Why travel

M. E. Rothwell

Feb 10, 2025

Welcome to Cosmographia — a newsletter dedicated to exploring the world and our place in it. For the full map of posts, see here.

*Old Tower in the Fields* — Vincent van Gogh (1884)

For years now I’ve been thinking about the human urge to travel. Here are some scattered notes on the subject:

Many reflections on human restlessness begin with Pascal’s maxim: “All of man’s unhappiness stems from his inability to sit quietly in a room.” If we never went anywhere or did anything, life would certainly be easier. But who wants an easy life?
The world is a big place. How can you live a full life if you only see a small part of it?
Wanderlust. Itchy feet. Restlessness. We have many words to describe the very physical pull, the wrenching desire to move.
There are many reasons given for why you should travel. Escape. Perspective. Growth. New experiences. Weather. For me it always comes back to a desire to see.
I feel it every time I look at a map. The urge to go there, to see it with my own eyes.
When I was a boy I read a novel called The Amulet of Samarkand. The Silk Road city has lived in my imagination ever since. I’ve sworn I shan’t die before seeing it.
I know people perfectly content to live their entire lives in their hometown. Nothing fills me with more dread.
“To travel is to live.” Hans Christian Anderson.
There are few better feelings than the first night in a strange city. Even better if you are alone.
The right novel read at the right time can shape who we become. It’s the same with places, they too are formative.
Travel for beauty.
Travel to feel small.
Travel to glimpse the unknown.
As the landscape spreads outwards, the mind is forced inwards.
Any traveller worth their salt simply must read Chatwin: “Patagonia is the farthest place to which man walked from his place of origins. It is therefore a symbol of his restlessness.”
Returning to a place you used to live brings grief for a life long gone, or one that never came to be.
Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad all spent time in the desert. Zarathustra climbed his mountain.
In some sense, we all make pilgrimage.
Each of us has a private atlas of memories. The events in our lives remain forever intwined with the settings in which they occurred.
There are places we’ve always wished to visit, but put off going. We fear spoiling the romantic image of it we’ve been nurturing our whole lives.
“The true voyagers are only those who leave | Just to be leaving…” Charles Baudelaire.
Once past a certain age it’s considered strange or sad to travel alone. So think the fools. Book that solo trip.
Birds and beasts travel long distances to forage and mate. But we already have all our material needs met, right here. We seek something else. Something of the spirit.
Few lines as evocative as Shelley’s, “Once I met a traveller from an antique land…”
Place names that get the heart racing: Timbuktu; Xanadu; Tibet.
Geography determines lifestyles — people are shepherds in the hills, farmers in the valleys, sailors along the coast. To see new ways of living, one must travel to new geographies.
A map, like a globe, is a model of the world. They are beautiful, but no substitute for the real thing.
Travel to test yourself.
Travel for the sheer pleasure of it.
In Africa they call outsiders mzungu, meaning ‘aimless traveller’. We are all mzungu.
Tourism digs deep grooves in the landscape, like water flowing downhill. It’s easy to follow those grooves — to book the tour, to fly there, to follow the suggested itinerary. But there’s more reward on the paths less trod.
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— \ I took the one less traveled by, \ And that has made all the difference.” Robert Frost.
To adapt Murakami: if you only visit the places everyone else is visiting, you can only live how everyone else is living.
If it’s difficult to get to, that’s a sign you’re heading in the right direction.
For adventure, walking is the best mode of travel.
A city overrun by tourism becomes Disneyland — an unreal place, false, kitsch.
“Make voyages. Attempt them. There’s nothing else.” Tennessee Williams.
Interesting things happen at the edge of the map.
If people question why you’re going to a place, that’s a sign it’s a good place to go.
There are no better guidebooks than fiction.
Don’t travel to find yourself. Travel to find other people.
You can journey to the other side of the world and the best experience you’ll have is still an interaction with another human being. “I sought trains; I found passengers.” Paul Theroux.
Don’t use google maps. Draw your own. Get lost. Ask strangers for help.
Leave space in your bag for the books you’ll pick up along the way.
Paradoxically, by spending time away from friends and family, you’ll appreciate them more when you return.
“Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold, | And many goodly states and kingdoms seen…” John Keats
As everyone increasingly spends all their travels recording, taking pictures and videos, I fantasise about Dark Travel: a trip with no record. No photos, no social media posts, no written account. You tell no one of it, not even where it was. A trip for you, and you alone.
Time goes faster when you’re sitting still. So move.
“See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask for no guarantees, ask for no security.” Ray Bradbury.
What are you waiting for? Go. Go now.