27th September: World Tourism Day
What makes people travel?
The answer is simple: We love it!
Something is relaxing about eating a slow and peaceful breakfast, taking long walks, encountering places, people, and making new memories. The experience makes us feel lucky to still be alive. That’s no surprise. A traveller seems to embody virtually all the characteristics of a healthy person.
As professionals, we know that travel has a positive impact on your life. We want to ensure that our children are as successful as possible, so GD Goenka, a C.B.S.E. School in Bhagalpur, supports travel because we want to help kids be successful. By the time they become independent, our children will appreciate travelling because they have learned the benefits of travelling at an early age. Our school’s mission is to generate global citizens, and traveling will help us achieve that goal.
What are the benefits of travelling? What makes travelling so important?
Scientists have proved that travelling improves the health of both your mind and body! It is perhaps for this reason that we love to travel. As a result of taking a few minutes to bask in the sun, we get more vitamin D and feel better. It has heart-healthy benefits, too – vitamin D boosts our cardiovascular health.
Various benefits of travel include reducing the chances of heart disease and reducing stress. Travel also enhances your sense of fulfilment, happiness, and creativity.
If you were still looking for more excuses or reasons to travel, here are the five main benefits of doing so!
When you pack your bag and set yourself for travelling, you:
Achieve peace of mind
We live primarily in cities. We travel on crowded public transportation through urban landscapes to keep up with our busy schedules as part of our routine. This gradually leads to stress. It is hard to escape the problems looming over us, and burnout leaves us dissatisfied with our job.
Travel is the cure!
Travelling can cause you to lose touch with your everyday routine. Breaking habitual patterns, packing your bags, and hitting the road allows the mind to reset itself. You may even come to appreciate what you have left behind in the process of meeting new people, seeing new places, and overcoming various challenges. Taking a step back and thinking about what you miss can help you move forward. This will help you appreciate the good things in your life more.
Travelling lets you enjoy life to its fullest!
Enhance your creativity
Travel takes you out of your comfort zone, which is one of its biggest benefits. Travelling to a place for the first time makes everything seem fresh and new. New stimuli bombard your senses. Beautiful landscapes and vivid colours surround you. A new language is spoken, a new scent permeates the streets, and people are involved with a different culture. Food tastes and smells are different. It’s all different. What’s your way of holding a chopstick? What do you do at the market for bargaining? What is the best way to get around the market?
The experience of travelling rejuvenates the brain and enhances cognition. When you face a new challenge, you have to come up with a creative solution. Brains are connected in a new way, and as a result, original ideas are generated.
In your old job, you can utilize all these new stimuli and creativity once you return home! Students can utilize it for their creative growth.
Improve your communication skills
Are you attracted to remote and exotic places?
If so, you might have encountered situations where your native language was not spoken. Being able to relate with the locals sometimes requires quite a bit of ingenuity. There comes a time when you realize that pointing and gesturing are part of everything you do to find or buy something. Eventually, you learn words as well. Pronouncing the name of local food like locals, I want dim sum, bossa nova, sushi, pastrami, and gelato. It’s fun, right?
In the meantime, you are getting to know a whole new culture and a way of life. You may even meet new people and expand your real-life social circle. This is particularly true if you are a couch surfer.
Traveling also makes you interesting. You’ll be eager to share your adventures and the friends that you made, as well as the new words you learned.
Broaden your horizons
What is our strategy for meeting the world? We learn about distant countries and people through books, the Internet, TV news, and documentaries. On the other hand, you may very well narrow your perspective instead of broadening it when you watch a TV report that presents someone else’s point of view.
Travelling around the globe, meeting different people, and learning how people live life differently make you understand the world. When you actually see places and cultures you have never heard of before, you may even reconsider your own opinion.
By learning about new cultures, we can also see problems and challenges in our daily lives differently.
Boost your confidence
Despite the benefits of travelling to new lands, it is not without its challenges.
There have been many scary stories. There was a huge bull that blocked your path. You get into a gloomy slum after a rickshaw driver takes you down a side street. You are taken to the neighbourhood chief, who looks like a gangster in a movie, upon asking for directions. This is the scariest part because you are alone in the unknown. There is no point in depending on your friends and relatives, or even on your language skills.
Because of this, travel teaches you how to be resourceful and how to handle obstacles. When you overcome obstacles, the scary story becomes an adventure that boosts your confidence. When you return home, you may even feel more prepared to take on your daily life’s challenges.
Get real-life education
A book may help you understand the world better. Textbooks contain many illustrations and facts. Through fiction, we are exposed to new cultures, people, and ideas. However, textbook facts can’t be touched, tasted, heard, or smelt.
Visiting a different place provides the opportunity to meet people, sample local cuisine, and feel the yellow stones of the pyramids.
Explore new cultures!
The experiences you gain from travelling will enrich your life and help you gain greater satisfaction in life. After returning home and sharing your newfound knowledge with your friends, you can recreate your exotic experiences. Bring them over, listen to the recorded video, show the pictures, prepare a special meal with the spices you bought, and let the incense fill your house with its aroma.
Learn about the world!
Make memories
Real-life educational experiences are memorable because they are personal. Memories play a significant role in defining who we are.
Furthermore, we tend to revisit good memories frequently. You will probably find yourself smiling a minute after you open one of your photo albums or gallery. Seeing your loved ones’ faces and seeing funny moments makes you smile. They make you feel cheerful and energetic! They remind you of the happiness you once experienced.
Do you remember the first time you used chopsticks? Broadway musicals and the West End! Visiting the tiny second-hand bookstore on Kanda Street!
One day you can share these precious memories with your children or grandchildren. They will be vivid in their memory just as they are in yours!
Understand yourself
You’ll be forced to deal with change and uncertainty whenever you travel since you will be out of your comfort zone.
Adapt to change; Flexibility is key!
We live in a world of constant change. Adaptability is therefore critical for our survival. Those who can’t deal with change struggle with their lives and feel frustrated at work. How does this help you understand yourself better? When you travel, you have to deal with change on a daily basis, whereas you do not have to do it as often in your everyday life. If you can manage to bring order to a confusing situation, you find out how adaptable and strong you really are!
Find your strengths
Meanwhile, you are learning your strengths and weaknesses from the new challenges that you are facing. Travelling can also help you realize your limitations.
Learn about your likes
Travel can also help you discover what your interests are and what you don’t. After experiencing the typhoon season and snowless Christmas, you are convinced of the value of your homeland and its changing seasons. It makes you appreciate your home country more.
It is more enjoyable to contemplate the sea than to trek. When you take a moment to ask yourself why, you might discover something about yourself. Dealing with obstacles might require some inner peace and quiet rather than new challenges and teamwork.
Improve your health
We are once again reminded of healthy habits.
Let’s start with sleep. Do your morning alarms annoy you? Are you setting your alarm too early so you can hit the snooze button twice before actually getting up? Do you feel guilty for not getting up when you don’t want to? A good night’s sleep is important to our physical and mental well-being.
Travelling provides a great chance to get a good night’s sleep or even take a nap in the afternoon. Make the most of your sleep!
Movement is the second healthy habit related to travel. Planning a walk can help you balance a job that requires a lot of sitting behind a desk. Exercise is a good thing for your heart, your muscles, and your bones; it can also make you feel more energetic.
Are you tired of the hurried breakfast? We seem to be living lives that are inconsistent with healthy eating. Yet, you can eat as frequently as you wish when you are travelling, eat well and enjoy your food! How about fast-food lunches and frozen dinners?
We spend a lot of time outdoors when travelling. Being outside and getting some fresh air promotes both a tan and a better mood.
Laughter at the end!
You can laugh together with your family and friends as you go through the journey.
You’ll be surprised: Laughter can help heal lots of hurts.
Have fun
Researchers have discovered that before we start our journey, our sense of happiness increases. But why? Because we are eager to begin! Positive anticipation creates a feeling of freedom as we look forward to breaking away from routine. You can sleep in late, take a lazy breakfast that someone else prepares, and enjoy the trip.
Discover new cuisines.
If you’re in Dubai, why not go for some camel milk with your coffee! Learn about traditional French mussels or real sushi (in contrast to the one sold across the street from your house). How about deep-fried insects?
There is something more alive and fun about dancing in the street than what you do in dance lessons. Artists and musicians on the streets of big cities are far more talented than those on talent shows.
Stress is reduced by positive experiences. Therefore, if you are exhausted, feeling burnt out, or are combatting anxiety, you might consider taking a mindfulness course or practising yoga. Nevertheless, if you’re lucky enough to have to time off, travel!
Your life will be changed for the better!
In GD Goenka, it is not all about academics; instead, it is all about learning. Here we learn from books, surroundings, events, people, and most importantly, experience. GD Goenka, the best school for primary education, is taking steps to make its students the best version. We believe travelling is an important part of a balanced education for student’s life. Join our hands.
