What Our Travel Stories Teach Us About Ourselves

Here’s a secret: Pay attention to your conversations after you return home from traveling. Listen for the insights and observations you exhale as naturally as your breath—the stories that are so much a part of you that you barely notice. This is where you will find the lessons of your trip. 

Do you complain incessantly about the lack of WiFi at the remote Patagonian lodge where you stayed?

Perhaps you tell everyone how much you enjoyed the experience of eating in Italy—the outdoor cafes, the leisurely pace of meals, shopping for fresh produce in the markets? 

Are you unable to stop talking about the 10-day silent retreat you’re just back from?

Hidden in each story is a nugget of self-awareness: An attachment to the internet, a lifestyle preference, the tension between a desire to communicate and a desire to listen within. 

More than a year has passed since I visited Namibia, a vast and wild republic on the south-west coast of Africa and one of the continent’s youngest countries. Namibia has a powerful story: one of hard-won freedom (it gained independence from South Africa in 1990), innovative conservation initiatives, ancient culture and extraordinary landscapes and wildlife. 

I speak often about Namibia with inspiration. But my experiences there revealed a parallel story: one of human graciousness and animal instinct. 

Human Graciousness

At some point after returning home, I realized that I will always associate Namibia with the memory of one specific phrase—“It’s a pleasure.” It seemed like every Namibian conversation ended with this gracious sentiment. 

One morning in Swakupmund, for example, as I walked alone on a quiet residential street, an elderly woman stopped her car alongside me to ask if I needed a ride. Swaddled in almost every piece of clothing I’d packed, I was obviously ill equipped for the cold October weather of the coastal town and was chilled to the bone. I told the woman I was headed to town to buy a coat. She said she knew just the place and would take me there. I hopped into the cozy orbit of her car and when I thanked her for going out of her way to deliver me to the store, she waved it off saying it was a pleasure. 

I can still feel the surge of gratitude and awe I’d felt standing there watching her silver sedan pull away. In that instant, I became acutely aware of how much I wanted to be a person who is intimate with the pleasure of kindness.

In the days that followed, with my ears attuned for it, I heard “It’s a pleasure,” everywhere.

When our safari guide thanked a colleague who’d stopped to help change a punctured tire, he hopped into his Land Cruiser and shouted a cheery ”It’s a pleasure,” over the noise of the diesel engine. 

It was in the bits and pieces of conversation between drivers and dispatchers that crackled across taxi radios and at the airport in Windhoek, where a friendly waitress told me it was a pleasure to help me install a local SIM card into my phone and place a call. 

I was inspired by the genuine delight Namibians appeared to take in helping others and it was contagious. From that point on, I adopted the phrase.

I don’t always possess Namibian graciousness, yet when I do stop to help a mother cradling a newborn to load groceries into her SUV, or pay for the coffee of a harried commuter who realized, only after placing his order, that he’d forgotten his wallet, it truly is a pleasure.

Animal Instinct

I’d arrived in Namibia from Mexico (where my husband and I live part time), disoriented and exhausted from the two days and four flights it had taken to get there. My body felt stiff and sore, as though I’d leaped over the continents myself. But even jet lag  couldn’t numb the sensation of excitement that defined the trip. 

As one of four participants on a photo safari, I was headed to Etosha National Park, a vast protected reserve in northern Namibia that is home to huge herds of big game. For five days our focus was on the single task of photographing Etosha’s legendary wildlife. 

I still remember the great anticipation I felt each morning as I packed my camera bag and conjured up images of the animals I hoped to see that day. To go to Etosha was a dream. In one morning we would visit water holes teeming with more animal species than I could imagine seeing in a lifetime. 

Every day, we parked ourselves at the natural springs that serve as a lifeline for the lion, leopard, cheetah, elephant, ostrich, zebra, black rhino, giraffe, antelope and other wildlife that inhabit the arid Etosha salt pan that encompasses the reserve. 

Once, we watched more than 100 zebra drink and bathe beside elephants, giraffe, eland, kudu and impala in a raucous dance choreographed by Mother Nature. In another instance, a mother cheetah nursed her four young cubs only a few yards from our safari vehicle. One afternoon a leopard stealthily approached to drink just behind where we’d parked, granting us a rare glimpse of the elusive cat in the wild. 

Whenever I talk about these amazing encounters, however, it isn’t the experience of photographing the wildlife that I recount: it is the animal instinct that was being expressed—the innate life force that compels each animal to behave true to their nature. 

I remember how fully alive and in sync with the universe the animals were and it inspired a desire to discover my own inherent disposition, something I hadn’t yet taken possession of. 

I observed the effect instinct had over the animals behavior—the way it guided the herds to Etosha’s life-supporting water and how cheetah cubs displayed basic hunting behaviors like stalking and pouncing in their play — and I knew that my true nature wasn’t something I needed to learn, I already had it.

Namibia was not my first brush with the explosive mix of insight and self-awareness that travel provokes, but when I returned home I could tell that I’d been changed in ways that redefined my notions of hospitality and unity.

What about you? What do your travel stories teach you about yourself? Use the comment box below to share or join the conversation. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

If You Go

Discover country highlights, things to do, travel tips, image galleries, and more about travel to Namibia at Namiba Tourism. 

Click here to view my Etosha National Park photo gallery.

Read about Namibia’s pioneering communal conservations and its collaborative projects with the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF).