Transcend Traveling

The sky in Istanbul is a melancholic grayish blue during Autumn. Dennis was aiming to avoid the taciturn mid-day luminosity and the pesky tourist that congregate at the Sultan Ahmed Mosque by squaring his camera lens early in the morning, at 5am. I was there at that time because I had no choice; my overnight bus from Bucharest, Romania had shut off its engine in a small and uneven street in the historic district of the European side of the city. When I almost crashed into the camera that wobbled from his neck as I somnolently turned a blind corner, I did not recognize Dennis. It took us both a long and disconcerting moment to figure out where exactly in our life paths we had met. Earlier that year I had couchsurfed with Dennis in Montreal, Canada. The probabilistic magnitude of our random encounter stunned us both: We spent the rest of that chili morning catching up over a hot cup of Turkish chai in a nearby quaint and picturesque cozy cafe on top of the hill, overlooking to Golden Horn and the Bosphorus river. As the morning turned into afternoon, we realized we had compared travel anecdotes, traded secrets and tips, shared life lessons, inspired one another and in general had a meaningful moment of human connection – one that reaffirmed my convictions about traveling and assured me that the pursuit of transformative traveling is how I want to organize my life.

Want to have meaningful moments of connection in your travels? Here are a few tips from my own experiences which might help you:

Meet the universe half-way: Meaningful moments happen at the intersection of the right context and the right attitude. The situations might present themselves but if you do not maintain an open and proactive approach you will often miss them. At 5 in the morning after an overnight bus journey I could have been grumpy and groggy and thus missed my chance.
Limit expectations: Often times the memories you take home are not the ones you had penciled in into your calendar. Do not bound yourself to itineraries, per-conceived notions or generalizations about people. Dennis is a 52 year old French Canadian businessman, I am a 27 year old Venezuelan sociologist. Not the clearest of matches at first sight.
Cultivate curiosity: As you travel, make a habit of challenging your understandings of the world at the time. Being curious about perspectives and beliefs which you do not hold will expand the kind of people and situations with whom you can connect.