English Version | The Voyage Issue: Editor's Letter

“I learned to watch... I learned to wander. I learned what every child needs to know - that no horizon is so far that you cannot get above it or beyond it." - Beryl Markham. 

Photography: Alessandro Esposito.

If our lives are ruled by the pursuit of happiness, then perhaps few things reveal as much about the dynamics of that pursuit as our travels. Even the ones where we don't physically move, and which only have the limit of our imagination. A true journey is, in any form, an experience that Greek philosophers called eudaimonia, or “human flourishing.”

The world seems unfair to us, or far beyond our understanding, but it is in the presence of places of overwhelming beauty that we understand that it's not strange that things are like that. We're the result of the same force that created the oceans and carved mountains. Sublime places lead us to recognize our limitations, it is the immensity of some natural spaces that give us the most beautiful and greatest respect for everything that exceeds us — accepting what is bigger than us and what we do not understand. Our life is not the measure of all things: there are places that put us in our place and remind us of human insignificance and frailty.

Photography: Mara Alonso.

We travel to lose ourselves; and we travel again to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and our eyes and to learn more about the world, more than newspapers or social media can bring us. We travel to delight the senses, with smells, flavors and colors... We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge. And, as someone said, in our essence we travel to become young and foolish again, to slow down time.

The Voyage Issue is dedicated to the art of travelling, in its most varied forms and dimensions. In the newsroom, it was inevitable to ask ourselves what was each person's dream travel, yet to be accomplished. I suppose there will always be one, no matter how rich one's experience is. In my case, I think of some destinations that are on my bucket list, but, influenced by literature, I admit I keep postponing it, precisely because I know that I won't find the places I traveled to, in a time far from this and in an essence that I imagine destroyed by the modern and touristy version of these same places, and I choose to keep the memory I created, albeit literary. In a book I travel, not only to other worlds, but also in time, in my own world... But, given the impossibility of traveling in time, I would choose a trip to Central Anatolia, for the impressive landscape sculpted by volcanic activity millions of years ago and the magic of a sunset hot air balloon ride over Cappadocia. It is always curious to see how different the places and experiences we dream of are, and the diversity is notorious in the testimonies of some of our team members, as you can find out on page 210.

Photography: Armand Dicker.

The true voyage of discovery does not consist in looking for a new landscape, but in having a new look. We travel to be able to return. To see where we came from with new eyes and new colors. Because coming home is not the same as never leaving. Before leaving for distant hemispheres, try to realize what you have actually seen. Sometimes we are sitting on top of a treasure without knowing it. Put down the “maps” and get lost: discover new places, in your street, in your city, in your country... in a book, or in a magazine. Just let go.

And, with no time nor distance too long of far, I wish you happy travels.

Photography: Bastiaan Woudt.

Translated from the original on our The Voyage Issue, from June 2023.Full credits and stories on the print version.