Number of words: 136

We tend to put a great deal of faith in travelling. Bacon said it was education for the younger, experience for the elder. It is “broadening,” we tell ourselves; it’s what we’ll do when we retire and our lives are our town. It grows us up, lets us change. Who has not had the fantasy, after clearing passport control, of dispensing with it to live it on the streets of a foreign capital? If only it worked. Alas, we don’t shed skins so easily. Most of us arrive home exactly as we left. Set someone down in a different culture, come back and check on him in the morning, and you’ll find just what you left the night before.

Excerpted from page number 51 of ‘Book of Ones Own People and Their Diaries’ by Thomas Mallon