Travel is not just seeing; it is exploring, testing, fine-tuning and experiencing the world. Travelling can be solo adventures, accompanied journeys or family time – but the basic recipe of a benign trip is always the same: the more you enjoy the present moment, the richer the experience of your travels will be. How can you enrich your travels? Here is my list of 10 tips: allow yourself to be spontaneous – connect with people who live where you want to travel – be in the now – open up your senses – be grateful – document your journey – focus on the experiences rather than the destination – amongst the ultra-mobile beings practise consciousness travel – carry the travel vibe inside you. These suggestions can help you to experience the true potential of your journeys, leading to a life’s work of boundless memories.

1. Embrace Spontaneity:

A good travel mantra is to loosen up: don’t be bound to doing exactly as you’d planned every hour on the hour. Instead, wander a bit, see where the alley takes you, and don’t go for those usual sights recommended in the guidebooks. Much of the magic of travel uncoils itself when you least expect it: say, meeting a local pottery artist or coming upon a hidden café where locals go, or watching a fabulous sunset at an unexpected viewpoint. Forgoing a rigid adherence to a plan can open many doors of possibility, letting serendipity take the lead. Leave the calendar behind, and let your wandering eye and wandering feet lead the way. Often, the side trips turn out to be the greatest aspects of the journey.

2. Connect with Locals:

If you want to truly experience the heart and soul of a place, try connecting with its people. Talk to shopkeepers, artisans and residents, asking questions about their lives, hopes and priorities. Attend community fairs, festivals and cultural celebrations to experience some of the traditions and stories that helped to shape the local identity. Consider participating in guided tours led by locals who can share their insights and hidden gems about the history, culture and sites of a destination. If you can, take advantage of the opportunity to form friendships and make new contacts. By creating authentic connections with people from places you visit – rather than just the hostel attendant, tour guide and ticket agent – you not only get to know a destination better, you help create a world where travel is about people-to-people interactions and the impact is not just one way. Both the local and the traveller benefit from connecting, receiving and sharing knowledge and experiences.

3. Slow Down and Savor:

Saving is a skill that’s sorely needed in our fast-paced modern world, and especially so when it comes to truly impactful travel. Whenever you’re visiting somewhere new, take conscious steps to slow down, savour, and pay attention: to lingering over a meal at the sidewalk café with steaming coffee and bustling street sounds; to watching the sun dip below the horizon, bathing the sky in golds and pinks and oranges; to strolling leisurely, untouched and surrounded by chirping birds and crinkling leaves. You may find that by slo working your travels you develop a stronger connection to what’s right in front of you, and a renewed awe for the wonder of the world around us. When you’re travelling, resist the urge to rush and to check off destinations. Go slow, breathe, pay attention.

4. Step Outside Your Comfort Zone:

Oddly enough, travel is the best time to push our boundaries a little to embrace all that makes your adventure special. Seek out the experience that excites you the most right outside your comfort zone and leap into it! Go actually taste what you can’t imagine eating: sauteed crabs with their claws still in bed withles of shark men’s digestive system, or an eight-legged spider with a smile for its cute toes. Try food you can’t even puncture with a fork, foods cooked or served in strange ways or that don’t look anything at all like what you previously thought it was! Find that activity that totally scares you, and do it! Make bungee jumping from a bridge or a hot air balloon lift sound like a great excursion idea or get your heart pounding by climbing rugged cliffs to watch the sun set. Behind every ounce of fear you defeat there remains a memory to follow and perhaps repeat. Learn to speak ten words in the local language – you’ll be surprised how far those polite words will take you! Learn what you can share with the other friendly human beings on the other side of the world. Go past that barrier of fear of the unknown which mediates your human relationship by exposing yourself to the possibility of a meaningful connection. Step beyond your comfort zone to get that special touch of magic that gives added shine to any travel experience.

5. Practice Gratitude:

Travel can take you to lofty heights and small, painful lows. Cultivating an attitude of gratitude will help see you through.On a daily basis, stop what you’re doing, and sink down into a mute meditative moment of thanks for all the spectacular extras that show up ‘extra’ richly when you travel. And not just material blessings. A little old lady on the street who points you in an unexpected direction. The grandeur of a burning desert landscape. The delight, mystery and lucidity of another person’s laughter. The special company of people you’re with. Travel offers up bounty aplenty, but even when the vista isn’t grandiose, there’s always something to be grateful for. There is so much on the road to serve as a teacher if you’re willing to see it. It’s easy to feel Good at travel when everything is going your way. Tourism has a predatory recon hedonize frame to it (‘what can I get from this place, what pleasure can I extract?’) but if you infuse your travels with an attitude of gratitude, you’re likely to spread that attitude and some of your good fortune to those around you as well. So as you gallivant and wander, stop occasionally and give thanks for the feast of blessings before your eyes. 

6. Capture Memories, Not Just Photos:

Photos are mementos that we take with us where the actual memories are. We are gazing over at a scene, but the image isn’t taking place just inside our minds, but outside of ourselves. We are not ‘ here ’ when we are taking photos of something – our minds are somewhere else. We might imagine we are present, and direct our senses, but we just aren’t simply being present, not fully. The brain is not creating experiences, it’s just a processor of world It is better to just sit under a tree, read a great novel, all the while reaching out with all the senses that we have for as long and frequently as we can, to the scene before us – to explore, feel, smell, see it and taste it as intensively as we can. Expert advice for entrepreneurs is to be ‘ in the zone ’ as much as possible. Photography means that we no longer are once we get the shot – we have become purely homo digitalis. When you read a good novel – and you are immersed in the narrative imagined world within the book, does it mean you haven’t read as many books if you read it more captivatingly while dance music is pumping out from your earbuds? The auditory emotional engagement distracts you from the storyline you are reading. Of course, music in its own right can be wonderful, but isn’t good writing the same? Surely, while listening to music, you aren’t really reading the words on the page. If you want to read with respect and focus, put the headphones away. Did you have a good time in Tuscancyou didn’t experience what you experienced or see what you saw – you only created memories of things you saw. Anyone can create memories of anything.

7. Embrace the Journey, Not Just the Destination:

With the promise of where we are going fuelling our need and desire to get there, we often lose sight of the fact that the journey itself is where the magic happens. Be it a road trip mountains, the process of getting there is usually as enriching (if not more so) than the anticipated arrival itself. Without opening the heart to the beauty of every juncture, stop, vista, conversation and fellow traveller you will miss for sure the time of your life. Come into your own, don’t leave it to your navigator, and enjoy the process. Take your time, pause to take in the beauty of whatever you pass by, talk to people, eat ice-cream, watch the world go by. Prepare to discover side roads you would otherwise miss. If you enter the journey with the same zest and spirit you would land in your destination, you would already have half your destination experience.

8. Prioritize Experiences Over Things:

In a society where so much importance is placed on collecting material things, we really need to make a shift in our thinking to placing more value on the experiences we have along the way. When you’re planning your travels, try to resist the urge to spend money on meaningless souvenirs that will just add to your growing collection of plastic crap that gathers dust on a shelf in your house. Instead, spend your money on experiences that enrich your life and stick in your memory. Get a hands-on cooking class with a local chef, go on a guided hike through the wilderness or see a cultural performance in a historic theatre. These will create memories that you’ll treasure for a lifetime, and will far outweigh the satisfaction that comes from buying a plastic souvenir that will soon end up gathering dust. If you continually focus on the experiences and memories you have along the way, not only will you have a deeper connection with the places you visit, but you’ll also carry back with you a greater appreciation for the richness and diversity of the world you’re exploring. As you get ready to go out into the world, remember that the greatest take-home souvenirs will always be the experiences and memories that you bring back with you from your travels.

9. Practice Mindful Travel:

Mindful travel is a moment-to-moment exploration of life, where your senses are fully engaged, your mind is opened, and you are more aware of yourself and your environment. Embed some mindfulness practices on your travels into your day-to-day, through meditation, journaling, or by simply checking in with yourself through mindfulness to observe the patterns in your experience. Take moments to pause, breathe deeply, slow down, and bring your attention to the sights, sounds and sensations of the space around you. Practise being present at mealtimes, and even consider being conscious as you brush your teeth in the morning and visionary as you wash yourself at night. In this way, through continuing mindfulness practice, you will travel deeper, absorbing more deeply into the essence of the places you visit. You will realise that the secret to a good, meaningful life… is right in the moment that is unfolding before you on the present day and at the present time.

10. Carry the Spirit of Travel with You:

With your travels over, and displacement giving way back to a base of operations, let the spirit of travel persevere in your heart. Then let the journal, souvenirs, photographs and tales serve as constant reminders of its potential to effect transformation. May they inspire you to encounter all that life has to offer with curiosity and compassion – even everyday occurrences – and to experience joy in the greatest whirlygig of all: the wheel of life. For it is not so much the places we go, as what we bring back from them. And it is this we carry with us wherever we find ourselves to be.

 Travel is more than a movement of mobile feet, a moving map, sometimes impatiently put on hold during a take-off landing. It is a soul trip, a search for meaning; it is a love song to the human spirit. Follow the suggestions in this list and you will help yourself and your travel companions to enjoy and remember your journey more fully. So pack your bags, open your mind to newness, and leap into today’s next adventure, whether near and not-so-near; with wonder, with joy, with a coffee, and with hope. A joyful new world awaits each traveller.