Humans built roads, carriages, boats, trains, cars, and planes so that they can travel. But we’ve been traveling long before we’ve started building roads – the earliest human history is a history of movement. Funny enough, thousands of years later, we still do it. We conquer greater distances in less time than we used to do only a hundred years ago, let alone a millennium or two, but the need to go somewhere else, to explore and learn about new places has remained the same. It could be said that we have traveling in our DNA and that we need to travel to grow and improve. Because that’s what traveling does to us.
Traveling might make you more resourceful.
It would be great always to have an open option to stay in great hotels, eat in fancy restaurants, and enjoy all of the luxuries your travel destination has to offer. However, not being able to travel like that doesn’t mean you can’t travel, have fun, and grow as a person. You only need to do all of that on a budget.
When you travel on a tight budget, you can learn how to make the most out of every situation. An extra night in a hostel in Paris doesn’t fit the budget? Offer to work for a night of stay. Food at the local bakery is too expensive? Go there near the end of their working hours, and see if they would be willing to sell you the left-overs for less money. Learn to be resourceful.
Traveling might make you smarter.
Especially if you’re studying abroad – in that case, the whole point of traveling is to come back smarter. But there’s something about being surrounded by a different culture that makes people more open to accepting new information. Learning in an international community, like they do in Asparis, is always challenging because of the mix of cultures, but that’s also what makes it more fun and efficient.
Traveling gets you out of your comfort zone and helps you move on.
If you’re stuck in a rut, displacing yourself from your zone of comfort can bring the much-needed change in your life. People have been hitting the road in search for change probably since roads were invented. Traveling is only one of the ways to get to know yourself better, change perspective and move on in your life, and there are probably less expensive things you can do to achieve a similar effect. But come on, what’s better to give life a new direction than having an adventure?
Traveling Makes You More Independent
Even if you don’t travel alone, it would be very hard to have all of the people who are part of your life back home come on your trip with you. Most of the support networks we have in our lives stay back home when we travel, and we have very few people we can lean on while abroad. So, we need to count on ourselves for everything we need.
Traveling Makes You Appreciate Everything You’ve Left Home
No matter how great of an experience traveling abroad is, at a certain point, you’ll want to go home. You might feel that you miss hearing people speaking your native language. You might discover that your bed is the most comfortable bed you’ve ever slept in. You’ll start missing your friends and family. Even though traveling abroad is fun, after a while you’ll notice that there really is no place like home, and hopefully, you’ll learn to appreciate everyone and everything waiting for you a bit more.
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