What does having a meaningful travel experience mean to you? Meaningful travel likely means something different to each of us. For many, it is the chance to spend time with family again. To others, it may be time to volunteer. Regardless of which school of thought you are from, one thing is consistent with many of us. It is time to look outside ourselves, and pay attention to those things that make us happy. There is a whole world to explore. If you don’t know what makes travel meaningful to you, it may be time to explore kindness and explore the ethics of ecotourism.
You might ask why I have the authority to talk about meaningful travel. The cover photo is from a hiking trip in California. What happened on this trip? My siblings all drove across the country. We attended our dad’s wedding ceremony with an incredible lady. Papa Joe and I hiked the Whiskey Town Trail, which was absolutely breathtaking and a great bonding experience. And a destination destroyed by fire a few years later.
Yes, I can talk about meaningful travel, and this single photo is just one example of all the reasons why.
What is Meaningful Travel?
A quick internet search reveals many different things, all with one resounding theme. Meaningful travel is when your travel experiences enrich your life in some way. How? Focus on making your own life better by discovering and learning new things about the world and yourself. I talk a lot about how travel enriches your life in my 20 Reasons to Travel post, and those reasons all pertain to meaningful travel as well.
To the Travel Junkie family, meaningful travel is when travel enriches your life in some way. That could be done by focusing on making your own life better by discovering and learning new things about the world and yourself. Let’s explore how each of you can have meaningful travel experiences.
The first step to determining how to have meaningful travel experiences is to determine what truly makes you happy. Does spending time with family make you happy? Maybe spending time with a different culture fulfills you – there is a whole world to explore. Perhaps you have been postponing taking advantage of missionary or humanitarian opportunities that pique your interest? Maybe you just want to immerse yourself in an area of the world that focuses on ecotourism solutions to some of the world’s problems.
These are all examples of how meaningful travel can enrich your life, and potentially the lives of others.
Having Meaningful Travel by exploring the world.
Travel can make the lives richer for the people you meet, the communities you visit, and the environments you explore. Meaningful travel is about being aware of your footprint and doing what you can to help the places that you visit. Spend time with the people who live at your destination. Be honestly interested in how they live, what their struggles are, and how they celebrate victories.
Why? In doing so, I have learned I am but one tiny cog in this huge world I am exploring, and my struggles become less significant. Frankly, the people I meet have shared the same struggles. While we think about the world as being a huge place, it is really just one tiny, interconnected lump of dirt and water that we all share.
Make an effort to learn some words in a different language and communicate even when you make mistakes or think you look silly. Learning Portuguese when we visited Brazil was not an easy task, but it showed me why traveling makes you happy. I laughed at myself and laughed with the Brazilians laughing at me while trying (in vain) to teach me Portuguese.
Laugh at yourself, make mistakes, See locals as world neighbors, not attractions. Because they are. The patience that allows you to laugh at yourself is an active exercise in exploring kindness. Both kindness to yourself, and kindness to others. And that is always a meaningful experience.
Meaningful travel while engaging thoughtful ecotourism.
Here is another question to ponder. What do you consider to be ecotourism? Is it a destination that practices conservation and encourages green space? Maybe the destination recycles rainwater or practices responsible husbandry. Are those ecotourism solutions, or merely ethics that make ecotourism an advertising slogan for the destination?
I can only answer these questions based on some of the destinations we have visited. Destinations are considered some of the “greenest” locations in the world. Some of the leading ecotourism locations include Costa Rica and Panama.
How do Costa Rica and Panama practice the ethics of ecotourism?
They prioritize the safety of indigenous species. Both countries are spending tons of money to protect their most valuable commodity – the rainforest. By doing so, they are actively working to protect the entire food chain and all flora and fauna associated with it. How do the ethics of ecotourism play into this? By reforesting hills near San Jose, Costa Rica is re-establishing the region’s natural balance.
Ecotourism in Costa Rica is a robust industry because the country was one of the earliest adopters of connecting nature/wildlife conservation with responsible travel.
Costa Rica has been ranked among the world’s best ecotourism destinations on more than one occasion and became the first country int he Americas to ban hunting. As a result, its biodiversity is virtually unparalleled.
Green Global Travel
You may ask yourself how the ethics of ecotourism justify the damage tourism can cause to the planet or a region? I challenge you to answer this question by answering another question. Where do you think the money comes from to support this work? I will answer for you. From tourism. From you.
If the ethics of ecotourism bother you, carpool. Use solar energy, or at least turn off the air conditioner. Eat renewable food sources. Eliminate single-use plastic bottles. There are many ways you can contribute in a positive manner to an area’s eco-health while having meaningful travel experiences.
Why traveling makes you happy.
Let’s go back to what makes you happy in general. Does spending time with family make you happy? Spending time with a different culture. Volunteerism and missionary work may be the answer. Do you like to learn life skills that impact the world positively, such as patience, humility, presence, awareness, and cultural sensitivity?
Meaningful travel experiences can be any of these. The answer to what is a meaningful travel experience is simple. Travel to do the things that make you happy. Practice meaningful travel by visiting family or friends separated by global challenges.
Give freely of your heart and soul by giving to others.
Volunteer locally or on an international level, whichever situation your heart is called to. And to be clear, I don’t think you need to belong to a formal volunteer organization to do this. Same for mission work. We are all missionaries in the mission of world kindness, world peace, by simple actions when traveling. Don’t judge another culture or impose your own values. Instead, seek to understand other cultures, and show that kindness and love always win.
And as for practicing patience, humility, and cultural sensitivity, do I really need to say more? When I have practiced these life skills during travel, I have found them returned to me 10-fold. Explore kindness isn’t, and shouldn’t just be a catchphrase. Explore kindness should be as natural to each of us as breathing air. And when see that practiced, that makes me happy.
Go for it.
Ask yourself why traveling makes you happy. Figure out what having meaningful travel experiences means to you. Have fun learning through travel. Practice the ethics of ecotourism, there is a whole world to explore. Explore kindness, at home and while traveling.
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