Fundamental kindness

Another thing I love about travelling is the kindness of strangers. I've been to 49 countries now. Some multiple times.

I've had plenty of amazing experiences, but also a few terrible ones.

The one constant is a shared love and universal kindness in the company of strangers. When you travel you get to see the best of people. The people I can never forget are the ones who knew nothing about me but went out of their way to help me.

On one recent trip, I got booted off a bus at the Serbian border and needed to hitchhike back into Kosovo.

Someone on the bus interpreted the instructions for me and gave me 5 euro to help me on my way. When I got back to Kosovo and failed again to enter Serbia at a different border, a taxi driver spent three hours in a car with me driving me out of Kosovo and back to Macedonia to enter Serbia from there. Even when we got to Presevo, he didn't leave my side until he'd convinced another taxi driver to take me the last 1.5 hours to my destination.

A few years ago I struck up a conversation in Egypt with someone who, like me, was soon heading to Tanzania. He offered me a room in his guest house to save me from walking around all day.