Hawaii is not a state of mind, but a state of grace.

To a lot of Africans, seeing an animal is a something of a rarity. So it's a paradox of this sort of parallel life. A safari is an expensive experience and it's adjacent to a place where people are having a very tough time.

I'm a tourist, a glorified tourist. I'm not doing it to have a good time or to lie in the sun.

There are two worlds: the world of the tourist and the world of everyone else. Often they're side by side. But the tourist doesn't actually see how people live.

You may not know it but I'm no good at coping with all the attention in the luxury hotels I sometimes find myself in.

The traveler's boast, sometimes couched as a complaint, is that of having been an eyewitness, and invariably this experience - shocking though it may seem at the time - is an enrichment, even a blessing, one of the life-altering trophies of the road.

Now and then in travel, something unexpected happens that transforms the whole nature of the trip and stays with the traveler.