Life is a series of highways and backroads and alleys and subways, at least for those willing and brave to show up.  The interstate or "vanilla way of living" will certainly get you to some sort of destination, and maybe faster, but one will miss so much of what shapes us, such as adventure and surprise, newly found sites and sweet pictorial moments. In travel, we learn that wrong turns, missed flights and delayed trains teach us a lot about ourselves and often how to find our way back to ourselves, more than any self help book or good therapy session could conquer.