I just returned from a week in Washington’s San Juan Islands (a trip you’ll be able to read about in an upcoming issue), where more than once I found myself thinking about how the sense of interconnectedness travel sometimes imparts can feel, dare I say it, spiritual. It came over me during a nighttime kayak ride on a bioluminescent bay off San Juan Island and on a midday paddle with my son across a mountain lake on Orcas. I felt it again watching my children build forts on the same driftwood-strewn beaches where I played as a child 35 years ago.
Hopefully this won’t sound too unbearably woo-woo, but in a world that can feel as broken as ours, it’s more important than ever to find ways to access your spiritual side—whatever that means to you. I think that this is one reason wellness and mindfulness and yoga and meditation—as well as various ways of giving back—have become essential components of travel for so many of us. In talking about travel, it’s hard not to notice how often we use the language of spiritual questing: pilgrimages and self-discovery, the transcendent and sublime. Consciously or not, we’re seeking a higher purpose or meaning. We’re trying, however we can, to feed our souls.
This idea, I think, is subtext for this issue’s essays about the wonder of exploring nature in New Zealand (your No. 5 Country in the 36th Annual Readers’ Choice Awards this year) and how Singapore (your No. 1 Large City, Rest of World) is discovering its softer side, as well as Noo Saro-Wiwa’s empathetic exploration of modern-day Rwanda. Don’t forget that behind the small-type lists of names and scores running throughout this issue lie ideas for finding out more about who you are—and connecting with something greater than yourself.
This article appeared in the November 2023 issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the magazine here.
