If there’s one thing the travel media loves more than a photo of a sunset. It’s quotes.
The goal of the travel quote is to combine brevity with meaninglessness. It must look like it means something, but mustn’t stand up to even the most cursory examination. If it still means something after three seconds of analysis, it has failed. Take for example this quote attributed to the Prophet Mohammed (pbuh):
“Do not tell me how educated you are. Tell me how much you have travelled.”
One….Two… “Well, I’ve been to Benidorm, Falaraki, Ibiza, Spring Break in Cancun, a Full Moon Party, got wasted in Goa, and Nimbin, oh, and Tijuana…”
See?
It would be worth setting up a no-holds-barred MMA fight between Facebook Quotes and Actual Travel just to see the blood bubble come out of Facebook Quotes’ nose.
Some excellent examples of the genre include “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page” or “The journey itself is my home” or “Once the travel bug bites, there is no known antidote”, all of which would stir any Lonely Planeteer’s soul, as long as you immediately punched them in the face to distract them before they could engage their critical faculties.
Even the most respected writers can’t help themselves. Robert Louis Stevenson, no stranger to a bit of travel, stated the obvious when he wrote: “There are no foreign lands. It is the traveller only who is foreign.” Thank you for that Robert.
Hemmingway, a master of brevity, chimed in with: “It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters, in the end.” but he clearly didn’t believe it and probably just liked the way the words worked in that order.
Travel quotes are not a modern phenomena. The 6th Century BC philosopher Laozi said that: “A good traveller has no plans and is not intent on arriving.” which only proves that Laozi never spend 19 hours in an Indian second-class sleeper carriage. A little further west we find: “Never travel faster than a camel or you will leave your soul behind.” an ancient Arab proverb which just speaks volumes about all sorts of things.
More recently, “Travel far enough, you meet yourself” comes from the book Cloud Atlas, and makes about as much sense as the film did. Other magnificent contributions include: “To travel is worth any cost or sacrifice.” - Eat, Pray, Love (ok, easy target.) “To travel is to live.” - Hans Christian Anderson (Aaaagh!), and “I read; I travel; I become.” – Derek Walcott. (Oh. Fuck. Off.)
Even the usually excellent Rumi got in on the act: “Travel brings power and love back into your life.” What? How? How does it do that Rumi?! (Stick to writing about relationships. You’re quite good at that.)
Some travel writers fail miserably at the travel quote game by actually telling the truth. Paul Theroux missed the point of travel quotes completely when he wrote: “Travel is glamourous only in retrospect.” Theroux’s howling error here is that the quote is critical of travel. This, in TravelQuoteLand, can get you lynched. Travel quotes robe themselves in the Emperor’s New Clothes because they are fully aware that unless we’re attempting to be the first person to cross the Atacama Desert using only our earlobes, we are - in the eyes of someone who doesn’t have the time or money to spend three months wandering round Asia in fisherman’s pants, at least - essentially just ‘on holiday’. But any little boy who feels like pointing that out will find himself bleeding to death in a dumpster round the back of STA Travel pretty quickly.
Fortunately, like nettles and dock-leaves, where you find self-importance, you find parody, and Neil Gaiman did an excellent job of parodying the travel quote with:
“Wherever you travel, you take yourself with you.”
