There’s a peculiar contradiction to traveling alone. You leave home in search of independence, only to discover just how much of the experience depends on complete strangers.
Someone helps you find the right bus. Someone invites you into their home. Someone insists you eat more food despite your increasingly convincing attempts to explain that you’re full.
And occasionally, someone you’ve known for three days treats you with the familiarity of an old friend.
I’ve spent years traveling for mountains, landscapes, unfamiliar cities, and the simple pleasure of having absolutely no idea what tomorrow might look like. But the more places I’ve explored, the more I’ve come to appreciate something that rarely makes it onto an itinerary.
The people who make those places feel like somewhere you belong.
In 2023, I spent several weeks making my way through Morocco, Mauritania, and Senegal, traveling overland, relying on local transportation, and staying with people I’d often only met through a screen.
I’d set out to experience a part of the world I knew very little about. What followed was a rather memorable education in hospitality, human connection, and the occasional awkwardness of being the person everyone is trying to help.
A stranger in Nouakchott
Mauritania wasn’t a country I knew much about before planning the trip. It sat between Morocco and Senegal on my route south, and rather than treating it as somewhere to pass through, I wanted to spend time understanding what life looked like beyond the bus stations and border crossings.
That’s how I ended up in Nouakchott, staying with Haroune, someone I’d connected with through Couchsurfing.
Over the following week, we spent time exploring the city, sharing meals, and talking about our lives. Nothing particularly extraordinary needed to happen. I was getting to know someone who lived in a place that, until recently, had been little more than a name on a map to me.
Haroune also became my unofficial logistical adviser for one of the more questionable transportation decisions I’ve made: riding Mauritania’s iron ore train across the Sahara.
When I explained my plan, he helped me get ready, including tracking down a pair of ski goggles in a local market. An unusual purchase in the middle of the desert, but significantly more practical than they might sound.
Several days later, after spending roughly twenty hours sitting in an open freight wagon full of iron ore, I returned looking as though I’d been excavated from a particularly dusty archaeological site.
Haroune welcomed me back, helped me sort out my clothes, and made sure I had something to eat.
He’d already given me somewhere to stay and helped me navigate a country I barely understood. Now he was helping me recover from an adventure I’d willingly inflicted upon myself.
There was no ceremony to any of it. He simply treated me like a friend.
And that’s what I remember most.
Hospitality isn’t always convenient
It’s tempting to romanticize these experiences afterward, especially when you’re writing about them from the comfort of home.
But staying with strangers means stepping into somebody else’s routine. You’re learning their habits, navigating different expectations, and occasionally discovering that what you consider polite is not necessarily what they consider polite.
I was reminded of that again in Tunisia.
During my travels, I stayed with a local host who was extraordinarily generous with his time and hospitality. Naturally, I wanted to contribute something in return. Groceries seemed like a reasonable place to start.
He disagreed.
When my offers to pay were declined, I tried leaving money discreetly beneath his pillow. He found it and returned it to my backpack.
This became something of a running disagreement. I was determined to contribute, and he was equally determined that I was his guest.
Neither of us appeared particularly interested in surrendering.
What stayed with me wasn’t the money itself. It was the realization that we were approaching the same situation with two completely different understandings of generosity.
I was trying to make things fair. He was trying to make me feel welcome.
Sometimes the most interesting part of traveling isn’t learning how differently people live. It’s recognizing how differently people can interpret the very same gesture.
The less glamorous side of connection
Not every interaction during those weeks was comfortable, of course.
There were misunderstandings, language barriers, and moments when I realized how little I understood about the places I was visiting. During one encounter with a police officer while filming in Mauritania, I was reminded that being curious about a place doesn’t automatically mean you understand the boundaries of being a guest there.
Travel has a way of humbling you like that.
I think it’s easy to talk about exploring unfamiliar cultures as though curiosity alone makes every interaction meaningful. In reality, you’re often figuring things out awkwardly, making mistakes, or discovering that someone has no particular interest in becoming part of your travel experience.
And that’s perfectly reasonable.
The people you meet aren’t characters waiting around to improve your perspective on life. They’re living their own lives, with their own responsibilities, frustrations, ambitions, and plans for the afternoon.
The privilege is being invited into a small part of that life, even temporarily.
It’s also why I’ve always preferred slowing down enough to spend time with people rather than racing from one attraction to the next. A few days in someone’s home can teach you things a week of sightseeing probably won’t.
Although, depending on the host, it may also teach you that some disagreements about paying for groceries are impossible to win.
What traveling alone actually taught me
Before that trip, I already knew that people could be generous. I didn’t need to cross several borders to discover that kindness existed.
What surprised me was how naturally some of these relationships developed, despite differences in language, background, religion, and daily life.
Haroune and I could spend an afternoon talking about things that had very little to do with where either of us came from. My host in Tunisia and I could disagree about hospitality, laugh about it, and still understand exactly what the other person was trying to express.
The circumstances were unfamiliar. The human parts usually weren’t.
And traveling alone made me far more receptive to them.
When you’re constantly surrounded by familiar people and routines, it’s easy to forget how many potential friendships exist outside your immediate world. Traveling strips away some of that familiarity. You have to ask for help, initiate conversations, and be willing to spend time with people you know almost nothing about.
Not every interaction develops into something meaningful, but enough of them do that you begin looking at unfamiliar places differently.
The world doesn’t necessarily become less complicated. It simply becomes harder to reduce entire countries and cultures to the handful of assumptions you arrived with.
Bringing a little of it home
Something interesting has happened as my life has evolved.
Back then, I was spending much of my time on the road, being welcomed into other people’s homes and routines. Today, my wife, Espoir, and I are building Gevity, a private wellness club in Austin, where creating a genuine sense of belonging is central to what we’re trying to do.
They’re very different experiences, but I recognize some of the same instincts.
Making someone feel welcome isn’t necessarily about elaborate gestures or beautifully designed surroundings. Those things can be wonderful, of course, but they don’t automatically make someone feel comfortable.
Sometimes it’s remembering a conversation. Introducing two people who might genuinely get along. Inviting someone to sit with you instead of leaving them standing awkwardly on the outside of a group.
Espoir and I have hosted dozens of people for dinner in an apartment that wasn’t remotely designed for entertaining that many guests. We didn’t even have a dining table. People sat on the floor, passed food around, and made themselves comfortable.
It wasn’t sophisticated hospitality.
It was people making room for other people.
I think about that whenever I remember Haroune welcoming me back from the iron ore train, or the friendly dispute in Tunisia over who was allowed to pay for groceries.
These experiences didn’t give me some grand blueprint for building a community. But they certainly influenced what I pay attention to.
The people behind the places
I still travel for the mountains, the unfamiliar roads, and the excitement of arriving somewhere I’ve never been.
That hasn’t changed.
But when I look back at the places I’ve explored, it’s remarkable how often the memories that surface first involve someone I met along the way.
Mauritania brings me back to Haroune. Tunisia reminds me of a host determined to return every bit of money I tried to leave behind. And the journey itself reminds me that independence doesn’t mean having to do everything alone.
If anything, some of the most rewarding parts of traveling independently come from realizing how much richer the experience becomes when you allow other people into it.
We spend a lot of time drawing distinctions between ourselves. Different countries, cultures, languages, religions, and backgrounds. Those differences are real, and they’re part of what makes exploring the world so interesting.
But there’s something reassuring about finding familiar human qualities in places that initially feel completely foreign.
Curiosity. Humor. Ambition. Generosity. The occasional stubborn refusal to accept grocery money.
The world is enormous, and I intend to keep exploring as much of it as I can.
It just feels a little smaller when you start recognizing friends along the way.
