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I’m Still Traveling Solo at 85. Here’s What I’ve Learned
Veteran travel writer Paul Theroux reflects on how aging has made him more observant as he continues to explore the world
4-minute read
The author of more than 50 books, Paul Theroux remains one of travel writing’s most influential figures. Here he's photographed in Massachusetts in September 2022.
Simon Simard
Growing old is a lesson in timekeeping. You value time as precious and want more of it. I began to see that the natural wish, in old age, for “more time” can be granted by travel. I always knew travel to be an enlargement of time, something richer and deeper than anything I would experience at home.
But now I see that travel also offers an expansion of time. I am not alone in seeing this. The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once observed, “When we are traveling … one month away seems longer to us than four at home.” In retrospect, travel takes up a greater space in your head.
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Whenever I’ve been stuck for an idea or gotten sick of my desk, I’d leave home and take a trip. And because I am self-supporting, I turned those trips into books. The benefit of having to write about a trip is that you need to look closer at things, you learn a new language, you make a point of talking to strangers.
It’s not news to any older adult that we are less and less at the center of things. We might have superb style, but fashion as a marketing effort is not aimed at us. Companies seeking revenue look to a younger demographic.
For his latest book, “True North”, Theroux traveled throughout Canada, including taking a ferry in Newfoundland.
Courtesy of Paul Theroux
But remaining on the periphery is not a bad thing for a traveler. The periphery is an ideal place to see the world as it really is: to observe, as the poet T.S. Eliot remarked, “the boredom, and the horror, and the glory” of life. Aging is a magnificent clarifier, offering wonderful, unanticipated perspectives.
It’s also good for curbing the ego. In my early travel books, I recorded my reactions to places and people. During what was considered the great age of travel writing, a travel book tended to concentrate on the traveler’s discomforts, satirizing the locals, their absurdities and customs. As I grew older, I began to see this as snobbery, mockery and egotism, and realized that the great value in travel was meeting other people as equals, or on their own terms, and especially hearing their stories. I learned to avoid luxurious places because the wealthy people who frequent them value their privacy, while guests at lower-end motels are happy to unbosom themselves.
I learned that other societies treat their elders better and show them more respect. In the Pacific Islands, in Mexico and Latin America in general, in Asia and elsewhere, older people represent living history. They are deferred to for their experience, they are listened to, and their life lessons matter. Had I stayed home and not traveled in these places, I would never have known this.
Another discovery: To find a new place is a delight, but to go back to an old one where you’ve lived or traveled is an enlightenment. After 30 years or more, I returned to Africa and wrote Dark Star Safari, seeing the continent with new eyes and a more mature mind. Thirty years after writing The Great Railway Bazaar, I retraced my steps and wrote Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, an entirely different experience.
“How long do you figure you’ll be doing this?” I am sometimes asked. The truth is that a life of writing and traveling has kept me fascinated and active. My last three books have been about road trips: in Mexico, the Deep South and now Canada. Driving my own car is liberating, offering the spontaneity of the road, the chance to change my mind, to dither, to look deeper, to stop and go when I wish, to linger in the hinterlands between overpraised cities, to hone my skills as a senior road warrior.
But to that silly question, I give a silly answer: “Until I fall off my chair.”
AARP essays share a point of view in the author’s voice, drawn from expertise or experience, and do not necessarily reflect the views of AARP.
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