I don’t travel just to see places.

Don’t get me wrong, I want to see the famous stuff too. If I’m in Greece, of course I want to stand at the ruins and see places I’ve read about. If I’m somewhere new, I’m going to take pictures. I’m still a tourist.

But that’s not really why I travel.

I travel because I want to experience people and cultures that are different from my own.

Somewhere along the way, I realized that you can read about another country your entire life and still not really know it. You can watch documentaries, look at pictures, read the news and learn its history. But none of that is the same as sitting down with someone who lives there.

It’s not the same as eating where they eat, walking through their neighborhood, trying to speak a few words of their language, or just having a conversation.

And sometimes it’s one person or one small moment that changes how you see an entire place.

That’s what travel has become for me.

The more I’ve traveled, the more I’ve noticed something that sounds simple but is easy to forget:

People are people.

We have different languages. Different religions. Different traditions. Different foods. Different histories. We don’t always agree on things, and honestly, I don’t think we’re supposed to.

Those differences are part of what makes traveling interesting.

But underneath all of that, I’ve found people want a lot of the same things. We want our families to be okay. We want somewhere safe to live. We want to laugh. We want friends. We want our children to have opportunities. We want to be treated with respect.

That realization is a big part of where One People, One Tribe comes from.

It doesn’t mean we’re all the same.

Actually, I think the opposite.

I don’t want a world where every place looks the same, eats the same food, speaks the same language and has the same traditions. What would be the point of traveling?

One People, One Tribe is about being different without those differences having to divide us.

When I travel, I want to experience a place instead of just passing through it. I want to meet people. I want to try the food. I want to learn a few words, even if I completely butcher the pronunciation the first few times. I want to understand why people do things differently than I do.

And I want to come home knowing something I didn’t know before I left.

I’m still learning how to travel. I’m still learning about the world. I don’t think either one of those things ever really ends.

That’s what this blog is going to be about.

I’ll share places I’ve been, places I’m going, things I’ve gotten right, things I’ve gotten completely wrong, ways I’ve learned to travel for less, and the people and experiences that made the trip worth taking in the first place.

Maybe some of it will help you with your own travels.

Maybe it’ll convince you to visit somewhere you never considered before.

Or maybe it’ll just introduce you to somebody on the other side of the world and remind you that they aren’t really that different from you.

Different cultures.

Different stories.

Different lives.

One People. One Tribe.