His attachment to Eretz Yisrael was very intense and he writes that there were many fundamentals that he understood only by virtue of having lived there. He once remarked that he could not understand the students who arrive in Eretz Yisrael and immediately enter a bais hamedrash. When he arrived he first traversed the entire land before he resumed his learning.
Upon leaving Eretz Yisrael he wrote that he had not experienced suffering and therefore felt he had not yet possessed it. (Eretz Yisrael, Chazal say, is acquired through suffering.) However, he wrote that when he returns in future years he will suffer and only then will he acquire the land. His words proved to be prophetic.
From an article in Jewish Action by Matis Greenblatt (Summer 5761/2001)