The Songlines struck me, on first reading it, almost as a sacred text around which I could arrange my life and meaning. A decade later, I wrote in a notebook three days' walk east of Herat: "Most of human history was conducted through contacts, made at walking pace ... the pilgrimages to Compostela in Spain ... to the source of the Ganges, and wandering dervishes, sadhus, and friars, who approached God on foot. The Buddha meditated by walking, and Wordsworth composed sonnets while striding beside the Lakes. Bruce Chatwin concluded from all these things that we would think and live better, and be closer to our purpose as humans, if we moved continually on foot across the surface of the earth."
The Songlines, Bruce Chatwin, Introduction, by Rory Stewart