Short answer – YES! So much more than just visiting places and doing things, travel opens you up to new cultures, experiences, people and an entirely new way of life that stays with you long after your bags are unpacked and tan has faded. Travel is all about self-improvement, simultaneously toughening your skin and melting your heart, forever changing your perspective on the world.

 Want to get specific? Here are some reasons.

YOU ACCEPT PEOPLE FOR WHO THEY ARE

Growing up, we naturally fall into our own social circles, more often than not sticking in these until we’re set free into the world. We’re unintentionally sheltered, unknowingly skeptical. Enter the concept of travel, and your first independent steps into the world. Suddenly you find yourself sat next to a teacher from Brazil, a writer from New York, a charity worker from the Philippines – people with totally different beliefs, backgrounds and stories. Talking to these people, learning their journeys and what they’ve been through, you realize just how different your lives have been. Yet these people aren’t scary, they’re not judgmental. They take you for who you are, as you do them. Travel throws you in the deep end and forces you to live side by side with people you’d never of imagined, opening your mind and eradicating preconceptions.