The Transformative Power of Travel: A Journey Beyond Borders

The Looking Glass: A Life Measured in Wonder

I have never once counted how many countries I have visited. Not even out of curiosity. For me, travel has never been about tallying stamps in a passport or collecting destinations like trophies. It was never about the list. It has always been something quieter and deeper. It is a calling, a remembering, and a slow return to wonder.

The truth is that I did not even set foot on a plane until I was twenty. I grew up in a small town where we did not have much, and we certainly were not a travelling family. But even then, I was constantly drawn to whatever lay beyond the horizon. I was surrounded by stories that felt otherworldly, and I could never quite shake the feeling that there was something vast waiting for me.

When I was small, my favourite story was Alice in Wonderland. I used to imagine what it would be like to tumble through the looking glass and fall into a world where everything was seen from a completely different perspective. Looking back, I realize that is exactly what travel became for me. It was my own version of falling through the glass. It was never an escape from reality, but rather a deeper plunge into the heart of it.

I remember sitting cross-legged on a dirt floor in a crumbling kasbah in Morocco, sharing mint tea with a family of ten. None of us spoke the same language, yet we understood one another completely. We laughed and gestured until our cheeks ached. In that moment, the connection did not need a translation. It lived in the eyes, the hands, and the shared silence between words.

I remember wandering the backstreets of Kathmandu, following the scent of incense and the rhythm of temple bells. I was lost and entirely unbothered, stumbling into courtyards where monks chanted, and children played. It was there that I realized I was not lost at all. I was exactly where I was meant to be.

I remember trekking above the tree line in the Everest region, my lungs burning and my heart wide open. The air was so thin I could hear my own pulse. The mountains loomed like ancient teachers, silent and sure. In that thin air, stripped of everything unnecessary, I found the simplest truth of all: how very little we need to feel full.

That is what travel does. It rearranges your insides. It humbles you, softens you, and shakes you loose from the roles you have played. It pulls you out of your narrow story and into a much greater one. Travel does not care about your plans. It asks only for your presence.

I believe that is why so many women in their wisdom years are travelling more than ever before. We have spent so much of our lives tending to others, raising families, and building careers. Somewhere along the way, we forgot how to tend to the fire within ourselves. Then one day, a whisper begins. A quiet question arises: what else is out there for me?

Travel answers that question with expansion. It permits us to be curious again and to wander without a specific reason. It reminds us that we are never too old to begin again and that adventure has no expiration date. The world is vast, yes, but so are we.

I never counted countries because you cannot count the places that have changed the shape of your heart. I remember the tea on the dirt floor and the trail where the clouds brushed my shoulders. I grew up in a family that dreamed, and that set me on this path to keep tumbling through the glass, chasing wonder wherever it leads.

In the end, travel is not about how far you go. It is about how deeply you are willing to feel. That little girl who once dreamed of other worlds finally found them. And she is still falling, quite gratefully, into the next.

In magic and adventure,

Penny