The Tao of Travel

Luxury is the enemy of observation, a costly indulgence that induces such a good feeling that you notice nothing. Luxury spoils and infantilizes you and prevents you from knowing the world. That is its purpose, the reason why luxury cruises and great hotels are full of fatheads who, when they express an opinion, seem as though they are from another planet. It was also my experience that one of the worst aspects of traveling with wealthy people, apart from the fact that the rich never listen, is that they constantly groused about the high cost of living—indeed, the rich usually complained of being poor.—

GTES

It is almost axiomatic that air travel has wished tourists on only the most moth-eaten countries in the world: tourism, never more energetically pursued than in static societies, is usually the mobile rich making a blind blundering visitation on the inert poor.—

OPE

Tourists will believe almost anything as long as they are comfortable.—

HIO

After a man has made a large amount of money he becomes a bad listener and an impatient tourist.—

POH

She saw their travels in terms of adverts and a long talcum-white beach with the tropical breeze tossing the palms and her hair; he saw it in terms of forbidden foods, frittered-away time, and ghastly expenses.

—Vladimir Nabokov,

The Original of Laura

(2009)

Departures

There is nothing shocking about leaving home, but rather a slow feeling of gathering sadness as each familiar place flashes by the window, and disappears, and becomes part of the past. Time is made visible, and it moves as the landscape moves. I was shown each second passing as the train belted along, ticking off the buildings with a speed that made me melancholy.—

OPE

Nothing is more suitable to a significant departure than bad weather.—

GTES

Frontiers

A mushroom-and-dunghill relationship exists at the frontiers of many unequal countries.—

OPE

In the matter of visas and border crossings, the smaller the country the bigger the fuss: like a small policeman directing traffic.—

POH

A river is an appropriate frontier. Water is neutral and in its impartial winding makes the national boundary look like an act of God.—

OPE