The People Behind the Places

The Man on the Flight to Zimbabwe

Some of the most memorable people I have met through travel have appeared in the most unexpected places.

Not in a beautiful hotel or on a carefully curated cultural experience, but in the seat behind me on a flight to Zimbabwe.

His name was Dave.

He was quite a character, and somehow we began talking. We laughed, exchanged stories and chatted for almost the entire journey. It became one of the quickest flights I can remember.

But beneath his wonderful sense of humour was a story that has stayed with me.

Dave had lost his wife.

During their life together, they had spoken about all the places they wanted to visit, the adventures they would share and the corners of the world they hoped one day to explore.

After she died, he made a decision.

He would travel to those places anyway.

Not to escape his grief or leave their memories behind, but to honour her and the dreams they had shared.

Every month, another journey. Another destination. Another promise fulfilled.

I found him enormously inspiring.

Here was a man who had experienced profound loss but had chosen to continue embracing life, carrying the memory of someone he loved into every new experience.

We had never met before boarding that aircraft, and we may never meet again.

Yet I have thought about him many times since.

It reminded me that travel is not always about discovering somewhere new.

Sometimes it is about remembering someone. Sometimes it is about finding courage, making sense of life or simply keeping a promise.

And sometimes the most extraordinary part of a journey is the stranger sitting behind you.

The Lives We Don't Live

Over more than twenty-five years in travel, I have been fortunate to encounter people whose lives are almost unimaginably different from my own.

I have met Berber women in North Africa, Maasai communities in East Africa and Inuit women in the Arctic.

Different landscapes, different histories, different traditions.

And yet each encounter has left me with similar questions.

What does a fulfilling life really look like?

Who decides what progress means?

And why, in the West, do we so often assume that the way we live is the way everyone else should aspire to live?

I find myself increasingly fascinated by communities where family, tradition and collective responsibility remain central to everyday life.

Where knowledge is passed between generations, where the elderly may hold an important place within the family, and where raising children can be a responsibility shared across a wider community.

Of course, no culture is uniform. Communities change, individuals make different choices, and life within them is rarely as simple as it might appear to an outsider.

Nor should we romanticise lives that can involve considerable hardship, limited opportunities or difficult inequalities.

But I do believe there is something important to learn from recognising that our own assumptions are not universal truths.

We have become remarkably good at measuring prosperity.

Perhaps we are less accomplished at understanding contentment.

The Questions That Stay With Me

I have always been curious about religion, belief and the ways in which different societies make sense of the world.

How does a belief begin?

How does it shape the rhythms of everyday life?

How is it passed from a grandmother to her granddaughter, from parents to children, from one generation to the next?

I am interested in the rituals that mark birth, marriage and death. The responsibilities people feel towards their families. The place of elders within a community.

And particularly the roles women and men are expected to fulfil.

In some remote communities, these roles are closely connected to traditions that have existed for generations.

Sometimes they provide identity, belonging and purpose.

Sometimes they can also restrict individual choice.

I find both aspects important to understand.

As a woman, I am particularly interested in the lives of other women.

The opportunities available to them. The expectations placed upon them. The freedoms they enjoy and the freedoms they may not have.

The strength they demonstrate in circumstances very different from my own.

And the ways in which women sustain families, preserve knowledge and shape communities, even when their contributions are not always publicly recognised.

It is easy to look at another culture through the lens of our own experiences.

Much harder, and far more valuable, to listen without immediately judging.

Understanding does not require us to agree with everything we encounter.

It asks us to be curious enough to look beyond our first assumptions.

The Geography of Opportunity

One of the thoughts that has stayed with me through my travels is how profoundly the circumstances of our birth can shape the direction of our lives.

The country we are born in.

The family we belong to.

Our gender.

The traditions, beliefs and expectations surrounding us.

So much is determined before we have had any opportunity to make a choice for ourselves.

A girl born into one community may grow up with expectations and opportunities entirely different from those of a girl born thousands of miles away.

Neither has chosen where her story begins.

And yet the possibilities available to them may be vastly different.

Travel has made me more conscious of this than almost anything else.

It has also made me question the language we sometimes use when describing other societies.

We speak of development, advancement and modernisation, often assuming that there is one particular destination towards which everyone should be moving.

But what if there are things we have lost along the way?

A stronger sense of community, perhaps. A closer relationship with the natural world. A greater appreciation of the wisdom and experience of older generations.

That does not mean rejecting progress or overlooking injustice.

It means recognising that different societies may have something to teach one another.

And that meaningful progress should surely involve expanding people's choices rather than simply replacing one way of life with another.

Small Lives, Extraordinary Influence

The more of the world I see, the more conscious I become of how small we are within it.

One person, living one life, in one small part of an extraordinary planet.

And yet collectively, our influence is enormous.

The decisions we make, the resources we consume, the places we visit and the assumptions we carry all have consequences far beyond our immediate surroundings.

Tourism is a particularly interesting example.

It can create livelihoods, preserve traditions, support conservation and introduce people to ways of life they might otherwise never encounter.

But it can also place pressure on communities, alter cultural practices and turn deeply personal traditions into something performed for visitors.

I believe those of us working in travel have a responsibility to think carefully about that balance.

Are we helping people understand a place, or simply consume it?

Are the communities we visit benefiting from our presence?

Are we allowing people to tell their own stories, or are we interpreting those stories entirely through our own expectations?

These are not always comfortable questions.

But I think they are necessary ones.

The Stories Worth Carrying Home

When I look back over my years in travel, I remember extraordinary landscapes, beautiful hotels and places that have taken my breath away.

But increasingly, it is the people I remember most clearly.

The conversations that challenged something I believed.

The women whose lives made me reconsider my own opportunities.

The traditions that reminded me how much human experience exists beyond the world I know.

And Dave, laughing his way through a flight to Zimbabwe, quietly teaching me something about love, loss and the extraordinary courage of continuing to live.

These encounters have shaped not only how I travel, but how I think about the hospitality and travel businesses I want to work with.

Because behind every destination are people with their own histories, beliefs, ambitions and stories.

And behind every truly memorable journey is an opportunity to understand something beyond ourselves.

That is what draws me to this industry, even after all these years.

Not simply the beauty of the places we visit, but the possibility of seeing the world, however briefly, through someone else's eyes.

Perhaps the greatest gift of travel is not discovering how different we are, but learning to appreciate the many ways there are to be human.

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Giorgia

Founder, Vellestia

Vellestia is built on a belief that the most compelling stories in hospitality begin with people, purpose and a genuine understanding of place.