Beautiful quotes about travel

Mình vừa đọc được 1 cuốn sách viết về du lịch, hay ơi là hay. Sách viết về "vagabonding", tạm dịch là "du lịch lang thang" - theo trong sách này tức là chỉ những người đi du lịch dài ngày

Dài ngày chỉ là 1 tiêu chí quan trọng, còn 1 số tiêu chí khác mà tự dưng mình đọc, thấy cũng phù hợp với đi du lịch ngắn ngày hoặc ngay cả không-đi-du-lịch (tức là trong cuộc sống bình thường)

Tổng hợp mấy cái quotes hay trong sách

Not long ago, I read that nearly a quarter of a million short-term monastery- and convent-based vacations had been booked and sold by tour agents in the year 2000. Spiritual enclaves from Greece to Tibet were turning into hot tourist draws, and travel pundits attributed this “solace boom” to the fact that “busy overachievers are seeking a simpler life.”

Long-term travel isn’t about being a college student; it’s about being a student of daily life. Long-term travel isn’t an act of rebellion against society; it’s an act of common sense within society. Long-term travel doesn’t require a massive “bundle of cash”; it requires only that we walk through the world in a more deliberate way.

Most of us, of course, have never taken such vows—but we choose to live like monks anyway, rooting ourselves to a home or a career and using the future as a kind of phony ritual that justifies the present. In this way, we end up spending (as Thoreau put it) “the best part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it.” We’d love to drop all and explore the world outside, we tell ourselves, but the time never seems right. Thus, given an unlimited amount of choices, we make none. Settling into our lives, we get so obsessed with holding on to our domestic certainties that we forget why we desired them in the first place.

Work is how you settle your financial and emotional debts—so that your travels are not an escape from your real life but a discovery of your real life.

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. —RALPH WALDO EMERSON, “SELF-RELIANCE”

The reason vagabonding is so appealing is that it promises to show you the destinations and experiences you’ve dreamed about; but the reason vagabonding is so addictive is that, joyfully, you’ll never quite find what you dreamed. Indeed, the most vivid travel experiences usually find you by accident, and the qualities that will make you fall in love with a place are rarely the features that took you there.

The world is a big place. Where should I go? This could be the hardest question of them all—not because some destinations are necessarily better than others but because all destinations are potentially wonderful in their own way. In essence, choosing one region to explore means forsaking (for the time being, at least) dozens of other fantastic parts of the world. Looking for a conclusive reason to pick one place over another can be maddening. Fortunately, you don’t ever need a really good reason to go anywhere; rather, go to a place for whatever happens when you get there. And as cheeky as that may sound, it’s the way vagabonding usually works.

Vagabonding is not like bulk shopping: The value of your travels does not hinge on how many stamps you have in your passport when you get home—and the slow, nuanced experience of a single country is always better than the hurried, superficial experience of forty countries.

“You can read everything there is in the world about a place, but there is no substitute for smelling it!”

Talk to people who have done what you want to do—they love to talk about their experiences and will often be your best resources. Know that there is only so much that you can learn about a place before you just have to go there. Write up an itinerary—even if you don’t follow it, your grandmother will feel better (mine did). Practice with maps in your hometown. Learn to relax about getting lost. Use common sense, use caution, but don’t let paranoia destroy your trip.

“One of the essential skills for a traveler,” noted journalist John Flinn, “is the ability to make a rather extravagant fool of oneself.” Thus, allow yourself to laugh and grow through your mishaps. Not only will you learn new things about yourself and your surroundings in the process, but you’ll also get a crash course in the traveler’s life (which includes such mundane rituals as bargaining for vegetables, navigating unfamiliar surroundings with a guidebook map, and washing your clothes in the hotel-room sink). Given the proper attitude, you’ll find yourself attuned to the new rhythms of the vagabonding life within just a few days.

Indeed, if you set off on down the road with specific agendas and goals, you will at best discover the pleasure of actualizing them. But if you wander with open eyes and simple curiosity, you’ll discover a much richer pleasure—the simple feeling of possibility that hums from every direction as you move from place to place.

Those who visit foreign nations, but associate only with their own countrymen, change their climate, but not their customs. They see new meridians, but the same men; and with heads as empty as their pockets, return home with traveled bodies, but untraveled minds. —CHARLES CALEB COLTON, LACON

“People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home.”

Leaving home is a kind of forgiveness, and when you get among strangers, you’re amazed at how decent they seem. Nobody smirks at you or gossips about you, nobody resents your successes or relishes your defeats. You get to start over, a sort of redemption. —GARRISON KEILLOR, LEAVING HOME

Keep your human interactions on a direct, person-to-person level, and don’t “acquire” these experiences like souvenirs. Even if you find yourself in a positively extraordinary social situation (be it breakfast with Bollywood film stars, lunch with Congolese guerrillas, or dinner with Papuan headhunters), try to keep yourself in the moment instead of thinking about what kind of story it will make when you get home.

Good judgment can come from bad experiences; good experiences can come from bad judgment. The key in all of this is to trust chance, and to steer it in such a way that you’re always learning from it. Dare yourself to do simple things you normally wouldn’t consider—whether this means exploring a random canyon, taking up an invitation to dine with a stranger, or just stopping all activity to experience a moment more fully. These are the kinds of humble choices—each of them as bold as bungee jumping—that lead not only to new discoveries but to an uncommon feeling of hard-won joy.

With this is mind, you should view each new travel frustration—sickness, fear, loneliness, boredom, conflict—as just another curious facet in the vagabonding adventure. Learn to treasure your worst experiences as gripping (if traumatic) new chapters in the epic novel that is your life.

Indulge yourself in “Western” food from time to time, but keep in mind that a restaurant’s food isn’t necessarily healthy (or clean, or tasty) merely because the place has an English-language menu and serves up pizza, club sandwiches, or an “American” breakfast. In Pushkar, India, I once ate lunch at a restaurant that “specialized” in Indian, Mexican, Chinese, Italian, Greek, and Israeli food—and I find it no small coincidence that I suffered stomach problems quite soon after.

We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them.… How should we be able to forget those ancient myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. —RAINER MARIA RILKE, LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET

Adventure can be whatever makes you smile—in the short or long term. (You might not be smiling now, but if you survive, you will!) I don’t really look for adrenaline rushes, and my best adventures would be totally dull to someone else. It is so often circumstance that makes an adventure, not a place or an action. —LIESL SCHERNTHANNER, 35, SEASONAL ANTARCTICA LABORER, IDAHO

The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they really are. —SAMUEL JOHNSON, FROM ANECDOTES OF SAMUEL JOHNSON

This difference between looking and seeing on the road is frequently summed up with two somewhat opposable terms: tourist and traveler. According to this distinction, travelers are the ones who truly “see” their surroundings, whereas tourists just superficially “look” at attractions.

“The traveler sees what he sees,” wrote G. K. Chesterton in the 1920s, “the tourist sees what he has come to see.”

Instead of worrying about whether you’re a tourist or a traveler, the secret to “seeing” your surroundings on the road is simply to keep things real. On the surface, this seems like a simple enough proposition. “Wherever you go, there you are” says a silly adage—and simply being there shouldn’t be a very tough task. The thing is, few of us ever “are” where we are: Instead of experiencing the reality of a moment or a day, our minds and souls are elsewhere—obsessing on the past or the future, fretting and fantasizing about other situations. At home, this is one way of dealing with day-to-day doldrums; on the road, it’s a sure way to miss out on the very experiences that stand to teach you something.

Thus, the purest way to see a culture is simply to accept and experience it as it is now—even if you have to put up with satellite dishes in Kazakhstan, cyber cafés in Malawi, and fast food restaurants in Belize.

Often I feel I go to some distant region of the world to be reminded of who I really am.… Stripped of your ordinary surroundings, your friends, your daily routines, your refrigerator full of your food, your closet full of your clothes, you are forced into direct experience. Such direct experience inevitably makes you aware of who it is that is having the experience. That’s not always comfortable, but it is always invigorating.

People say you have to travel to see the world. Sometimes I think that if you just stay in one place and keep your eyes open, you’re going to see just about all that you can handle. —PAUL AUSTER, SMOKE

Volunteer work, after all, is serious business, and you stand to harm more than help the cause if your convictions are less than true.

We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again—to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more. —PICO IYER, “WHY WE TRAVEL”

People say that what we are all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think this is what we’re really seeking. I think what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive.

Thus, travel compels you to discover your spiritual side by simple elimination: Without all the rituals, routines, and possessions that give your life meaning at home, you’re forced to look for meaning within yourself.

And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Allons! The road is before us! It is safe—I have tried it—my own feet have tried it well—be not detain’d! Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopen’d! Let the tools remain in the workshop! Let the money remain unearn’d! Let the school stand! Mind not the cry of the teacher! Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! Let the lawyer plead in the court, and the judge expound the law. Comerado, I give you my hand! I give you my love more precious than money, I give you myself before preaching or law; Will you give me yourself? Will you come travel with me? Shall we stick by each other as long as we live? —WALT WHITMAN, “SONG OF THE OPEN ROAD”