Want to make your next trip more than just a holiday?

Meaningful travel can change your perspective, deepen your connection with other cultures and leave you with experiences that stay with you long after you return home.

To the uninitiated, “meaningful travel” may sound like the sort of thing gap-year students talk about when they finally get around to entering the workplace. “Yah, so I went to India and did some meaningful travel, right? It was sooooo am-azing? Like totally life-changing, yah?”

But the reality is that everyone can gain from a travel experience that leaves them with a different perspective on the world – provided it is meaningful for the people and places you visit, too.

Done well, meaningful travel involves exploring unfamiliar places, gaining fresh insights and connecting more deeply with local people and cultures. It produces a mental change, garnering experiences that leave you richer in spirit, while also considering the social, environmental and economic impact of your trip.

My journey into meaningful travel

Meaningful travel has been a part of my life since I was a teenager. At 16, I went to India, spending time volunteering in a school and immersing myself in Indian culture. It was awful. I had undiagnosed glandular fever at the time, felt horrendous and ended up being put on an IV drip in Bahrain airport on the way home.

Despite this, my eyes were opened to all the things I didn’t know about the world. That is why, with my A-levels completed, I signed up to three months of volunteering in Nepal. Alone.

It’s now over 10 years on and that trip has unquestionably made positive changes to my life. As a teenager with anxiety, travelling alone to a different continent and entirely alien way of life was, quite frankly, beyond terrifying.

But the experience was truly amazing, with the best part of the trip being the friendship I made with the Nepalese lady, Jyoti, who ran the orphanage I stayed at. She showed me what it was really like to live there, rather than simply being a tourist. We still stay in touch.

Looking back, however, I would also question some of the assumptions behind volunteering in places such as orphanages. Today, responsible tourism guidance recommends avoiding activities that treat children as tourist attractions, including visits to schools and orphanages, unless there is a clear, locally led reason for doing so.

The trip massively boosted my confidence. Now, whenever I think I can’t do something, I remember that experience and all the amazing, brave things I did: travelling across the world alone at 18, taking part in a white-water rafting adventure, making new friends even when I was way out of my depth.

I also remember the people I met, the kindest people in the world, and the help I was given by strangers, people who had so much less than me.

Giving travel a purpose

Giving your travels a purpose can have truly life-changing results, as Ryan Trump discovered. He spent a fortnight in Peru, undertaking volunteer work to renovate a rural school before completing a trek along the Salkantay trail to Machu Picchu to raise money for a local charity.

“Machu Picchu had always been on my bucket list,” says Ryan. “When I saw the opportunity to go while making a difference by volunteering and raising money for a charity close to my heart, I jumped at it.

“It was a wonderful experience: I made new friends, experienced a new culture and completed the difficult challenge of not only fundraising, but completing the trek itself. It showed me just how much I am capable of.”

These types of experiences don’t only affect you personally. They can also help you professionally: at interviews, I am always asked about my experience travelling as a teenager, even a decade on.

Travel experience can certainly give you useful things to talk about at an interview, particularly when it demonstrates qualities such as adaptability, independence, communication, problem-solving or working with people from different backgrounds. Simply having travelled, however, isn’t necessarily an achievement in itself – it is what you did, learned and contributed that matters.

Meaningful travel also means thinking about where your money goes. Choosing locally owned accommodation, restaurants, guides and businesses can help more of the economic benefit of tourism reach the communities you visit.

And there is another consideration that was less prominent when I first wrote about meaningful travel: the environment. Flying, consuming resources and visiting fragile natural areas all have an impact. Travelling more slowly, using public transport where practical, avoiding waste and respecting wildlife and natural environments can help reduce it.

Whether you choose to fundraise, volunteer responsibly, take on a physical challenge, immerse yourself in another culture, support local businesses, or combine several of these elements into one trip like Ryan, enrich your life by giving meaningful travel a go.

The key is to remember that meaningful travel isn’t simply about how much a trip changes you. It is also about whether the people, culture and environment you encounter are treated with respect – and whether your visit leaves something positive behind.

Take it from me: you won’t regret it!

Three tips for meaningful travel

1. Do your research. Particularly if you are planning to volunteer. Of course, volunteering can be an amazing thing to do, but it’s important that you do so ethically. Ask whether the project is genuinely needed, locally led and designed to benefit the community rather than simply providing a feel-good experience for visitors. Be especially cautious about projects involving children.

2. Immerse yourself in the culture of the place you are visiting. The best way to do this? Learn the language so you can communicate with the locals. Duolingo can help you learn the basics. Ask local people where they eat and how they spend their time, support independent businesses and look for community-led experiences. You might even get a special invite!

3. Be prepared to leave your comfort zone – responsibly. Whether it’s travelling solo, exploring somewhere less well-known, travelling by train, trying something you’ve never done before or simply slowing down and spending longer in one place. You don’t have to take unnecessary risks to have a transformative experience. Meaningful travel is about being open to learning, while respecting the people and places around you.

By Charlotte Bean

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