“What we may find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home.”

A long, long time ago, I had to read The Art of Travel for school. Expecting something on travelling, I remember feeling disappointed that it was more on the philosophy of travelling. But since I recently read The World in a Selfie, I thought it was time to go back to The Art of Travel.

Where The World in a Selfie was a broad look at the philosophy of travel, The Art of Travel is a more personal one, focusing on what we experience before, during, and after a voyage. De Botton talks about the anticipation of a trip, how the trip differs from our anticipation, what we find exotic, on art and beauty – really the different elements of the trip. All this is done through both de Botton’s own experience of travelling and by visiting various writers on how they travelled (or not, in one case). It’s not really a travelogue, nor is it a purely philosophical meditation on travel – when I went back through the contents, I realised that this is a collection of examples of travelling and we are invited and guided through a journey of thinking about our own experiences while travelling.

Going back to my review of The World in a Selfie, I wrote about how one passage on the the disappointment of tourists reminded me of The Art of Travel. I think it’s this passage:

The anticipatory and artistic imaginations omit and compress; they cut away the periods of boredom and direct our attention to critical moments, and thus, without either lying or embellishing, they lend to life a vividness and a coherence that it may lack in the distracting woolliness of the present.

The chapter on anticipation is about how we anticipate only the best moments, and how we also remember the best moments (or worst moments) of a trip. But what we experience is everything, including the boring parts where we’re just travelling or waiting. And I think that agrees pretty well with the idea of tourists being disappointed when their trip is not all markers – but I think de Botton’s explanation of this phenomenon also implies that the disappointment that a country is just a guidebook is a temporary one, and our personal editing of the trip when we review our memories will make us remember a much more eventful journey.

Perhaps because it’s so personal, it feels more hopeful than The World in a Selfie. The impact of overtourism, the consequences of our search for authenticity on the places we visit, our attitude towards other tourists – these are all not discussed. Which makes this a good book to pair with other, perhaps more pessimistic books. If we want to know how we can enrich our own experience of travel, if we want to examine our motives on why we enjoy certain small elements during our travel, The Art of Travel is the book for you.

Going back to the experience of rereading this book, I found that I enjoyed it a lot more this time! Perhaps it’s age, perhaps it’s because I know what to expect (especially after reading other School of Life books), but I think this is a good book to read if you want to start thinking about travel in a broader sense and with a slightly more optimistic look.

Although after reading all these travel books, I’m still torn between liking travel and wanting to travel, wanting travel to be available to all, but also absolutely dreading the effects of overtourism and not seeing a better way to travel without being unfair to groups of people… anyone have a book recommendation for that?