I am taking inspiration from Xavier de Maistre, when, as Alain de Botton describes in 'The Art of Travel', page 240, "...undertook a journey around his bedroom...in 1790, while he was living in a modest room at the top of an apartment building in Turin, de Maistre pioneered a mode of travel that was to make his name: room travel." Botton compares de Maistre's book 'Journey Around My Bedroom' to another exploration book of the same era: 'Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent', 1799 - 1804 in South America by Alexander von Humboldt which "...required ten mules, thirty pieces of luggage, four interpreters, a chronometer, a sextant, two telescopes, letters of introduction from the king of Spain and a gun..." (page 240, The Art of Travel, Botton.)
Therefore, I shall make use of this method of thinking about traveling to learn, explore and discover, instead of thinking about the travel element and feelings like de Maistre did, I shall make architectural and spatial studies. While I have been planning a great trip to investigate the dense inner cities of some of the worlds largest mega-cities, in the meantime, I shall start right here in my bedroom and slowly move further away, see what I can learn. Without plane tickets, visa's and a backpack, discover whether or not, as the Tao Te Ching says in chapter XLVII in D.C. Lau's translation:
'...The furthur one goes,
The less one knows...'
