My relationship with travel
Travel is more than a holiday for me – I believe it’s a return to who we really are. It’s hard to sum up why travel is so important to me, but here’s an attempt to convey the magic that happens when I strip away the routine of home, and finally come face-to-face with my own curiosity:
- It has the ability to reset our nervous system
- It’s often the greatest classroom on earth
- It forces deep human connection, stretching me in ways I will forever benefit from
- It teaches me wild humility
- It can very often directly support conservation of incredibly special areas
- It reawakens my five senses
- It forces me into the present moment
- It builds soul memories across generations
- It offers the joy of anonymity
- It changes me – every single time
What follows is a look at the logic, the experiences, and the deeper intent that drives my need to explore.
It’s the same every time. A low rumble somewhere out beyond the canvas walls of my tent, so deep I can feel it in my chest before my ears make sense of it. A lion. Calling across the Serengeti in the pitch darkness that thickens just before dawn. I lie still, my heart hammering. Suddenly and completely alive.
That’s the feeling I keep chasing. Not the photographs, not the sunsets—but that raw, electric sense of being pulled back into the world as it truly is. Unhurried. Unfiltered.
I don’t see safari travel as a vacation. For me, it’s a return. It heals – a time when the bars of my modern cage vanish. No emails. No meetings. No notifications or deadlines. In my usual life, time dictates my every move – gym, calls, timesheets, calendar invites. In the African bush, time follows only the sun. I’m brought back to the here-and-now.
So why do I travel? I travel to wild, untamed places because they offer me unique experiences and connect me deeply to my soul. There are ten reasons I keep returning to the wild—some based in science, all rooted in my core motivations.
To Experience The Safari Reset
Why nature is the best medicine
The safari reset goes beyond spa treatments or digital detox programmes. The safari reset is what happens when your parasympathetic nervous system – the ‘rest and digest’ branch – takes over. Your blood pressure drops. Your shoulders drop away from your ears. You breathe.
It may sound a little woo-woo, but it’s backed by science. Biophilia is our evolutionary pull to nature. Our bodies crave nature. Studies show just 20 to 30 minutes in nature reduces cortisol, the stress hormone that keeps many of us wired and tired.
Now imagine what happens to your body after a week or 10 days in the bush. On safari, the silence isn’t empty. It’s full of sensations our nervous systems were designed to receive. There are wide skies and nature’s slow pace. No alarms—only birdsong, wind in the grass, and an occasional branch cracking as an elephant strolls by the river.
To Witness ‘The Great Story’
Travel is the ultimate classroom.
No textbook, documentary, or podcast has ever taught me as much as travel. About the world. About myself.
Cultural immersion is crucial in today’s travel. Don’t just watch; join in. Sit with a community elder. Walk beside a Maasai guide on the savannah his family knows well. Explore Olduvai Gorge, where human evolution began. This way, you learn to feel our shared natural history. We’re all just a tiny part of one large ecosystem on Earth.
Are you curious about how travel can connect you more deeply with communities? Explore Asilia’s cultural and community experiences on our Positive Impact page to learn more.
To Find Connection in the Analogue World
The benefits of the digital detox
The campfire might be humanity’s oldest social technology. Everyone is coming together to share and connect. Just flames, stars, the occasional hyena call in the distance, and the kind of conversation that means something.
Maybe it’s the absence of phones – there’s no Wi-Fi to hide behind, just raw connection. There’s nowhere else to be, no distractions. These are the moments that build genuine connections.
To Develop Wild Humility
Serengeti means endless plains. As endless as they seem, they lie beneath even vaster skies. When I stand under them, something shifts—I find new horizons. Suddenly, that presentation that felt like a crisis seems small. My inbox shrinks in importance next to nature’s greatness.
This is deep humility and the joy of realising you’re just one of millions of species sharing our planet. The planet spun long before you and will keep spinning long after.
To Participate in a Legacy of Conservation
Regenerative travel in Africa
Here’s what I love most about travelling with Asilia: I’m not just visiting a beautiful place. I’m actively participating in its survival. Every night I spend at an Asilia camp has a positive impact.
This is regenerative travel. It’s real, measurable, and circular. Tourism funds conservation, which protects ecosystems. Communities contribute and benefit. Asilia’s Twende Porini programme—Swahili for “Let’s go to the bush”—invites local children into the camps to see wildlife as travellers do. Some of these children will be inspired to pursue careers in conservation, guiding, or hospitality, and that’s a legacy worth being part of.
To Rediscover My Five Senses
Modern life seems heavily visual. Screens, notifications, the endless scroll. On safari, the rest of your senses come back to life.
Smell the soil after rain sweeps the savannah. Hear hippos grunting in nearby shallows. Feel the gritty warmth of red dust between your fingers on a game drive. Taste fresh, slow-roasted coffee as dawn breaks over the plains.
The bush is a full-body experience. The daily grind’s numbing sameness shatters here. Your senses suddenly reawaken in a way they haven’t for a while.
To Embrace the Art of Presence
On safari, there’s no multitasking. If you look away when the leopard yawns, you miss it. If you’re not listening for a hyena call, it goes unheard. The bush won’t wait for texts, calendars, or Instagram. It’s happening now, in a way that won’t repeat.
This forced presence is, for many people, the most unexpected gift of safari travel. We spend much of our lives planning the next thing, reviewing the last thing, and rarely existing in the present. The wild doesn’t allow that. A river crossing lasts exactly as long as it lasts. A kill happens in seconds. A sunset is unrepeatable.
I’ve seen real change in a hardened executive who sat still, maybe for the first time. His shoulders eased. His jaw relaxed. He started breathing from deeper within. Without rushing off or deciding anything, all he did was enjoy a golden sunset.
To Build Intergenerational Soul Memories
I remember my niece’s face when she saw her first giraffe in the wild. Not on TV. Not on a screen, or behind glass. Its ears twitching in the sunlight. It’s long legs striding elegantly. Her little face lit right up, as if she’d seen real magic. It seems long ago now, but that moment is something we reflect on often, all these years later.
This is what I call a soul memory. An experience that bypasses the photo album and lodges itself somewhere deeper—not just in the body, but in the bones. These are the memories my family will talk about years later. That shared moment—real and unmanufactured—is what binds us together.
At Asilia, these are the moments we design for. The Retreats at Namiri and Sayari exist precisely so families and groups can have their own space and rhythm to make those core memories to look back on forever.
To Experience the Joy of Anonymity
At home, I play a collection of roles. Content strategist. Fiancée. Sister. Aunt. Student. Every role carries weight and expectations. On safari, all that falls away, leaving me simply a human in a landscape, regardless of my profession.
There is such liberation in this. It brings you into your body and the present. This benefit of the African bush isn’t often mentioned. It’s more than stress reduction. You shed your outer layers and all roles, revealing who you really are.
Because We Never Leave the Wild Unchanged
When you visit the wilderness, you don’t come back the same. You change. Something shifts, permanently. Your relationship with silence changes. The measure for what constitutes ‘urgent’ changes. The way you see every living thing changes.
I think of it as rewilding. Not just restoring landscapes and species but restoring ourselves. Wonder, patience, stillness, and awe come back.
That’s why my heart always finds its way back to the wild.
Ready to find your own wild?
