My partner and I love to travel Have you ever had a dog who was at the door every time she heard the jangle of the car keys? That’s us.

As soon as our youngest child was old enough to be left with his brother and sisters and a caretaker we started taking at least a month of our winters to travel to far-flung places.

We’ve been to the Peruvian Amazon twice, Patagonia, the Galapagos Islands and lots of other places in South and Central America, Spain, Amsterdam, South Africa, three of the more out-of-the-way islands in the Caribbean, and to India twice for over six months altogether.

We have a friend who says he prefers to see the world from the comfort of his easy chair on his big screen tv – without the humidity, bugs, crowded trains and lack of electricity and WiFi. I get that but it makes me sigh.

Traveling by small motor boat for four hours to reach a lodge deep in the Amazon forest, feeling the weight of the heat and humidity, hearing bird calls in a night that is totally black because there’s no electricity for kilometers in every direction, coming upon thousands of ants who eat all the leaves off a huge tree in a day or two, peeling a cocoa plant to taste the bitter chocolate inside; you can’t experience any of that watching National Geographic on your tv.

But when I might answer the question of why we like to travel so much with that paragraph somehow it still leaves people puzzled.

I’m reading a book called Under the Wide and Starry Sky by Nancy Horan. It’s basically a sweet romance between the Scottish writer and poet, Robert Louis Stevenson, and his American wife, Fanny. A pleasant story; nothing earth-shattering. Very nicely written. And then I came across a few paragraphs written about Stevenson introducing Fanny to all the places in Paris that he remembers from trips there with his parents as a child. Many have been changed by war and the interceding years. They also explore new places together. Only a few paragraphs but the excitement of sharing the sights and memories and it all came together for me.

The bonding and beauty of travel.

Experiencing a new culture together; realizing how different cultures can be and, at the same time, how many commonalities there are between people, seeing animals in the wild, on their turf, living in freedom, moving out of our routine and, sometimes, out of our comfort zone – together – sharing the confusion, the hilarious mistakes, the unexpected.

We were once surprised by an elephant who stepped languidly out of the forested side of the narrow road and stood 15 feet from us calmly staring at us and munching on big leaves, before sauntering off to the other side of the road.

There was the exotic, elderly Sadu (spiritual street person) with whom we shared a few words every morning on our way to Hindi class. One day he told us he wouldn’t be there for a few days because he was going home to see his family. What? His family?

We traveled by train, plane, and taxi for the privilege of seeing families of some of the 3000 remaining white rhinoceroses in the world – mom, pop, and children – wandering freely in large fields.

And the bonding isn’t only between my partner or child and myself on our trips but between other travelers with whom we share a few days or a week in a place foreign and sometimes challenging for us all. Travelers tend to share intimacies their long-time friends have yet to hear. A Latvian couple, traveling with their two young children, left their kids in our care overnight while they spent a day and night with a shaman in the forest. We shared dinner with a couple from San Francisco several times over the years after becoming friends in South America.

How often is one of us reminded of something from our travels that when shared takes us both back to something amazing or funny or breathtaking or just brings a wistful smile to our lips?

The magnificent noise and sight of a glacier calving into the water in Puerto Merino, hundreds of macaws congregated on a clay lick across from the small boat where we’ve spent an hour waiting for them to arrive, the impromptu street musicians sitting by the Laxman Bridge (where, incidentally, I was bitten by a monkey on one of our trips – ouch), the friendly guide who suggested we come home with him to meet his young family in their home in the slums of Mumbai.

The memories of the things that went “wrong’ are often the best memories of all.

My daughter and I alighting from a park employee transport in NE Thailand. The people on the transport knew no English but we understood from them that we just needed to follow the narrow asphalt trail to arrive at our bamboo hut in the cloud forest. Many kilometers later, with all our possessions on our backs, the asphalt path had become a dirt path and there was still no sign of civilization, much less our bamboo hut. At some point, after hours or walking, we had to put our backpacks down because we were giggling so hard that we couldn’t see for the tears of hilarity at our situation. No worries. We came upon the bamboo hut after about 10 kilometers and had an amazing time deep in the forest.

Driving a recommended shortcut through the mountains to reach an isolated farm, we suddenly found ourselves socked in by dense fog. I, the designated driver in countries where driving is on the left, literally photographed what I could see in front of me in my mind and closed my eyes in prayer driving each 50 feet, with a steep chasm on my right and a road not wide enough for two cars to pass each other. When we arrived, safely, at the farm, and described our hair-raising drive through the mountain pass he’d recommended, the wrinkled, crotchety old farmer wasn’t impressed. “Yep, it sometimes gets like that.”

I think many people don’t like to travel exactly because of all the surprises, challenges, lack of home familiarity and comfort, language issues, and that beast – the unknown. But in my opinion, all those parts make up the wonder and beauty of travel.

It’s a surprising and delicious world out there.

Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and jump into it all with both feet, and someone you love to share it with. Take a chance on being clueless, making the “wrong” decision, taking a turn by way of eeny meeny mayni mo and exploring whatever you find there.

One answer to Mary Oliver’s question of what you might do with your one precious life.