All good trips are, like love, about being carried out of yourself and deposited in the midst of terror and wonder.

Most of us who have been lucky enough to hear, read and see the Dalai Lama, often come away thinking, "What a kind, inspiring and golden human being!" That is true, but I think it does him an injustice.

We may be joined these days more by the questions we have in common than by the answers we share.

Travel, for me, is a little bit like being in love, because suddenly all your senses are at the setting marked “on.

Everyone is a Wordsworth in certain moods, and every traveler seeks out places that every traveler has missed.

Just as there are many more Californians now to be found in the temples of Kyoto or the villages of Bali or the mountains of the Himalayas than ever before, what is also exciting is that one can just go downtown Santa Barbara and find ayurvedic medicine, Thai restaurants, and Japanese cars in abundance.

The Dalai Lama, these days, encourages Westerners not to take up Buddhism, partly because he feels that our roots are deep in other traditions, and we should go deeper into our own traditions rather than just acquiring the surfaces of others.