Jonathan Raban wrote about travelling:
"When the true and sincere traveller pulls the front door shut and turns the key in the lock, he casts himself adrift in the world. For the foreseeable future, he'll be a creature of chance and accident. He doesn't know when - or if - he'll be back. From here on, he submits himself to the current of things, dog-paddling with the stream and watching where it takes him. If he's wise, he'll have made no appointments and will carry no letters of introduction. Trying to keep appointments wrecks the natural rhythm of a journey, and letters of introduction nearly always introduce you to people who don't much want to see you and whom you would sooner not have seen anyway..............."
and about writing about the journey:
"... actual journeys aren't like stories at all. At the time, they seem to be mere strings of haps and mishaps, without point or pattern. You get stuck. You meet someone you like. You get a rude going over in a bar. You get lost. You get lonely. You get interested in architecture. You get diarrhoea. You get invited to a party. You get frightened. A stretch of country takes you by surprise. You get homesick. You are, by rapid turns, engrossed, bored, alert, dull, happy, miserable, well and ill. Every day tends to seem out of connection with every other day, until living from moment to moment turns into a habit and travelling itself into a form of ordinary life. You can't remember when it wasn't like this. There is a great deal of liberating pleasure to be had from being abroad in the world, continuously on the move, like one of Baudelaire's lost balloons, but a journey, at least as long as it is actually taking place, is the exact opposite of a story. It is a shapeless, unsifted, endlessly shifting accumulation of experience."
"When the true and sincere traveller pulls the front door shut and turns the key in the lock, he casts himself adrift in the world. For the foreseeable future, he'll be a creature of chance and accident. He doesn't know when - or if - he'll be back. From here on, he submits himself to the current of things, dog-paddling with the stream and watching where it takes him. If he's wise, he'll have made no appointments and will carry no letters of introduction. Trying to keep appointments wrecks the natural rhythm of a journey, and letters of introduction nearly always introduce you to people who don't much want to see you and whom you would sooner not have seen anyway..............."
and about writing about the journey:
"... actual journeys aren't like stories at all. At the time, they seem to be mere strings of haps and mishaps, without point or pattern. You get stuck. You meet someone you like. You get a rude going over in a bar. You get lost. You get lonely. You get interested in architecture. You get diarrhoea. You get invited to a party. You get frightened. A stretch of country takes you by surprise. You get homesick. You are, by rapid turns, engrossed, bored, alert, dull, happy, miserable, well and ill. Every day tends to seem out of connection with every other day, until living from moment to moment turns into a habit and travelling itself into a form of ordinary life. You can't remember when it wasn't like this. There is a great deal of liberating pleasure to be had from being abroad in the world, continuously on the move, like one of Baudelaire's lost balloons, but a journey, at least as long as it is actually taking place, is the exact opposite of a story. It is a shapeless, unsifted, endlessly shifting accumulation of experience."
