You are going to change your life for a long time. But work-home-family-responsibilities-loans and other excuses do not allow you to even exhale to understand what changes you need. You continue to run at the usual crazy pace of life, without doing anything.
Think, look at your life from a different angle, decide what you lack now and what prevents you from living in harmony with yourself. Does not work? Then here’s a working tip for you: get out of the house and go a little further than the usual route home-work-shop-home.
Let’s see what travel teaches us and whether it is worth it to actively look for excuses, protecting your fears. Here are my 12 reasons why people need to travel!
1. TRAVEL TEACHES WHAT YOU NEVER KNOW
First of all, this is geography. If I had been asked 2 years ago which city is the capital of Macedonia, Albania or Vietnam, I would have had to bashfully crawl into Google. But now I know even more, due to the constant dreaming and planning to see this or that country. Secondly, it is the culture and traditions of the peoples of the world. Imagine people who look at life in a completely different way, who have strange and sometimes terrifying traditions and a completely different religion. All this inspires and awakens in you curiosity in relation to everything that you see and feel.
2. LEARN TO BE TOLERANT
Useful thing in society. If you are tolerant, it means that you are educated and generally a normal person. Going on a trip, count on the fact that people in another country will be different: different skin color and eye shape, traditions and religion, outlook on life and way of life. Therefore, you must always respect the state of affairs that is different from yours and understand that you are not at home. In another country, you are a guest and must take into account their peculiarities.
3. LEARN INDEPENDENCE
Why you need to travel
On a journey, you never depend on anyone, completely surrender to yourself and rely only on yourself. Therefore, it is, first of all, self-knowledge and disclosure of one’s abilities and capabilities.
4. TRAVELING IS FUN AND ALWAYS A BIG ADVENTURE
If you are going abroad not on a hot ticket to some all inclusive hotel for a week, but do everything yourself, up to drawing up an entertainment program, then adventures will definitely find you. Checked more than once, especially when you suddenly deviate from the plan of your program, choose a different route from your usual one, or, at worst, decide to go to some crowded cafe on the outskirts of the city. Life just has to provide something like that! Traveling is always fun! Either you are bargaining at the local market for some trifle and, then, snatching this very trifle for mere pennies, you feel like a hero and smile from ear to ear all day. Or you went to a restaurant to taste khinkali, and there a Georgian ensemble sings to the fullest – and your mood has improved! Or boys play football in the yard near the house, who, as soon as they see you, run up to say hello and shake hands. Or when you meet a lot of different pets on your way in the mountains, you immediately run to squeeze and stroke them (I’m not talking about a million photos on your phone).
5. GOOD LANGUAGE PRACTICE
In my case, English. Each person should know at least elementary things in English so that they can explain themselves at least at the level of a first grader. But since at home language learning takes place in a passive form, then on a journey without active practice, nowhere. If you communicate every day among native speakers, or at least those who are the same as you, but when you communicate in your native languages you do not understand each other, then awkwardness and embarrassment gradually disappear, the level of the language improves and there are fewer misunderstandings with other people. Better than sitting at home and knowing the language only in theory.
6. SEE WHAT YOU CAN OR CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT
One of the meanings of life is to find for yourself what only you need and determine your comfort zone. Being far away from your own country, you begin to understand the true value of things, for example, you rethink communication with family and friends, the need for universal approval. And you forget about everyday things, such as the presence of a microwave oven, TV, hot water.
7. KNOW YOUR ABILITIES OUTSIDE YOUR COMFORT ZONE
Leaving far from home, you understand that your soft bed with a pillow will no longer please you, the always clean bathroom will be replaced by the one that has already let hundreds of people through it, and in the kitchen everything will not be the way you want. But it’s always nice to expand your comfort zone, to understand that you could survive everywhere and with minimal waste of nerve cells.
8. UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU WANT FROM LIFE AND FIND INSPIRATION
Why you need to travel
If it seems to you that life has lost its meaning and there is no strength to do anything – plan a trip! Even if for a week. This will already give time to be distracted by thoughts, relax and be inspired by new achievements and projects.
9. MAKING NEW DETAILS
Probably the most pleasant thing about traveling is meeting new people and interesting personalities. Through getting to know the local people, you can learn more about the country, city, traditions and religion. Since they are local, neither Wikipedia nor any other blog will tell about this. They will show you places where you can eat without compromising your health, they will show you where you can buy fruits/vegetables, so that they are tasty and inexpensive! They will show how they spend their leisure time and how they have fun and advise better than any guide what to see in the city.
10. TRY THE CUISINE OF DIFFERENT COUNTRIES
It is unlikely that you will be able to try real Adjarian khachapuri, Georgian khinkali, Nepalese momo dumplings and Dal Bat rice, Thai Tom Yam soup and Vietnamese spring rolls at home. People even came up with a new branch of travel – gastronomic tours. Simply put, when you go abroad just eat and drink.
11. OPPORTUNITY TO HELP PEOPLE
Volunteering is not such a new direction in tourism anymore. People go to poor countries to help both physically and financially. It’s not for me to tell you that a person receives extraordinary satisfaction from helping others. For example, in Nepal, after the largest earthquake in history in 2015, a lot of buildings were destroyed, both ordinary residential buildings and cultural heritage sites. Without tourism and volunteers, the city would have been restored for a very long time. The owner of the house in Nepal, who rents out an apartment, is now engaged in a large project to restore from scratch the only school high in the mountains that was completely destroyed by an earthquake.
12. CREATING NEW BEAUTIFUL MEMORIES THAT YOU WILL NEVER FORGET
And finally, these are memories. Probably the most expensive thing we can have. We ourselves are the creators of moments, both pleasant and not so. But anyway, later it will be cool to remember and in some places understand how you have changed. The main thing is not to forget to live here and now, enjoy life and not look for any reasons to travel.