Why do I travel?

Everybody has his or her reasons why they travel, and quite frankly they usually end up with more or less the same basic answers - explore, detach, learn, heal, and pleasure.

I've been to places in my childhood and the travel really never did struck me as a necessity.  Yes, that's what I see it now.  The world is so damn beautiful to be missed, so fascinating not to be experienced, so vast to just stay stagnant.   It's exciting really to state the obvious.  But weird enough, these reasons weren't my reason why I actually started to travel.

They say that in order for a heart to heal you need to detach yourself in the familiar and immerse in the unfamiliar.  That's when you need to pack up your bag and go to another place to either work or play.  Just get out of your comfort zone, and pray that by the time you come home, you'll be okay.  Well that's what I did.  Of course traveling isn't the end all and be all to heal yourself, there are many ways to do so, but this is one thing I know that did.  

Now when I try planning for a trip, I seem to know where I want to go next and somehow bookmark it in my brain because I know that I'll get back soon after I'm done with the trip I'm planning on.  For other people, they would contemplate about it as soon as they step home again.  Whether or not coming up with the next destination dawned to you earlier, there will still be that next destination.  I think it's safe to say that traveling is like a drug to me- it's addictive, it requires money, it makes you ask for more, it gives you a certain high, an anxiety if you can't have any of it for long periods of time, it is just divine.

So going back to the question, why do I travel?

I started traveling to appease my broken heart, but reasons changed when my heart had grown fond of it.

Now, I travel because...

I like to learn and experience new things,

I desire to marvel at God's creation and I want to see the best of it before I die,

I feel the need to travel because I probably wouldn't be able to travel often when I start my own family (at least that's what I think),

I'm interested on meeting local people and talking to them about banal things.  I know it's so simple but there's something about it that makes you feel that you're a part of something large - humanity.

I want nature and the wild to surprise, shock, intimidate me.  The feeling of being around danger, and coming out of it unharmed, alive, and even smiling.  Now that's cool!

I am curious to know how these weird and awfully sounding exotic food tastes like.  Will I like it?  Will I not? Will I take more home?  Or will I puke?  Will I get diarrhea or disease from this?  Whatever it is, at least  know.   And at least I can tell my grandchildren that I've eaten brains, insects, frogs, crocodiles, and some sorts, and they'll think I'm cool.

And I know you've may or may not about heard these answers before.  But really whatever reasons you may have, I assure you that by the time your trip is over, you wouldn't see your world the same way again.  You needed to just go on with your own journey for you to understand.

Those are my reasons.

You.

Why do you travel?