TRAVEL TEACHES YOU MORE THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE

Travel is the best teacher. When you load up your suitcase and head out on your next trip, you never know what unexpected events might lay ahead of you. Different travel experiences have a way of pushing you outside of your normal routine. Exploring new destinations can be compared to being handed a key to a door, it’s up to you to see what’s on the others side. Travel then becomes a learning experience. It teaches you about different people, different places, their history and their culture. Travel takes us close to nature, gives us a sense of independence and imparts many important social skills. It teaches us to be compassionate, to accept those who are not like us in looks, race, language skills and religious beliefs and it broadens our horizon. But what is most important perhaps is traveling gives us confidence to face the world and we end up learning more about ourselves, the potentials that we have and the talents that we either possess or acquire or even excel in.

Travel teaches you so many things – in particular, skills you never realized were even necessary. These are not the sort of abilities you would put on your CV. They're little things, niche skills you've never needed before but which become vital when you move through various parts of the world.

If you know how to do any of the following, chances are you're a traveller.

Haggle

I'm still a pretty terrible haggler, but better than I was. This is a basic survival skill for many travellers, a way to interact with local people in the way they expect you to, and a way to avoid paying far too much for certain things. The trick is not to take haggling too seriously, and not to find yourself going hard at it over the equivalent of a few rupees. We must respect that the other guy is also trying to make a living, but we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be ripped off either!

Hand-wash clothes

My mother made me scrub my own cricket whites when I was in high school as there were no washing machines back then; so this is a talent I already possess. But I'd never had to hand-wash anything in a tiny hotel sink with a shard of old soap and a piece of twine to hang it on. Travel for any decent length of time, however, and you figure out how to do this. You can call me stingy but I cannot pay the hotel laundry to wash my under-garments and charge me more than they cost.

Fit your world in your suitcase

Travel teaches you to live comfortably with minimal clothes and accessories. One formal wear and a couple of informal and comfortable clothing and lots of inner wears, a wind-cheater, a pee cap, sun-screen and toiletries and your camera and you are ready to go. You will invariably choose the smallest possible stroller and keep your luggage light for both your comfort and your pocket….only idiots pay for extra baggage.  

Use a squat toilet

We had squat toilets at home when we were young but our children are only comfortable with the western ones. At first those new to them find squat toilets just frightening, and then they're awkward, and then eventually they become normal. It's all about knowing what to do with your clothes, and your hands, and the hose thingy, and getting the hang of balancing in a certain position. Once you've got that down, you're all set.

A sense of direction

Travel teaches you awareness of direction otherwise you're going to end up lost pretty much every day of your travelling life. When you travel you become aware of landmarks, of street signs, of where the sun is and how it relates to the points of the compass, which you now have on your phone. You will invariably become an expert on reading Google maps and use it for pretty much everything  from searching landmark heritage sites to eateries. You keep a rough idea in your head of where you came from, and how you're going to get back there.

Communicate without language

Sign language is a beautiful thing. Pointing, gesticulating, miming all your hidden talents get exposed to the world. You do what you have to in foreign countries to make yourself understood. You figure out, too, what others are saying via non-verbal cues. Vegetarians need to specify their dietary choices as do selective non-vegetarians who would like to avoid beef or pork. So in a food joint in Santiago or Brasilia you will be understood at once if you cry out Cookroo Co!  Many language translation software are now available and soon you realize that the language barrier is really no barrier at all.

Find a place to sleep

Here's a handy skill that you'll never need outside of the travel sphere. I can walk into any airport in the world and figure out pretty quickly where the best place will be to lie down and try to have a snooze. It's usually at an unused gate or in some far-flung corner where people tend not to venture. Sometimes you'll find actual sleep facilities (Delhi, KL, Changi, Munich), but if not, there are always options.

Spot a scammer

Here's a skill that probably does translate to real life every now and then: spotting scammers. You get to know the lines. You can spot the approaches. You know the art sellers and the English practicers and the tea drinkers and you just smile at them and move on. If need help and you are a Bong like me then here is a catch – look for the newsstand hawkers or the street peddlers and ask them to help in Bengali. They are usually refugees from Bangladesh trying to make a decent living. Be respectful and friendly to them and they will always help you.

Order sandwiches in seven different languages

The heading is a reference to the Paul Kelly lyric, but you get the idea. Spend a few years travelling and you end up with all sorts of useless snippets of foreign tongues: how to order beer, or sandwiches, or ask which way to the bus station in Italian and Thai and Swahili. It makes a nice party trick if nothing else.

Eat or drink just about anything and smile through it

You have to be polite. If people are going to share their culture with you – and share their food with you – it's the very least you can do to smile and be grateful and look as if you enjoyed it. Doesn't matter if you're drinking fermented mares' milk in Mongolia, eating horse pasta in Kazakhstan, trying grasshoppers in China or skolling snake wine in Vietnam, you learn to grin and bear it. If you invite me to lunch and I refuse to accept your home made pickle which your mother has painstakingly made how will you feel? So, the other guy too has feelings……respect  them.

Make better decisions

The only way to survive as a traveller is to start making better decisions. The people you hang out with, the places you go, the ways you get there: every little decision on the road can have major consequences. That has to translate to the rest of your life. Good home-work on the internet and reliable local contact always helps to improve your decision making.

Sleep sitting up

Plenty of people will say that they can't sleep sitting up, but it's all practice. It's also a necessity. If you're going to spend long periods on a plane or travel a decent distance on a train or bus, you need to be able to sleep. Maybe it's uncomfortable and maybe it's unnatural. But you can do this. I can sleep through any sort of travel – road, rail, air or water but I will never do it at the cost of missing the local scenery…….but you can’t keep on staring out blankly from an airplane window 35,000 feet above sea level for hours together, can you?

Eat with chopsticks

We in India eat with our hands. This is the simplest, most basic way to eat, a true connection with your food that's far more significant than when using a knife and fork which I have eventually mastered. But chopsticks, now this has always been challenging to me. My lumbricals and interossei muscles simply refuse to listen to my brain and I keep on dropping food before it reaches my mouth. But I am not giving up, it will take some more learning, but it's a beautiful thing.

Stick to a budget

When you travel, you stick to a budget, or you go home. Those are some dire consequences for someone who's overseas and having the time of their lives. You learn to balance the books pretty quickly.

Put things into perspective

The "starving kids in Africa" cliché that you're warned about as a child becomes very real when you begin to travel the world, but because we live in India poverty lives next door and we are petty familiar. But still when you see all of the different ways people live, when it dawns on you bit by bit that you've been unreasonably fortunate to be born into a life of relative privilege and luxury. Travel teaches you perspective. It teaches you about how lucky you've been, and how trivial some of your problems are compared to the rest of the world's. That has to be a good thing.

Travelling surely makes you a better person and every travel experience brings out a better version of your own self.