Quotes About Travel

His book accurately reflects what I feel in traveling in America—the solitary road trip that is in many respects a Zen experience, scattered with road candy, unavailable to motorists in any other country on earth.

An airport is an obstacle course, and because of that it can sour you on the whole notion of travel. By degrees, over the years, the airport experience has become an extreme example of a totalitarian regime at work, making you small and suspect, depriving you of control. Such is the clumsy questioning of motives

I had my own compartment - plenty of space, plenty of provisions, the grapes, cookies, chocolates and tea that made being on the Trans-Siberian like a luxurious form of convalescence.

told them why I was traveling in Mexico: because the notion of ranging widely in a big country attracted me, and because in the United States, under the current presidential administration, Mexico and Mexicans had been reduced to stereotypes. One great reason to travel, I said, was to destroy the stereotypes.

and in a lifetime of travel had never felt more fully alive

Herein, I think, is the chief attraction of railway travel. The speed is so easy, and the train disturbs so little the scenes through which it takes us, that our heart becomes full of the placidity and stillness of the country; and while the body is being borne forward in the flying chain of carriages, the thoughts alight, as the humour moves them, at unfrequented stations

But no sooner had I gotten behind the wheel than a feeling came over me that was like being caressed by a cosmic wind, reminding me of what travel at its best can do: I was set free.

Claudia Muzzi, of Italian ancestry, had traveled in Italy and indeed spoke Italian. But her most memorable experiences had been in the United States, specifically in Georgia. She planned to write about it later in the week.

A train journey is travel; everything else—planes especially—is transfer, your journey beginning when the plane lands.—GRB

I turned seventy in the Kalahari Desert and defended myself against oafs in the stink and misery of northern Angola. All these trips, ten of them, became books.

The glare of gas station rest stops, mystical, comet-like as they rushed past, but melancholy and ordinary when we paused for the ten-minute breaks.

I went to the Yungang Caves outside Datong, where travelers used to draw chalk circles on the beautiful frescoes and Chinese workmen would hack them off the wall and wrap them up; and where another lively business was the beheading of Buddhas. Even so, there are plenty of Buddhas left-and several in the larger caves are as tall as a three-story building.

they had been summoned to Mexico for a family emergency and had been unable to return.

the helpful 2012 guide Don't Go There. It's Not Safe. You'll Die, and Other More Rational Advice for Overlanding Mexico and Central America.

Visitors from Tucson and beyond would pop over for a break from the routine—an opportunity to buy clay pots or sombreros, drink a world-class margarita

If a train is large and comfortable you don't even need a destination; a corner seat is enough, and you can be one of those travelers who stay in motion, straddling the tracks, and never arrive or feel they ought to.

Penrhyndeudraeth

Any advice for me? I'm driving south." "Don't drive at night. You'll be fine. You'll learn a lot. And Mexico City is a lot safer than it used to be.

I asked them to amplify a bit.

Reading about a far-off place can be a satisfaction in itself, and you might be thankful you're reading about the bad trip without the dust in your nose and the sun burning your head, not having to endure the unrewarding nuisance and delay of the road. But reading can also be a powerful stimulus to travel.

But, truly, the worst trains take one across the best landscapes.

drove up the road and into the foothills to Huayapam, a simple drive, my car bouncing on the speed bumps, the topes and corrugations.

If you are thoroughly sick of being kept waiting at home or at work, travel is perfect: let other people wait for a change. Travel is a sort of revenge for having been put on hold, having to leave messages on answering machines, not knowing your party's extension, being kept waiting all your working life—the homebound writer's irritants. Being kept waiting is the human condition.

to be anonymous and traveling in an interesting place is an intoxication