Paulo Coelho, Relais & Châteaux Ambassador 2012

The Brazilian author, Paulo Coelho, who has sold more than 100 million books in 71 languages, sees travel, as much in his books as in his life, as a personal quest and a voyage of discovery.

‘To travel is to embark on a pilgrimage’, says Paulo Coelho. “You commune with a place, with a particular environment, with people, with the idea of sharing”. An experience that is, in his eyes, a quintessentially Relais & Châteaux experience.

‘Every (Relais & Châteaux property) is like a living museum that you can visit. A rare place where the entire heritage of the Maître de Maison and his approach to the surrounding region is expressed.The innkeeper himself embodies his environment. Here, and nowhere else, he has found his own groove, an ‘expression of his own life’. He is what surrounds him.’

It is this complete and unique immersion that Paulo Coelho seeks. That is the quest of his journey. ‘There is no alternative but to trust another person. To be inquisitive enough to absorb his culture, his gastronomy, his terroir.’ What is more, by taking a step towards him, the writer avers, you are able ‘to rediscover yourself’. And rediscover those issues which are dear to him, indeed those that he champions in his recent novel, Aleph, published by HarperCollins. ‘Through contact with others, travel reveals us to ourselves. We learn about ourselves through our capacity to adapt, to find a balance between our own personality and this new environment. We are enriched by it.’

Succeeding previous Ambassadors actor and hotelier Richard Gere, and actress and winemaker Carole Bouquet, both of whom perfectly shared the values of the Association, Paulo Coelho continues this legacy through his travels of personal enrichment, and his pilgrimages to discover people and places “all around the world, unique in the world.”