{"id":16385,"date":"2016-04-27T15:57:04","date_gmt":"2016-04-27T05:57:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.intrepidtravel.com\/adventures?p=16385&preview_id=16385"},"modified":"2025-03-13T03:51:29","modified_gmt":"2025-03-12T16:51:29","slug":"travel-lesson-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intrepidtravel.com\/adventures\/travel-lesson-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Your people are actually everywhere: the most important lesson I’ve learnt about travel"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I first met my best friend, I was convinced our stars had aligned. There we were, both late for a bus ride on a school excursion and assigned the last two seats, slightly uncomfortable to be sitting beside a stranger \u2013 one from a different year at school, at that. I shouldn\u2019t have worried. By the end of that two hour bus ride, our sides were sore from laughter and our friendship was firm, even transcending the barrier between grade nine and grade ten. As anyone who has ever been to high school knows, that\u2019s no easy task.<\/p>\n

Since then, many of the friendships I\u2019ve made have felt serendipitous. We just happened<\/em> to be grouped into the same year at school, or assigned to the same project at work, or in the same bar some random Friday night. That\u2019s how most relationships are formed: a group of people \u2013 whether it\u2019s students, colleagues or acquaintances \u2013 are put in the same place at the same time, and left to work out their alliances. I never gave it much deeper thought; I just felt lucky to have found my people.<\/p>\n

\"lesson---taryn\"<\/p>\n

What I always overlooked is that the class of legends I think of as \u201cmy people\u201d actually aren\u2019t as uncommon as I think they are. That\u2019s not to take away from what I share with my friends \u2013 I still consider myself lucky that we found each other \u2013 but as I embark on more missions out there into the world, the more I see that \u2018my people\u2019 are really everywhere.<\/p>\n

A recent study by the Common Cause Foundation has shown that, despite the bombardment of doom and gloom in the news, humans are actually inherently good<\/a>. The common characteristic of humans is funnily enough \u2013 humanity, and nowhere is this truth more apparent than in travel.<\/p>\n

When my best friend and I travelled through South America<\/a> together in our early 20s, we undertook the incredible feat of hiking the Inca Trail for three days to Machu Picchu, on a tour with a group of strangers. Almost immediately, we fell in with two girls our age from Perth. The connection was instant; almost obvious. A similar sense of humour united us and as a gang we became inseparable, resulting in the four of us travelling together for the next few months. But on that first day of group hiking, we also make an unlikely friend; one who, if you compared us on paper, might not have been so obvious.<\/p>\n