How Sitting Still Helped Me Heal
Finding the benefits of travel in silence and solitude at a remote lake
What does a travel writer write about in a year marked by a pandemic that forces people to stay home? When the simple act of heading to the local grocery store is filled with fear, would anyone want to get on a plane and transport themselves to a faraway city, knowing that no country is safe?
The best travel writing is not merely about the change of place but about the change that the place brings about in the person who has travelled.
In a recent article in the BBC, acclaimed travel writer, Pico Iyer claims that “Destinations can only be as rich as what we bring to them.” As someone who brings his deeply introspective nature to all his travels, Iyer’s words ring true. Whether he writes about his neighborhood in Nara or accompanies the Dalai Lama across Japan, Iyer manages to make us pause even as he describes a life filled with movement.
A twenty-day, twenty-city tour of Europe sounds like a good deal when listed on a tourist brochure. It’s only when you return from having spent three weeks on a bus, hauling your suitcase on and off each day, with the only change being a new hotel every night…
