“I have some bad news,” my British tour operator told me as I prepared to return to North Korea four months ago. “The DPRK1) is really short of basic materials. You’re going to have to take your own snacks and water. Even soap.” Then he brightened up. “The good news is that it’s still quite hard to get online there and most mobile phones don’t work. So you’ll be free for as long as you’re there!”

“我有些坏消息，”四个月前，在我准备重返朝鲜之际，安排我旅行的英国旅行社工作人员告诉我说，“朝鲜的基本物资非常匮乏，你得自备些食物和水，甚至还有香皂。”说完，他又面露喜色：“好消息是，那里上网仍然很难，而且多数手机也用不了。所以你只要在那儿待着，就不缺空闲!”

It wasn’t the first time of late I’ve encountered such wisdom. In Namibia a year earlier, I realised that one of the sovereign2) blessings of the place is that, in nine days and nights, I had barely gone online and had made and received exactly one phone call (to my wife, to remind her when I would be coming home). And, of course, in the presence of desert-adapted rhinos3) and sand dunes the height of skyscrapers, I had never begun to miss the tiny screen.

这不是我近来第一次见识这样的智慧了。一年前在纳米比亚我就意识到，身在那个地方一个最大的好处是，在九天九夜的时间里，我几乎没上过网，而且只接打过一个电话(是打给我妻子的，为了提醒她我回家的时间)。当然，那里有适应沙漠环境的犀牛和高度堪比摩天大楼的沙丘可赏，我一点也没有想念手机那块小小的屏幕。

More and more people are spending hundreds of pounds a night to stay in “black-hole resorts4),” one of whose main attractions is that you hand over your smartphone and tablet on arrival. In a world where the human race accumulates more information every five minutes than exists in the entire US Library of Congress, emptiness and silence are the new luxuries.

越来越多的人一个晚上花几百英镑在“黑洞度假区”度假。这类度假区的一大主要吸引力在于，客人一到就必须交出智能手机和平板电脑。在这个人类每五分钟积累的信息量要比整个美国国会图书馆馆藏还多的世界里，空闲和清静成了新的奢侈品。

Welcome, in short, to “slow travel,” which comes to seem ever more tempting in an age of acceleration. This can take the form of simply unplugging; but it also speaks for the special, everyday allure of seeing somewhere on foot, of going to one place (and not 10) in 14 days, and sometimes of going somewhere to do nothing at all. This used to be known as idling, but in a multi-tasking world, in which we seem to be living at a pace dictated by machines, going at human speed suddenly begins to look like sanity and freedom.

简言之，欢迎加入“慢旅行”。在这个加速运转的时代，慢旅行似乎正变得越发具有吸引力。慢旅行的形式可以是简单的断网关机，但也可以是日常生活里一些别致的吸引人的活动，比如走路去看风景，花两周游一个(而非十个)地方，有时还包括到一个地方无所事事地待着。这一度被视为是游手好闲之举，但在这个一心多用的世界中，我们生活的步伐似乎全被机器操控，保持常人的节奏忽然开始显得明智而自由。

I experienced my own first taste of slow travel 23 years ago, when I checked into a monastery5), of all places—even though years of enforced chapel6) at school had left me all but allergic to church services. It didn’t matter. The chance to take walks, to forget about phone calls, to sit and just catch my breath, so invigorated7) me that when I moved to Japan, I took a two-room flat that had something of the quiet of a retreat house.

我第一次切身体验慢旅行是在23年前，当时我从众多地方里选择了一座修道院栖身—尽管读书时多年的强制性教堂礼拜已让我对那套东西几乎心生厌恶。这没关系。那次经历让我有机会悠然漫步，忘掉电话，静坐，调整呼吸。我感到精神无比焕发，以至于后来旅居日本，我挑了一如休养所般幽静的两居室公寓安家。

But I also experienced a sense of freedom when I arrived in Zurich, to find I could get everywhere by easy and frequent tram. I’ve known friends take tours on bicycles, or long train rides so they can simply read and write and chat with strangers. I’ve seen them go skiing in Kashmir, where there’s just one chairlift, or fishing in Scotland or Montana to catch some stillness. Even Ritz-Carltons8) and Intercontinentals9) now offer “digital detox10)” packages to help open your eyes and ears to the wonders around you.

不过，当我到达苏黎世，发现自己可以乘坐方便频繁的电车到达任何地方，我同样感受到一种自由。我认识一些朋友，他们骑自行车或乘坐长途火车出游，这样就能尽情地阅读、写作或是同陌生人攀谈。我见到过他们去克什米尔滑雪，那里的滑雪场只配一个升降椅;也见到过他们去苏格兰或美国的蒙大拿钓鱼，只为感受一些宁静。如今，就连丽思-卡尔顿酒店和洲际酒店也推出了“戒除数码产品”的套餐服务，帮你打开眼睛和耳朵，发现身边的种种美好。

The essence of holidays, and therefore travel, is to get what you don’t get enough of the rest of the time. And for more and more of us, this isn’t movement, diversion or stimulation; we’ve got plenty of that in the palms of our hands. It’s the opposite: the chance to make contact with loved ones, to be in one place and to enjoy the intimacy and sometimes life-changing depth of talking to one person for five—or 15—hours.

假日的本质，进言之，旅行的本质，是获取你平时无福尽情消受的东西。对于越来越多的人来说，要享受的不是奔波、消遣或刺激—这些我们已从掌上设备中获得了很多，而是与之相反的东西：与挚爱的人接触的机会，待在一个地方的机会，跟一个人聊上五个或15个小时、享受那种亲密深谈的机会—这种深谈有时可以改变人的一生。

Of course, lying on a beach or in a hammock11) has always offered something of a respite12) from the rat race13). But as I hear of westerners walking to Mount Kailash, or a film producer going to the Seychelles just to read books with his daughter, as I see how the appeal of a long walk in the woods is not just the woods but the lack of all signals, I suspect that the world has reversed direction since the time, not so long ago, when jumbo jets14) and Concordes15) first promised to whisk16) us across the planet at supersonic speeds. Concorde, after all, is gone now; but near where I live, in the old Japanese capital of Nara, there are more and more rickshaws17) in view—to cater to the very people who patented the idea of “Six Cities in Four Days.”

当然，躺在沙滩上或吊床上总能使人从每日的奔忙中得到一些喘息。然而，当我听说有些西方人徒步前往冈仁波齐峰，或是一位电影制片人去趟塞舌尔只为陪女儿看看书，当我发现长久漫步林间的趣味不仅在于林地本身，还在于那里没有任何信号的打扰，我不由得猜想，自不算太久以前，巨型喷气式飞机和协和式飞机第一次承诺将以超音速载我们环游地球以来，世道已经逆转。如今，协和式飞机终究还是销声匿迹了，而在我的住地附近，在日本的古都奈良，倒是看到越来越多的人力车—它们的服务对象正是当初炮制出“六城四日游”点子的那些人。