When we travel we don't know where we are headed which can be the most exciting thing, but sometimes a little scary. Although we may have a plan in place, it's likely to change. Travel isn't a holiday, knowing where you will be for the coming week or two... It's a journey where no plans are fixed, you can't predict how things will flow and you can't imagine the characters you will meet and the things you will see. This is one of the reasons i love to travel, because nothing can be predicted. Unlike being at home where i know pretty much for sure where i will be from one day to the next, a period of travel is living in the opposite way. Over the last month in South America my plans have changed numerous times, sometimes for good reasons and sometimes for not so good reasons. But those changes in plans often make the best stories.
“When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable." - Clifton Fadiman
It's so important to realise you won't always feel comfortable when you travel. When you wake up alone in a place so different to home everything is intensified. Your senses work on overdrive and you can feel a little lost. It's these moments that help build your character and make you realise there is so much more to learn about the world and yourself and travel gives you the opportunity to do this.
“To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.” - Aldous Huxley
Naturally we all hold stereotypes, and like the ones we hold towards people, the stereotype isn't proven wrong until we meet someone who changes it. Just like travelling we may have an idea in our heads about what a place will be like, but it's not until you are there, in a place that you truly get to know it. When you meet the people who make the country and they show you how they live their lives, that's when you discover often presumptions held by yourself or others are so very wrong.
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