In order to gain knowledge, historical figures like Ibn Battuta, Xuanzang, Saint Augustine and many others devoted their lives to travel and to discovering a world they did not know much about. From science and art to history and geography, these travelers left behind a legacy of knowledge that enriched the lives of future generations. But we don’t always have to be full-time travelers to learn from traveling; we can grow from mere tourists to travelers that attain valuable knowledge by making the effort to truly explore the places we visit. As NYU Abu Dhabi students, we get to travel a lot: we take semesters abroad, class trips, or independent trips that not only make us learn more about the world, but about ourselves.

The transition from a tourist to a traveler happens gradually as we learn to experience hidden places and their picturesque scenery. As tourists, we experience the instant reward of superficial contact and then leave the place. Yet, when we become travelers, we take in intangible experiences that become a part of our personal experiences, which form our identities. We learn how to be patient, how to carefully read the places we visit and find the details that make a place different from anywhere else on the globe.

We gradually learn how to become reflective travelers who can absorb a place rather than just observe it. Our journeys usually start with an eagerness to see something new or to tick a place off our bucket list. Then the curiosity to explore more cultures comes into play. As a friend of mine says, “We eventually stop seeing and start looking.” We learn things that are unspoken and unreadable when we immerse ourselves within different cultures. We gain a kind of knowledge that is personal and too abstract to be contained in books orand publications, one that we can experience but can never fully pass on.

Moreover, traveling to new places also comes with an elevating sensation. That feeling may even make us forget about the piles of paperwork we had to drag to the embassy, the unflattering headshot on our visa stamps, and the stiffness of the plane. We find a rare chance to take our eyes and minds to places we’ve never seen. We meet people who lead lives that are radically different from our own, to the point that they are unrecognizable. This difference allows us to see our own lives in a different perspective and reflect on our own choices and how happy we are with them. We remember all the places we visit, but some we remember as a fling, sweet and passing, and others we regard as love, joyous and agonizing.

I believe that the most important part of traveling is the people we meet and how our narratives collide with theirs. Whether it is the people we spend a semester with, a stranger who helped us get home after our phone battery died or the person who made us coffee every day, we learn a lot by interacting with them. Sometimes, we only need a moment with another person for knowledge to be exchanged. We can buy bread from a street vendor like we buy bread anywhere in the world. But this trivial trip can change drastically if we reach out with a stronger form of human communication rather than a somber monetary exchange. Maybe that street vendor will open up, and tell us about his childhood in that same city when bread was a luxury in the midst of a war-torn country. These interactions broaden our perspectives and make us pause to think about beliefs we once thought were concrete.

Traveling helps us get out of that suffocating position between the past and the future; it grounds us in the present and allows us to take in the moment. Yet, knowledge always comes with loss, and that loss can mean losing our stability, our contentment and even our own identities. We start to long for that sense of liberation we only get when we are constantly moving. We grow, but we also age. We may even become consumed with wanderlust. It is hard to find the balance between wanderlust and responsibilities, but maybe it’s worth spending a lifetime in that pursuit.