Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer. No, you don’t get rich in terms of dollars or rupees, but it makes you a better you… an awesome you!
How and why does travel make you awesome? Let me count the ways:
- You Become More Confident : You have traveled at all hours of the night alone, haggled with cabbies and rickshaw-wallahs, dined alone in restaurants, fought eve-teasers, hiked through the hills, swam in the Ganges while doing white water rafting… You have done all these awesome things which were once outside your comfort zone. And these experiences do make you confident, for you know that you can achieve anything you might never have thought possible.
- You are Better at Conversations : If you are an introvert, travel certainly makes you an ambivert, if not an extrovert. While you may like to hide behind a book, your co-passengers might have different thoughts. It starts with small talks but pretty soon you realize that you can talk comfortably to strangers and some of your best conversations have been with strangers.
- You Become Good at Problem-Solving : Your male co-passenger in the Volvo bus insists on sitting as if he is sitting on the sofa at his home. He not only occupies the armrest completely, but encroaches in your space too. You first push yourself in the far corner, then request him to sit properly and when that fails, you call the bus conductor and tell him loudly for all to hear to make the ‘gentleman’ buy another ticket because he is not able to contain his body parts in one seat!
- You Learn to Adapt : Not everything goes according to plan when you travel. Long delays, bad food, wrong terminals, terrible service, pathetic hotel rooms, obnoxious co-travelers… you are bound to experience all this and much more. You don’t shed tears or throw tantrums when facing these uncomfortable situations. You know that you have to find a way to deal with these curve balls and move on.
- You Learn to be More Appreciative : As you travel, you see such sad and harsh realities of life and that it isn’t easy and fair for most. You learn to count your blessings and express gratitude for all the good you have.
- You Will be Open to New Things : You are a non-vegetarian but restrict to only chicken and mutton. But when an opportunity comes to taste beef, camel’s meat, pork or crabs or quails… you say, “what the heck! meat is meat!”
- Your Skills Improve Dramatically – You have to reach the airport on time, you have to carry certain gear and different set of clothes for the trip, so your time management, organizational skills, decision making skills get better.
- You Value Your Loved Ones : Absence makes the heart grow fonder, right? Staying away from home, makes you appreciate your family and friends and not to take them for granted, ever. You learn to appreciate the comfort of mundane routines. And even find a new respect for the life you often wish to escape.
- You Become a Happier Person : Detox from social media, getting some quality time to spend with yourself (if you are solo traveling) or with your family helps you to let go of stress and everyday worries and boosts happiness.
- You Become an Interesting Person : After having seen so many cultures and cuisines and gone through varied good, bad and ugly experiences, you become a storyteller, which makes you the life of any gathering!
Need any more reasons? So, go on and pack your bags to become a super awesome person. Happy travels!
What are some ways that you’ve learned and changed through travel?
28 Responses
Hmm…nice article and valid points except one (for me) — I am very finicky eater when it comes to eating at different places. I don’t eat meat now but even when I used to some years back, I could not eat it out, not even on trains. It had to be homemade. My husband gets annoyed at times. 🙂
Break the rules! Eat what you like! Keep within the rules – ie get super organised but break them when you can. If an introvert, become an extravert if only for a while. Try garments clothes different to the usual from different places .. and learning to appreciate the mundane. Great post Shilpa thank you!
Excellent. You also learn to be patient.
You are brave to have tried out the meats that you mentioned here. I am a chickentarian and would go as far as trying out some lamb and goat meat but thats it.
Love the fact that you have shared so much of your travel experiences with all of us – travel makes for a hearty past time with so many benefits.
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Oh so true. To sum it up we become wiser… ❤️
What a lovely post. It makes me wish I’d traveled more out of the country! We’ve moved around South African and Zimbabwe lots, but only a few times to the United Kingdom and America. Even that has blessed us and done a lot for us. Thank you for this. Nearly done! 2nd last letter of the alphabet in the 2018 A to Z Blogging Challenge. Y is for Yes!
That is a lot of great reasons to travel more often! I should do this!
Wow, These are so true. Better conversations, Better stories to share and funny anecdotes to laugh over. Adapting to a new culture and new environment is not easy. Travel indeed helps us do so better. Awesome notable points.
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Oh yes, travel indeed makes one awesome! How many more reasons does one need to get into their travel gear, right? I know this post is for people like me, who need that extra push (shove, in fact) to get up and get going! 😛
YOU said it, Shilpa!
Travel has changed me as a person, both physically and mentally. In some way, it has made me more spiritual too.
Life is certainly an adventure! I enjoy traveling and seeing different places and meeting people. Everyone has a great story, and I am happy to go places to hear all of those stories.
I have been pushing my best friend to just pack up and go on that trip! I am going to forward your link !!!!
Totally agree. Travel is awesome & makes us awesome too 🙂
You’ve said it all, Shilpa! Travel does change one for the better. The best therapy there is!
Thats surely good reasons to travel shilpa, you have motivated me to keep planning and start packing my bag whenever possible. I have always enjoyed travel and i have a whole list of places to visit. Thanks for sharing your valuable learnings here…
Shilpa, Bill Bryson should be worried. With your great travel writing you could mount a good challenge. Am enjoying these posts.
I love every reason in this post. It’s what makes me want to travel more. I love trying new foods, I find it extremely easy to speak with strangers when I know I’ll probably never see them again, and it definitely opens my eyes to the fact that the world is a lot bigger place than I give it credit for being. People are so different from each other, and there’s no way we can learn and accept all our differences if we don’t get out there and see some of them face to face.
Thaks for providing a beautiful piece of article, Travel makes you very modest. It shows you how tiny you are in the scheme of things, with yourself and others, and just how vast our beautiful world is. It makes you wonder where you are and how you fit in the vast universe we live in.
I can’t agree more Shilpa. Travel surely has brought these changes in me ♥️
Travelling is always interesting. It prepares you to adapt to new culture food and environment. You always learn something new about a place when you travel.
Being a travel addict, I cannot agree more than this. Travel has changed me so much and made me lot flexible.
Absolutely agree on every point! I love traveling and have been traveling for work, fun or education. It is indeed a great learning experience every time.
We are so used to of having a company that traveling alone looks scary and builds pressure. But it has it’s own charm. The biggest advantage is you get to plan as per your wish.
I’ve always believed that the more one travels the more ones mind opens up… We see the world from others eyes. And that matters a lot.
Travel is the best choice to understand life better. I agree with your insights on traveling.
While going through the post I was either remembering few incidents or nodding. Travel makes you awesome for sure.
I agree with all that you said! And yes space makes the heart go finder.
I had my share of experimenting with food but still haven’t tried all kinds of meat yet. I was nodding my head all the long. This exactly why I live traveling. But what I love the most is it opens our mind to different cultures, to understand the history behind people’s action and traditions.