One of the greatest benefits of living in the free world is our freedom of movement and the ability to travel virtually wherever we want. I am lucky enough to do it for a living and one thing I have learned is that there is nothing better than travel for developing an understanding of what is going on in the world around us.

Travel puts a true perspective on our own lives and makes us realise that, once we leave our little bubble of familiarity and comfort, we are actually not quite as significant as we may think we are.

One of the most important lessons of travel is surely not so much what we see but what we learn. That is the subtle difference between a tourist and a traveller. The tourist takes his photographs and buys his souvenirs but the traveller not only does that but, travelling with an open and receptive mind, he learns from what he sees and the people he meets, giving something back to those with whom he interrelates.

Probably the greatest hope for humanity is that youngsters all over the world take to the seas, skies and roads and travel as far and as wide as they possibly can. They would then learn one of life’s great truths, that fundamentally, irrespective of skin colour, religion, culture or belief, human beings are pretty much the same.

The true value of travel is therefore not so much the places we visit but the people we meet along the way and if life’s extremists could only open their minds and travel a bit perhaps we might end up with a safer world.

As Mark Twain once famously said “I aint never seen a well-travelled bigot”!