Travel is little beds and cramped bathrooms. It’s old television sets and slow internet connections. Travel is extraordinary conversations with ordinary people. It’s waiters, gas station attendants, and housekeepers magically becoming the most interesting people in the world. It’s churches that are compelling enough to enter. It’s McDonald’s being a luxury.

It’s the realization that you may have been born in the wrong country. Travel is a smile that leads to a conversation in broken English. It’s the epiphany that pretty girls smile the same way all over the world. Travel is tipping 10% and being
embraced for it. Travel is the same white t-shirt again tomorrow. Travel is accented sex after cheap wine and too many unfiltered cigarettes. Travel is flowing in the back of a bus with giggly strangers. It’s nostalgia for studying abroad that one semester. It’s a street full of bearded backpackers looking down at maps.

Travel is wishing for one more bite of whatever that just was. It’s the rediscovery of walking somewhere. It’s sharing a bottle of liquor on an overnight train with a new friend. Travel is: “maybe I don’t have to do it that way when I get back home.” Travel is realizing that “age 30” should be shed of