The Book of Travels

Description

The purpose of travel is not merely to conform to the customs of the world one visits, but to understand its conditions, absorb its experiences, and integrate these encounters—allowing them to shape one’s perspective on oneself and the world from which one originated.
Regardless of the disparities between different worlds, their boundaries overlap and their destinies are intertwined; this enriches identity and refines experience. Travel is a personal discovery, a way to preserve a meaningful impression, and a means to reclaim memory. Travel writing should never become a source of hatred or a vehicle for disparaging other nations; rather, it ought to be an expression of affinity—a way to draw closer to those other worlds. Human existence cannot endure without memory, and life is devoid of meaning without it. I count myself among those who prefer to narrate their experiences rather than merely depict them through images. As the world has shifted from being a subject of language to a subject of the image, it has lost much of its allure—for this shift wounds the imagination that once gave it shape, settling for the image as a mere guide. Such an approach leans more toward distortion than documentation. People often grow up perceiving the world through fixed, static representations, leaving little room to grasp it in its own fluid, evolving state. Consequently, the desire to read accounts written from diverse perspectives fades; for people do not speak a single, uniform language—their understandings differ, and such is the nature of the worlds in which they live.