into a foreign country,
where you can't quite speak the language,
and you don't know where you're going,
and you're pulled even deeper into the inviting darkness,
every trip to a foreign country can be a love affair,
where your left puzzling over who you are,
and who you've fallen in love with.
all the great travel books are love stories, by some reckoning-
from the odyssey to the aeneid,
to the divine comedy and the new testament-
and all good trips, are,
like love,
about being carried out of yourself
and deposited in the midst of terror and wonder.
and,
if travel is like love,
it is, in the end,
mostly because it's a heightened state of awareness,
in which we are mindful,
receptive,
undimmed by familiarity
and ready to be transformed.
that's why the best trips,
like the best love affairs
never
really
end."
-pico ayer, excerpt from why we travel.
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