There are several questions that I often formulated in the talks of the conference floor offer each year in various Spanish cities: Why globalization travel time?, What drives us to move when the media and particularly television offer us the letter landscapes from around the world?, You still something left on the planet that can surprise? These questions are difficult to answer, course, and for which each one would guess their interpretation. And are well certain: Why embark on a journey if your television, while drinking a beer quietly at home, can show both an ant's belly as the surface of Mars? Complex, yes; but my answer is very simple: travel driven by the sensuality and the desire for adventure.
Because we are not only sight, but we have four other senses that we need to get in touch with the outside. The reality draws us with a force irremediable, otherwise we would deliver us gently into the arms of the virtual. And when traveling, empaparnos need of odors ignored, new flavors, beyond voice and tactile contact with other skins. Must be present in places, not only imagine from a static or moving picture. It happens like love: photo not enough, we feel the other's flesh, open our ears to their whisperings, enjoy your body, sniff aromas.
Regarding the adventure, is necessary to clarify what the word and note that, in this case, definitions provided by the dictionary of the Real Academia de la Lengua are limited. Adventure, in my opinion, is no risk from looking, put yourself in danger, expose the fear and place your life in the knife-edge. For me, the adventure is to head out to that side of reality you do not know, dare to pass the line of what you ignore. And do it with all the excitement of those who expected a pleasant surprise. Every journey means that, even if it is an organized trip punctiliously, in which almost everything is provided. Because any trip is a violation of normality, get out of the organized life you repeat daily, monotonous disorderly things, put you on the opposite side occupying the tedium and boredom. And anytime arises, maybe when you least expect it, longed surprise.
It happens like love: photo not enough, we feel the other's flesh, open our ears to their whisperings, enjoy your body, sniff aromas.
If the trip is comparable sensuality of love, your adventurous side is very similar to the process of literary creation. Writing is not a never-, by very careful to be the writer, organized a task to its most intimate detail. On the contrary. The creative writer is immersed in the pages of his book, plunged into the arms of the imagination, as one enters a dense, dark forest. The characters and situations, has more than planned, suddenly emerge, unexpectedly, and take unexpected paths. The protagonist can refuse to be secondary and may require the first role of the work. And the writer must follow them. Thereby, traveling just hand your work over territory ignored and surprising: should, in the end, as the traveler, venture.
The author of "The Quiet American", the novelist Graham Greene, also a great travel writer, I once calculated the number of miles he had done that year and in the account came out over twenty thousand. And he wondered: "Is not it why sometimes I have the feeling that I am eternal?”.
Because eternity might be on our feet travelers.