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Why Travel Changes Your Life?

It's a reality, at least in my life, travel has caused some of the biggest changes in my personality and my way of being.

By HowToFind .comPublished 5 years ago 4 min read
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Traveling is an experience that takes you out of your comfort zone, and helps you develop new personal tools.

You will learn to enjoy with the 5 senses

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One of the people I love the most in the world carries the banner: "Food is the reason you should Travel." But the truth is that food is one of the most authentic ways to experience a country.

Normally we don't pay attention, and I have to confess that I was one of the first to end up in a tourist trap restaurant: one of those paella restaurants in Las Ramblas at 150€.

But if something has taught me to travel it is to go with the five senses alert, and try traditional flavors where I travel.

Lose yourself in the streets of a new city, find a local restaurant where they've been cooking the same traditional dish for 40 years, and fall in love through the palate.

I can assure you that there's nothing like tasting a mie goreng on a beach in Lombok or a nyama choma in a Nairobi stall surrounded by locals.

You will experience many, many first times

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I don't know why, but when we're traveling, we love to try things and live new experiences. I love the first times, and those people who think that before dying they have to try everything.

Because those moments, moreover, are recorded for you forever. Maybe you don't remember your sixth kiss, but what about the first time?

Well, the same happens with traveling.

And I'm telling you, because the first time I sled or went to a Balinese cooking course I'm not going to forget.

So you know, sleep on the beach, fall in love, dive with turtles, climb a volcano, sail in a sailboat, live with local people, volunteer, camp, go to a festival, do yoga, learn to dance, jump out of an airplane, do crafts... try it ALL.

There's no better way to shoot your adrenaline levels.

Because you'll make friends for life

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No doubt, traveling is an intense experience. I've come across people—sometimes I've just shared a meal with them—but I've always taken a little piece of them with me.

I once met an Italian boy who left everything in his native country to build a boat off the coast of Kenya and go around the world helping developing communities; and an Australian woman who, after being widowed in her 70s, decided to travel all over Africa alone for years to fulfill her life's dream.

They are fascinating stories that make the journey much richer and more inspiring. You see ordinary people accomplishing extraordinary feats, making their dreams come true, and demonstrating that in this life everything is possible.

And today, I can proudly say that I have friends all over the world.

I don't know if it's because we far from homes, our routines or our comfort zones. But this makes us feel these friendships more intensely.

Because you fall in love with the world

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

And it is that this passion that unites us so much to many, transforms us and I have lived it in my own flesh.

I remember the first time I left home with a backpack. We prepared the trip around Europe for weeks, and I had those nerves in my stomach to see what I was going to find. Backpacks, hostels and trains, instead of suitcases, planes, and hotels like when you travel with your family.

But little by little those nerves turned into emotion, and I think it was on that first trip when I realized what traveling was going to mean to me.

That first adventure and others have given me incredible experiences, and have taught me that life can be looked at in very different ways, and that other ways of living it are possible.

Traveling helps us to think differently, to see the world as bigger and smaller at the same time.

Years ago I looked at the world map that I have had in my room since I was little and dreamed what all those countries that I saw so far away would be like. And now I spend hours looking for flights to jump from one side of the globe to the other.

I'm sure you've felt it too, that feeling when landing on your land, that mixture of nostalgia and melancholy for leaving the journey behind.

That feeling that escapes words and manifests itself in stomach knots and chills.

But also, the fullness of knowing that all those moments will always remain within you.

Now I look back, and life is incredible.

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HowToFind .com

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