“I confess that I have never understood why so many people’s idea of a fun vacation is to don flip-flops and sunglasses and crawl through maddening traffic to loud hot crowded tourist venues in order to sample a ‘local flavor’ that is by definition ruined by the presence of tourists. This may (as my Festival companions keep pointing out) all be a matter of personality and hardwired taste: The fact that I just do not … Read more »

“I always get terrified right before I travel. I become convinced that this time will be different: I won’t be able to figure out the map, or communicate with non-English speakers, or find the people I need in order to write the story I’ve been sent in search of. I will be lost and incompetent and vulnerable. I know that my panic will turn to excitement once I’m there — it always does — but … Read more »

“Michael [Rockefeller] was working with a bottomless supply of money — the one thing that limits most people, that checks them, that forces them to use friendship and reciprocity and patience with others. And there is a profound difference between people who are friends and people who want your money. Had Michael had less money, he could have had to move more slowly, would have had to settle in villages for longer, to trade, to … Read more »

“There is very little mystery left in driving around America when you can search a million photos of the Grand Canyon online, or when you hew rigidly to the route laid out by the automated Google Maps voice as you roll through the desert. You can travel anywhere you want before you actually go there. Inevitably, this changes how it feels to arrive at a new place — leaving you with that nagging sense of … Read more »

“Of course, writers of any kind are never the norm; those of us who write about travel are different from the start, since we usually head out alone. The reason cited most often is freedom from distraction; when you’re by yourself, you’re more attuned to your surroundings. Less discussed, but just as important, is the fact that, alone, you’re also more sensitive. You not only notice your surroundings more clearly, you respond to them more … Read more »

“Why do we, for a spell, trade the security and comfort of a familiar place for the liberty offered by an unfamiliar space, a swap of domestic fixity for freedom of the open road? Even if we go as tourists, where there and then dominate the peregrination — rather than going like travelers, who each moment try to embrace the challenge of the here and now — don’t we usually set out motivated by curiosity … Read more »

“It used to be that you would hardly ever see anyone you met ever again. With the advent of email, the half-life of a friendship was about a year. Keeping up with mail tended to fall off at that rate, but with Facebook it lasts forever. There is a dark side, however. Over the last several years I’ve often found entire hostel common rooms, with perhaps 40 backpackers, all absorbed in smartphones and tablets, barely … Read more »

“A person who has not crossed an African border on foot has not really entered the country, for the airport in the capital is no more than a confidence trick; the distant border, what appears to be the edge, is the country’s central reality.” –Paul Theroux, Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Capetown (2003)

“These ‘non-places’ have radically changed the concept of home, not only for most of us in the first world but for a growing number of those in the developing world. Perhaps nothing has left so strong a mark on our identities as the periods spent in the sky and in the airports that gather together assorted strangers before sorting them on to different planes. An airport ‘hub’ is a stopping point between places. The ‘hub’ … Read more »

“Here’s what I think: you need to leave and then go back to the places that obsess you. If you want the delight of the unfamiliar you leave yourself enough time between trips to activate the added kick of nostalgia when you return. That is what it means to be a traveler: the desire to immerse yourself, for the ants and the flowers and the sticky heat and the language to become “normal” — but … Read more »