“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain
The Urge to travel - to open our minds and move beyond the familiar - is as old as man himself. It is what drove the Roman to visit Athens's Acropolis and Verona's amphitheater. It is what drove Marco Polo off on his journey to the east.
Whether we go to London for the weekend or to places that's utterly alien, travel changes us, sometimes superficially, sometimes profoundly. It is a classroom without walls.
Wander-Thirst, by Gerald Gould
Beyond the east the sunrise; Beyond the west the sea
And East and West the Wander-Thirst that will not let me be;
It works in me like madness to bid me say goodbye,
For the seas call, and the stars call, and oh! The call of the sky!
I know not where the white road runs, nor what the blue hills are,
But a man can have the sun for friend, and for his guide, a star;
And there’s no end to voyaging when once the voice is heard,
For the rivers call, and the road calls, and oh! The call of a bird!
Yonder the long horizon lies, and there by night and day
The old ships draw to home again, the young ships sail away
And come I may, but go I must, and if men ask you why,
You may put the blame on the stars and the sun,
And the white road and the sky.
“What gives value to travel is fear. It is a fact that, at a certain moment, when we are so far from our own country, we are seized by a vague fear and an instinctive desire to go back to the protection of old habits. I look upon it more as an occasion for testing.” Albert Camus.
"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we takes but by the places and moments that take our breath aways." - Anonymous
