Travelling has a ton of perks and building new human connections is one such. While on the move, our travellers affirm to the belief that often travelling has been able to help them meet more people and form deep impactful friendships.

The Winding Tales of Travel and Love

For all those times the world as we know has felt miserable, humans have looked up to the soaring birds, the swimming shoal of fish and wished to melt somewhere beyond. Imagination works like a balm in places where doing is still a distant desire. Imagination allows us to indulge in its deepest recesses and bask in its warmth, providing us the outlet to look beyond the walls that make our worlds. In the minuscule of events and happenings around us, life hides its most personal lessons but what misses is the chance to contemplate! A very few, simple words from a deranged old man in the mental hospital changed a suicidal Patch Adams’ life. A paraphrase of the line would be: ‘Laziness, fear and apprehension kill our innermost beings which otherwise might have shined the entire world!´

Travelling breathes life into all those instincts that helped us evolve as human beings in the first place. Perhaps, right after life takes a precarious turn, we all at some point ponder the idea of leaving everything behind and traveling the entire world. Five minutes into internet surfing, we realize the cost, close our laptops and go to sleep. The cost is actually letting go of our fears. The cost is containing the courage of leaving everything behind us when it really comes down to it!

Members of the Driftwoods family, quite interestingly have taken the bottomline of fear and turned it to their side

As for the fear part, I really try to not let it get me! I have always had an adventurous spirit and I know that each obstacle just makes for a great story down the road! Life is an adventure no matter where you are!

Lily Hall, a journalist by profession holds similar opinions on travel.

Travel equals discovery. There's no set way to do it, but as long as you learn from the world around you and your own experiences, you're doing it right.

Nothing beats the happiness of finding someone along the winding roads you are currently walking on. That's how friendships are forged, that is how families are born, for we all have each others’ backs. While traveling in Chile, the Driftwoods family was stranded on a deserted island due to an unforeseen gale storm that lasted for about 3 days. With reserved food, they put up a good fight with the Element, but not without the support of another family.

We were constantly monitoring our anchor to make sure we didn't drift into the rocks and tried to entertain the kids on land by searching for the feral sheep that live in the old apple orchards on the island.

In another trip in Koh Lanta, a tsunami warning was one of the most terrifying moments for the family, as Gina recounts.

But both of these experiences taught us to always be prepared with a safety bag that can be grabbed at a moments notice in case of such emergencies!

We all gradually learn to stick together, with practice. Struggling is nature's way of strengthening. Experiences shape us, harden us for what all that can be seen and guessed. Very few people like Meg have really grasped the meaning of this. Not even one of her trips has been without her getting injured. But then again,

all the bumps and bruises are certainly a unique way to remember a trip! Nothing's going to stop me!

Relationships are forged by facing hardships together and that is how families break the barriers of blood. Gina ponders on travelling and the bonds her family formed as they went along.

Travelling as a family has opened so many doors for us. We meet more people on the road traveling as a family than we ever did travelling as a couple. Families are universal! Every parent can relate to the other parents in the room. Kids are kids no matter what country you are in and they make for a great ice-breaker!

We are all together in the aching, haunting, loneliness of the grand silence of the universe. The hopelessness and despair born out of it is pure, and I daresay, beautiful. For otherwise, we would not have cared to look beyond ourselves. The grand phenomena of this flimsy probability called life as we know it, is rarely apparent today in this cash and time-strapped world. We are a product of everything that happened before us, dating back to the times when the industrial revolution first began churning its wheels. How can the distant cries of a wounded child bother us when deadlines breathe on our necks and the latest smartphone is way better than the ones in our hands? The child got drowned somewhere between the news breaks and his tears dried up long back. Ashlyn, an expat narrates her tale of communion with the world of sorrow, residing around and beside us. We are all a part of it, even if this system tells us we don´t.

I think it was during the time I travelled to Bosnia and Herzegovina. I went there expecting nothing, but it turned out to be such a beautiful country. We all know Bosnia because of its brutal war that happened during the recent past. Although this country is now building its way back, it’s so hard not to notice the scars these wars have left behind. Bullet perched walls, crippled people all as a result of this war. That’s when you realise how lucky you are. That’s when you learn to appreciate the little things in life.

Travelling rejuvenates and makes our hearts yearn for all those suppressed feelings we forgot we had. As humans, we are innately born with sensitivity. But the airtight socio-economic order at times manages to corrode it. Travelling heals those voices of sensitivity and of benevolence long lost. Meg found peace after signing up for something completely new. In her own words,

I'd never really hiked before, but when my dad passed away a couple of years ago, we signed up to trek the Inca Trail to raise money for charity. It’s the best experience I’ve ever had and we’ve just keep going from there. It’s so good for the soul...It was absolutely incredible. So therapeutic and just the most incredible scenery I’ve ever seen. Plus we’ve made some incredible friends who we trekked with. Can’t recommend it enough!

Most people of this world today would really go insane if they were granted complete freedom. Travelling teaches you the definition of freedom, how it is practised while being humble towards yourself and your fellow beings, and most importantly, loving yourself. That is the core from which everything else emanates. How can you look beyond if you do not look deep inside of yourself?

Perhaps, Camus shall suffice the best ending for this composition. “And he knew, also, what the old man was thinking as his tears flowed, and he, Rieux, thought it too: that a loveless world is a dead world, and always there comes an hour when one is weary of prisons, of one's work, and of devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart."

Driftwoods familyTraveler

Traveling and adventuring been a way for us to connect deeply as a family. It is a way for us to im...

LilyTraveler

Travel equals discovery. There's no set way to do it, but as long as you learn from the world around you and your own experiences, you're doing it right.

AshlynTraveler

‘The best kind of education everybody needs to experience’- that is what travelling gives you back. ...

MegTraveler

Travelling for me is connecting with the world. Connecting with the people, the places and the wildl...

BishwadeepAuthor

A confused soul who thinks he can write and thinks a lot. He is a part of the content ideation team...

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