We Travel, In Essence, To

Visiting A New Town Is Like Having A Conversation. Places Ask Questions Of You Just As Searchingly As You Question Them. And, As In Any Conversation, It Helps To Listen With An Open Mind, So You Can Be Led Somewhere Unexpected. The More You Leave Assumptions At Home, I've Found, The Better You Can Hear Whatever It Is That A Destination Is Trying To Say To You.

Perhaps The Greatest Danger Of Our Global Community Is That The Person In La Thinks He Knows Cambodia Because He's Seen The Killing Fields On-screen, And The Newcomer From Cambodia Thinks He Knows La Because He's Seen City Of Angels On Video.

Often When We Think Of Exile We Think Of Destruction Or Loss. But The Dalai Lama Always Says Exile Is Reality, It's Something We Can Make Use Of, And He Has Used It To Get Rid Of Everything That He Thought Was Stifling And Old, And To Create A New, Improved And Much Healthier Tibet.

Travel Spins Us Round In Two Ways At Once: It Shows Us The Sights And Values And Issues That We Might Ordinarily Ignore; But It Also, And More Deeply, Shows Us All The Parts Of Ourselves That Might Otherwise Grow Rusty.

For More And More Of Us, Home Has Less To Do With A Piece Of Soil Than A Piece Of Soul.