Certain travellers give the impression that they keep moving because only then do they feel fully alive.

We travellers are in very hard circumstances. If we say nothing but what has been said before us, we are dull and have observed nothing. If we tell anything new, we are laughed at as fabulous and romantic.

Sri Lanka is an island that everyone loves at some level inside themselves. A very special island that travellers, from Sinbad to Marco Polo, dreamed about. A place where the contours of the land itself forms a kind of sinewy poetry.

Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.

But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travellers notoriously false?

The very condition of having Friends is that we should want something else besides Friends. Where the truthful answer to the question "Do you see the same truth?" would be "I see nothing and I don't care about the truth; I only want a Friend," no Friendship can arise - though Affection of course may. There would be nothing for the Friendship to be about; and Friendship must be about something, even if it were only an enthusiasm for dominoes or white mice. Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow-travellers.

An ordinary mirror is silvered at the back but the window of the night train has darkness behind the glass. My face and the faces of other travellers were now mirrored on this darkness in a succession of stillnesses. Consider this, said the darkness: any motion at any speed is a succession of stillnesses; any section through an action will show just such a plane of stillness as this dark window in which your seeking face is mirrored. And in each plane of stillness is the moment of clarity that makes you responsible for what you do.

Certain travellers give the impression that they keep moving because only then do they feel fully alive.

We travellers are in very hard circumstances. If we say nothing but what has been said before us we are dull and have observed nothing. If we tell anything new we are laughed at as fabulous and romantic.

All things on earth point home in old October sailors to sea travellers to walls and fences hunters to field and hollow and the long voice of the hounds the lover to the love he has forsaken.

Like all great travellers I have seen more than I remember and remember more than I have seen.

But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travellers notoriously false?