If in doubt, just walk until your day becomes interesting.

Seeing' as you travel is somewhat of a spiritual exercise: a process not of seeking interesting surroundings, but of being continually interested in whatever surrounds you.

Long-term travel doesn't require a massive bundle of cash; it requires only that we walk through the world in a more deliberate way.

In reality long-term travel has nothing to do with demographics, age, ideology, income, and everything to do with personal outlook.

In this way, we end up spending (as Thoreau put it) “the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it.” We'd love to drop all and explore the world outside, we tell ourselves, but the time never seems right. Thus, given an unlimited amount of choices, we make none. Settling into our lives, we get so obsessed with holding on to our domestic certainties that we forget why we desired them in the first place.

Travel, I was coming to realize, was a metaphor not only for the countless options life offers but also for the fact that choosing one option reduces you to the parameters of that choice. Thus, in knowing my possibilities, I also knew my limitations.

The goal of preparation then is not knowing exactly where you'll go but being confident nonetheless that you'll get there.