Dawn Punter

Something else you might not know about me… 🎒🌍🥾

When I left the UK, I was heading towards my fifties, I decided to do something I’d never done before… take a gap year.

My husband and I had a base in Spain, which gave us a few months to decompress from corporate life. Then we packed our bags and set off on a seven-month slow-travel backpacking adventure, making our way across Central America from Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua then up to Guatemala, Belize and into southern Mexico.

Our challenge? Carry-on luggage only, travel by public transport (no tourist buses), a minimal budget and cheap accommodation. It would also involve plenty of those quirky yellow ‘chicken’ buses I’d previously only seen on The Simpsons. 😂

We stayed with local families, travelled slowly and learned to live with very little. We had no grand itinerary to stick to, just a rough direction of travel and the freedom to see where each day took us. We knew we could stay in each country for a month, without having to get a visa.

That year opened both our eyes in ways we hadn’t expected. When it came to an end, we realised we weren’t ready to return to the lives we’d left behind.

So we didn’t.

Instead, we set off again, spending another seven months travelling through Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka. More journeys followed: Indonesia, Europe and Thailand, until eventually we decided to put down roots in Spain.

But this isn’t really about the places we visited. Perhaps I’ll write about those another time.

It’s about what the journey taught me, and how it changed the way I look at life.

1. To slow down.

When you travel slowly, the journey becomes just as important as the destination.

A seven-hour bus journey wasn’t something to endure before arriving somewhere interesting. It became an experience in itself. Watching the landscape change through the window, noticing villages and everyday life passing by, seeing wildlife I never knew existed and chatting with people along the way.

There were curious children who wanted to touch my hair, fascinated by its colour, and others who couldn’t resist examining my freckly arms. Sometimes we communicated through gestures, smiles and laughter rather than words.

I began to appreciate that you don’t always need to be doing something or heading somewhere. Sometimes there’s an extraordinary amount to see when you simply sit back and pay attention.

2. To connect.

One of my favourite memories is from Vietnam, during Tết, the Vietnamese Lunar New Year.

We were travelling from south to north on a 13-hour sleeper train. I found myself sharing a six-bunk compartment with a lovely young woman called Tân.

I knew a few Vietnamese expressions and she knew a little English. Between us, we managed a conversation, shared plenty of laughter and somehow made a connection despite having so few words in common.

At one point, she offered me some of the Vietnamese stuffed bread and vegetables she’d brought with her for breakfast.

It was such a simple gesture, but one I’ve never forgotten. Sharing her food with me (a stranger), despite our limited ability to communicate, felt like the most natural thing in the world.

We didn’t need a common language to share a moment of kindness. We didn’t need to know anything about each other’s lives to enjoy each other’s company.

Travel taught me that connection isn’t always about what we say. Sometimes it’s about being open to the people we meet and accepting the little things they offer.

3. To need less.

Everything I owned fitted into a 30-litre rucksack.

It was my first real lesson in travelling light, and it prepared me rather well for future adventures, including my more recent Camino. 🥾

Initially, I thought about what I might need. Gradually, I started thinking about what I could do without.

Every time I travelled, I carried a little less. I learned which clothes worked together, what I actually wore and what stayed at the bottom of my bag for the entire trip. Eventually, I’d developed the perfect little capsule wardrobe.

There was something incredibly freeing about having everything I needed on my back. No overflowing wardrobe, no endless decisions about what to wear, no worrying about what I’d left behind.

I discovered that having fewer possessions didn’t mean going without. Quite the opposite. It gave me more freedom to move, explore and enjoy the experience.

4. To appreciate the small things.

Some of my most treasured travel memories aren’t of famous landmarks or spectacular tourist attractions.

They’re the moments in between.

Sitting quietly in a field watching a quetzal, one of the most beautiful birds I’d ever seen.

Cooking a Cambodian meal over a wood fire in the middle of a rice field, surrounded by the landscape and everyday life of the people who lived there.

Watching the sun go down on a beach, sharing the moment with a few stray dogs.

Or sitting down to a meal with people we’d only met that day, sharing food, stories and laughter.

These weren’t expensive experiences or things we’d booked in advance. They were simply moments that happened because we were there, open to whatever came along.

I began to realise that some of life’s richest experiences don’t cost anything at all. You just need the time and inclination to notice them.

There was no need for much. Just life, happening right in front of us.

5. To appreciate what I have.

Perhaps the most profound lessons came from seeing how differently other people live.

Travel takes you outside the familiar boundaries of your own neighbourhood, country and culture. It challenges the assumptions you didn’t even realise you held and reminds you that your own way of living is just one of many.

I remember, to this day, conversations with survivors of the tsunami in Sri Lanka and Sulawesi (Indonesia). Hearing about their experiences and the lives they’d rebuilt gave me a perspective that no book or documentary could ever quite provide.

These encounters stayed with me. They changed how I think about what matters, what we take for granted and how easily we can become absorbed in the small frustrations of our own everyday lives.

It isn’t about comparing hardships or deciding who has more or less. It’s about recognising the breadth of human experience and understanding that there’s so much more to life than the little world we each inhabit.

I came home with far more than I’d taken.

Not souvenirs.
Not photographs.
Perspective.

Those journeys didn’t just give me memories of places I’d visited. They changed how I approach life, how I spend my time, what I value and what I consider important.

They taught me to be curious, to embrace the unexpected, to appreciate people and places, and to find pleasure in things that might otherwise pass unnoticed.

And perhaps that’s one of the greatest gifts travel can give us.

Sometimes you have to leave the life you know to really learn. 🌍