II

Prologue

He who returns from a journey is not the same as he who left. Chinese proverb

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are. Samuel Johnson, England

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, narrow-mindeness, all foes of real understanding. Likewise tolerance, or broad wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime. Mark Twain, USA

For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more clearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilization... Robert Louis Stevenson, Scotland, Travels with a Donkey

The months and days are the travelers of eternity. The years that come and go are also voyagers...I too for years past have been stirred by the sight of a solitary cloud drifting with the wind to ceaseless thoughts of roaming. Matsuo Basho, Japan, The Narrow Road of Oku

If "heaven is the Lord's," the earth is the inheritance of man, and that consequently any honest traveller has the right to walk as he chooses, all over that globe which is his. Alexandra David-Neel, France, My Journey to Lhasa