Leaping into the unknown — the ultimate lesson in letting go. Photo / Tamara Hinson
Easter is about fresh starts; a brilliant time to reevaluate our travel habits. From tarantula encounters to North Korean etiquette, Tamara Hinson has learnt to push past her comfort zone.
Aged 22, I booked a spontaneous solo trip to Peru’s Tambopata Research Centre, a lodge so remote that it’s also a research base. Back then, my jet-setting extended to family holidays and a European backpacking stint.
Things didn’t bode well when my luggage didn’t arrive in Peru, and I missed my flight to the dusty rubber boom town where I eventually boarded a tiny boat, which took two days to reach the lodge.
Describing myself as unprepared is an understatement. There was no Wi-Fi, and intermittent electricity. I loved the guided rainforest hikes, but at night I’d cower under my mosquito net. Rooms didn’t have windows, just open spaces facing the rainforest, and the bugs terrified me. I’d drift asleep then jolt awake, using my omnipresent head torch to scan for insects.
The good news? I’ve since returned multiple times to what I now call my happy place. Last time, I trapped the tarantula I found by my bed under a glass (pointless, given the lack of windows meant it could check straight back into my room) but gazed at it in awe, not terror. I detest the phrase “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” (if I lost an arm and a vital organ in a lion attack, would I really be stronger?), but that first Peruvian adventure did just that.
After all, why travel if not to experience something different? In Gambia, basing myself at a locally owned hotel in a small village provided fantastic insights into the country. During a walk along the nearby beach, I encountered armed guards presiding over sun loungers occupied by cocktail-sipping Westerners. I’d stumbled across a luxury chain hotel, and their job was repelling souvenir-flogging locals. Or, perhaps, any reminders for guests that they were actually in a different country. I beat a retreat (a local was taking me to a nearby snake rescue centre), after a confused guard asked why I’d want to leave the premises.
Sticking to comfort zones doesn’t just mean less fun – you’ll learn less about the world. In Zambia, the wildlife initially terrified me, but I learned to keep my guard up (the right way) after an elephant charged me, an incident caught on camera. In Rwanda, I benefited from history lessons schools never offered during harrowing visits to sites connected with the genocide. It preserved warnings to humankind about a manmade tragedy many aren’t aware of. Ignorance isn’t always bliss.
Learning from travel doesn’t have to involve far-flung destinations. That’s its beauty – exposure to new experiences, of any kind, can benefit everyone. My most uncomfortable experience? My night as a scare actor at Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights – the furthest I’ve ventured from my comfort zone. I hated it. I was fitted with prosthetic horns, given a ridiculous costume and unleashed on the public, who I failed miserably to scare. But while I wasn’t conquering Everest, I realised I’m braver than I thought.
Then there was North Korea. There was a constant sense that minor slip-ups could land you in hot water – our North Korean minders repeatedly warned us against creasing printed material showing Kim Il Sung so that folds crossed his face. At night, we were confined to our hotels, but one evening we clambered on to our rural hotel’s roof and sipped local beer beneath a spectacular star-spangled sky (beyond Pyongyang, there’s little electricity, so no light pollution).
The truck-driving locals who helped me after a bicycle accident in a very, very rural area of Virginia changed me, too. On the morning of the accident I was hot, tired and somewhat America’d out after 10 days in the US (Trump had just returned to the White House in nearby Washington DC), but it was a reminder to ditch certain preconceptions, and that most humans are good. When I flagged down my first wonderful rescuer, my clothes were totally blood-soaked (personally, I’d have hit the accelerator, not the brake), and I ruined the other’s beloved American flag T-shirt after he insisted I use it as a tourniquet.
My bugbear remains “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” but for the University of Liverpool’s Dr Ross White, it’s “comfort zone”.
“I prefer ‘conforming zone’ to describe how our choices can end up conforming to restrictive stories our minds generate about what we can do,” says White, a psychiatrist who’s researched the effect of interactions between people and places on mental health.
“Comfort isn’t your enemy – conforming to skewed ideas about yourself is. I also refer to the ‘transforming zone’ – transcending preconceived ideas about ourselves and the world. And travelling helps us become the people we wish to be, rather than being dictated by fears.” Although, to be clear, I’ll never try my hand at being a scare actor again.