What led me to buy this book of collective tales was not only its suggestive title The kindness of strangers - Tales of fate and fortune on the road but also the opinions on it by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and authors like Amy Tan and Bill Bryson, added to the fact that I have always be keen on reading about people's experiences abroad particularly in countries whose way of life is entirely different from ours.
Although I reckon some of these "essays" aren't but brief encounters and situations that may have even occured just anywhere ... I also recognise that some are incredible and even "frightening" if one puts oneself in some of its authors'shoes.
I do honestly believe that people who travel on their own like I do must trust one's instincts whenever help is needed, (because let's put it honestly, for all one may study the country one is travelling to and thoroughly prepare oneself there is the unexpected one can never be prepared for).
"When we are befriended in misfortune by people we have never in our lives seen before, then we may see kindness most suggestively displayed, as these small actions represent the vast, most untapped potential of the emotion." - Jan Morris
"Kindness is really so to speak, all of a piece - an absolute, which cannot be graded; but its most symbolical expression is the sudden, unpremeditated act of sympathy, offered without hope of reward to an unknown and perhaps unappealing soul in distress - to a foreigner, a truculent vagrant, an unwashed backpacker or a cat." Jan Morris
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