So far we have seen that the philosophers held travel to be a road to knowledge, that the religions counted it sacred, that psychology found it a medicine for the soul, and that the traveller returns home at the end of the road with a new maturity.
But one question remains, which ties all these threads together: what is it that makes a journey a good one?
For it is clear that not every movement from place to place is a journey worth making. Sometimes a person travels thousands of kilometres and comes back empty-handed, and sometimes a short journey transforms him from within. Where does that difference lie? To my mind, in five things.
The first mark of a good journey is that it has an intention and a purpose. There is a principle in Islamic wisdom which says that the worth of any act lies in the intention behind it; and this holds true of travel as well. Scholars such as al-Ghazali, writing on “the etiquette of travel”, have said that the traveller must before all else know why he is going — to learn, to visit, to worship, to widen his horizon. A journey with a clear purpose has a direction even in its hardships; but a journey without a purpose is nothing more than the wandering of the eyes. And Bacon, as we saw in the first chapter, said the very same thing centuries later in another language.
The second mark, and perhaps the most important, is that a good journey depends less upon the “destination” than upon the “way of seeing” of the traveller. Alain de Botton, the contemporary philosopher, arrives at a profound point in his book The Art of Travel: the pleasure we take in travel depends less upon the place we go to than upon the frame of mind in which we travel. He shows that a person may go to the most beautiful shore in the world and, with a mind full of anxiety, take no pleasure in it at all; and conversely, that someone with a curious, receptive and eager mind may find wonder in the simplest corner. This is the very secret that Seneca uttered two thousand years ago. Saadi says the same: in the eye of the discerning, every leaf of the green trees is a book of the knowledge of the Creator. The secret lies in the “discerning eye”, not in the leaf of the tree.
The third mark is depth as against haste. Many experienced travellers warn that the greatest mistake a traveller can make is to cram his journey with a list of “sights not to be missed”. De Botton says the same: the art of travel lies not in the number of places you see, but in the depth to which you enter them. An hour spent sitting in an unfamiliar lane and watching the ordinary life of the people sometimes teaches more than a visit to ten famous monuments. A good journey is slow and deep, not hurried and shallow.
The fourth mark is respect and connection. A good traveller is a good guest; he shows respect to his hosts and to their customs, learns with humility, and tries to understand rather than to judge. He knows that upon the road he is the representative of his own people and an ambassador of goodwill; and this outlook alone turns his journey from a simple excursion into a bridge between two cultures.
And the fifth mark is the return and its fruit. A good journey does not end with arrival at the destination; it is completed upon the return — when the traveller brings what he has learned back home with him, applies it in his own life, and shares his experience with those who did not go. A journey which leaves behind nothing but a memory in a mobile telephone, and which leaves no mark upon the traveller himself or upon those around him, is an unfinished journey.
If we set these five marks side by side, the definition of a good journey becomes clear: a journey which begins with a right intention, proceeds with a mind present and curious, seeks depth rather than haste, is accompanied by respect and connection, and upon its return builds a better person and a better society. And the beauty of it is that such a journey is within the reach of anyone who sets out with a noble heart — be he a king or a poor wayfarer.
But it is just here, at the end of this part, that we arrive at a truth which turns the face of this book around. And I want to say honestly that it was this one point which drove me to write it.
Up to now we have spoken of how to travel well. But this is the question of someone who already has the possibility of travel. For millions of people in the corners of the world, the question is not how to travel well at all, but whether they can travel at all. The finest intention and the most receptive mind are of no use to someone who has neither a road to go by, nor a means of travelling, nor a bridge to cross. For a great part of humanity, that ancient treasure which the philosophers and the prophets praised, and which the knowledge of our own day has confirmed, still remains locked.
And here we have no choice but to come down from the inner world of the traveller and look at the outer world of roads and rails and bridges. For if travel is so vital to the soul and the understanding of a human being, then making it possible for all the people of the earth is no longer a poetic wish; it is a necessity.
In the next part we begin from precisely this point: from the world as it is — a world in which the absence of roads still deprives a great many people of this ancient right.
Sources: Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel (2002); Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, Ihya’ ‘Ulum al-Din, the section on the etiquette of travel; the principle of “intention” in Islamic wisdom; Francis Bacon, Of Travel; Seneca, Moral Letters; Saadi, Golestan; the findings of world travellers and travel specialists.