Hello dear ‘Local Traveler!’. Let’s bring you another step closer to identifying with this term and engaging in it on your next travel.
Today we are talking about what you will gain from traveling as a local.
You might ask yourself, ‘why should I do it, though, what marks the difference? Is it really worth to take that one step further?’
Let’s replace those questions with answers and uncover the hidden gems of travelling as a local. As I wrote before, traveling has the potential power to impact us personally, how we see the world and how we live our days.
Are you ready?
*Please remember that I write out of experience having travelled the world and not of learned knowledge acquired at home.
Vitamin R – Fortifying Worldwide Friendships
Vitamin R, the greatest amongst them all: the vitamin of building relationships when you travel. Latest when we travel, we learn the value true friendships behold.
Remember how I mentioned that when we travel as a local, we must often engage in some kind of work and travel? Whatever work that is, or whatever trade you engage in, travelling as a local will always bring you into direct contact with the local people of a destination from day one on and so with for the remainder of your travel.
Before I explain to you why you build precious friendships when you travel and the treasure found in them, let me share with you a personal example from friendship building when traveling as a local.
If you would like to skip the story just read on after the quotation mark ends. Yet be aware, you might find a lesson hidden in the story I have to tell you.
‘My family and I were in Gwaii Haanas, British Colombia in 2015. A few days before we found ourselves gliding through the uninhabited and protected natural wealth of the Gwaii Haana islands my mother had a dream. She wanted to do a sailing trip through the uncountable islands epitomizing the words beauty, on the most cultural and grounded way possible. So, she walked down to the harbour and addressed every owner of their sailboat that was currently present. She asked, if they have ever been in Gwaii Haanas and whether they organize sailing trips into Gwaii Haaanas. Here’s the point, although we didn’t have the financial means, my mother decided to reach for her dream and so she became a local traveler. This shifted what was going to be a turistic experience to a beyond cultural, local and tradition infused adventure. Crafting a new friendship and illustrious moments I remember until today. Anyways, the first was upmost kind but could unfortunately not help us. So it went with the second. Yet the third, Lon, a humble, kind, generous and compassionate man answered with yes. The thing is, though, he was no one who organizes sailing trips to Gwaii Haanas. He had a personal interest in gliding through the island’s waters. Perfect! And so, a story is written for Lon, my mother, my father and I. One week later we spent 7 days sailing through gentle currents, fierce storms, roamed the undescribable natural wealth and, through Lon, saw what as a tourists we would have never found.’
When two ‘strangers’ meet in a destination home to one, foreign to the other, two ‘strangers’ who, for instance, have engaged to reach each other a lending hand while the other he or she gifts him a place of embrace, magic happens. Not in an instant but with the passing of the minutes and hours.
The thing is, when you commence your travel with such a mindset that you are sincerely interested in experiencing the profoundest parts of the country, city, town, you vibrate to the locals a respectful attitude. You, yourself whether consciously or unconsciously behave and perform with a specific mindset, openness and character. This is what locals perceive.
By your engagement, whole souled integration and interest you demonstrate the ‘stranger’ who opened his doors to you, now becomes a friend.
A connection is built as you immerse into their daily life, their hidden gems, their culture, values and norms and possibly even the negative aspects faced by the everyday life of their homeland.
Yet why is such a friendship so precious to have? Travelling, as you will read later on, is an incredible connector of human beings. Both parties face reality, whether beautiful reality or dark reality. Both, leading to transcendence and unison. The ‘stranger’ that he or she once was, is now your friend. One to guide you through his culture, to take you places diminished to the sight of ‘normal’ tourists, teach you lessons whose wisdom arises from learnings beholden decades ago, a leader of guardianship keeping you from harm’s way as no one knows the streets better than its inhabitants. Not a friend as you have them at home, no, it something different. A greater purpose connects you.
I think you are starting to get an idea of what you will gain from traveling as a local in terms of Vitamin R. It’s truly precious. This subject, relationships, the special connections built with locals, lays the corner stone for nearly all other dismissible gains of travelling as a local.
How you gain these connections, this human contact with locals remains an urging question mark until the 11/02 when the third journal is released. The big question of HOW.
Access to Cherished Local Treasures
That’s right, the gateway to the most beautiful places of the country open to your eyes. When you have connections and friendships with locals, they will always strive to share with you the best of their country. Things found solemnly in the personal treasure trove of the locals, in their passage of time spent here, in their homeland, unexpressed on google maps or guides.
Your friend is at the same time becomes your guide, a leader to the essence of the country for what is normal for him is extraordinary for you. You will awake, each day, with a profounder interest towards the country, culture and people, urging for nothing other than originality and a the key to the deep rooted purpose residing in that which you experience.
A Greater Sense of Safety, Better said EMBRACE.
In the world of personal growth there is a famous saying that quotes
‘you become the average of the 5 people you surround yourself with’.
When you interact and travel on a local basis you get access to a full view into the live’s of the locals and new learnings, values and insights are transmitted to you boundlessly. These learnings teach you a lot about the environment and surrounding you find yourself in. Either indirectly or directly, a local will lead you to the safest and to his knowledge most secure path in his/her country.
Now don’t trust anyone with this, really do ask someone trusted, your new friend. For most probably where they tell you to go, you will go and sadly, not everyone always has the best in mind for you.
I want to share with you one of the best examples when it comes to safety and security gained as a local traveler:
In Saudi Arabia I have done a lot of hitchhiking. It Is a big country, and its distances are extremely long, therefore I spent a lot of time in the car with the local people. I swear to you, not one of these people that took me with them will ignore my phone call should I need their help, no matter where in this vast country I am. Even if I don’t find myself in it.
These are not simply words. I speak of experience I have in regards to this topic, with these very people.
For I stepped into the car with a ‘stranger’ and stepped back out friends. Since my travel to Saudi Arabia I have had times in which I helped these people and they helped me, unquestionably from both sides.
I guess it might sound somewhat surreal if one hasn’t experienced it before. I get it, it does sound surreal. But that’s just because, so it is. So, I a must say once again:
‘Traveling carries an indescribable force and silent power to craft sincere, strong bonds between what where just a while ago, ‘strangers’.
You and I
Choose wisely with who you travel for you will have to stick with them for the rest of your life. You know about travelings silent power to connect sthe humans of this world. I guess it’s due to the fact that travelling carries the value of perpeual experience. When we work together just as much as when we travel together, we grow together, learn together, discover wonders together, reinvent ourselves together and grow into better human beings together every single time we decide to hit the road.
As my friend Abdulaziz says,
‘One month of travelling carries the same value of a whole year lived at home.’
Hallelujah, No More Shocks
That’s right, not only will you be guided by safety tips from locals and spend the remainder of your travel in the knowingness that a helping hand, whenever you need it, is there for you to reach out too, but you are also less likely to crash into a shock. A culture shock.
You become part of a community through the bonds you create and through the local way of travelling that you embrace. Along with your pre-travel research, the way you travel, the community you are a part of, as well as your wider horizon of knowledge and understanding you are less sensitive to things such as cultural shocks and engage into a neutral attitude towards that which encounters you on the way.
Unity Built on the Cornerstone of Experience and mutual respect. Understanding.
All you just read, all the words I wrote, they whisper no other words but unity. Don’t they? When we travel as a local, we not only shape unbreakable bonds and relationships that, with the passing of years, lead to friendships across the whole world making the world your home but they lead to that what we all strive to achieve. Unity amongst the 7, nearly 8, billion of us all. A unity-based o understanding and respect. This is only achieved while travelling when we travel in sincere interest and openness towards the country, we find ourselves in. So, immerse and find the extraordinary in that which is seen as ordinary.
Carve out the countries essence and build encompassing bonds as you roam the world. Make the world, the whole world your home.
Something unexpected might cross your path on your travel, while you contribute to the locals, while you lend a friend a helping hand…Somewhere, someday life might, through a little wink at you beholding your new love. A new hobby, a new passionate career you might want to pursue or even a purpose.
Who am I? Get to Know Yourself Better.
Not only is travelling an unmatched connector of human beings, but it is a grand teacher.
Travelling as a local, whether you find yourself in the planning and research phase or in the country itself, will face you with a lot of question marks, hurdles to overcome and encourage a mastermind when you are immersed, amidst certain situation unpredictable to us from home.
You set out to do something you have probably never done before, you communicate with a mentality you have never communicated with before, you face unpredictable situations, find yourself in 10 different places in the passing of just a few days, Influenced and impacted by a new culture and a new way of life, becoming a human being of uncommon adaptability.
Who knows maybe you’ll even become someone you’ve never been before.
All I can say is that, before I went to live in the Australian outback for 5 weeks I didn’t know a horse riding cattle herder hides within me, before I travelled to Portugal I didn’t know I was a surfer and before I roamed the streets of New York I didn’t know I was an extreme foodie.
I can’t wait for you to grow, to redefine yourself and to uncover hidden gems that reside within you. Unleashing you into a New Way of Life.
Thank you for your time, I sincerely wish this journal brought grand value to you and your traveler soul. I’ll see you on the 11/02 where we will learn how we can turn all this knowledge and inspiration into reality. How to travel as a local.
Until then, I wish you have remarkable days.
Live free,
Kayleen