The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton is an essay about all the different feelings and stages of travelers of all kind. As someone who loves to travel I identified my own behaviors as I read this book. Alain de Botton uses the English language beautifully. His prose is clean, simple, full of action, and with the capacity to bring to life the places and characters he describes.
“It was hard to say when exactly winter arrived. The decline was gradual, like that of a person into old age, inconspicuous from day to day until the season became an established, relentless reality” is the beginning of the first of five stages of travel, Departure. My favorite part was ‘On Anticipation’ that speaks on how we anticipate the trip with excitement just to be disappointed because, as the writer puts it, “I had inadvertently brought myself with me to the island.”
To read The Art of Travel is a learning experience. Each of the five stages – Departure, Motives, Landscape, Art, and Return – has a destination (or more than one) and a guide. Alain de Botton flawlessly puts together destination and guide. I not only traveled through the described destination but also through the life of my guide.
This compelling essay is food for thought and reflection on how we travel and how going to other places affect our mind and feelings. We are motivated to reflect during our journeys to other places. As the author puts it “journeys are the midwives of thought.”
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