MINDFUL TRAVELING

10 Reasons Why I Keep Exploring New Places

Travel is more to me than just your average 2-week vacation per year

Travel. Such a short word for something so big. Travel can be a day trip to the neighboring city. Travel can be a 2-week vacation to an exotic destination. Travel can be a journey in finding your roots or a year-long world trip. And travel can be so much more.

There are countless ways to travel. By bus, by train, by car or by plane. Some even travel by foot or by boat. Some travel slow, others travel fast. Some travel daily, others never leave their home town.

And that is the beauty of travel. As diverse as it is, it makes it unique. Travel can be so different. Everyone can travel the way he or she desires. A travel itinerary can be changed, customized, and individualized.

And travel is a passion of mine. I’ve been introduced to traveling at a young age. I was several weeks old when I did my first travels. The type of traveling I would do has changed over the years. But one thing has never changed.

My passion for traveling.

But what is it that keeps me moving? Why do I want to constantly go on new adventures? What are the reasons why I keep going to new places?

(These points are in no particular order besides the one they came to my mind.)

1) Travel keeps me alive (and/or awake)

This might sound weird to you but when I travel I truly feel alive. I feel like I’m living my life and doing things I would otherwise regret not having done. It keeps me alive on a psychological level letting my senses take it all in.

Travel keeps me awake. It teaches me to be careful, to always be prepared for the unexpected, and never walk around with closed or tired eyes. There’s always something that could hurt you which you might not see or on the other hand, there is always something you could miss experiencing when simply staying home.

2) Travel excites me

And with all those things travel does excite me. Just thinking about traveling to a certain destination calls my dopamine hormones and makes me happy. Booking plane tickets, packing the bags, and driving or flying to a new destination brings me an incredible level of excitement.

This excitement carries me throughout the trip. It lets me try new dishes, do unknown sports, and meet strangers. The excitement also overrules any stereotypes or silly myths placed into my head by others.

3) Travel teaches me so much about foreign countries, cultures, and the people

Some things can’t be taught in school and even reading a countless number of books and articles will never teach you those things you’ll learn when being in person in a foreign country.

The smells, the sounds, the feelings you will experience when walking through a dark alleyway in Asia, or when walking across the hot desert sand in Africa, or while being crammed in an overloaded minibus can only be experienced in person.

No words can ever do justice to all those things I’ve experienced, seen, and heard across the world. I’ve learned things I’ve never heard about before. I’ve taken part in cultural rituals and seen habits of people which taught me so much about life.

That is why I keep exploring new places. Because it is the only way to really get to know a foreign culture and to understand people from different countries.

4) Travel widens my horizon

This brings me to the next point. Even as an open-minded person that tries to stay unimpressed by stereotypes and myths, you always have certain expectations about countries and their people.

Travel will widen your horizon in a way you won’t believe it. It opened my eyes in so many ways. I’ve learned so much. I’ve seen so much. And even changed my own habits due to what I experienced.

This is not just a cheesy quote. There is more behind your horizon and vision of life. Letting foreign cultures and countries broaden your knowledge will even change your daily lives in some situations.

5) Travel pushes me out of my comfort zone

There’s for sure one thing I have to think about when talking about getting out of my comfort zone while traveling. There have been many situations where I had to leave my comfort zone during travels but this one situation stands out by far.

I’ve been asked before if there’s anything in life, any activity or sports I would be scared of. And I replied immediately “there is for sure, scuba diving”.

Guess what? I’m holding my PADI open-water license in my hands right now. But that was only possible because my husband didn’t force me but kind of did in terms he wanted me to give it a try. He wouldn’t understand why and how I could be scared of diving, something that brought him so much joy.

A week later with an incredibly patient and understanding diving coach, I had my first few dives logged in my diving book and went on an additional dive together with my partner where I truly enjoyed the underwater world in Thailand.

Not sure what else is out there but I am sure there are more things (like trying weird foods for example) that could push me in the future again out of my comfort zone.

6) Travel shows me how fortunate I am in life

Traveling to different countries, living in various climate zones, and experiencing different cultures and living conditions of locals has taught me so much about how fortunate I am about where and how I grew up.

It’s natural to not think about your upbringing and life back home when there’s nothing else you know. But seeing other children sitting on the floor in the classroom trying to study with just a pen and a blank paper on the cold concrete makes you think. It makes you think about how fortunate you are about where you grew up, what education you received, about the stable household you were brought up in, and the stable and developed country you are living in.

It makes you think a lot about the safety net you always had around you.

Once I started traveling together with my boyfriend (now husband) I learned as well how fortunate I am for having one of the strongest passports in the world. Never in my life had I worried about getting into a country, needing an excessive amount of paperwork in order to get a visa, or all the other stress that comes with it.

Yes, traveling has made me a more mindful human being and I am grateful for it.

7) Travel allows me to constantly shoot new things

(and follow my other passion of photography)

Now I am coming to a different topic. Photography has been my passion for years already. And because I love nature and landscape photography a lot, I get to live it up to the limits during my travels.

I’m no city traveler in case you haven’t realized yet. I love to travel to different countries to meet people from foreign cultures but mainly to see new landscapes and nature features. And to capture those in photography.

So, travel does help me to never run out of objects to capture.

8) Travel allows me to create special memories with my husband and partner in life

I used to be a female solo traveler who couldn’t imagine traveling with a partner. But that’s a few years ago. Time changes. So does life. And so do I.

Here I am today. Looking forward to the next escape I am planning together with my partner. Because I wouldn’t want it any different. I love traveling with him. Simply because our minds work so similarly. We enjoy the same things. And even if we don’t, then we spend some time apart from each other to still do what we like during our vacations.

I love thinking back at all the memories I made with my husband while traveling. There are many of them. In countless countries and on three different continents.

And I am excited about more. I surely travel to create more amazing memories with my husband.

9) Travel allows me to see the world with different eyes

This might sound a bit cheesy but it is the truth. Only through traveling, one can learn to look at the world with different eyes. Traveling opened my eyes, widened my horizon, and taught me to look at things differently.

Seeing people living in the poorest conditions but showing nothing but gratitude and happiness surely showed me that there’s not much needed in order to live a happy life. One doesn’t need the latest iPhone, every season new clothes, and the biggest car.

There’s more behind true happiness. And it seems like people with fewer possessions have figured it out before the rest of us. But I am very grateful for the experiences I’ve made and the lessons I’ve learned.

I try to be more mindful these days and look at life situations differently. I try to use all those different eyes I met on the road and put them back into my own life.

But all of this is a never-ending process. There’s no such thing as “I’m done, I’ve learned it all”. There is always more to learn. And while traveling there are always new perspectives to explore. And that is why I keep traveling as well. To keep seeing the world with different eyes.

10) Travel teaches me to appreciate home

Last but not least I’ve learned a lot about home, the meaning of home, and what different homes one can have while traveling. My home is surely different from the home many other western people have. At some stage in my life, my backpack was my home. It was my safe anchor and the only thing that followed me around for six months.

But I still enjoy coming home. Even if my home is changing with the seasons.

After living abroad for almost 7 years and finally coming back to my birth country Germany I could see it all with different eyes. All of a sudden I loved the forests, the meadows with cattle grazing on them, and countless rivers crossing through the country.

I had to go abroad to learn to appreciate the landscape features in my own country.

And that is why I will continue moving to new places. So that eventually I can come back to a certain home and appreciate it all over again.

Final words

Yes, travel is more to me than just the average 2-week vacation. Travel is my life. Travel has changed my life and travel has shaped me in so many ways. Travel is part of me.

And that is why I continue to travel. Because I see traveling as a way of growing as a human being. I continue to travel to experience all those things all over again.

I travel because the world is my greatest teacher.

I first read Glad‘s piece on traveling and then Jack’s article who was the instigator of this challenge. Thanks for inviting me to such a fun write-up. I truly enjoyed reading their reasons for traveling and invite you to write down yours as well. Please don’t forget to tag me because I can’t rely on the Algorithm to show me yours.

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