Good, better, best

Greetings to all you good people. First things first, thank you for your generous acknowledgement of the first edition of G&B. The trepidation and enthusiasm in equal parts with which we set out have made a rather fulfilling journey into your hands, or at least that is what your tremendous feedback would have us believe. And yet we remain humbly cognizant of the miles to go before we come anywhere close to signing away the merits of the journey over the destination, or vice versa.

Last week, sitting on the steps of the Pushkarani (sacred water tank) in Hampi, surrounded by nothing but a resonant silence and an ornate stillness pronounced by the endless milieu of rich stone ruins, Somerset Maugham got me wondering about a good traveller and a bad traveller. In ‘The Gentleman in the Parlour’ – the 1920s travel accounts of his journey from Rangoon to Haiphong – Maugham writes, “Though I’ve travelled much I am a bad traveller. The good traveller has the gift of surprise. He is perpetually interested by the differences he finds between what he knows at home and what he sees abroad…. Since everything is strange to him he notices everything, and according to his humour can be amusing or instructive. But I take things for granted so quickly that I cease to see anything unusual in my surroundings… I travel because I like to move from place to  place, I like the unknown; I am often tired of myself and I have a notion that by travel I can add to my personality and so change myself a little. I do not bring back from a journey quite the same self that I took.” By the end of the passage, I wasn’t entirely convinced of his indictment of himself as a bad traveller.

And thus, here in our second outing – in the same week as World Tourism Day (September 27), I throw the question at you, dear reader, for you to dwell on and determine how intimately you take your travel. As you (re)acquaint with destinations, exotic and exquisite, tranquil and trippy, in the pages that follow, we hope you find the next stopover that brings out the best in you... And don’t forget to let us in! Godspeed.