There are so many reasons to board the plane. Sometimes we are running away from our jobs, responsibilities and the repetition of the same faces over and over again. Broken hearts and bored minds have sold more berths than sound reasoning could ever justify.

Sometimes we are running to something – a place we have patiently spun together from glossy pages; a place that we are aching to knit together and stretch around us in the hope that it will fit.

There is so much joy in anticipation. We want to learn, to discover, to become different; as though by standing on another continent we will somehow answer all the questions. And then we arrive only to discover that we are on a journey with that same unsmiling stranger in our passport photo; the one person we can never escape.

Our best bet then is to learn to like this traveller. Treat her kindly, help her make friends and take her out dancing. When you return home, she is the only one who will truly remember who you were in this foreign place. The laughing girl at the bar. The angry woman at reception. The backpacker sleeping on the floor of the terminal.

I think we travel to make friends with ourselves again.

What do you think, Dear Traveller? Why do you travel?