What gives value to travel is fear. It is the fact that, at a certain
moment, when we are so far from our own country...we are seized by a
vague fear, and an instinctive desire to go back to the protection of
old habits. This is the most obvious benefit of travel. At that
moment we are feverish but also porous, so that the slightest touch
makes us quiver to the depths of our being. We come across a cascade
of light, and there is eternity. This is why we should not say that we
travel for pleasure. There is no pleasure in traveling, and I look
upon it more as an occasion for spiritual testing. If we understand by
culture the exercise of our most intimate sense -- that of eternity --
then we travel for culture. Pleasure takes us away from ourselves in
the same was as distraction, in Pascal's use of the word, takes us away
from God. Travel, which is like a greater and graver science, brings us
back to ourselves.
- Albert Camus. Notebooks 1935-1942.