Pessoa wondered if travel could offer his soul something it didn't already possess, while Twain saw it as a balm against ignorance. Ralph Waldo Emerson maintained that seeking answers outside one's homeland was fleeing from oneself, and Chesterton encouraged travel to rediscover one's own country. From the empty and deceptive experience of tourist travel to the migrant forced to adapt to a new world, travel is a complex phenomenon involving processes of self-knowledge and transformation.

Bartra reflects on why travel is not only a physical displacement, but also a cultural and emotional distancing that confronts our identity and origins with the world around us.