I so get this! Thank you Harry. Might I take a turn at this?
“ Traveling alone is different than living alone. Living in solitude can harden a person. As can sameness. Loneliness had closed me up, like darkness and chill cause a lily to fold in upon itself. At dawn, though, that same flower stretches herself toward the sun, recreating herself. Travel can be like that: the promise of dawn. The promise of change.
“As a lone traveler, far from home, I opened myself up, I offered myself to strangeness. I stepped out the door of my hotel, past the guard with a machine gun slung over his shoulder, and onto the streets crowded with people who belonged there. I carried only my backpack, my courage and my curiosity.”
~Lost & Found in Egypt: A Most Unlikely Journey between the Shifting Sands of Love and Loss.