Danika Smith

As the plane engine started toward home, a baby wailed. My eyes were heavy and blurry, but I held back the tears. Forcing against the hot air outside, the plane rattled and shook to match the chaos in my mind; sad to leave, excited to visit family and friends, scared to move on, relieved to […]

Attaining fulfillment and happiness is not about what we have but what we can give. Chandrawati. Photo by Danika Smith I walked through the gate of the school grounds behind my host, Laxmi, who met me at the bus stop a few minutes earlier. A tiny hand appeared in front of my face and smeared

If you’re an avid solo traveller, you could probably give me a long list of why you love it.  But if you could pick your number 1 reason why you choose to go on solo trips, what would that be? My answer:  Freedom.  There’s only one problem though: Having the freedom to do as you

Exploring a new place after flying hundreds (or thousands!) of miles is exciting.  New sights, new landscapes, new people, new food, new smells—we are filled with wonder as we explore.  As we wander with excitement, locals pass by without the same eyes of excitement, because they feel they have seen everything around them before. Today’s

What’s one item that you would NEVER want to forget before catching the flight on your next trip? I bet that one of those items is your camera. It’s one of mine too.  I love taking photos (sometimes I like to be artsy and pretend like I’m some kind of photographer), and in truth they

I am back again with another Travel Thoughts blog!  The past few weeks we have discussed topics such as simplicity vs poverty, craving culture shock, and last week (which relates to today) the power of nature. Today I am going to focus on the attraction to sublime landscapes—unscalable mountains, vast deserts, and ocean horizons—and how they affect our

I’m back with another blog on Travel Thoughts!  Today we are focusing on the ability of nature to provide us with mental escapes long after we depart from the beautiful landscape.  To help discuss this topic I will be sharing some excerpts from The Art of Travel (Alain de Botton, 2002) which I also referenced

I’m back with another blog of travel thoughts, and I’m here to share some more book excerpts from two books.  The first, is Full Tilt (1965), by Dervla Murphy (which I talk about in last week’s blog).  The second is The Art of Travel (2002) by Alain de Botton, which teaches several important lessons travel can