Never better said, because my first adult trip (that is to say ... I was 17 years old) was one of those made on foot. He continued like that, without knowing it, the advice of Faulkner: a landscape is only conquered with the sole of the shoes. I toured part of the provinces of Burgos and Soria: Salas de los Infantes, Santo Domingo de Silos, Hortigüela, Covarrubias, Quintanilla de las Viñas, Navaleno ... Then I degenerated , like that banderillero of Belmonte that finished as civil governor, and I turned to other less attractive means of transport. The most stupid of them all is the plane, which does not serve to travel, because traveling consists of crossing places and not flying over them, but to travel. Even so, by car, by bus, by train or by airplane, I gradually became creditor to the sticky crutch that today is as attached to my name as the rock barnacle: "tireless traveler". Tireless and fatigued, because there is no longer a single decent place in the world that has not been swept away by the biblical plague of tourism. Biblical, I say, because the tourist is the current equivalent to what lobster was in the Book of Yahweh Books. A year ago, meeting in Tokyo more or less at this time, I wrote a column in which I philosophized about the possibility that this was my last long-distance trip. Such an ominous state of mind was due not only to the horror of air traffic, with its sadistic services (scanners, measures of supposed safety, queues, squeezes, fluid restriction, trays of vomitive catering, fat travelers and curvy travelers), but also the I suspect that my caulked cardiovascular system was no longer suitable for such a jog. But the writer always returns, like the criminal, to the stages of his books and I'm about, as I said, to return to the streets. Yesterday I took a plane and today, if everything went well, I will land in my eternal Bangkok and from there I will jump to Phnom Penh, a way station to the place in the world where I find myself most comfortable. I will not say his name. Facilities, just. The last time I walked there was still free of tourists. Now, namely, because that marabunta invades everything , although the monsoon, which in August and September reaches its peak, sometimes stops it. Better dengue, chikungunya and malaria. I persecute myself and ... Here I go, holding the hand of a girl. Begin the beguine . The path of the heart always flows and never ends.
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