Having just spent the entire month of April traveling, I feel as though I’m still catching my breath! In 30 days, I was in a total of 10 cities and disrupted by 1 very pesky volcano. For all the laughs shared, hardships endured, and stories remembered, I can say with certain that traveling is one of the most rewarding and enjoyable experiences that people can have.

Travel is freedom. The monotony of daily life can really suck the life out of people.  Responsibilities always piling on, assignments always coming up, stresses always building.  Travel is the release valve everyone needs.  By extricating yourself from these daily cycles and building pressures, you can return to a more human state.  You can shut down the machine that is your “work” brain and let go for a bit.  But don’t be fooled.  I’m not talking about “vacation” in the traditional sense of grabbing a cocktail by the pool in some sunny place.  That’s not travel as I see it.

Travel is exploration.  It is about seeing what the world has in store that you’ve never seen or even thought of.  Certainly, as a young child, going on vacation was the most exciting thing because every situation was novel.  Each hotel was a new labyrinth to solve, every window seat a portal to a new world.  But eventually even these begin to enter a predictable pattern; it is no longer travel.

Travel is unpredictable. It is about throwing out the daily itinerary and getting lost.  Countless times over the month we wandered without a particular destination only to happen upon beautiful parks, crowded public markets, or inspiring monuments.  And the experience was all the better because we did not plan on seeing these places, but were an unexpected surprise outside of a plan or schedule.

Travel is curiosity.  I love learning, but sometimes I am just really not in the mood to learn another heat transfer equation or microeconomic theory.  Travel quenches that constant thirst for knowledge with history, art, culture, language, and yes, even engineering(the Porsche factory was quite informative on elasto-kinematics!).

Travel is love. More important that where you’re going is with whom you’re going.  The memories with friends while traveling will be the some of the last to drop out of my brain when old age seizes it.  The stories shared with friends strengthen these friendships beyond what everyday life is capable of. Surely this brief rumination on the properties of travel that make it so wonderful are not a complete list.  But I think it’s a good start.  So, where to next?