“Traveling it leaves you speechless then turns you into a storyteller” – Ibn Battuta

Travel is the vessel through which imagination itself meets the opportunity to not only learn new things, but old things afresh. I love traveling as it allows me to experience taste, and consider new things. And still, I must confess, I don’t know that I’d consider myself the adventures type of traveller. I’m not exactly jumping at the opportunity to go skydiving, climbing mountains, and/or bungee jumping. I’m a trooper kind of traveller – meaning I’m basically down for almost anything within reason of course. But my one caveat is this: it’s really important for me not to be overwhelmed and overstimulated. I like time to process my experiences.

In today’s travel meets tourism age, everyone is always trying to sell you something – even the experience of having truly travelled itself – the must see, the must do, the must eats, and the must try. Rushing my experiences just to get through a checklist just isn’t my cup of tea. I want to take my time digesting the change of scenery, breathing in the new air, and basically doing nothing at all.

Through trial and error, I have come to the understanding that this form of travel just is not for me.

Personally, the travel experiences that I have found most rewarding are ones where I get to meet new people. People from different places, living different lives, speaking different languages, believing different truths – and despite all the differences amongst us, or maybe more so in respect of all our differences – there are people eager to connect, to learn, to be taught, and to appreciate something outside of their norm.

For me, this is just inspiration overload; wanting to record it all, but knowing that you could never really capture it all entirely. But even then there is comfort in that, knowing there will always be more left to add to the cannon of experiences, always more ways to create. Meeting new people reminds me of the beauty of our reality, that there are and will always continue to be so many possibilities in this world.

For some time now, I have intuited that there must be some kind of connection between travel and creativity, but I dismissed my own observations as just my mind playing tricks on me. But science has come to the rescue to back me and my suspicions! To put a long story short, travel sparks creativity by placing you in new environments which then in turn stimulates your senses, thus heightening your observational skills, and hopefully, spurring your creative drive.

So now I want to know, am I alone in this or can you relate too?