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Jambo, I'm Julia.

How to Travel book summary

How to Travel book cover
  • On choosing a destination, identify what's missing or incomplete in your life and pick your destination based on how you might be able to find that missing piece.
  • Don't define "exotic" by society's conventional norms. What is truly exotic to you?
  • Don't be anxious about feeling anxious when you're meant to be in a destination that brings you calm serenity - a degree of anxiety is a fundamental part of being human.
  • "The smallness of a pleasure isn't really an assessment of how much it has to offer us: it is a reflection of how many good things the world unfairly neglects. We should dare to fully savour the modest pleasures offered to us by our trips."
  • Seek the sun.
  • Free yourself from inhibitions when you travel. It doesn't matter if you occasionally look like or feel like a food. It will develop you into a more confident, less self-conscious person.
  • If you stop and think about it, an airport and flying in an airplane are actually extremely remarkable concepts.
  • Ugly architecture affects our spirits and brings out our worst selves. This is why we are intuitively drawn towards architectural and civic beauty.
  • Despite all this talk of globalisation, there is basic pleasure in "otherness" - practices, customs, habits and vocab that is strikingly different from what we're used to at home.
  • Develop the skill to courageously approach strangers. Most of the places we want to travel to are tied to a distinctive way of bring: an implicit personality. We can find out more about it by engaging with locals.
  • Family holidays upends the usual hierarchy by taking everyone out of their comfort zones and usual roles.
  • A 'loss of desire' for a romantic partner is usually just a kind of anger that hasn't had a chance to understand itself.
  • We are constantly on the search for that 'little restaurant'. Why are there not more of them about? Probably because we are not very good at knowing what actually makes us, as humans, happy.
  • We seem to have a problem with crowds. We don't actually hate people, we just want to be around people who have a dignified shared sense of devotion to a place.
  • Room service is a symbol of considerateness for us as an individual that we so badly crave in our daily lives.
  • Nature calms us because none of our problems or current negative thoughts have any relevance on it.
  • Draw rather than take pictures. It forces us to stop and really notice things.
  • Holiday flings gives us access to the true 'spirit of a place'. It's not necessarily just about the physical intimacy.
  • Travel to remind yourself of what true poverty or misfortune is. Give yourself perspective.
  • Remember that your 'boring home' is someone else's deeply exciting 'abroad'.
  • Why do we feel the need to seek new experiences, when we hardly ever revisit past ones? Shut your eyes and think back to your past, amazing travel adventures.
  • The need to go for a walk stems from the same place as the desire to travel: to restart our minds.

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