Iyer, Pico. "Why We Travel." Worldhum. 27 April 2009. Web. 3 Feb 2012.
Okay, so I acknowledge that it's about time to branch out and expand my vision as I'm looking at sources, although I will probably add a few more essayists to my course of study at some point. This essay is a great find; although it talks about traveling in general, it can easily apply to travel writing (obviously, because it's an essay written about travel). The first few sentences of this essay perfectly outline what it talks about:
"We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again--to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more."
I hope this quote doesn't get taken the wrong way. It does say "we travel to bring what little we can...to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed," which could indicate the American arrogance that field study so despises, but I think it's different than that. Throughout the article it very humbly explains that travelers travel to learn from the world--but it's impossible to think that we don't bring something to the parts of the world we visit. The traveler probably learns infinitely more, but we can still bring something to the people we visit.
And that is, essentially, what this essay communicates. And much more: this is a beautiful essay.
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