16 Travel Quotes That Will Make You Pack Your Bag for Africa

Is there a better feeling than embarking on a journey, suitcase and camera in hand, to an unknown place or a far off land? No, not really.

Africa has enthralled her own people and travellers alike for centuries. Take a look at some of our favourite quotes from people who love this continent and travelling and exploring just as much as we do.

1. “There is something about safari life that makes you forget all your sorrows and feel as if you had drunk half a bottle of champagne – bubbling over with heartfelt gratitude for being alive” – Karen Blixen

2. “I just wish the world was twice as big and half of it was still unexplored” – David Attenborough

3. “Africa has her mysteries, and even a wise man cannot understand them. But a wise man respects them” – Miriam Makeba

4. “I never knew of a morning in Africa when I woke up that I was not happy” – Ernest Hemingway

5. “The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands” – Sir Richard Burton

6. “I hope you have an experience that alters the course of your life because, after Africa, nothing has ever been the same” – Suzanne Evans

7. “A person does not grow from the ground like a vine or a tree. One is not part of a plot of land. Mankind has legs so it can wander” – Roman Payne, The Wandress

8. “To get lost is to learn the way” – African proverb

9. “People must feel that the natural world is important and valuable and beautiful and wonderful and an amazement and a pleasure” – David Attenborough

10. “You cannot leave Africa, ” Africa said, “It is always with you, there inside your head. Our rivers run in currents in the swirl of your thumbprints; Our drumbeats counting out your pulse; Our coastline, the silhouette of your soul”. – Bridge Dore

11. “I am not the same having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world” – Mary Anne Rademacher

12. “The only man I envy is the man who has not yet been to Africa – for he has so much to look forward to” – Richard Mullin

13. “One of the great things about travel is that you find out how many good, kind people there are” – Edith Wharton

14. “Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before” – Dalai Lama

15. “To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted” – Bill Bryson

16. “Africa changes you forever, like nowhere on earth. Once you have been there, you will never be the same. But how do you begin to describe the magic to someone who has never felt it? How can you explain the fascination of this vast, dusty continent, whose oldest roads are elephant paths? Could it be because Africa is the place of all our beginnings, the cradle of mankind, where our species first stood upright on the savannahs of long ago?” – Brian Jackman