When I am lost in the world and completely outside of my element, I feel truly alive. It’s as if travel is my beloved and I am in relentless and passionate pursuit. It is when I am submersed in different cultures, languages and landscapes that I am enamored with the entirety of life and all of my surroundings. Just like when one finds themselves teetering between lovesick and infatuation, I feel illuminated and chosen.
Travel allows me to revisit my child-like sense of wonder, making me forget the ugly side of life. I discover a smile I didn’t know I had, I uncover a feeling that I didn’t know existed in me, I forget about man’s inhumanity to man. I experience stirrings, longings, fantasies, delusions and projections. It’s through adventure and uncertainly that I see and feel who I really am. It is here that I experience myself the most.
My first taste of adventure travel happened in 2002 when I signed up for a study abroad program in Antigua, Guatemala. Guatemala is a land of volcanoes and ancient ruins with a rich Mayan heritage. The charming colonial city of Antigua (the direct translation in Spanish is “ancient”) is particularly unique, known for its cobblestone streets and well-preserved 17th and 18th century architecture. In Antigua, people spoke a combination of Spanish and 22 different indigenous languages. The markets were bustling and vibrant centers of culture and community filled with fabrics, handicrafts, handmade tortillas, and traditional dishes. I was 22yrs old at the time, and I can honestly say that nothing had previously triggered my sense of wonder and fascination. The things I saw and the sounds I heard were more satiating than food and water and I was enamored by it all.
That short two-week Spanish excursion awakened something inside of me. It was the beginning of my unraveling. For a long time, I couldn’t name what I was chasing. But in my blind pursuit of aliveness — like a heroin-addicted artist hooked on the rush — I kept going back for more. Booking the next flight. Finding the next mountain. Searching for the next river, waterfall, jungle, or border crossing that might shock me awake again.
And travel isn’t comfortable. That’s part of its charm. Trekking, paddling, cycling, mountaineering my way across continents has always come with a sizable dose of suffering, and that’s precisely the point. Discomfort forces the heart open. It makes the present moment feel intense enough to matter. Wilderness and unfamiliar landscapes pull me into a more animal state — instinctive, rugged, unapologetically alive.
When I say “discomfort,” I’m talking about challenges that incite growth. Getting what we don’t want is often what shapes us. Discomfort brings out our strengths and exposes our weaknesses. The struggle is the journey and if you remove it, you remove the transformation. The universe is thrifty: nothing goes to waste. Hardship becomes instruction. Setbacks become seasoning. Discomfort turns wanderers into adaptable, improvisational, resilient humans.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” -Mark Twain
In this quote by Mark Twain, he illustrates how potentially limiting it can be when we don’t travel. Not only is it limiting, but in my opinion, this limitation can be outright damaging to our personal growth and development. By “vegetating in one little corner of the earth all of one’s lifetime”, as the quote says, it can be easy to believe that our culture, religion, and political systems are superior to others. We may come to think that our history books are the only ones that matter, that we are the descendants of the winners – the first to discover and conquer everything.
When we remain in our safe little corner of the world, we tend to believe that our language is the most relevant and evolved, and that our skin color is the most attractive. This mindset can lead us to fear those in faraway lands who don’t look like us, viewing them as enemies. We close ourselves off from humanity, convinced that we must draw lines, lock doors, fortify borders and build walls.
Travel, on the other hand, is both inspirational and experiential. It teaches us that cynicism and hatred are both unoriginal and boring. When we embark on a travel adventure, we open our minds to new possibilities that challenge our thoughts and preconceptions. Our hearts and minds fill with fresh ideas.
Travel forces us to go beyond ourselves – beyond culture, beyond tradition and, most importantly, beyond our comfort zone. Travel invites us to see how people live on other continents and allows us to experience their warmth and hospitality. Making new friends and immersing ourselves in different cultures brings the heart-opening magic of human connection, which is both powerful and transformative. It dissolves negativity and pulls us out of darkness and self-worship.
When we step out of our comfort zone and find ourselves lost in the world, we revisit our childlike sense of wonder. Travel allows us to experience everyday things as if for the first time, placing us in situations where almost nothing is familiar. Perhaps the most precious gift that travel offers is perspective. It helps us replace judgement with curiosity, making us modest and grateful, so we take nothing for granted.
I travel because I would rather be alive and lost in the world than stagnant and uninspired under fluorescent lights. Or as Jack London put it, “I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.”