape is only escape as long as it does not become another reality." --Ian Littlewood, Sultry Climates (2001)

"When our spirits lift at the start of a journey, there is usually an element of relief to be leaving things behind. Travel releases us from the treadmill of domestic habit. Even if it goes no further than our choice of clothes, there is an impulse of defiance." --Ian Littlewood, Sultry Climates (2001)

"It is one of the seductions of travel that it allows us to enjoy the extremes of human emotion and experience in the knowledge that next morning we shall wake in a different place, having left them behind. In the normal way of things, sex, death and religion may be fascinating but they are also...

"Back home in the Wild West, time whips by with the relentless and terrible purpose of a strangling vine filmed in fast motion. A week, two months, ten years snap past like amnesia, a continual barrage of workdays, appointments, dinner dates and laundromats, television shows and videocassettes, parking meters, paydays and phone calls. You can...

"But professional imaginer or not, when you are at the destination you've dreamed of all your life, you're liable to be distracted by material reality in the form of T-shirt vendors and other tourists as you strive to be moved. The creative imagination works best in solitude and silence and not on demand. It is...

"A foreigner tends to see paradise where a native sees purgatory, insofar as a foreigner is in a privileged position and has more appreciative eyes, undimmed by familiarity." -- Pico Iyer , From a Powells.com interview , 2000

"Youth -- nothing else worth having in the world...and I had youth, the transitory, the fugitive, now , completely and abundantly. Yet what was I going to do with it? Certainly not squander its gold on the commonplace quest for riches and respectability, and then secretly lament the price that had to be paid for...