The Tourist and the Pilgrim

Steps away from me, a visitor holds a camera to his eye to take a photograph of a photograph of Georgia’s unblinking face. In the moment it feels like a surreal thing to witness, but again I understand why it’s happening. Behind that apparatus, the gentleman feels that he has a surer grip on reality, as it can be difficult to fully experience what

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Or do such Sisyphean philosophies—that “the road is life”—turn out to be bourgeois luxuries indulged by those safe enough to pretend this is all there is? Does the hunger and hope of the migrant show us something more fundamentally human? Maybe our craving for rest, refuge, arrival, home is a hunger that can’t be edited—the heart an obstinate palim

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Tourists, of course, are always other people; never us. We are different. We are travelers—intelligent, well-mannered, cultured, a blessing on our chosen destinations, a delight to have around. It’s a common attitude, and one that I have always found condescending and offensive, as well as inaccurate. If you travel away from home for pleasure, you’

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But there is another kind of restlessness that can be experienced on the road, a fatigue that stems from knowing where home is but also realizing you’re not there yet—a kind of “directed” impatience.25 The first is a baseline aimlessness that keeps looking for home; the second is the weariness of being en route, burdened by trials and distracted by

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heightened spiritual awareness is the natural result of your choice to put the material world in its place and hit the road for an extended time. Where your treasure is, your heart will be also—and your decision to enrich your life with time and experience (instead of more “things”) will invariably pay spiritual dividends. Travel, after all, is a f

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There is often something deeper below the surface motivating many of us to strive to uncover something more about ourselves and the nature of this world when we travel. But do we necessarily need to go looking for it “out there” beyond the horizon? Why might strolling the streets of Paris on a fall moonlit night enchant us in a way our midwestern t... See more

This contributes to what Agnes Callard coins the “locomotive” character that has pervaded modern tourism:

“I went to France.” O.K., but what did you do there? “I went to the Louvre.” O.K., but what did you do there? “I went to see the ‘Mona Lisa.’ ” That is, before quickly moving on: apparently, many people spend just fifteen seconds looking at the

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If you want to propose marriage to your girlfriend and you live in England and she is in Sicily, do the decent thing and walk down there. Travelling by car or aeroplane wouldn’t be right at such a moment. Making a journey like that on foot has nothing to do with being a tourist; you won’t find many of them carrying binoculars, a canteen, a compass

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