From ancient times to modern comics like Corto Maltèse and Tintin, literature and storytelling have long offered readers a chance to escape to real or imagined places. Characters like Tintin, the globetrotting reporter and adventurer, reflect the spirit of explorers like Joseph Kessel, while literary giants such as Don Quichotte from Don Quichotte by Miguel de Cervantes continue to embody the dream of discovering an ideal world beyond one’s own. These stories often blend reality and fantasy, drawing inspiration from historical figures like Vasco de Gama or fictional narratives like Tartarin de Tarascon by Alphonse Daudet, which mixes satire with a fictional journey through Africa. These tales have their roots in the real world, where books once circulated among literate elites, shaping the way people imagined travel and discovery. The enduring appeal of travel-themed literature is evident in events like the Etonnants voyageurs Festival in Saint-Malo, which has been celebrating world literature for 36 years and attracts around 50,000 visitors annually. Classic authors such as Lamartine, Flaubert, and Chateaubriand continue to be widely read, sharing their journeys through the East or Italy. Contemporary writers like Sylvain Tesson, whose books like La Panthère des neiges and Dans les forêts de Sibérie have sold hundreds of thousands of copies, and Jack London’s Martin Eden, still a bestseller, further illustrate the genre’s vitality. However, the rise of overtourism and its negative impacts have led to a wave of critical literature, including works like Ou partir avant qu’il soit trop tard, Le manuel de l'anti touriste, and Tristes Tropiques by Claude Lévi-Strauss, which famously begins with the line, "I hate travel and explorers." Despite these criticisms, the book remains a powerful tool for escape and imagination. For many readers, especially children, novels like Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, Harry Potter, or Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry have shaped their understanding of the world. These stories allow readers to explore distant lands and cultures without leaving their homes, offering the flexibility to be read and reread, interpreted in different ways, and even serving as a form of mental travel. In some cases, the emotional impact of a book can be so profound that it transforms a person's perspective, as seen in Alan Bennett’s The Queen of Readers, where a queen becomes so immersed in her books that she forgets her duties. Literature also offers a unique kind of journey that does not require physical movement. Works like Voyage autour de ma chambre by Xavier De Mestre, in which the author explores the world from within his own room, or À rebours by Joris-Karl Huysmans, where a journey is imagined but never taken, show how stories can create a sense of travel through imagination. As philosopher Montaigne once wrote, "We do not see the world as it is, we see it as we gloss it!" This highlights the power of books to shape our perceptions of the world, even when we never leave our sofas. Whether through real travel or the pages of a book, the desire to explore and understand remains a shared human experience.