I am lying in a copper bathtub filled with naturally-carbonated water, in a baths establishment of the Belgian city of Spa. I go to countries where people, by law, can not be fired from their jobs, and to my astonishment meet wealthy conservatives who staunchly defend those prohibitions. I stroll a great plaza of Nairobi, and feel a minority. I experience the same illuminating impressions and insights over dozens of years and in hundreds of locations in Asia and Africa and India. And I feel, as so many other travelers have felt, the gradual weakening of whatever racist impulses still inhabit my sub-conscious.
Travel teaches the absurdity of reacting to people according to their color.
It makes everyone a minority on occasion. And people who come back from such trips are often changed by the experience, as I have been. And yet when I emerge in still another unfamiliar airport and city, I feel challenged and alive. There is still another language to attempt, a new history to absorb, a new culture to encounter. And even when you believe you have exhausted the store of new destinations and cultures, you then discover that you can enjoy them on new and different levels.