Who does not dream of travel? Not a vacation for a week or two. I mean leaving it all behind. Just walking away from it all one day. (You take your family with you if you have one – let’s not be ridiculous.) Maybe you move to Argentina for a year. Maybe two years. Or, maybe Australia. If Vagabonding does not inspire you to go, and help you plan the trip, nothing will.

Two of my favorite quotes:

The more we associate experience with cash value, the more we think that money is what we need to live. And the more we associate money with life, the more we convince ourselves that we’re too poor to buy our freedom.

Thus, the purest way to see a culture is simply to accept and experience it as it is now even if you have to put up with satellite dishes in Kazakhstan, cyber cafés in Malawi, and fast food restaurants in Belize. After all, as Thomas Merton retorted when asked if he’d seen the “real Asia” during his trip to India, “It’s all real as far as I can see.”

Buy this book.