is travel good for you

5 Scientifically Proven Health Benefits of Traveling Abroad

When was the last time you traveled abroad? Traveling for business is one thing, but I’m talking about packing your bags, logging out of your email account and disconnecting from your normal routine for a week or more.

Traveling the world isn’t just fun and exciting; there’s ample research to suggest it’s highly beneficial for your physical, mental and emotional health as well.

Check Out These Five Proven Benefits

Americans may say they like to travel, but most don’t venture abroad very often. According to a study published in the Hostelworld Global Traveler Report, Americans are half as likely as Europeans to go abroad and visit more than one country.

The average resident of the UK has visited 10 countries, Germans have seen eight, and the French traveled to five nations on average. But Americans? They tend to visit just three. In fact, 29 percent of American adults have never been abroad!

When citizens of the U.S. do move past the border, most visit Canada or Mexico. Affordability is evidently a big factor — about 71 percent of Americans say it’s too expensive to leave the country — but that’s hardly the whole story.

Given what all the travel and deal sites have to offer today, you can travel abroad without ransacking your piggy bank. Perhaps many Americans don’t grasp the benefits of traveling abroad — and there are many!

Let’s dive in and take a look at some of the health benefits that researchers have explored and verified scientifically.

1. Travel Makes You Healthier

According to a joint study from the Global Commission on Aging and Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies, in partnership with the U.S. Travel Association, traveling actually keeps you healthier . The study found that women who vacation at least twice a year show a significantly lower risk of suffering a heart attack than those who only travel every six years or so.

The same is true for men. Men who do not take an annual vacation show a 20 percent higher risk of death and 30 percent greater risk of heart disease.

2. Travel Relieves Stress

Although missing a connecting flight or losing baggage in a foreign airport is sure to boost your anxiety, traveling has been scientifically proven to lower stress levels, and rather dramatically.

RELATED: Try These Simple 1-minute Meditations to Calm Your Mind

According to one study , three days after taking a vacation, travelers report feeling less anxious, more rested and in a better mood. Interestingly, these benefits tend to linger for weeks after the trip has ended.

3. Travel Enhances Your Creativity

“Foreign experiences increase both cognitive flexibility and depth and integrativeness of thought, the ability to make deep connections between disparate forms,” explains Adam Galinsky , a professor at Columbia Business School who has authored a number of studies that investigate the concrete links between creativity and international travel.

Travel alone isn’t enough, however. Galinsky has found that international travelers have to be purposeful about engaging.

RELATED: 7 Creative Pep Talks to Get You Through the Work Week

“The key, critical process is multicultural engagement, immersion and adaptation,” he continues. “Someone who lives abroad and doesn’t engage with the local culture will likely get less of a creative boost than someone who travels abroad and really engages in the local environment.”

4. Travel Boosts Happiness and Satisfaction

Most people tend to be happier when they’re traveling and don’t have to worry about work, of course. However, one of the more interesting takeaways from a Cornell University study is that people also experience a direct increase in happiness from just planning a trip.

Three days after taking a vacation, travelers report feeling less anxious, more rested and in a better mood.

The study found that the anticipation of taking a vacation is far greater than the anticipation of acquiring a physical possession. Thus, the benefits of traveling abroad begin well before the trip does.

5. Travel Lowers the Risk of Depression

While people tend to avoid the subject in our society, depression is unfortunately a major problem. Millions of Americans struggle with depression on a regular basis and it’s not uncommon for doctors to overprescribe medication for depression.

Luckily, healthier alternatives are available for escaping the hopelessness of a depressed state. According to research, travel may be one of them.

A study from the Marshfield Clinic in Wisconsin found that women who vacation at least twice a year are less likely to suffer from depression and chronic stress than women who vacation less than once every two years.

Where Will Your Travels Take You This Year?

So there are clear, scientifically-backed health benefits of traveling the world. Mentally, physically and emotionally, you can gain a lot from packing your bags and visiting places you’ve never been.

But where will you go? Thousands of places across the world are worth visiting. Here are a few that should be on your radar:

• London, England. London is a must-visit city. If you’re new to international travel and want to get your feet wet, there’s probably no better destination. Not only is there a lot to do in London , but it’s cheap and easy to get to from most major U.S. cities. There’s also no language barrier, which is a bonus for people who get nervous about that.
• Cape Town, South Africa. The beauty of Cape Town is astonishing. Not only is the landscape unique, but there’s wildlife galore, including the Big Five (lion, elephant, Cape buffalo, leopard, and rhino). There’s much to see ; whether you prefer a fast pace or slow and easy, there’s an itinerary for you.
• Lucerne, Switzerland. If you’ve never been to Switzerland, Lucerne is a fantastic first city to experience. Conveniently near to the Zurich airport, the town is compact, yet lively. Not only are there lots of attractions in the city , but you can enjoy an array of hiking trails just outside of town.
• Auckland, New Zealand. Whether you want to kayak to a volcano, abseil down a waterfall, swim with sharks, or tackle challenging trails on a mountain bike, Auckland has everything an adventure lover could ask for. Oh, and it’s also a city that teems with good food and entertainment.

For many, the notion of international travel isn’t as mysterious and thrilling as it used to be. In a world accessible via YouTube, Google Earth, and virtual reality, many think they’ve already seen all the world has to offer, when they’ve really only stared at a screen a few inches in front of their face.

If you want to enjoy the scientifically proven health benefits of travel abroad, you should start planning a trip. Whether you go to London, Cape Town, Lucerne, Auckland, or somewhere entirely different, boarding a plane and flying to a foreign destination where you’re equal parts excited and intimidated is great for your growth and development.

Where will you go?

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Brain Health

7 Ways Traveling is Actually Good for Your Health & The Earth

Did you know that travel is good for you?

It is! And it’s good for you in real and scientifically studied ways.

In fact, research indicates that traveling can improve your brain function, boost your heart health, improve your physical activity, turn on your creativity, and help you to be happier , to name a few health benefits.

And if you add eco-travel into the mix, you can experience the feel-good hormones that come from doing something positive for others .

As travel begins to open up with more vaccinations rolling out, it’s a great time to contemplate the benefits of traveling and how it is good for your health.

Let’s explore!

7 Benefits of Traveling for Your Health & The Earth

Traveling to new locations is good for your brain. According to adjunct professor of neurological surgery at the University of Pittsburgh, Dr. Paul Nussbaum, traveling can stimulate your brain and spur the growth of new connections within its cerebral matter. There’s a link between new experiences and the formation of dendrites, which are the branch-like extensions that grow from brain neurons.

Dendrites help to transmit information between different regions of the brain. When you have a greater number of dendrites, your brain functions better, especially its memory and attention.

When you come up against an obstacle or problem in traveling, and your brain is forced to focus on the situation to create a solution, that act both boosts dendritic growth and tests your problem-solving skills.

The newness is key. When traveling to a new location, your brain is challenged to make sense of new stimuli. Add a foreign language and your brain cognition sharpens even more!

Heart Health

Travel can reduce your chances of heart health problems.

A study conducted by The Global Commission on Aging and Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies, in partnership with the U.S. Travel Association found that women who vacationed every six years or more had a significantly higher risk of developing a serious heart issue compared with women who vacationed at least twice a year.

And for men, if they didn’t take an annual vacation, they were shown to have a 20% higher risk of death and about a 30% greater risk of death from a heart health event.

Stress Relief

Travel has been shown to relieve stress , and that stress relief appears to continue even after you return home.

One study showed dramatic reductions in stress for corporate middle managers who took a vacation for just four days and the stress relief lasted four to six weeks after they returned.

When you consider that stress may play a role in 60-80% of primary care visits, stress relief is super important to your overall health. With that statistic in mind, travel takes on increased importance for your health.

Increased Physical Activity

Another factor contributing to the heart health benefits of travel may be the increase of physical activity that often goes with it. In fact, research shows that substantial physical activity may accompany active travel.

Physical activity increases even more if you adventure travel. People of all ages can build trips around physical activities, whether that’s hiking , mountaineering, rock climbing, scuba diving, surfing, skiing, golfing, or a simple walking tour. The possibilities are endless.

But even with simple exploration, sightseeing, and visiting local attractions, you’ll likely be walking greater distances, which is wonderful for both mental outlook, your brain, and your body.

Boosts Creativity

There’s a well-documented link between multicultural traveling and creativity. Exposure to other cultures presents a person with new ideas, concepts, and ways of seeing the world. This kind of exposure expands your mind and facilitates the flow of creative energy.

Of course, engaging in creative pursuits helps us to feel a greater sense of well-being , and reduces stress and anxiousness.

Increased Happiness

With all that physical activity, better cognition, and creative thinking resulting from travel, is it any wonder that travel makes us happier? This was reflected in a survey of 500 people conducted by Washington State University earlier this year. It showed that people who regularly take trips are happier than respondents who rarely travel.

Yet, it may come as surprise to learn that even thinking about travel makes us happy. A Cornell University study explored how thinking about an experience such as a trip can increase a person’s happiness even more than the anticipation of buying material goods. Another study found that people feel greater well-being and happiness in anticipation of a holiday.

Eco-travel Benefits Well-Being and the Earth

For example, in the Amazon Rainforest, there are several ecolodge, adventure travel options. The income from these operations can help restore rainforest areas and support local communities, helping them to refrain from rainforest destructive practices such as gold mining, logging, and slash and burn agriculture.

Knowing you’re making a difference by helping others and the earth can help boost your own mental well-being. It’s a win for all involved.

Time to get planning! Better health and new adventures await.

At BrainMD, we’re dedicated to providing the highest purity nutrients to improve your physical health and overall well-being. For more information about our full list of brain healthy supplements, please visit us at BrainMD .

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7 Personal Benefits of Travel

Forget milling around in your finest evening wear, Singapore Sling in hand: You'll be lucky to get peanuts. Flying isn't quite the party it was in Sinatra's days, and lots of time, energy, and money are expended to leave home, so why travel? How long do the  personal benefits of travel last?

Getting away from home and stepping outside of your usual routine is beneficial for both mind and body. The long-lasting personal benefits of visiting a foreign country far outweigh the costs and time to get there.

The great travel writer Pico Lyer said: "Travel is not really about leaving our homes, but leaving our habits." Here are seven ways that travel, especially  international travel, will enhance your life.

Travel Sharpens the Mind

You've done your old routine for so many years that you could run through it on autopilot. Being dropped into a new environment engages a dormant part of your mind and gets those synapses firing again.

Suddenly, you'll be required to navigate unfamiliar places, read foreign languages , try new things, make quick decisions, and choose your new eating and sleeping schedule.

Unlike at home, all the new sights, sounds, and places will require mental processing and filing. Your brain will welcome the workout! Once you return home, you'll be sharper than ever for better organizing and sprucing up your daily routine.

A Shift in Perspective

"Nobody comes back from a journey the way they started it." — Unknown

Being exposed to new cultures and people will greatly shift your paradigm and create a healthier perspective once you return back home. Seeing different social classes creates compassion and really makes you feel more blessed and content. Large portions of the world's population have to deal with daily threats such as hunger, disease , and landmines .

A hard day at work suddenly doesn't seem so bad when you see people in developing countries toiling in sun-scorched fields from morning to dark, or begging for a drink of water.

A Chance to Try New Things

"Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." — Ralph Waldo Emerson

While you may branch out at home from time to time by trying new restaurants or splurging on expenditures, traveling kicks you out of the comfort zone and forces you, for better or worse, to try new things!

Even if you don't enjoy your first attempt at scuba diving , at least you'll be able to relate in a new way the next time you see it in a movie or hear someone talking about it.

Becoming a well-rounded individual enhances self-confidence and will help you find new material for conversation in social settings with a wider variety of people.

Who knows, you may accidentally discover your new favorite food or find out that you want to pursue a new career in karaoke!

Meet New People

"A journey is best measured in friends, not in miles." — Tim Cahill

You'll meet far more friendly people on the road than you will under ordinary circumstances at home.

Other travelers are always looking to share experiences, give tips on places to go, and meet people from all over. Striking up a conversation with other travelers is extraordinarily easy.

A polite "so where are you from?" breaks the ice quite easily and may lead to lasting friendships with people from all over the world.

See the Real Deal

"To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries." — Aldous Huxley

Until you visit a place and form your own opinions, your understanding only comes from what you were taught in school, read in books, or saw on media, which may or may not be a complete truth.

Don't over-research your upcoming destination in guidebooks. Do your best to avoid building a bias toward a place or installing mental filters before you visit. Wait to form your own opinion, remaining objective until you can make up your own mind.

Exercise and Sunshine

Sure, you could just go sweat in the gym under fluorescent lighting, but chances are that you'll be much more active from day to day while on the road, regardless of whether your trip is an adventurous one or simply a relaxing beach trip .

You could be exploring new cities on foot, hiking , swimming, walking between places, and hopefully soaking up some needed sunshine while doing so. And it's guaranteed to smell better than the gym.

Come Home Renewed

After stepping away from home for a while, you'll return with renewed energy, a new set of mental filters, and ready to take on the next big project or challenge. Call it a life reboot.

Getting away for some time, even though it requires effort, will greatly enhance your attitude and productivity once you return home. Sure, you may have some mail piled up and matters to attend, but those are simple challenges easily knocked out.

Breaking up the monotony for a while is a great way to reduce stress and give your life an injection of excitement. Don't be surprised if shortly after your return, you're already counting down days until the next trip!

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Why Travel Is Good For Your Health

Even a brief break can help boost your well-being.

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Use your vacation days to relax, recharge and increase your physical and mental health.

Americans are forfeiting their vacation days, despite the stress, anxiety and other negative effects of not taking time off from work. In fact, a report by Project: Time Off , shows U.S. employees took about 16 vacation days in 2013, down from about 20 in 2000. Apart from depriving yourself the chance to enhance your productivity and work performance, avoiding taking a break can lead to stress overload and other potentially damaging effects on your health, experts say.

After all, vacations offers the chance to relax and restore overall well-being. But simply taking a hiatus from your demanding workday schedule isn't enough. Traveling somewhere new can enable you to immerse yourself in new surroundings, boost your brain power and fully recharge. With this in mind, here are five reasons why traveling is smart for the mind, body and soul and expert tips for making the most out of your vacation days to rejuvenate and ensure a stress-free getaway.

You'll Recharge Emotionally and Increase Empathy

According to Wallace J. Nichols, author of "Blue Mind: The Surprising Science That Shows How Being Near, In, On, or Under Water Can Make You Happier, Healthier, More Connected, and Better at What You Do" vacationing – especially near the water – can help us reset our emotions and actually increase compassion. "Often associated with feelings of awe and wonder, water can boost our empathy and compassion, our connection to ourselves and those we are with, and for many — from musicians like Pharrell Williams to neurologists like Oliver Sacks – it's a steady source of creativity and insight," he says.

You'll Get Back in Shape

While some may not describe vacations as an opportunity to escalate their fitness routines, travelers may be more active than sitting in an office chair all day. Tourists may walk as much as ten miles a day while sightseeing in Europe or visiting Disney World. Travelers may also be more inclined to try new activities while in a new place, like paddleboarding or hiking. There are also fitness-centric resorts that encourage guests to get fit and try new workouts to boost physical and mental health away from home.

You'll Engage in New Surroundings and Eliminate Stress

Traveling has many advantages, with stress relief topping the list, according to Dr. Margaret J. King, the director of the Center for Cultural Studies & Analysis, a think tank focused on the ideas, products and ideas that drive consumer decisions. 'There are lots of psychological benefits from change of venue from home and work to 'third places' devoted to just experiencing the environment. With a short list of activities each day, freed up from the complexities of ongoing projects and relationships, the mind can reset, as does the body, with stress relief the main outcome. Humans thrive on novelty, and travel offers the complete package with new faces, sounds and sights," she says.

You'll Wind Down and Rest Up

Little sleep   mixed with  high stress  can lead to irritability and negative consequences on your cognitive performance and efficiency. Max Hirshkowitz, chairman of the board of the National Sleep Foundation says a vacation is a great opportunity to catch up on sleep. To feel more energized, the NSF recommends at least seven hours  of sleep per night for adults. "Reserve that time," he says. "Make it an important thing you need."

You'll Boost Your Mood

Many studies suggest that travel can improve our emotional state. A 2014 survey conducted by Diamond Resorts International found over three-quarters of respondents reported feeling happier when they planned a trip at least once a year. Dr. Leigh Vinocur, a certified physician and spokesperson for the American College of Emergency Physicians, isn't surprised by the findings. "It's hard to sit on a beautiful beach somewhere and ruminate about paperwork or deadlines. That is why over three-quarters of respondents to the Diamond Resorts International survey reported feeling happier when they regularly vacationed. Periodic and regular vacations while taking time for yourself and your family lowers your stress level and decreases the release of all those stress hormones that contribute to degrading our mental and physical health," she says. Plus, studies show reminiscing about pleasant vacation memories may trigger happiness long after your trip. 

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About En Route

Practical advice on the art of traveling smarter with tips, tricks and intel from En Route's panel of experts.

Contributors have experience in areas ranging from family travel, adventure travel, experiential travel and budget travel to hotels, cruises and travel rewards and include Amy Whitley , Claire Volkman , Holly Johnson , Marsha Dubrow , Lyn Mettler , Sery Kim , Kyle McCarthy , Erica Lamberg , Jess Moss , Sheryl Nance-Nash , Sherry Laskin , Katie Jackson , Erin Gifford , Roger Sands , Steve Larese , Gwen Pratesi , Erin Block , Dave Parfitt , Kacey Mya , Kimberly Wilson , Susan Portnoy , Donna Tabbert Long and Kitty Bean Yancey .

Edited by Liz Weiss .

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Why Travel Is Good for Your Mental Health

Travel is great way to rejuvenate your mind..

Posted March 26, 2018 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

After graduating from college, I went alone and joined a three-week budget tour of Scandinavia. I probably matured more on that trip than in my four years of college, just by virtue of facing unfamiliar people and situations, which greatly helped some strong social anxiety I struggled with.

Our tour group itself came from all over: Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Japan, and more. As a “budget” tour, we had to sleep in tiny cabins and hostels and sometimes cook and clean our own meals together outside. The low point was when I got horribly ill from stomach flu at the top of Norway and endured walking back and forth several hundred feet from the small cabin to vomit in an outside bathroom with arctic winds blowing across the rocky, hilly tundra under the midnight sun.

Nonetheless, the experience made me grateful for little things afterward, like having an indoor bathroom or being able to hold down your meal. I also saw gorgeous and amazing art, architecture, seascapes, history, and ate the freshest seafood. I still remember the most delicious soup I’ve ever had, at the Finnish border: made of reindeer broth.

Afterward, I understood why some Australians apparently followed a cultural tradition of working temporary jobs for half a year to save up money to spend on traveling for the other half: living to travel.

While the practical reality of money, health, and job and family obligations certainly matter and affect people’s ability to travel, whenever possible, travel is a worthy and sometimes underestimated goal for our daily existence.

Americans reportedly often decline to take any eligible vacation time during the year and tend to overwork themselves. Still, several articles and studies have noted the significant psychological benefits of travel. Travel acts beneficially on multiple levels.

Travel disrupts your routine and introduces novelty to your brain, which improves cognition and helps reactivate reward circuits. You have to think about how to get through new neighborhoods, new transportation patterns, new customs, and rules.

Initially, such changes can be stressful and frustrating, as anyone who has dealt with minor annoyances like different toilets or trouble getting change back for large bills knows. But ultimately, your brain can benefit from being put on its toes; according to Brent Crane’s article in The Atlantic , the cognitive flexibility helps stimulate neuroplasticity. This, in turn, can help generate creativity that persists even when travelers return home and helps with innovative idea generation at their jobs.

Travel helps on an interpersonal growth level as well; seeing different people and cultures and encountering them directly as individuals and human beings opens yourself to becoming more tolerant and flexible about unfamiliar ways of life. Your sense of empathy can increase, which can help you feel better able to negotiate interpersonal issues back home as well. You can also learn and appreciate things to seek out and continue enjoying at home, like a delicious dish or a new genre of music.

Travel itself can be a break from stressors piled up back home; a literal escape where you can focus on your own pleasure and yourself can be a welcome change of pace, and help reduce your body’s stress hormone overdrive. Even when you return to stressors back home, the memories encoded by travel help maintain a “zen space” you can revisit whenever you need. Mindfulness techniques often recommend returning to a beautiful or peaceful memory to help restore calm and balance anywhere you are.

Overall, travel is a way to even temporarily provide the goal of living life for its own sake, apart from the drudgery of daily responsibility and routine. It helps with personal growth and appreciation, and can also benefit mood and intellect. If you have the means to build travel into your schedule, by all means, do so.

For a More Creative Brain, Travel . The Atlantic .

Jean Kim, M.D. is a psychiatrist and writer working in Washington, DC.

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The Many Ways Travel Is Good for Your Mental Health

A dozen reasons why hitting the road can help boost your mood.

How Travel Bolsters Your Mental Health

Americans are notoriously hardworking, sometimes to the detriment of our own health. We take fewer vacations than most other countries in the developed world. We're much less likely to travel, as well. “The average U.S. citizen has been outside the country three times. In other countries, it’s more like a dozen times,” says Dr. Joshua A. Weiner, a psychiatrist practicing in McLean, Virginia.

Though there hasn’t been a lot of direct research into this, most experts agree that travel has powerful mental health benefits. “A lot is based on making reasonable conclusions based on other things we do know,” says Dr. John Denninger, a psychiatrist, expert on mind-body science and the director of research for the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. On balance, he says, travel is “absolutely” good for mental health.

Here are 12 ways traveling boosts your mental health:

Travel is a form of behavioral activation. Depressed individuals tend to isolate themselves and avoid things that can bring pleasure, which only makes their depression worse. Increased engagement in activities that have been shown to improve mood, like travel, can help. “It can be as simple as going for a walk, but something more involved, like travel, we can say by analogy almost certainly is worthwhile,” Denninger says.

Experiences trump "stuff." Multiple research studies have demonstrated that happiness is increased much more by experiences than by things ,” Denninger says. “People think the thing that will make them happy is the new Mercedes, but in fact, what makes them happier is the trip they took to Disneyland, or wherever.” A 2014 paper in the journal Psychological Science that looked at four previous studies concluded that “people derive more happiness from the anticipation of experiential purchases and that waiting for an experience tends to be more pleasurable and exciting than waiting to receive a material good."

8 Quirky Things That Can Help You De-Stress

K. Aleisha Fetters Feb. 2, 2018

[Read: A Look at Depression Around the World .]

Travel teaches resilience. Anyone who has ever traveled, even on a supposedly easy vacation, knows that a road trip is rarely fun every minute. “There are always challenges and conflicts, like in the rest of life. Travel is a chance to recognize that this stuff does happen,” Denninger says. “I try to teach my kids that you can have those hard moments, even in the midst of vacation, and it does not ‘wreck’ the vacation. It’s a moment, and you move on, and that is a good example for when you return to your regular life. Those lessons can be learned in a more concentrated way when traveling."

It can alleviate seasonal affective disorder . By the middle of winter, everyone yearns for some warm sunshine, but those with SAD often need it to combat seasonal depression. “I have patients who, if they have some sort of SAD, I tell to make sure they go on a cruise or head somewhere sunnier every winter,” Weiner says. “It is unclear if it works because of the vacation or whether it’s the week in the sun, but either way it seems to do the trick."

It's a break from daily stress . “You are more likely to disconnect from the phone, and focus on the relationships that really matter, like family,” Weiner says.

Travel connects you with nature. A trip that includes time in natural settings has proven positive health effects. “Our experience of being on a mountain or by the ocean feels sustaining,” Denninger says. For instance, studies have found that going for a walk in nature – rather than an urban environment – can boost your mental health.

It “stretches” you. “Any time you have the opportunity to do something a little less comfortable, to expose yourself to new things, that does two things,” Denninger says. “It creates experiences that can build happiness , and it trains you to be more flexible in your daily life. Travel is often a great opportunity to do that.”

Travel encourages human interaction. “One of the most important contributors to mental health is relationships with other people,” Denninger says. “Travel gives couples, families, groups of friends and even people who meet as strangers an opportunity to connect over new experiences. That is incredibly important to mental health.”

[See: Am I Just Sad – or Actually Depressed? ]

It increases physical activity. Not all vacations are based on skiing or hiking, but on most vacations people tend to be more active. “They walk more, go out to do things, and physical activity has consistently been shown to improve mood,” Denninger says.

It challenges you. Travel often involves problem solving and creative thinking. When your navigation app sends you in the wrong direction, you have to find your way. When your flight is delayed or canceled , you have to figure out how to get to your destination. Solving problems creatively has been shown to help maintain and improve cognitive health . “This type of stress can be experienced in positive way,” Denninger says. “It’s almost like the no pain, no gain idea. If you are always comfortable, you are not growing, so a little discomfort is good. It shows you can get through it.”

It encourages gratitude. A lot of data suggests that showing appreciation, in the form of gratitude journals or diaries , is a powerful tool for mental health. “Travel is great time to keep a gratitude journal and to write down new experiences,” Denninger says. “Travel is a great thing to appreciate, to remind yourself that not everyone has the opportunity to do this. That appreciation has been demonstrated to be positive for mood and mental health.”

[See: Before You Travel: Have You Gotten Recommended Vaccines? ]

Travel may extend your life. A 2013 white paper titled "Destination Healthy Aging: The Physical, Cognitive and Social Benefits of Travel," prepared by the Global Coalition on Aging, the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies and the U.S. Travel Association, reports that travel, especially for retirees, helps prevent dementia, including Alzheimer's disease . The famed Framingham Heart Study found that women who took a vacation every six years or less had a significantly higher risk of suffering a heart attack or dying from coronary disease than women who vacationed at least twice a year. And men who did not take a yearly vacation had a 20 percent higher risk of death and about a 30 percent higher risk of dying from heart disease.

As the Destination Healthy Aging paper concludes, “Ponce de Leon visited Florida 500 years ago in search of the mythical Fountain of Youth. Though he did not find it, by traveling, he was on the right track. Travel and healthy aging, the process of remaining as vibrant as possible in body and mind, are in fact closely associated.”

11 Simple, Proven Ways to Optimize Your Mental Health

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Travel has been linked to greater happiness, empathy, and creativity. But science suggests even just thinking about a trip can give your brain a boost.

Here’s why planning a trip can help your mental health

Even during a pandemic, thinking about travel can make you happy.

With the pandemic far from over, now may not be the right time for leisure travel. But that doesn’t mean trip planning is canceled too. There’s some good news for globe-trotters: According to researchers, looking ahead to your next adventure could benefit your mental health. Even if you’re not sure when that adventure will be.

Some psychologists tout the mental benefits of vacationing somewhere new . One 2013 survey of 485 adults in the U.S. linked travel to enhanced empathy, attention, energy, and focus. Other research suggests that the act of adapting to foreign cultures may also facilitate creativity. But what about the act of planning a trip? Can we get a mental health boost from travel before we even leave home?

Scientists talk travel

Planning and anticipating a trip can be almost as enjoyable as going on the trip itself, and there’s research to back it up. A 2014 Cornell University study delved into how the anticipation of an experience (like a trip) can increase a person’s happiness substantially—much more so than the anticipation of buying material goods. An earlier study , published by the University of Surrey in 2002, found that people are at their happiest when they have a vacation planned.

Amit Kumar , one of the co-authors of the Cornell study, explains that the benefits are less about obsessing over the finer points of an itinerary than they are about connecting with other people. One reason? Travelers “end up talking to people more about their experiences than they talk about material purchases,” he says. “Compared to possessions, experiences make for better story material.”

( Related: This singer traveled halfway around the world to witness one breathtaking performance. )

Among the pandemic’s many challenges: quarantine measures greatly reduce our ability to create new experiences and connect with other people. And we’re craving those those connections and their social benefits more than ever.

Kumar, now an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin, says that the social-distancing experiment the pandemic forced on us has emphasized how much humans—social animals that we are—need to be together. He even suggests replacing the phrase “social distancing” with “physical distancing,” which better describes what we’re now doing; after all, quarantine measures are designed to protect our physical well-being.

Managing emotional well-being is a different challenge. While we may not be as physically close to others as usual, we’re still able to interact with each other socially through voice and video chats. But you still need something to talk about—and plans for the future can serve as the perfect talking points for enhancing social relationships.

Kumar’s co-author Matthew Killingsworth, now a senior fellow at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, says trip-planning encourages an optimistic outlook.

“As humans, we spend a lot of our mental lives living in the future,” says Killingsworth, whose work centers on understanding the nature and causes of human happiness. “Our future-mindedness can be a source of joy if we know good things are coming, and travel is an especially good thing to have to look forward to.”

One reason Killingsworth thinks that planning travel can be such a positive experience? The fact that trips are temporary. “Since we know a trip has a defined start and end, our minds are prone to savor it, even before it’s started,” he says. “Sometimes people even prefer to delay good experiences like a trip so they can extend the period of anticipation.”

( Related: Is virtual travel here to stay, even after the pandemic subsides? )

There’s another reason travel planning can produce happiness: We often know enough about a trip to imagine it and look forward to it—but there’s also enough novelty and uncertainty to keep our minds interested.

“In a sense, we start to ‘consume’ a trip as soon as we start thinking about it,” Killingsworth says. “When we imagine eating gelato in a piazza in Rome or going water skiing with friends we don’t see as much as we’d like, we get to experience a version of those events in our mind.”

Planning during a pandemic

The post-pandemic future of travel is still unmapped. But Killingsworth recommends planning a vague itinerary (where to go, what to do)—without getting attached to taking the trip at any specific time. Then, start booking flights and hotels once experts say it’s safe to travel again. “If the experience becomes more stressful or depressing than fun, file it away for another time.”

Former clinical psychologist turned author Alice Boyes agrees the general approach is best for now, “like learning about a national park you want to visit.”

Related: iconic American destinations

While travel can be anxiety-inducing—especially in the era of COVID-19—Boyes suggests that trip-planning can be calming.

“If you’re anxious by nature, trip-planning can give you a sense of comfort and reduced anxiety,” she says. “For instance, I like to know exactly how I’m going to get from the airport to my hotel upon arrival in a foreign country. I like viewing the walking directions to places and using street view on Google maps, all in advance, so I have a good idea of what to expect and feel confident.”

“This virus can stop our travel plans, but it cannot stop our travel dreams,” says travel expert Rick Steves in conversation with the New York Times . Planning for travel—thinking about it, talking about it, imagining it—may in fact be the best thing you can do to stay optimistic and, when this is all behind us, be ready to embark on your trip of a lifetime.

Tips and tricks

• Get inspired. No matter what kind of trip you’re longing to take, there’s a wide world of travel books to nourish inspiration. Try these great reads that whisk you away to paradise —or get excited to slow down and savor the journey .
• Brush up on your trip-planning skills. New York Times ’ “Frugal Traveler” Seth Kugel visited 50 countries in six years; his book Rediscovering Travel: A Guide for the Globally Curious offers advice on how to channel the whimsy of global vagabonding. National Geographic’s 50 States, 5,000 Ideas: Where to Go, When to Go, What to See, What to Do lays out the best travel experiences in every U.S. state, from the obvious to the unexpected.
• Ask for help . Yes, people still use travel agents —and with good reason. Now called travel advisors, they can help find the best deals, arrange complicated itineraries, and juggle large groups or family vacations.
• Gather some maps . Nothing illuminates a place or helps you plan a trip like a good map. National Geographic publishes hundreds of world, continent, country, and city maps and atlases.

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15 Benefits of Travelling and Why Travel Is Good for You

What comes to your mind when someone asks you about “travel”? Does travel mean a vacation on the beach while sipping some margaritas, an adventure to the unknown, or an Instagrammable sunset destination? The idea of travelling varies from person to person, but the advantages of travelling are unbounded. 

When you travel, not the trip or the vacation itself, but the whole process of planning, exploring, and returning from a trip is important. When you realise how the benefits of travelling can do wonders for you, you definitely will have the motivation to pack your bag and start travelling more. What is it about travelling that always makes you feel good after coming back from a trip? There are so many advantages behind travel, but here are the top 15 benefits.

The Health Benefits of Travelling: Travelling Improves Your Health and Mind

Improving your well-being is one of the fundamental benefits of travelling. Travelling helps to decrease the risks of heart attack and anxiety, while developing our brain health. There have been studies proving that travel can place a positive impact on our heart health. One study from Framingham Heart Studies Organization published in the American Journal of Epidemiology shows that women who would travel at least twice a year had a significantly lower risk of developing coronary heart disease or heart attack compared with those who would only be able to travel once in every six years.

One of the health benefits of travelling is that when you travel to new surroundings, you press a restart button to your body and mind, which brings in fresh energy when you get back to your regular activities. It keeps you physically fit by being active on the journey, exploring nature, hiking, or strolling the local markets. A healthy body means a healthy mind, and the stimulation you get from travelling can boost your productivity and effectiveness in your daily work. 

Exploring a new place, trying new things, and pushing yourself out of your comfort zone can increase the level of dopamine in your brain. This will contribute to how we strive, focus on things and find things interesting. Remember, “Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind,” said the Roman philosopher Seneca. 

Source: unsplash.com

The Advantages of Travelling: Travelling Improves Your Communication and Language Skills in Many Ways

Some people enjoy the idea of travelling because it allows them to meet new people from all walks of life. Speaking to new people and getting new perspectives will change how one perceives the world and easily get engaged in various topics of conversation. Travel really helps in consolidating both effective communication and social skills as you are exposed to different cultures and outlooks. This benefit you get from travelling can be applied not only to your personal life but your work life also .

Setting foot in a new part of your country or a new part of the world means you are out of your ordinary comfort zone. Everything is new and captivating to your curiosity. The benefit of this is you are eager to learn new things and open to new ideas and concepts. This will naturally lead to the urge to open your mind and practice your people skills, whether you travel alone or with someone else. 

Travelling is when creativity comes into play in your daily communication. When you travel to a new country, there are situations where you would have to use not only verbal communication but also gestures and other non-verbal ways to express yourself. Whether you ask for directions, buy ingredients at a local market or have a conversation with a local, be prepared to utilize your body language skills! 

The Benefits of Travelling: Hedonistic Travel Ensures Peace, Calms Your Mind and Encourages Positive Feelings

When going on a holiday, we often tend to be stimulated, present and be in the moment, which brings us a step closer to achieving mindfulness. Travelling alone brings in the feeling of solitude that we don’t often get enough of. Travelling allows us to be disconnected from people, and even technology, for a while, and be more connected to our own mind and self, which leads us to our inner peace.

Whether it is domestic or international travel, travelers step out of their habitat and get exposed to other conditions of life. We find ourselves more thankful for our life and realise what we have might be what others desire. Appreciation to every little thing in life is one way or another a course for happiness. 

Travelling also changes our attitude towards life and people in a more positive way. We observe things and think from a broader perspective when our mind is open to the outside world. The benefit of travelling helps us embrace cultural and social differences more when immersing ourselves in a different environment with new people and perspectives. Moreover, coming back from a journey means ticking off one goal and proving our ability to overcome challenges. This forms the positive attitude that helps us tackle the hurdles. 

Why Travelling is Good? International Travelling Boosts Creativity through Experiences

“Why would travel have anything to do with creativity?” you may ask. First of all, it is associated with the sense of being innovative. When we travel, we try the local cuisines which we might have never tried before, get exposed to new customs and culture, and get introduced to unfamiliar ideas and beliefs. This stimulates creativity within our thinking, our methods and how we deal with certain situations. It is easier for us to come across new ideas when we get out of our usual surroundings. If we are put in boxes, how can we think “outside the box”?

Travelling teaches you to be creative and that everything has an alternative. What if you bump into a toilet that only has a hole on the ground, or a bathroom without a shower but only a bucket of water? That is travelling forces you to use your creativity to roll along with it. 

What you might have experienced but not have realised when you travel is that travelling touches your every sense. Ask yourself this question, do you feel a strong sensation by a mellow sound you have never heard, an exquisite taste from local cuisines, an evoking smell from a street food vendor, or a remarkable sight of a magnificent mountain range? If the answer is yes, then this effect of exploring a new place can be an attribute to revitalize your mind and make you more creative when you travel. 

Not only does travelling help with our creativity, but it also enhances our cognitive ability, sometimes referred to as general intelligence. This ability includes the capacity to “reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience” (Plomin, 1999). These attributes are all connected to travel. The more you travel, the wiser you become. Adam Galinsky , a professor at Columbia Business School has stated “Foreign experiences increase both cognitive flexibility and depth and integrativeness of thought, the ability to make deep connections between disparate forms.”

The Benefits of Travelling Abroad: Travelling Enhances Your Tolerance towards Different People and New Cultures

Travelling is more than just about exploring new places. It also allows you to become more tolerant and open towards new cultures and people. It is a great opportunity to connect with locals and other like-minded people from around the globe. When you are willing to strike up a conversation with someone from a different background, the more you understand them and accept diversity, the better your tolerance level gets. Travelling teaches us to appreciate and value cultural diversity, traditions and appearances. 

Not only does travelling help us embrace cultural, social and racial differences, travelling also increases our tolerance towards tough conditions and uncertainties. When we throw ourselves into an unfamiliar or less developed locality, we begin to become more accepting. It is not always a bed of roses everywhere we travel to, and things do not always go as planned, however, when we are aware of this, we get less bothered and enjoy the journey as much as we want. 

Cabinzero’s CEO Neil Varden shared with us some stories about a time when he traveled to India - a country of hues and colors, and on top of all, a country of kindness. He was deeply touched by how friendly and greathearted local people were when he found out a notion followed in their mind, which is “Guest is God”. As he was travelling to Diu - a very small and unfamiliar town in India - on a bus, he happened to have a conversation with an Indian doctor. And since there was no direct bus to the town and it was very late at night, the doctor then invited him for a stay with his family for the night and offered him the surprisingly good generosity that he had ever received. 

Another time when he was on a bus, and there was this Indian woman who offered him some biscuits when he was hungry, while she might not have enough to eat for herself and her children. Those are just among many warmhearted stories that he stumbled upon during his travel that made him realise one thing: you can really meet people who have almost nothing but still are generous with what they have.  

The Benefits of Travelling: Travelling Is a Great Way to Boost Your Confidence

Neil also shared an example of how travelling can be a motivation for us to gain more confidence in ourselves and our passion. “Unbeknown to me, travelling when I was 22-26 changed my life long term, even today. The confidence gained by travelling to an unfamiliar country/culture gave me huge benefits when I started my business. I never had much fear knocking on doors of factories or visiting trade shows in countries I had never been to before. AND, for sure, my business and the brand would not exist if I hadn’t travelled. Since I travelled I spent all my time after trying to figure out how I could make travel a permanent fixture in my life and the business was built around this need, it is truly a lifestyle business.” - Neil Varden, CEO of Cabinzero .

Regarding this advantage of travelling, Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, an associate professor of education and psychology at the University of Southern California, says “What a lot of psychological research has shown now is that the ability to engage with people from different backgrounds than yourself, and the ability to get out of your own social comfort zone, is helping you to build a strong and acculturated sense of your own self.”

Stepping out of your bubble to travel, especially alone, is one way to prove that life has no limits. Travelling makes us realise that difficulties and obstacles can be handled well without the help of friends or family. When you see the powerful force within you, you start to build more trust in yourself and fear less. You believe in the certainty that things can be tackled one way or another, and it comes with the creative mind you get from travelling - nothing can stop you from achieving your passion and goals in life!

The Importance of Travelling: You Get Real-life Education from Travelling to a New Place

Real-life education comes naturally when you travel. Think about when you plan for a trip, when you solve a problem, or when you come across a situation that you have to use your body language to communicate. Those circumstances train you to be skillful as you travel. This benefit of travelling helps in your planning skills, problem-solving skills, improvising ability, and such. As you learn from your own experiences, these lessons are what you can equip yourself with and make use of in the long run.

What you learn in books is great, but travelling offers you the opportunity to learn more about something new every day. The moment you step out of those hotel doors and go out on the street, you learn at least one new lesson. Simple things like how people greet and talk to each other, how they behave tell you a bit about their culture. What’s more, travelling teaches you failures can turn into great hands-on lessons. It is true that travelling is not always glorious and can be hard at times. Let’s say the language barriers, for instance, it is surely possible to make mistakes with words here and there. Imagine going to the market and getting mixed up with the words for tomatoes and fish, this could be a bit embarrassing, but that’s where you get to learn. 

The Benefits of Travelling: Travelling Make Memories from New Experiences

Do you usually take photos during your travel, or collect items like currencies or souvenirs after the trip? If not then we strongly suggest you to, as this is one of the benefits of travelling that could be valuable to you. Photos, or videos, that are taken from a trip, whether you keep them on your phone or post on social media, can remind you of the good time you have spent. Even an object you take home from the trip can really awaken your memories and feelings. 

Memories from travelling are often connected with positive emotions, when you try something new, or the excitement you get from going to a new place that makes you feel at one with yourself and others around you. There are definitely times when you face unexpected obstacles on the journey, however, after you figure how to settle them, those memories are the life lessons that you have got a chance to learn. 

If you travel in a big group, special memories from the trip can be turned into engaging stories that can last for a lifetime. When we travel, we are relaxed and open to show our true colors, which even adds more spices to the fun. This is the reason why travelling can be such a great bonding activity for families or groups of friends. 

Why Travel is Good for You - How Travelling Helps You Understand Yourself More is Very Important

Travelling alone facilitates a process of introspection, allowing you to reflect on your own emotional and mental well-being. This is a wonderful benefit of travelling that you might not have thought of. When you are away from the stress of your daily life, be present and live in the moment, you are more likely to be conscientious about how you think and feel. 

When you travel internationally, you get to observe how you feel being far away from your own culture. You observe the differences in people’s manners and behaviors, how people think and react to specific situations. From there, it is human instinct to compare the differences. You then start to explore and compare how it is different from your own culture and mindset, how other people are different from you, and why. Eventually, travelling will help in the process of understanding yourself more and give you a reflection on how you feel and think.

On the other side of this self-discovery process, travelling even changes you. You are not the same person after returning home from a journey. You have tons of intriguing stories to tell, you are more open and accepted. Moreover, travelling helps you reinvent yourself and re-evaluate your values in life after the lessons you learn on the road. Travelling teaches you to be more patient and curious about the world around you. This benefit undoubtedly helps in understanding and developing yourself.

The Benefits of Travelling: Travelling Helps Reduce Stress and Eases Anxiety

When you choose to leave your daily work to travel, you give yourself an opportunity to be more connected with nature. Fresh air and sunshine are a benefit to your health, fresh air boosts oxygen in your body and sunshine provides you with vitamin D. Being connected to these elements of nature makes you feel calmer, which definitely helps with stress and anxiety. 

Whether you are a fan of hiking, cycling, climbing or diving, they are all a cure for depression while you travel. Fun and adventurous activities help you to relieve stress as you get to live and enjoy the moment. Leave your daily hassles away, pack your bag, go on a trip and get some air! 

Why People Are Travelling - Travelling Gets You out of a Rut of Daily Life

Travelling is one of the great ways to get out of the hustle and bustle of your everyday life. It frees you from your daily schedule and allows you to have time for yourself to relax and explore. To some people, 9-5 jobs are occasionally mundane and repetitive, which makes a break from work totally a must. It is easy to get stuck in the workload and forget about our purposes and direction in life. Therefore, travelling gives us a pause from ordinary life and helps us get more focused on ourselves. 

The Benefits of Travelling: World Travel Teaches Us to Appreciate the Beauty and Fragility of Nature and the Earth

If you ever wander off the rice terraces in the Philippines and Vietnam, dip in the Blue Lagoon in Iceland, or fall in love with the cherry blossoms season in Japan, you definitely feel a great sense of appreciation and gratitude for what Mother Nature has offered. Travelling opens your eyes to the absolutely breathtaking wonders of the Earth, especially if you gaze upon them with your own eyes. 

World travellers are people who have witnessed the diversity of nature and wildlife, and how fragile this Earth can be. Travelling is eye-opening and enriching our responsibility of protecting the planet that we are living on. It makes us realise that nature and animals are suffering from human activities and raises more awareness about our crucial role in developing a more sustainable future. 

Why Is Travelling Important? Travelling Helps You Find a New Purpose and Forces You to Take Action

For some people, travelling can be a life-changing experience. If you are at an important transition in your life and thinking of making a decision, travelling is a breath of fresh air to slow things down and it gives you time to think it through. If you are looking for a purpose and direction in life, try planning a trip to unfamiliar surroundings and experiencing it as much as you can. What if you see a meaning out of it and figure out what you are looking for? 

Believe it or not, travelling can turn you into a better decision-maker. Travelling is about decision-making in the whole process, from planning a trip, to deciding a place to eat, or where to go, you need to be determined and actively leading the way. If you are confident in making those little decisions, it will build up your determination in bigger decisions in life. 

Travel Makes You Embrace Your Home and Ordinary Life More - One of The Advantages of Travelling 

We often tend to dream of travelling and those days off hitting the road while we’re working 9 to 5. However, when we travel, there are certain situations that you may find yourself miss the feeling of home and how convenient it is to be in your own comfort zone. You will begin to appreciate the essentials you have at home when you travel. The feeling of a comfy bed and pillows at home may pop in your mind when you spend days and weeks sleeping in hostels or camping tents. You may miss your own bathroom when you share it with other travellers in dorms and hostels. Those are the little things that you will appreciate when you are back home from a long journey.

What’s more, the language barrier is another aspect that can make you miss home when you travel. Of course, during the trip, you might be able to use some basic communication with the locals and can pick up several phrases here and there. However, you will definitely miss the feeling of being able to join in a more in-depth conversation, discussing politics, or expressing your opinions at some point. 

The Benefits of Travelling: You May Find the Love of Your Life When You Travel and Meet New People

“Could you find love on the road?” Yes, it is possible. You meet plenty of like-minded people when you spend days hitting the road. Someone who shares the same values and mindset as you might come along unexpectedly and suddenly you feel connected to them. Especially when you travel, you open your mind and heart to new experiences, therefore, falling in love with someone is very likely to happen. 

Travelling can indeed bring people closer, which is why couples choose to spend time together on a vacation to spice up their relationship. But what about meeting a total stranger and falling head over heels unexpectedly, while strolling on the riverside or a random beach? That sounds more intriguing. That random stranger might just be a fling or can turn into the love of your life, who knows?

It caught my attention when you said that you can get helping reducing stress when you engage in fun and adventurous activities while you travel. As you said, traveling gives you an opportunity to be more connected with nature. With this in mind, I will consider finding great travel ideas so I can plan my vacation. Since December last year, I have been feeling so stressed due to the divorce process that I had to go through, so it is important for me to find places where I can feel recharged and relaxed. Thanks for sharing this. https://www.homegrowngreat.com/discover/attractions/

It’s great that you mentioned that one of the health benefits of travelling is that when we travel to new surroundings, we press a restart button to our body and mind, which brings in fresh energy when we get back to our regular activities. My husband and I will go on vacation to a family resort this weekend with our family. I’ll share this with him since we really need to travel more often and destress from work. Thanks! https://edgeofthewilderness.com/resort-lodging-minnesota-northern.html

Interesting article. So many reasons to travel!

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• GENERAL TRAVEL

10 Benefits of Exploring New Places (So Just Go!)

Growing up as an “army brat,” Sydney could not help but develop a thirst for travelin...

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If you’ve ever wondered what you can do to change your life for the better, traveling should be the top thing on your list! You’ll meet interesting people, view lifestyles from different angles, and see sights that will take your breath away.

Or make you *conserve* your breath.

Imagine sailing the waters in the Caribbean , trekking Machu Picchu in Peru , or squishing sand between your toes in Fiji. Bonus—you’ll have lots of Instagram-worthy pics, and dozens of stories to regale your friends and family with!

Whether you travel abroad for a couple weeks or a couple years, you’ll be able to reap lots of positive effects of traveling. Who knows? You might even pick up some fresh skills that will give you a competitive edge in your future or current career field. Are you catching on to the benefits of international travel yet?

If you still need more #inspo on why travel is good for you, check out our round-up of the benefits of exploring new places that will make you want to book the next available flight—and get out into the world!

Pandemic burnout? Sign up for our 20 Days of Travel Inspo for a daily dose of positivity!

Why travel is good for you, 1. broadening your horizons.

Broad horizons are the best for perfect sunsets!

Your normal day-to-day routine will only do so much for facing new challenges and experiencing new opportunities. Why not get out of your comfort zone and travel?! You may fumble over some foreign words or can’t hold chopsticks to save your life, but it’s about trying something new, right? You’ll be proud of yourself, and you’ll have something to laugh about later!

When you travel, you’ll also gain a deeper understanding of international issues and develop cultural sensitivities. Traveling will help you learn to see things from new perspectives, build your confidence, and develop a deeper empathy for others.

2. Improving your health

When you travel to new places, you may do a lot of walking around and climbing stairs to see sights firsthand. You may even want to try new physical activities like salsa dancing , white water rafting , or scuba diving ! These physical activities can help cut down stress levels, improve heart health, and boost muscle growth.

Here’s a top reason why travel is good for you: Not only is it good for you physically, but travel can be good for you mentally . It can help to manage your anxiety and stress to explore new places and have fun new experiences. You’ll also meet new people, which will help you feel happier and increase levels of self-esteem and confidence.

3. Making new memories

One of the best benefits of international travel include making memories that will last a lifetime! From historical landmarks to aromatic foods to charismatic markets, your travels will tingle your senses from head to toe. You’ll remember the laughs you had with new friends as you try to stay upright on the subway, or the time when all of you got lost trying to find a local restaurant.

Everything won’t always go as planned, but that’s part of the fun. You’ll have some memorable experiences along the way! All the pictures you’ll take that’ll capture those moments will make for scrapbooks that you’ll cherish for years to come.

4. Building your resume

Who says you can’t have a great time AND do a little good for the world?

One of the best ways to boost your hiring potential and make your resume look impressive to future employers is by traveling abroad. More specifically, you could study , teach , work , intern , or volunteer abroad to improve your skills. And we mean valuable skills, like adaptability, time management, and problem solving!

You’ll also fuel your creative thinking skills when you expose yourself to new challenges that involve thinking outside of the box. You’ll also improve your intercultural communication skills when you meet new people from other countries and work with them on projects. Hey, you’ll have something to talk about in job interviews too!

READ MORE: What Skills Do You Gain from Studying Abroad?

5. expanding your social circles.

Ready to meet your new BFF? Maybe your soulmate? Okay, no promises there, but the benefits of international travel include meeting new friends for life! The conversations you have with both locals and other expats about the joys and pains of your experiences abroad will make for strong bonds.

Also, who knows if a new contact could lead to a new job or business venture? You never know if opportunities abroad will lead you to a connection that could change your life!

6. Making a difference

“Set your heart on doing good. Do it over and over again, and you will be filled with joy.” —Buddha

Whether you’re interested in helping the environment , animals, or people in need, you’ll find that many countries are in need of volunteers in one way or another. You could teach English to orphans, provide medical assistance to wounded elephants , or plant trees on affected coastlines.

Volunteering is also a great way to immerse yourself in your host country and learn more about the culture. You’ll not only be making a difference in the lives of others, but you’ll also be improving your skill set for future opportunities.

7. Practicing a new language

There will be tons of opportunities to practice or gain language skills.

Remember the good ‘ol days of trying to learn a language in school with lots of reading and writing but not enough speaking and listening? Here’s another one of the top pros of traveling: You can practice new language skills at restaurants, bus stops, grocery stores, theaters, events, and more with native speakers.

You’ll find that many places also host language exchange clubs. Taking classes can help with getting a strong foundation, but you’ll learn even more with real world experiences. Knowing another language will open new doors for cultural exchanges and career opportunities. Plus, you’ll be able to participate in a whole new world of music, books, movies, memes, and more!

8. Trying out new activities

You’ll be able to enjoy the benefits of exploring new places when you can check off new activities on your bucket list! Skydive in New Zealand , zipline above cloud forests in Costa Rica , or go caving in the depths of Iceland .

If you’ve ever wanted to challenge yourself with adventurous activities, you’ll find lots of opportunities in other countries. You could even swim with sharks in South Africa, paraglide in Colombia, or go sea canoeing in Thailand.

What about participating in activities you’ve never heard of? Try underwater scooter riding in Mauritius, sky swinging in Australia, or spending a night in an ice hotel in Sweden!

READ MORE: 9 Adventurous Destinations for Spelunking & Caving

9. sampling new dishes.

Food is always one of the top benefits of traveling abroad! Imagine tasting fresh paella in Spain, slurping ramen in Japan , or savoring tikka masala in India! From smoked salmon in Scotland to shawarma in the United Arab Emirates to Adobo in the Philippines, your palate will explode with a variety of flavors wherever you go.

Got a bit of a sweet tooth? Chow down on churros in Mexico, get a pick-me-up with tiramisu in Italy, and enjoy gooey sponge cakes in South Africa. Every country will expose you to new spices and seasonings that can give you new ideas for dishes you can create back home. When traveling the world, we’re all foodies at heart.

10. Feeling more grateful for home

There’s no shame in feeling a little relief when you’re headed home!

You may love the food in France, the pyramids in Egypt, and the people in Portugal. You may also, however, miss your favorite hometown burger, the bookstore down the block, and free clean water at restaurants.

In the end, you’ll learn to be grateful for all the little things you took for granted. All the day-to-day problems you faced back home won’t seem so bad anymore. You’ll also cherish your friendships and family more at home because absence makes the heart grow fonder, right?

Traveling is a wonderful experience when you fully commit yourself to enjoying every moment, but there’s also something soul-nourishing about returning home to the familiar after a long time away.

Talk to our FREE Online Advisor and get 5 personalized travel program matches

Who could argue with the positive effects of traveling.

The benefits of traveling abroad are tenfold, from opening your eyes to creating meaningful relationships to developing new skills. The pros of traveling include tasting new foods, trying new activities, and seeing new sights. Maybe you’ll learn how to ask for directions in Spanish or learn how to ride a moped.

Why not learn to tango in Argentina, sip bubble tea in Thailand, or snap pics of the Taj Mahal? You’ll feel like a true adventurer when you visit the Amazon, trek the Great Wall, or dive into the Great Barrier Reef!

Your body and mind will thank you for all the positive effects traveling had on your health. You’ll also have lots of good stories from your travels that will make for amazing conversations with everybody you meet.

There’s no doubt about it—you’ll come home feeling a sense of accomplishment knowing that you faced challenges and overcame obstacles along the way and made lasting memories!

Do you have questions about planning your next trip? Talk to us on Twitter , Instagram , or Facebook !

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5 Ways Travel Is Good for Your Mental Health

Here’s why experts say you should consider making time for a vacation this year.

Travel lovers, rejoice. As of Sunday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lifted the requirement for airline passengers to test negative for COVID-19 before boarding a flight into the United States. After more than two years of stay-at-home orders and other travel restrictions, the majority of Americans are ready to venture out and explore, according to Tripadvisor’s annual travel forecast . And that actually may not be a bad idea, because research has found that satisfying our collective wanderlust has a surprising number of benefits for our mental — and possibly even physical — health.

It’s not only because time away from work and the responsibilities of daily life helps us shed stress. Our brains, it seems, are happier when we take them to new, far-flung places — though it’s best to check the CDC’s COVID-19 Travel Recommendations by Destination before booking any trips to check travel restrictions.

How does travel benefit us? Here are five ways your next trip may contribute to your overall health and well-being.

1. Travel Makes You Happier

People who travel regularly (defined as trips at least 75 miles away from their home) report being about 7 percent happier than those who travel rarely or not at all, according to research on a Taiwanese population published in January 2021 in the journal Tourism Analysis .

Even before the pandemic, researchers identified a link between travel and happiness. They tracked the location of 132 adults for several months. The results, which were published in May 2020 in Nature Neuroscience , indicated that people who spent time in a variety of places reported more positive emotions than those who didn’t venture out as much. About half the subjects also underwent MRI scans near the end of the study, and the scans showed a strong association between visits to diverse places and activity in the hippocampus and the striatum, two parts of the brain that process novelty and reward.

Simply looking forward a trip may increase happiness. Results from a study published in the journal Psychological Science found that consumers experienced more positive feelings when they anticipated spending money on an upcoming experience (“doing”) than on a possession (“having”).

2. Travel May Lower Your Risk of Depression

You’ve likely heard that you “should” take your paid vacation time, but perhaps you’ve wondered if there’s actually evidence to back it up — and there is. Research published in the Wisconsin Medical Journal found that, of 1,500 women, those who took vacations more frequently reported less stress and depression .

Recent research supports these findings. In a study published in January 2019 in the Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment, and Health ,  experts observed positive results among a group of 3,380 working men and women ages 45 to 52. They found that 10 extra days of paid leave decreased the likelihood of depression by 29 percent for American women (there was no association in men).

“Travel can help with depression in that it gets people out of the rut of their everyday lives,” says Heidi McBain , a licensed marriage and family therapist in Flower Mound, Texas. “It can also be a great reminder of our own humanity, and seeing other people’s pain in the world as a whole can be a great connector when it comes to compassion for self and others.”

3. Travel Makes You More Creative

If you’re feeling burned out , travel may be useful for getting back on track. Adam Galinsky, a social scientist at Columbia University in New York City who studies the relationship between travel and creativity, has found a positive connection between the two. Adapting to different cultures, as often happens naturally and necessarily while traveling, can be powerful enough to foster creativity.

A study Galinsky cowrote, which was published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin , found that living abroad can facilitate a process called multicultural learning, which allows you to solve problems in new ways, increase your awareness of your surroundings, and reduce rigidity — all of which, researchers discovered, contribute to creativity.

Novel experiences may prompt you to be more creative, as you may have to think differently to navigate new situations, says Saba Harouni Lurie , a licensed marriage and family therapist in Los Angeles. “The novelty of travel, including people, cultures, customs, and places, can broaden a traveler's perspective, increasing positivity and allowing for creativity. Travel also offers us distance from a problem or situation, which can then give us the possibility of a new perspective.”

Recent research supports this view. A study published in Frontiers in Psychology in 2021 assigned 274 workers to self-report their creativity before and after vacation. Researchers noted that while workers reported less creativity the first day back at work (while trying to tackle accumulated tasks), they felt overall more creative two weeks after a vacation when handling new tasks.

4. Travel Can Strengthen Your Relationships

If you feel closer to your loved ones after a vacation, you’re not imagining things. There is some research to suggest travel can bring you closer together. “Couples who travel together report more satisfaction, experience better communication, and have longer-lasting relationships. This also seems to be true for friendships and families. More time spent in leisure activities, which is more accessible when traveling, enhances our relationships,” explains Lurie.

Women who took two or more vacations per year had a higher level of marital satisfaction than those who took a vacation every two years or less, researchers reported in the Wisconsin Medical Journal . And couples who vacation together are more cohesive and flexible as a unit, with lasting effects well after they return home. The more positive vacation experiences you have with your partner — like communication, shared moments, and affection — the better your day-to-day functioning at home will be post-vacation, noted researchers after studying 112 couples for a study from December 2019 in the Journal of Travel Research .

5. Travel Relieves Your Stress

Stress is an inevitable part of life, but long-term or chronic stress can negatively impact both your mental and physical health, per the  American Psychological Association .

Even a short vacation may lower your overall stress, according to a  study of 40 German middle managers published in July 2018 in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health . The small study concluded that a four-day solo stay at a wellness hotel had a significant, positive, and immediate effect on stress and well-being (and suggests short vacations can be as effective as long ones).

Other research indicates that even looking forward to a planned vacation may blunt the effects of stress. Fifty-four workers completed surveys and wore devices to monitor their heart rate in the weeks leading up to and after a vacation. The results indicated that they were less affected by stress in their everyday lives the closer they got to their approaching vacation, according to a study published in August 2020 in the journal Psychology & Health .

The stress-busting effects of a well-timed vacation may be due, in part, to how it increases your connection to the present moment, which means travel can share similarities with the practice of mindfulness, says Elizabeth Jarquin, PhD , a licensed therapist in Dania Beach, Florida. “Individuals who are stressed usually have a lot going on in their minds and are unable to connect with the present. But when people travel, they are in a brand-new environment, one that is out of the ordinary.” This, she says, can lead them to be more mindful of what is going on around them, and may result in a greater connection with the people around them, their surroundings, and the moments they are living in.

The Takeaway

After two years of staycations, now may be a good time to dust off the old passport, or plan a weekend or day trip somewhere new. As COVID-19 restrictions relax somewhat in the United States, a summer getaway could be just what the doctor ordered, and for good reason. Research shows that taking a vacation has multiple potential benefits for your mental health. Not only does some research indicate it can increase happiness and help prevent depression, but it can also help you recover from burnout, heighten your creativity, and expand your horizons — literally, of course, but cognitively, too.

Before you use up those vacation days, though, be sure to glance over the CDC’s guide to COVID-19 Travel Recommendations by Destination in order to help keep you and your family safe.

The Joy of Travel – 20 Reasons Why Travelling is Good for Your Career, Personal Growth and Soul

By Author Rossi Thomson

Posted on Last updated: 5th September 2022

Categories Lists , Travel , Travel Experiences

Travelling seems to be the buzzword on everybody’s lips these days.

With cheap flights and options that vary from short city breaks and luxury staycations to round-the-world trips, it has never been easier (or more affordable) to pack a bag and go. For a day, a weekend, a week, a month or even more.

Seeing amazing architecture, admiring centuries-old pieces of art, tasting new foods and accumulating memorable experiences to last you a lifetime becomes a quasi-addiction that you are only too happy to feed.

I call it The Joy of Travel .

In other words, that indescribable feeling you get when you make the first step on a new journey to discover yet another portion of the world. It doesn’t matter if the journey is of a thousand miles or much, much less. What matters is that it makes you feel alive.

Yet, soon the people around you (like parents, employers and close friends) may start questioning your choice to travel.

• Why do you spend so much money on travelling ? Don’t you have a mortgage to pay?
• Why do you need to go there when you have all that you may want at home? Did you know that they don’t sell marmite in shops abroad?!
• Why do you need to go on another city break this year? Haven’t you already been to three?
• Why are you dragging your kids to yet another museum with art by people we have never heard of? Don’t you know that kids simply want to play?
• Why did you take a sabbatical instead of concentrating on your career?
• Why there is a gap in your CV? It seems like you value having fun over working hard.
• What if we hire you and then you leave our company in order to travel more?

These are all difficult questions that everyone who loves travelling has been pressurised with. At least once. Often, countless times.

Yes, on the surface, regular travelling may seem disruptive to an established daily routine which includes family obligations and a good job. It is also draining in terms of money and paid vacation time.

Yet, travelling gives you so much more in return. From the deeply satisfying feeling of being connected to other people and the world to an improved skill set and higher stress threshold.

So, in order to help you deal with those nagging and niggling questions about your travel habits which you may be getting from friends, relatives, colleagues and your (current or potential) boss, here are twenty reasons why travelling is actually good for you.

Read on, enjoy, and use as appropriate!

The Joy of Travel –

20 reasons why travelling is good for your career, personal growth, and soul, 1. travel helps you hone your decision-making skills.

With so many options in terms of travel, you quickly learn to make complex decisions about where to go and when, what accommodation to book and what sights to see. You know that you can’t cram it all into a couple of days, so you precision-pick what you are interested in and what is not your cup of tea. You learn to have at all times several variables in mind. For example:

• money – how much you can afford to spend on accommodation, food and sightseeing;
• distance – how far from your point of interest you can stay; and
• time – how many hours you have at your disposal at each place on your schedule.

The more you travel, the more you hone your decision-making process.

Sooner, you find it easier to make decisions with regards to everything else in your life. At work, this streamlined approach and the ability to juggle several variables and different outcomes is what sets you apart from the rest.

2. Travel Helps You Develop Your Research Skills

Research is a big part of both study and work processes nowadays. The ability to research new ways to do things and having the skills to find out what your competitors are up to can be the decisive factor between failure and success. Both in business and your personal life.

Well, have you noticed how much research you need to do everytime you plan a trip?!

From finding the best tickets in terms of time slots and prices to discovering those hidden gems that all the other tourists miss, a well-conducted research is at the basis of your successful trip.

You can easily transfer your research skills from your travels to your job: monitoring industry leaders’ websites for promotions, discovering blogs and articles by local experts, unearthing little-known bits of information both online and in print.

Research helps save money and find valuable data. Being good at research will take you to the forefront of your field.

3. Travel Helps You Learn to Better Communicate Your Expectations

You can’t be reticent when you travel, especially if you travel as a couple or as a part of a group.

Failing to tell your partner that you really, really want to visit a particular sight may lead to your not seeing it all. People rarely are able to read minds and get tired of always having to ask you what you want to do. Plus, you usually have limited time at each destination. And, once you have left it, you may never have the chance to go back.

So, you quickly learn to communicate exactly what you want to see and do during a particular trip.

Making your expectations clear is a valuable skill in any work environment. It puts everybody on the same page as to what needs to be done and achieved. It also helps prevent conflicts or misunderstandings as no-one likes to have to second-guess what people around them think.

4. Travel Helps You Develop Your Negotiation and Compromise Skills

All this is very good but what happens when you and your travelling partner expect different things from a trip (assuming that you communicated them clearly to one another – see point 3 above).

This is when you soon develop your negotiation skills. You agree to do one thing as long as they agree to something proposed by you. You suggest that you are happy to go to the sea, but it would be nice if next year they come to the mountains with you.

Or, if everything else fails, you both agree to spend a bit of time apart. So, you go to the museum you have always wanted to see and your partner relaxes by the pool all morning book in hand.

It’s all a question of achieving mutually acceptable compromises. Which make travelling so much more enjoyable.

Being a good negotiator can open many professional doors for you. From being able to negotiate the best salary and perks for yourself to being in control during a difficult meeting with a supplier, it all comes down to seeing what the other party is offering, knowing what your limitations are and then marrying both as best as possible without you or the other side losing face.

5. Travel Helps You Fine-Tune Your Organisational and Scheduling Skills

Once you have settled on a destination, it’s time to begin the planning stage. Soon, you become a master of compiling complex schedules. After all, you want to experience the joy of travel to the max. So, even after a strict elimination process, you still pick to do many, many things within one day. In all honesty, back home it would take you weeks to complete the same number of activities.

Still, anything is possible, you reassure yourself. You can definitely:

• arrive early morning;
• drop your stuff at ‘Left Luggage’ at the train station;
• queue (while the queue is still tiny) to climb to the top of Bruneleschi’s dome of the Gothic Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore;
• spend a moment in the adjacent Baptistry;
• walk up to Accademia, pick your pre-booked ticket and simply fall in love with Michelangelo’s David;
• then walk down to Palazzo Vecchio and Piazza dei Signori;
• admire the statues in the Loggia della Signoria;
• pick your pre-booked tickets and spend a spellbinding hour and a half in the Uffizi Gallery;
• walk down to Ponte Vecchio to see the views and the goldsmiths’ shops;
• then pop down to Michelangelo’s birth house followed by a quick visit to the Cathedral of Santa Croce in order to see the tombs of some of Italy’s most notable sons;
• have a sit-down meal at a local restaurant tucking into some Tuscan delights;
• pick your luggage and get on the train to Pisa that same evening; and
• book into your hotel for a good night sleep.

Based on a day I planned for myself and spent in Florence, Italy some years ago. It all worked like a charm and was interspersed with lots of gelato-eating, photo-taking, and window-shopping, too.

Even if your travel style slows down with time, this ability to organise your day and schedule activities in an organic manner (taking in consideration local opening times, the influx of tourists and the walkable distances in town) is a valuable skill.

Being organised, efficient and able to set up and follow a schedule is something to be proud of and it certainly helps a lot both in your family and professional lives.

6. Travel Helps You Be More Flexible and Think on the Spot

Things happen when you least expect them. This seems especially valid when you are on the road.

Last summer our flight from Treviso, Italy to Stanstead, England was canceled just past midnight.

What to do? We spent the night at a hotel (paid by the air company) and in the morning we travelled close to four hours to Bergamo where we were placed on another plane. Then, in accordance with the legal framework, we claimed compensation and, after several phone calls and emails, were paid a small amount for our troubles.

It was inconvenient, unpleasant, and very, very hot. We were travelling with a small child and some rather heavy luggage. But there was nothing we could do to make the plane come pick us up from Treviso airport. Instead, we adjusted ourselves to the situation and managed to reach England after all.

The ability to be flexible is highly valued. Knowing that in spite of your best efforts and adherence to plan, things can still go wrong, will free up space in your mind to think on your feet. This way you are able to react according to the actual circumstances rather than in line with what you want to be happening right now.

7. Travel Helps You Understand the Power of Money and Budgets

Two euros (or pounds) for a coffee doesn’t sound that much. A new top and a new bag are the order of the day when you need a little bit of cheering up. Unfortunately, these spontaneous expenses quickly add up and then you wonder why you are always short of cash towards the end of the month.

When you really want to travel and have amazing experiences, you soon realise that the only thing that stops you from doing it is not having enough money. After all, transport, insurance, accommodation, and food are not free.

Hence, you soon start not only to save any spare euro that you have but also to judge the necessity of each purchase through the prism of your travel plans. A new pair of earrings for 10 euros?! This equals your food budget for a day in a far-flung place.  A night out on the town costing you at least 50 euros?! This may buy you a slightly more comfortable hotel room rather than having to stay at a hostel again.

In other words, you quickly learn to prioritise your purchases and to meticulously budget for your time abroad.

On the other hand, once you are at your destination, you are only too aware that not sticking to your daily budget can be the difference between having a great time and finding yourself in financial trouble far away from home. With no immediate support network to help you along, spending above budget 20 euros frivolously every day may be the difference between eating the last few days of your trip or not.

Being good with money and being able to stick to budgets are highly valuable skills both in personal and professional plans. At a time of overconsumption and of companies cutting corners only too willingly, being able to show that you are a dab hand at prioritising expenses and saving money may be your strongest feat.

8. Travel Helps You Sharpen Your Eye for Bargains

In this financial line of thought, travel can also help you develop an uncanny ability to spot a bargain from a hundred feet.

Buying a combined ticket for three sights will save you one third of their individual prices? Done! Waiting for the sales in order to get a new cabin-size suitcase and save 50% off its original price? Excellent!

At the same time, you soon start to differentiate between a real bargain and a false one.

Buying something in a package may not always translate into financial savings. Especially, if due to lack of time, you only end up doing one of the pre-paid things.

Real bargains are great not only for the money you save but also for giving you that fabulous feeling that you have gotten extra value against a portion of the full price.

Knowing the shortcuts and the techniques for achieving bargainous prices will help the budgets of both your family and your company. This will earn you praise and more available money to spend on other (hopefully travel-related) stuff.

9. Travel Helps You Get Out of Your Comfort Zone

People tend to stick to what they know. Be it other people, fashion styles, and even places.

This is why being the newcomer in a tight-knit group can be such a daunting prospect. And why some people tend to spend their every holiday over thirty years at the same resort.

When you embrace the joy of travel for what it really is, i.e. exploring the world and its many different faces, rather sooner than later you need to get out of your comfort zone.

• You may need to get up really early in order to catch a plane. Even though you may not be an early riser at all.
• You may need to approach people and ask in a foreign language (and mainly with your hands) how to get from point A to point B. Even though you are anxious just thinking about talking to strangers.
• You may need to get your point across when you are unhappy about a service. Even though you are non-confrontational to a fault.

Travelling gets you places and most of them are beyond the confines of what you know. Being able to navigate the unknown is a valuable skill and state of mind.

It makes you more self-assured, more confident, more open to the world.

Well-based confidence can give you a competitive edge and get you far ahead on your career path.

10. Travel Helps You Find Creative Ways to Overcome Obstacles

Obstacles may present themselves at any time when you travel.

It could be:

• luggage not arriving at the same time as you;
• weather that is not as nice as the forecast promised;
• large crowds visiting the same sights as you even though the travel guidebook that you read promised that they were off-the-beaten-track.

It could be anything, really. For example, many people come to Italy expecting it to be always sunny and nice outside. But here (especially in Northern Italy) it rains and even snows. So, what to do when you imagined sun-soaked walks, gelato in hand, but instead you are faced with a downpour.

Well, instead of locking yourself in your hotel room and complain on social media about the injustice of it all, you put your creative hat on. You capitalise on things that the country is famous for and which are weather-impervious. Like Italy has lots of thermal baths and spas, large expos, cooking classes, great indoor places for children to play, and so much more that can be done inside (see the full list here , in fact).

This ability to come up with creative solutions to obstacles which may threaten to derail your plans will come in handy in your professional endevours, too. Capitalising on your travel experiences, you may be the person to come up with an out-of-the-box suggestion as to how to overcome a problem your company is facing.

11. Travel Helps You Learn How to Mediate Between People

When you travel with other people (family, colleagues or friends), sooner or later there will be a situation which will make everyone jump against everybody else.

One of your group wants to go to the beach and another wants to shop?! Cue an argument that can spoil the whole day.

Stepping in with a calm head and mediating between people can dissipate the stress. Allowing everyone to express how they feel and setting up firm but fair rules for a respectful exchange is a difficult task but someone has to do it. If you accept the challenge and don’t let emotions rule, everyone will be thankful and much happier at the end of it all.

Mediation is a valuable skill. Knowing when to let people talk and helping them express themselves in a constructive manner will earn you kudos at work and at home.

12. Travel Helps You Expand Your Horizons

Have you ever thought that your country has the best art, the most interesting history and the best looking and most hospitable people?

Well, travel can change your set ideas about the world.

You may come to realise that people have different ways to do the same thing. That certain foods taste better abroad. That every country has unique nature, beautiful art, and lovely people. Just like yours.

This enriches your soul and makes you more appreciative of things which before you might have easily dismissed.

Travel helps you expand your expectations of the world. Hence, you are better prepared to work in a multicultural environment and have a stronger foundation to deal with a team with diverse cultural norms.

13. Travel Helps You Experience a Sense of Purpose and Achievement

In a world overloaded with information which makes us question how happy we are with what we have, travel can bring us closer to that elusive feeling of feeling content.

There is nothing better than the sense of achievement after a long day of exciting sightseeing when, in a short amount of time, you have seen so much.

Be it a visit to an art gallery to enjoy the company of the Old Masters. Be it a hike through a gorgeous place. Be it a food tour savouring your way through the flavours of a nation.

Travel can really make you feel purposeful and full of energy. After all, travelling for most people equals achieving their dreams of seeing certain fabled places and experiencing them for themselves. There is nothing better than having your dreams become reality.

Having this sense of purpose and achievement makes you a happier, calmer person, too. And it propagates into all of the different spheres of your life.

14. Travel Helps You Develop Your Interests

Chances are you travel to places that interest you in order to see things that interest you, too.

Often, lost in the stress of daily life, the first thing we forget to take care of is our hobbies and our personal interests. We may not notice it at first, but making time for them becomes more and more difficult when faced with a demanding family and job.

Travel may be the only chance we get to reconnect with what is important to us.

I used to have a very stressful, high-power job that kept me chained to the computer up to 12 hours a day. Monday to Friday with the weekends often taken over, too. Going on short breaks to Italy to experience its art, food and sun helped me stay sane. Just knowing that Venice was only two hours away from London and that I could easily get there and see all that artistic beauty was enough to give me a bit of respite.

Other people travel in order to practice their photography, to eat new foods, to develop their artistic skills.

When we are too caught in our daily lives, travel opens a little bracket allowing us to re-centre on ourselves, to think about what we want to do with our lives. It also gives us the impetus to start making the changes we need in order to focus more on our own interests (both creative and purely personal).

15. Travel Helps You Awaken Your Creativity

Faced with the exuberance of the world, your heart and your soul soon begin to need to be surrounded by colour and excitement every waking moment.

It could be something as simple as buying colourful fabrics and authentic souvenirs abroad in order to give your home a touch of happiness and creativity.

Or, it could be that after a while you may begin to feel a desire to replicate on home turf the wonderful things that you’ve seen on your travels abroad.

For example, many people are inspired to start a business after falling in love with a particular destination. From importing its food to organising trips to it – the sky is the limit when you feel the creative sparkle in your soul.

I started my blog Rossi Writes led by my excitement of having just moved to live in Italy . Three years later I am still at it and writing has been a great outlet for me during moments of feeling bleak and down.

16. Travel Helps You Get Physically Active

In a world where spending all your time in front of a computer is an acceptable way to lead your life, travel gets us moving.

Getting from point A to point B requires that we leave the house and get on a plane (or train, car, boat). Then, once at our destination, we use our feet to get to know it.

By walking around we see the most exciting, most beautiful things. It could be a walk through a museum; it could be a hike through a stunning landscape. The important thing is that we use not just our mind, but also our body in order to experience the world.

17. Travel Helps You Test Your Resilience to Stress

Being able to work under pressure is a basic job requirement these days. We are supposed to be able to juggle several things at once both at work and home. Obviously, without breaking a sweat.

Travel is the perfect school to test and increase our resilience to stress.

Starting with expecting the unexpected and learning to deal with it, and ending with mastering the communication process with people from different cultures and with different attitudes, travel throws at us many curveballs at any one time.

It may feel scary at the start, but you soon adapt yourself to it all. From learning that eating on your own at a restaurant is not an insurmountable task to not expecting that everything and everyone has to stop to tend to your needs. Travel is character-shaping and -strengthening.

18. Travel Helps You Become More Aware of Health and Safety

At home you may be living in a safety bubble guaranteed first by your parents and then by your partner and/or community. Travel can shift your perspective about the world.

Soon you learn to read people and situations better and to make decisions based not on emotions and fleeting wants but on how safe the experience will be. You learn to keep your guard up. You realise that you are in charge of your decisions and your belongings.

You stop seeing yourself as a fragile flower that needs constant supervision and help. Instead, you act as a grown-up person who can stand up for herself and judge a situation based on observed and perceived dangers.

From simple things like deciding where to eat based on hygiene to much more complicated situations when you need to decide in a split second how to extricate yourself from some potentially unpleasant circumstances, you learn to trust your sixth sense. To appreciate how safe the environment is and to take only measured risks.

19. Travel Helps You Appreciate What You Have

At the end of a trip (be it of several weeks or a day-long) there is nothing better than getting back to your own bed. At least for me.

Having witnessed what the world has to offer – from its most beautiful, most inspiring offerings to its (sometimes) darker side – you begin to look at home with different eyes.

You may have been unsatisfied with your lot in life, but having seen how other people live (and still smile no matter what), you learn to value so much more what you, yourself, have achieved.

What you have may not be loads, but suddenly just it being there, waiting for you to return, becomes a driving force.

Travelling is great! Having something or someone to return to is what gives you roots.

20. Travel Helps You Feel More Connected

Travelling – actively exploring new places and learning about them – makes you feel more connected with the world as a whole. You observe and learn how other people, other cultures live. And through the contact with them, you connect better both with your inner self and those around you.

Through the different experiences you have abroad you learn more about yourself – what makes you tick, what makes you happy and what makes you sad. Through this knowledge, you feel more committed to yourself as a person, more willing to stand up and fight for your dreams.

Through the positive experiences you accumulate when you travel, you feel more engaged with humanity. More open to other people, their stories and their point of view.

And this connection, this feeling of being alive, of belonging is what gives us the strength to continue forward.

Thank you for reading! Please, leave me a comment, pin the image below or use the buttons right at the end to share it on social media.

For more stories like this you can follow me on  Facebook  and  subscribe  to my weekly strictly no-spam newsletter.

angeladowdy

Friday 22nd of January 2021

Hi Rossi, I am so impressed with this article! Would you possibly allow me to use some quotes from this ...I'm writing an article about The Joy of Discovery through Travel ! I would certainly give you the credit. Also you can have a look at my website https://embracesouthernstates.com/ (focus on Southern USA). Exciting to find a soul who shares my JOY !!

Dear Angela,

Thank you for your comment and for your kind words about my blog post. You are very welcome to place a link to my article in your writing. Unfortunately, I don't allow direct quotes in line with the advice of the copyright attorney who helped me after a large number of my blog posts and photos were stolen. Thank you for your understanding.

Best wishes,

Sunday 24th of February 2019

Wow....amazing article, Rossi! Absolutely loved it! Spot on, insightful, so well written - I’d always thought travel was good for the soul and fostered personal growth (not to mention aiding in understanding people of other cultures which in turn promotes PEACE), but until reading your article I didn’t realize in just how many ways it can make you a better, stronger, smarter, more self reliant person! Travel rocks! And it’s sooo much more fun than sitting in a classroom... Also, I agree with all your “20 Reasons” and found myself thinking several times, “...that is SO true! I never thought of it that way...” when thinking about my own experiences with travel. Travel is a marvelous teacher. I’m so glad I found your blog.

Monday 25th of February 2019

Thank you for your very kind words, Lisa! I am glad that my blog post resonated with you. I wrote it very spontaneously and had a lot of fun putting it together. It's nice to know that somebody else finds it interesting. Best wishes,

Sonia M Checchia

Friday 27th of April 2018

I can't tell you how much I love this article. Thank you.

Saturday 5th of May 2018

Thank you very much for your very kind words. I really enjoyed writing this blog post. :) Best wishes, Rossi

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17 Reasons Why Around the World Travel is Good For You

Why travel around the world.

We’ve compiled a list of the best reasons why everyone should enrich their life with around the world travel. And while we’re at it…all these reasons can also be taken as our motivation for doing what we do at AirTreks.

1. Traveling is easier than you think.

We believe that traveling around the world shouldn’t be hard: it’s actually something everyone should be able to do at least once in their lives. Whether you choose to spend a few years or just a couple months traveling this beautiful planet, it’s important to see what’s out there. It’s up to you to make the dream come true and take the first step. Launch TripPlanner to piece together and price your ideal route. Not sure where to start?  You can always call one of our travel consultants and get some complimentary advice!

2. Travel opens your eyes.

If you’re open and willing, travel will make you an incredibly more well-rounded human being. And that’s really the goal, isn’t it? If you don’t know where to start, check out our Around the World planning guide .

3. Traveling helps you learn who you are.

All the challenges and opportunities travel lays at your feet help you discover who you are in a way that’s only possible on the road.

4. Travel creates meaningful relationships

People you meet while on the road become some of the most valued names on your contact list. They become places on the map to visit later on. These folks give you a glimpse outside your hometown circle of friends, and force you to take in new and refreshing perspectives, and ultimately realize that everyone is the same.

5. Traveling develops skills you didn’t know you had

Sometimes it’s only far from home that you realize you you’ve got skills you’ve never used. It’s travel that brings them to the surface and makes you smile, satisfied to have reached the mountain top, or  crossed a gorge  or helped a villager clean up after a storm, or even to have successfully ordered a meal at a rural Chinese restaurant.

6. Travel helps you learn new languages

There’s something satisfying about being able to throw around a few words of Greek, knowing how to say thanks in Thai, pulling out that long dormant Spanish to book a room in Santiago, or simply hearing a language you didn’t know existed just a few weeks before.

7. Travel means adventure

Zip-lining over the jungle canopy in Peru, successfully navigating the maze-like streets of Venice, bartering for the best price in the traditional markets of Marrakech, taking a speedboat ride in New Zealand, or hopping in a Land Rover and heading out to watch animals grazing  in Tanzania: these are adventures worth having. People are hardwired for the excitement of adventure and travel may just be the best way to tap into it.

8. Traveling gives you perspective

Meeting people from other cultures will teach you that the way you’ve been looking at the world isn’t the way everybody else does. In fact, your point-of-view might have some major blind spots. Seeing the world for yourself will improve your vision and your grip on reality.

9. Travel helps you move forward

If you’re between jobs, schools, kids, or relationships, around the world travel can be a perfect way to move from one of these life stages into your next great adventure. A big trip won’t just ease your transition into the next stage of your life , it’ll give you a chance to reflect on where you’ve been, where you’re going, and where you want to end up.

10. Travel is education

Seeing the world provides an education that’s absolutely impossible get in school. Travel teaches you economy, politics, history, geography, and sociology in an intense, hands-on way no class will.  Fortunately, the school of travel is always taking applications , no entrance exam required.

11. Travel challenges you

Getting your daily latte at the same place and staring at your screen at your nine-to-five every day not nearly interesting enough? Even if you choose to work on the road (and keep staring at the screen), you’ll have to find a new place to drink your latte, and depending on your destination, finding coffee, and foamy milk or a good place to sip them could prove to be a sizeable challenge. Travel is full of moments of joy and challenges. Overcoming the challenges gives you some of the greatest joys of all.

12. Travel shakes things up

It sucks to be stuck in a rut. Everyone knows what that’s like. A big trip can be your perfect solution. Fly around the world, stopping over in all of the places you’ve always wanted to visit. Go ahead and plan your ideal route around the world  (it’s easier than you think!)

13. Traveling proves that dreams do come true

You imagined it, daydreamed about it, envisioned it. Guess what? It can be done. Around the world travel is possible, you just have to decide you’re willing to take the first step and start planning your itinerary.  What are you waiting for? We’ve put together some specials to inspire you to live your dream .

14. Travel gives you cool stories

Let’s face it. Even for folks who can’t tell a story, just the words “last year in Mongolia” get you instant party points.  Even when events seem trivial, nostalgia and distance create an irresistible spin that makes mundane things like getting your laundry done in Zanzibar, entertaining. Just don’t be that person and overdo it!

15. Travel is literally food for thought.

You’ll be constantly surprised at the flavors the world has to offer.  The way people in other cultures and countries prepare food, and break bread together (not that all cultures even eat bread) will astound you.

16. Travel gives you a sense of accomplishment

If you’re the kind of person that dreams big, you’re probably one to reach for new challenges. Finishing a trip gives you the satisfaction that you were able make a goal to travel and  accomplish what you set out to do–see the world.

17. Traveling for the hell of it

Why travel? Because you can. Because you want to. Because it beats the alternative (staying home). Why not  pick up your tickets and get the ball rolling!

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• Yoga + Wellness

5 Reasons You Need to Take a Vacation, According to Science (Video)

Can you buy a ticket to a better mood? Hop a flight to a healthier heart? The travel industry would say yes—and increasingly, so does science.

For decades, researchers have been probing the benefits of vacations. They’ve wondered whether taking time off from our everyday lives—from deadlines, expectations and office politics, from grocery runs, sibling squabbles and commutes—has more than a vague I-feel-chilled-out payoff.

Almost across the board, they’ve found evidence that vacations can positively impact everything from blood pressure to energy levels. And that doesn’t just apply to wellness escapes—you don’t need to spend up on a destination spa or engage in trendy forest-bathing.

But you do need to take those days off, a challenge for many Americans.

“We’re one of the only advanced economies that does not guarantee paid leave,” says Brigid Schulte, author of “Overwhelmed: Work, Love and Play When No One Has the Time,” and director of the Better Life Lab at the think tank New America. One in four Americans has no access to paid vacation, and those who do often don’t use it, she says.

In 2018, the average American earned about 24 days of paid time off—but used only about 17 of them, according to research from the U.S. Travel Association . More than half of Americans leave vacation days on the table, fearful of being seen as uncommitted to work, returning to a tsunami of emails, or other fallout.

“When you go away in the United States and other people are in the office, you feel guilty,” Schulte says. “But you cannot be productive 365 days a year, 12 hours a day. The brain doesn’t work that way.”

Experts don’t know yet exactly how much time you need to take off to get the full benefits: Studies have variously shown that just four days can impact stress and well-being, that positive effects peak at eight days, and that longer vacations —more than 10 days—soothe stress better than shorter ones.

Regardless of the duration of a trip, one way to amplify the upside is to spend time in nature, says Richard Davidson, professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and founder of the Center for Healthy Minds. “Research clearly shows that even being in green space for as little as 10 minutes has a demonstrable effect on the brain compared to spending 10 minutes on city streets,” he says.

Need more of a nudge to put in those PTO requests? Here are some of the ways that vacation can improve your life.

Increase Mindfulness

If you’ve ever felt more present, more stimulated, more tuned into the moment while away from home, it wasn’t your imagination. “When we travel we are usually breaking our normal routine,” says Davidson, a pioneer in the science of mindfulness and meditation. That means we can’t operate on autopilot. “That decreased familiarity is an opportunity for most people to be more fully present, to really wake up,” he says. While mindfulness can be its own reward, it also has knock-on benefits: it’s been shown to reduce stress and increase compassion, resilience, and happiness. Another plus of international travel: It “can help people appreciate the common humanity and basic goodness which is present in all human beings,” Davidson says. “Not just those who look like us or who talk like us or who dress like us.”

Improve Heart Health

Long-term studies have shown a connection between vacations and heart health. One, based on the famous Framingham Heart Study and published in American Journal of Epidemiology back in 1992 , found that women who took very few vacations—less than one every six years—were twice as likely to have a heart attack or coronary death than women who had a couple of breaks each year. Another that was also based on thousands of subjects concluded that men who took fewer vacations were much more likely to die from coronary heart disease than men who took more vacations.

“It’s possible that people who have more work stress don’t feel like they can take vacation and die early,” says Brooks Gump, professor of public health at Syracuse University and the author of the second study. “But I think there’s a good chance that vacation does reduce your risk of heart disease. The next step is to figure out the mechanism.”

You don’t even have to leave home in order to get heart-related upsides: Another study Gump co-authored in 2019 compared blood test results with the number of vacations subjects had taken in the prior 12 months. For each additional vacation, the incidence of metabolic syndrome—a group of conditions that puts people at higher risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes and stroke—went down by almost 25 percent. The big surprise: the results were even more potent for those who staycationed.

Reduce Stress

Sounds obvious, but it’s also been proven. Multiple studies have shown that vacations reduce stress, which is known to negatively impact blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and other measures of health. Even knowing that a vacation is coming up can keep stress from, well, stressing you out. The same Syracuse University researchers who tracked metabolic syndrome looked at what happened to people’s heart rates when they were exposed to stress in the weeks leading up to a vacation . The closer they were to takeoff, the less work pressures affected them.

Boost Brains

It’s well-known that relaxation can juice up your creativity. “Neuroscience is so clear, through PET scans and MRIs, that the ‘aha’ moment comes when you’re in a relaxed state of mind,” Schulte says. That’s why you have your best ideas in the shower or on a walk—or on vacation. Then there’s the power of immersing yourself in another culture: One fashion-focused study published in 2014 compared the backgrounds of 270 top designers with their runway shows over 21 seasons. Designers who had worked outside of their home countries—the Karl Lagerfelds and Alber Elbazes of the world—produced more novel work. If you want to spark some fresh thinking, go abroad.

Vacation doesn’t just have the power to pep up a person, but an entire country. A handful of years ago, Swedish experts did a deep dive into antidepressant consumption . They figured out that fewer meds were dispensed during vacation periods. The more people who were on vacation—in July, for instance, which is a big month off in Sweden—the bigger the impact.

Finally, there’s arguably the biggest benefit of all—which hasn’t yet turned up in studies, and may not be apparent for many years. “At the end of your life, you remember moments of connection,” Schulte says. “The times when it feels like you’re so present. Psychologists call it peak human experience—and it doesn’t happen in the office.”

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A Groundbreaking Scientific Discovery Just Created the Instruction Manual for Light-Speed Travel

In a first for warp drives, this research actually obeys the laws of physics.

If a superluminal—meaning faster than the speed of light—warp drive like Alcubierre’s worked, it would revolutionize humanity’s endeavors across the universe , allowing us, perhaps, to reach Alpha Centauri, our closest star system, in days or weeks even though it’s four light years away.

The clip above from the 2016 film Star Trek Beyond showcases the effect of a starship zipping through space inside a faster-than-light warp bubble. You can see the imagined but hypothetically accurate warping of spacetime.

However, the Alcubierre drive has a glaring problem: the force behind its operation, called “negative energy,” involves exotic particles—hypothetical matter that, as far as we know, doesn’t exist in our universe. Described only in mathematical terms, exotic particles act in unexpected ways, like having negative mass and working in opposition to gravity (in fact, it has “anti-gravity”). For the past 30 years, scientists have been publishing research that chips away at the inherent hurdles to light speed revealed in Alcubierre’s foundational 1994 article published in the peer-reviewed journal Classical and Quantum Gravity .

Now, researchers at the New York City-based think tank Applied Physics believe they’ve found a creative new approach to solving the warp drive’s fundamental roadblock. Along with colleagues from other institutions, the team envisioned a “positive energy” system that doesn’t violate the known laws of physics . It’s a game-changer, say two of the study’s authors: Gianni Martire, CEO of Applied Physics, and Jared Fuchs, Ph.D., a senior scientist there. Their work, also published in Classical and Quantum Gravity in late April, could be the first chapter in the manual for interstellar spaceflight.

Positive energy makes all the difference. Imagine you are an astronaut in space, pushing a tennis ball away from you. Instead of moving away, the ball pushes back, to the point that it would “take your hand off” if you applied enough pushing force, Martire tells Popular Mechanics . That’s a sign of negative energy, and, though the Alcubierre drive design requires it, there’s no way to harness it.

Instead, regular old positive energy is more feasible for constructing the “ warp bubble .” As its name suggests, it’s a spherical structure that surrounds and encloses space for a passenger ship using a shell of regular—but incredibly dense—matter. The bubble propels the spaceship using the powerful gravity of the shell, but without causing the passengers to feel any acceleration. “An elevator ride would be more eventful,” Martire says.

That’s because the density of the shell, as well as the pressure it exerts on the interior, is controlled carefully, Fuchs tells Popular Mechanics . Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, according to the gravity-bound principles of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity . So the bubble is designed such that observers within their local spacetime environment—inside the bubble—experience normal movement in time. Simultaneously, the bubble itself compresses the spacetime in front of the ship and expands it behind the ship, ferrying itself and the contained craft incredibly fast. The walls of the bubble generate the necessary momentum, akin to the momentum of balls rolling, Fuchs explains. “It’s the movement of the matter in the walls that actually creates the effect for passengers on the inside.”

Building on its 2021 paper published in Classical and Quantum Gravity —which details the same researchers’ earlier work on physical warp drives—the team was able to model the complexity of the system using its own computational program, Warp Factory. This toolkit for modeling warp drive spacetimes allows researchers to evaluate Einstein’s field equations and compute the energy conditions required for various warp drive geometries. Anyone can download and use it for free . These experiments led to what Fuchs calls a mini model, the first general model of a positive-energy warp drive. Their past work also demonstrated that the amount of energy a warp bubble requires depends on the shape of the bubble; for example, the flatter the bubble in the direction of travel, the less energy it needs.

☄️ DID YOU KNOW? People have been imagining traveling as fast as light for nearly a century, if not longer. The 1931 novel Islands of Space by John W. Campbell mentions a “warp” method in the context of superluminal space travel.

This latest advancement suggests fresh possibilities for studying warp travel design, Erik Lentz, Ph.D., tells Popular Mechanics . In his current position as a staff physicist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, Lentz contributes to research on dark matter detection and quantum information science research. His independent research in warp drive theory also aims to be grounded in conventional physics while reimagining the shape of warped space. The topic needs to overcome many practical hurdles, he says.

Controlling warp bubbles requires a great deal of coordination because they involve enormous amounts of matter and energy to keep the passengers safe and with a similar passage of time as the destination. “We could just as well engineer spacetime where time passes much differently inside [the passenger compartment] than outside. We could miss our appointment at Proxima Centauri if we aren’t careful,” Lentz says. “That is still a risk if we are traveling less than the speed of light.” Communication between people inside the bubble and outside could also become distorted as it passes through the curvature of warped space, he adds.

While Applied Physics’ current solution requires a warp drive that travels below the speed of light, the model still needs to plug in a mass equivalent to about two Jupiters. Otherwise, it will never achieve the gravitational force and momentum high enough to cause a meaningful warp effect. But no one knows what the source of this mass could be—not yet, at least. Some research suggests that if we could somehow harness dark matter , we could use it for light-speed travel, but Fuchs and Martire are doubtful, since it’s currently a big mystery (and an exotic particle).

Despite the many problems scientists still need to solve to build a working warp drive, the Applied Physics team claims its model should eventually get closer to light speed. And even if a feasible model remains below the speed of light, it’s a vast improvement over today’s technology. For example, traveling at even half the speed of light to Alpha Centauri would take nine years. In stark contrast, our fastest spacecraft, Voyager 1—currently traveling at 38,000 miles per hour—would take 75,000 years to reach our closest neighboring star system.

Of course, as you approach the actual speed of light, things get truly weird, according to the principles of Einstein’s special relativity . The mass of an object moving faster and faster would increase infinitely, eventually requiring an infinite amount of energy to maintain its speed.

“That’s the chief limitation and key challenge we have to overcome—how can we have all this matter in our [bubble], but not at such a scale that we can never even put it together?” Martire says. It’s possible the answer lies in condensed matter physics, he adds. This branch of physics deals particularly with the forces between atoms and electrons in matter. It has already proven fundamental to several of our current technologies, such as transistors, solid-state lasers, and magnetic storage media.

The other big issue is that current models allow a stable warp bubble, but only for a constant velocity. Scientists still need to figure out how to design an initial acceleration. On the other end of the journey, how will the ship slow down and stop? “It’s like trying to grasp the automobile for the first time,” Martire says. “We don’t have an engine just yet, but we see the light at the end of the tunnel.” Warp drive technology is at the stage of 1882 car technology, he says: when automobile travel was possible, but it still looked like a hard, hard problem.

The Applied Physics team believes future innovations in warp travel are inevitable. The general positive energy model is a first step. Besides, you don’t need to zoom at light speed to achieve distances that today are just a dream, Martire says. “Humanity is officially, mathematically, on an interstellar track.”

Before joining Popular Mechanics , Manasee Wagh worked as a newspaper reporter, a science journalist, a tech writer, and a computer engineer. She’s always looking for ways to combine the three greatest joys in her life: science, travel, and food.

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Airports will be packed this summer. That makes finding good direct flights even more valuable for Alaska travelers.

Traveler Michael Ricchiuti waits in Salt Lake City International Airport after his flight was canceled by snow Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2023, in Salt Lake City. Brutal winter weather hammered the northern U.S. Wednesday with "whiteout" snow, dangerous wind gusts and bitter cold, shutting down roadways, closing schools and businesses and prompting dire warnings for people to stay home. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

The summer travel season is upon us. Cruise ships are sailing into ports and RVs are on the road.

The common denominator of these events is crowds. As the days get longer, the crowds get bigger on the tour boats, bigger at hotel lobbies and bigger at the airport. And if you’re concerned about the crowds here at the Anchorage airport, just wait until you get to Seattle.

Seattle is a crucial connecting airport for Alaskans traveling around the world. But the summertime crowds are going to be massive. Smart travelers look at nonstop flights to avoid problems along the way, including delays, lost luggage and weather cancellations.

Many travelers have booked their peak-season flights already. But things come up and plans change. If you’re in the market for a flight Outside this summer, let’s review who’s flying nonstop flights where — and how much it costs to get a ticket.

International flights

Anchorage-Vancouver on Air Canada. The airline offers one flight per day, leaving at 4:55 p.m. The flights start this weekend and run through Sept. 30, 2024. For most of the summer, the one-way fare is $421. Fares are subject to change without notice. Air Canada is a member of the Star Alliance group, which includes United Airlines. Travelers can earn and burn their MileagePlus points on these flights.

Anchorage-Frankfurt on Discover Airlines. Discover also is a member of the Star Alliance airline group, so you can use your MileagePlus points. Discover offers two nonstops per week (Tuesdays and Saturdays) from Anchorage, starting on June 8. Prices start at $799 roundtrip. Book at United.com .

Anchorage-Frankfurt on Condor Airlines. Condor’s first flight of the season is this weekend. For the next three weeks, Condor will fly twice each week on Thursdays and Saturdays. Starting June 11, Condor boosts its schedule to three times weekly, adding a Tuesday flight. Fly for $670 roundtrip through June 20, before prices go up. Travelers can earn and burn Alaska Air miles with Condor.

Mileage tickets between Anchorage and Frankfurt on Condor start at 27,500 miles each way. But there are extra fees: $49 for the outbound flight to Frankfurt and $193 per person for the return flight.

Anchorage-Seattle/Everett on Alaska Air. Alaska has resumed its daily Anchorage-Paine Field nonstop for the summer. The airline uses Horizon Air to fly the route on one of its E175 2x2 aircraft (no middle seats). There are a few dates in June (7-12) where you can get a $119 one-way fare. After that, most days are available for $167 one-way on the southbound flight ($169 one-way northbound).

Anchorage-Seattle/Tacoma. Alaska Air’s schedule to Seattle from Anchorage is impressive: 18-21 flights per day. To get the best rate of $167 one-way (Saver), plan on buying your tickets at least 21 days in advance. It’s an extra $35 each way to get a Main cabin ticket. Same seat, but you can pick it out in advance and earn full Mileage Plan credit.

Delta is offering six flights every day to Seattle. The cheap seats are priced the same: $167 one-way. It’s $30 more to get Main for advance seat assignments and full SkyMiles credit. But for $50 more ($217 one-way), you can get Comfort+ with a little extra legroom.

Anchorage-Portland on Alaska Air. Travelers can choose from three departures each day from Anchorage. Two of the flights are on Horizon’s E175s. Again, I’m partial to these aircraft because there’s no middle seat in coach. In first class, there’s just one seat on the left side, with two on the right. Saver tickets start at $177 one-way, with Main cabin seats for $35 more each way.

Anchorage-San Francisco. Daily nonstops on Alaska are available for $197 one-way for Saver seats, with a 21-day advance purchase. Add $40 each way for Main. The seasonal nonstops operate through Sept. 30.

United’s nonstop Anchorage-San Francisco flights resume on May 23. Pricing for Basic Economy is $197 one-way. Add $40 one-way for Economy so you can carry aboard a rolling bag or other in-cabin item.

Anchorage-Los Angeles/LAX on Alaska Airlines. The airline offers a daily red-eye flight from Anchorage, starting at $197 one-way. You must purchase your ticket 21 days in advance to get that price on the southbound flight. Northbound flights are more in the summer, from $341 one-way (Saver).

Anchorage-San Diego on Alaska Airlines. This is a new route for the airline, which operates once per week on Saturdays between now and Sept. 28. Plan ahead and get tickets for as little as $219 one-way (Saver).

Mountain states

Anchorage-Las Vegas on Alaska Airlines. Twice-a-week nonstop service is available on Fridays and Sundays. Plan ahead and get tickets for $197 one-way (Saver).

Anchorage-Phoenix on Alaska Airlines. Daily service is available all the way through the summer until Aug. 19, when Alaska reverts to four-times-weekly service. Tickets in mid-June are available for as little as $187 one-way (Saver). Northbound tickets cost more, but some late-June dates are available for $199-221 one-way.

Anchorage-Salt Lake City. Delta and Alaska Airlines resume their seasonal flights this weekend with three-times-weekly service on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. After June 10, Delta adds two more days: Thursdays and Mondays. One-way tickets sell for about $217, with a 21-day advance purchase.

Anchorage-Denver. United flies the route year-round. Alaska has resumed its seasonal nonstop flights, through Sept. 28. On May 23, United adds a second daily nonstop. Plan ahead and tickets are available for $187 one-way southbound. Northbound tickets cost more, from $189-$289 one-way in late June.

Midwestern states

Anchorage-Minneapolis. This is the most competitive destination, with three airlines vying for customers. Early-season flights on Sun Country Airlines are the cheapest: $119 one-way, starting May 25 for southbound flights. Flying north costs more: from $179 one-way.

Alaska Airlines starts seasonal service to the Twin Cities this weekend with three flights per week: Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. On June 13, Alaska starts daily flights, from $219 one-way.

Delta flies nonstop year-round, with prices starting at about $210 one-way.

Anchorage-Chicago. In the height of the summer season, three airlines also fly this route: American, Alaska and United. Starting next month, both United and Alaska add an additional flight, offering two each day. All three carriers offer basic economy tickets at about $195 one-way.

Anchorage-Dallas. American has resumed its nonstop flights for the summer, currently scheduled all the way through Jan. 6, 2025. On June 6, American adds a second daily flight, which will fly through Sept. 2. Prices are super-high through most of June and really do not mellow out until June 25, when you can get a basic economy ticket for $548 roundtrip.

Anchorage-Houston on United Airlines. United’s seasonal daily flight resumes on May 23. Prices are high, even with advance notice: from $741 roundtrip starting June 13.

Eastern states

Anchorage-Detroit on Delta. Starting June 7, Delta will operate three flights each week, Friday-Sunday. Prices are high, starting at $717 roundtrip.

Anchorage-Atlanta on Delta. Starting May 23, Delta resumes its daily Anchorage-Atlanta nonstop flights. Prices are super-high, from $1,117 roundtrip.

Anchorage-New York/JFK. This is a new route for Alaska Airlines — the longest in its system. Nonstop flights start on June 13 and are priced starting at $551 roundtrip.

Anchorage-Newark on United. Seasonal nonstops from Anchorage to Newark resume May 23, priced from $571 roundtrip (departing June 7).

Anchorage-Washington, DC/Dulles on United. This is a new flight for United. Dulles is a big hub for the airline. Seasonal daily service starts May 23. Plan ahead to get roundtrip tickets for $741 (departing June 7).

Alaska Airlines drops its nonstop flights from Anchorage to Maui and Kona. But Anchorage-Honolulu continues to operate each day. Flights in June are available for $197 one-way going south. Flying north costs more: from $279 one-way.

There are fewer nonstop flights between Fairbanks and the Lower 48, but they’re important.

Fairbanks-Seattle: Delta has two daily flights and Alaska has five daily flights, starting at $179 one-way.

Fairbanks-Denver: United offers daily flights, starting May 23. from $291 one-way.

Fairbanks-Minneapolis: Starting June 7, Delta will fly each day to Minneapolis, starting at $479 roundtrip.

Fairbanks-Chicago: United’s daily flights are scheduled through Sept. 25. Prices start at $573 roundtrip.

All fares (and schedules) are subject to change without notice. Sources: Google.com/flights , Alaskaair.com , Delta.com

Scott McMurren

Scott McMurren is an Anchorage-based marketing consultant, serving clients in the transportation, hospitality, media and specialty destination sectors, among others. Contact him by email at [email protected]. Subscribe to his e-newsletter at alaskatravelgram.com. For more information, visit alaskatravelgram.com/about.

Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. We may earn a commission from these links.

33 Best Travel Essentials You Should Always Pack

What our editors always travel with, and you should, too.

For some of us, an affordable carry-on is our travel essential. For others, it's nothing less than a Rimowa suitcase . Some of us never travel without a cashmere sweater . Personally, I swear by this Halfday Garment Duffel , but others swear by a classic weekender . We're exploring all options here.

Best Sweater for Travelling

Naadam cashmere sweater.

Travel Packing Hack

Halfday the garment duffel.

Best Packable Tote Bag

Tumi just in case tote.

Best Passport Cover

Smythson passport cover in panama.

Best Dopp Kit Upgrade

Lucchese dopp kit.

Best Suit to Fly In

J.crew kenmare unstructured suit jacket.

Best Travel Pants

Lululemon abc classic-fit pant.

Best Shoes for Travel

Sabah baba leather slip on.

Best Travel Wallet

Husbands paris black metal corners wallet.

Best Hanging Toiletry Bag

Away the hanging toiletry bag.

From post-flight, or in-flight, grooming must haves to luxury wallets that make you feel more put together walking through TSA, you can trust our expertise here. And here's a light warning. We will, only once, recommend that you still wear a suit while you travel. It's part of our DNA, sorry. Other than that, these are the 33 travel essentials that we swear by.

It sounds annoying to say a cashmere sweater is the perfect travel accessory, but it's so warm, soft, and lightweight, there's nothing that beats it. Plus, our favorite sweater from Naadam only cost $100.

I've already written about how great this bag is . A garment duffel isn't a new concept, but for $100, this version of it is life changing. Pack two suits or a few dresses, roll up the bag, then add everything else like normal. Nice clothes stay wrinkle free and everything packs more easily.

We all know the deal. It's a return flight, you have new clothes and souvenirs, or you just are packing a lot less diligently. That's where this Just In Case Tote comes in. It packs down to the size of a book and expands to be a sizable personal item.

A passport cover is tough to call an essential, but once you hit a certain level of frequent flyer, it absolutely is. This one in luxe leather from Smythson is the best you can buy.

One thing we really believe in is upgrading your dopp kit. That polyester one from Amazon won't make you happy, and it'll disintegrate in a few years. Lucchese makes some of the best travel bags on the market , and this pebble leather dopp kit is the best value on the website.

Yes, the men's magazine is still telling you to wear a suit on a flight. A relaxed-fit unstructured suit is a man's matching set. It's just as comfortable as your ugly PJ pants, getting dressed takes two seconds, and you look great no matter how jet lagged you are.

If you insist on doing stretchy pants, make sure you do the best stretchy pants on Earth .

The airport shoe situation is a funny one. There's a lot of ways to tackle the issue. Most people prefer sneakers. Loafers are a great shout. Cowboy boots —they're slip ons!—are my chaotic choice. The only rule is no exposed toes.

Truthfully, though, these Sabah slip ons are the only answer to "What's the best travel shoe?" Slip on, slip off. Wear them to the beach, or use them as a bring your own hotel slipper.

When you're an American exploring parts of the world you're unfamiliar with, be smart. A front pocket wallet will keep you from being on the losing end of tourist pickpocket schemes. This one from Husbands is my absolute favorite.

If you have an especially long self-care routine, you'll need something a bit more tailor-made. This hanging toiletry bag from Away is a great shout.

Cadence Flex System

As far as routines go, this Cadence system is a functional masterpiece. You can customize a set of containers for grooming products, bath products, and supplements. All the little hexagons click together for easy packing. It's some of the best travel design we've ever gotten our hands on.

Byredo Mojave Ghost Roll-On

Creating your own olfactory bubble is a life-changing travel hack, but spray-on cologne is a bit intense for the plane ride. Byredo makes nice roll-on fragrances to solve that problem.

F. Miller Eye Oil

That stale plane air is a nightmare for your skin. This eye oil firms and nourishes skin while still feeling natural. Keep it on hand to take care of any problem areas—around your eyes, lips, and cuticles. It's our best hack for looking good even after a long flight.

Bose QuietComfort Headphones

We're big proponents of noise-cancelling headphones for pretty much all things that require either a deep inner focus or a hard distance from the world outside. Bose's QuietComfort headphones silence the world (crying babies, crunching plane neighbors) around you.

Bombas Everyday Compression Socks

These socks will reduce any swelling or numbness after a long flight, or a short one for that matter. Compression socks are your new favorite travel companion. These have a daily-use approved 15-20mmHg pressure.

Patagonia Nano Puff Fitz Roy Trout Hoody

A packable Patagonia jacket is one of travel's biggest upgrades. It's super warm, and makes for an excellent extra layer—especially when you're not sure what you'll need. It packs into a little cube, which can double as a travel pillow.

Davek The Mini

Tiny and adorable, this will save you from some unexpected weather. The micro design tucks away perfectly into your suitcase.

Drake's Brown Birds of Paradise Print Wool Scarf

Even more versatile than a sweater is a lightweight scarf. Any scarf from Drake's is a good buy, but this printed one is especially fun. In the terminal, it's an accessory. In the lounge, it's a blanket. On the flight, it's a shawl, eye mask, emergency pillow, or a fucking tablecloth. If you buy one thing for travel, buy a good lightweight scarf.

Adidas Originals Stan Smith

Stan Smith's are another classic choice. Wear them with jeans, sweatpants, or a suit, and look fine in all instances.

NEW BALANCE 990v4 Sneakers

Sometimes you just need to get there, and these sneakers will do the trick. And when you do get there, go stretch your weary plane legs on a long walk without having to change shoes.

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Hundreds of items from estate of former Ky. governor up for auction

FRANKFORT, Ky. (WKYT) - Have you ever wondered how a governor or former governor lives?

Well, former Governor Julian Carroll’s estate is not only set to be on the market, but hundreds of his furnishings are currently up for auction.

The road leading to Carroll’s home in Frankfort is nothing short of scenic.

“You can come across the two bridges coming in, and you’re at your own private oasis,” said Jonathan Noel, Owner and Auctioneer of Noel Auctioneers and Real Estate Advisors.

The property sits up against the rolling water of Elkhorn Creek.

“It has tons of memories, tons of history, and you’ve got the opportunity to make it your own,” said Noel.

However, before the $1 million estate goes up for sale, it has to be cleared.

The Carroll family has hired Noel to auction off hundreds of unique items. Some, like a Paul Sawyier painting, are one-of-a-kind.

“The stuff we’re selling here is stuff that was a value 100 years ago, and it’s going to be of more value 100 years from now,” said Noel.

Noel says people from across the world can bid on items in the online auction. He expects some items to sell for upwards of $5,000.

“All the excitement happens on that very last day. Our auctions go up 1,000% on the last day. It’s called a soft close. If there’s five minutes to go and someone bids on an item, it’s going to extend for five minutes. If someone bids again, it extends for five more minutes, and it continues to do so until there’s no bidding for a five-minute period.”

Noel says it’s an honor for his family to be a part of this process.

Bidding ends on May 26, and the soft close starts at 7 p.m.

You can view the items up for bids here .

Copyright 2024 WKYT. All rights reserved.

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July Luggage Review: Does the Brand Live up to the Hype?

Spoiler alert: I think I've found my new favorite hardside luggage brand.

We've been independently researching and testing products for over 120 years. If you buy through our links, we may earn a commission. Learn more about our review process.

My honest thoughts on July luggage

The bottom line: should you buy july luggage, why trust good housekeeping.

If you're anything like me, finding the right luggage is easier said than done, especially if you're looking for a stylish, non-basic option.

In the Good Housekeeping Institute , we've tested over 100 suitcases in recent years t o find the best carry-on and checked luggage available both in our Lab and on hundreds of trips. As a textiles product reviews analyst, I've personally packed dozens of suitcases, assessed damage from our drop tester, evaluated scratch resistance and traveled with several of our top-tested luggage brands .

I recently took July's Classic Family Luggage Set (which includes a carry-on and two checked suitcases) on four international flights, traveling between three countries for multiple weeks. Several of our consumer testers also tried the brand's Carry-On Light , which the brand calls the lightest luggage you'll find, on a variety of domestic trips.

What is July luggage?

Named after the most popular month for traveling, July's suitcases were designed to bridge the gap between budget bags and luxury luggage, offering thoughtfully designed luggage at a more accessible price point. Since its start in 2018, the brand has expanded to three luggage collections (Classic, Light and Trunk) plus various bags , like weekenders and totes , and travel accessories .

July Carry On

The Classic Carry-On is July's most popular product. It's made with polycarbonate, a popular material in hardside luggage , and each corner is capped with an anodized aluminum bumper for added protection.

July Carry-On Light

The Carry-On Light is another popular product, and the brand calls it, "the lightest double-wheel suitcase in the world" at 3.9 pounds. Hardside luggage is known for its lightweight nature, but as certain airlines lower their weight limits (even for carry-ons), every ounce counts. Still, it has a 32L capacity, making it less spacious compared to other popular options.

July Classic Family Luggage Set

On my most recent trips, I traveled with July's Classic Family Set , which includes the Classic Carry-On, Checked and Checked Plus . While some luggage sets may come at a discount, July's do not, but sets do ship with the suitcases nested inside each other to save space.

July's luggage has a simple yet sleek appearance. On the Classic line, the aluminum corners provide an added edge, elevating otherwise minimalist suitcases. In person, I immediately noticed how luxurious each suitcase felt: The exterior felt solid and substantial while the interior felt buttery smooth with a notable Y-strap over the standard compression panel. Note that the Carry-On Light instead features two zippered components with no compression panels.

The telescopic handle (pictured) stops at 20 different heights, meaning it will stop without falling down immediately, although it doesn't fully lock in until lifted to half its full height. It's also slightly slanted, for a more ergonomic hold. Some of our consumer testers appreciated this when wheeling it through our in-Lab obstacle course, but as someone with smaller hands, I found it a bit odd, although not uncomfortable.

The standard Carry-On also comes with a built-in power bank, which can be a nice perk, but I personally didn't use it while traveling due to the added bulk. When I tried it on its own, it charged quickly but noticeably warmed up. You can skip the power bank if you'd like by purchasing the Carry-On Essential , though it does not have the aluminum bumpers.

July also allows you to personalize your new suitcase for an added cost. This is great for easily spotting your checked luggage on a baggage carousel or in the event that your carry-on gets moved around or checked at the gate. I didn't personalize my luggage, as it delays the shipping, but I've always plastered colorful stickers on all my luggage to make sure it doesn't get confused. July's personalization, though, is definitely more intentional and long-lasting compared to my DIY endeavors.

Performance

I've tested many, many suitcases, but I've never used luggage that glided as smoothly as July's through an airport. Often, even when using pricey or top-tested luggage, I feel self-conscious, especially on moving walkways: The noises my other carry-ons have made in the past vary from slightly squeaky to loud, but this wasn't a problem with July. The wheels effortlessly accompanied me throughout several airports without any issues. During in-Lab testing, participants in our obstacle course agreed, giving July some of the highest scores for ease of use, particularly for its smooth, 360º wheels and adjustable handle.

In terms of packability, the Classic Carry-On, Checked and Check Plus were fairly standard compared to other hardside luggage, fitting our standard load with room to spare. Each included a thoughtful laundry bag for dirty clothes. The Carry-On Light, however, wasn't able to fit everything in our standard four-night packing load, so it's best for shorter trips.

When it comes to hardside luggage, polycarbonate is king, and all of July's suitcases are made of polycarbonate. It's an extremely durable material with excellent impact resistance, yet it's still lightweight, proving well-rounded when compared to other plastics or metals like aluminum.

It doesn't have the best scratch resistance, which we saw during testing, notably when we used a wire to scratch the surface of July's suitcases in the Lab. Still, when I assessed the Checked and Checked Plus suitcases (pictured), I didn't notice much wear and tear on the polycarbonate material (especially after wiping it down). The aluminum bumpers did show some damage though, with some visible scratches up close.

In our drop tests, which involve packing a suitcase with a set weight before releasing it from a three-foot height at various angles, July came away without any dents, damages or changes in appearance.

Warranty & Return Policy

July's luggage comes with a "lifetime warranty." But this doesn't necessarily mean you can purchase it once and use it forever. The brand says it will repair or replace products with manufacturing faults on the wheels, zips, handles and compression straps. Certain cracks and breakages to the polycarbonate shell are also covered, but cosmetic damage is not. Be sure to thoroughly document it if you suspect something's off with your luggage.

The brand also offers a 100-day return policy, but it's only for new, unused luggage in its original packaging. Personalized luggage is exempt, as it's considered bespoke, as are notably discounted items (i.e. Final Call and Weekender promotional purchases). There's also a $20 return fee.

If you're looking for minimalist hardside luggage with a bit of personality , I would recommend investing in any of the suitcases from the Classic line (the Carry-On, Checked and Checked Plus). I've tested many suitcases in my role at Good Housekeeping, and July might be my new favorite luggage brand. The maneuverability is unparalleled , thanks to its smooth wheels and adjustable handle, and the materials feel sleek and durable.

The suitcases faired well in our tests , earning high scores for their ease of use in our in-Lab obstacle course and durability during drop testing. Note that the polycarbonate material can scuff, but this was easily wiped away in my experience. The aluminum bumpers don't have the best scratch resistance, though.

When it comes to the Carry-On Light, my recommendation depends on the type of traveler you are. The suitcase is incredibly light, but it isn't quite as versatile due to its smaller size. If you go on lots of quick trips or if you'd rather use a rolling suitcase over a weekender bag or travel backpack , then the Carry-On Light is a great choice.

Still, the return policy, while fairly standard, isn't the most generous, and the lifetime warranty isn't a fix-all, so I encourage you to thoughtfully examine any July luggage you purchase.

Grace Wu is a textiles reviews product analyst at Good Housekeeping and has tested all kinds of luggage and travel products using specialized Lab equipment. She's flown on dozens of long-haul flights over the years, both international and domestic, and swears by hardside luggage. Prior to joining GH, Grace earned a Master of Engineering in materials science & engineering (with a focus on polymers like polycarbonate) and a Bachelor of Science in fiber science from Cornell University.

Grace Wu (she/her) is a product reviews analyst at the Good Housekeeping Institute 's Textiles, Paper and Apparel Lab, where she evaluates fabric-based products using specialized equipment and consumer tester data. Prior to starting at Good Housekeeping in 2022, she earned a master of engineering in materials science and engineering and a bachelor of science in fiber science from Cornell University. While earning her degrees, Grace worked in research laboratories for smart textiles and nanotechnology and held internships at Open Style Lab and Rent the Runway.

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