In Turkey it was always 1952, in Malaysia 1937; Afghanistan was 1910 and Bolivia 1949. It is 20 years ago in the Soviet Union, 10 in Norway, five in France. It is always last year in Australia and next week in Japan.
The worst thing that can happen to you in travel is having a gun pointed at you by a very young person. That’s happened to me maybe four times in my life. I didn’t like it.
One of the cardinal principles of Buddhism, the principle of neglect.
And that is all anyone can do, try to be honest about what he feels, what he’s seen or thinks he’s seen.
An island is a fixed and finite piece of geography, and usually the whole place has been carved up and claimed.
Indian enterprises seemed to work so well they produced disasters; success made them burst at the seams and the disruption of unprecedented orders led to shortages and finally failure.
You can’t want to be a writer. You have to be one.
The greatest justification for travel is not self-improvement but rather performing a vanishing act, disappearing without a trace.
Airplanes have dulled and desensitized us; we are encumbered, like lovers in a suit of armor.
There’s always a way if you’re not in a hurry.
You think of travellers as bold, but our guilty secret is that travel is one of the laziest ways on earth of passing the time.
Home is always the impossible subject, multilayered and maddening.
Tightfisted people are as mean with friendship as they are with cash – suspicious, unbelieving, and incurious.
A gun show is about like-minded people who feel as if everything has been taken away from them – jobs, money, pride.
Pain does not create a long-lasting memory, but the memory of luxury exerts itself for ever.
I’m not pessimistic about Africa. The cities just seem big and hopeless. But there’s still a great green heart where there’s possibility. There’s hope in the wilderness.
Travel is a vanishing act, a solitary trip down a pinched line of geography to oblivion.
Railways are irresistible bazaars, snaking along perfectly level no matter what the landscape, improving your mood with speed, and never upsetting your drink.
The journey, not the arrival, matters; the voyage, not the landing.
The Colombians are good-tempered people. They are used to waiting for buses that are late, used to riding buses and trains that do not arrive.