Learning How to Fall

A young traveler’s journey through Mongolia, Japan, and South Korea reveals how uncertainty, discomfort, human connection, and crossing thresholds can shape identity, deepen awareness, and transform.

One of the greatest gifts of my work with the Transformational Travel Council is that it continually deepens and reminds me of the power of travel, and of the conditions that are often present when we have the kinds of experiences that shape who we are, how we see the world, and potentially transform us.

Our frameworks, principles, educational programs, and practices are not static ideas. They continue to deepen through rigorous research, meaningful dialogue, surrounding myself with people far wiser than I am, and most importantly, through listening carefully to the lived experiences and stories of travelers themselves.

Increasingly, I find myself especially drawn to the stories of young people who step courageously into the unknown with fresh eyes, open hearts, curiosity, humility, and a willingness to be changed by the world.

That is why I am so grateful to share this powerful reflection from Aroura Daniels. Her story, heard over a rainy Sunday morning coffee at my favorite cafe, captivated me from the beginning because it beautifully illustrates something I believe deeply: that a quest, rite of passage, pilgrimage, study abroad experience, gap year, or intentional journey into the world can play an essential role in helping young people cross the threshold from adolescence into conscious adulthood.

Not simply as tourists or consumers, but as human beings learning how to navigate uncertainty, cultivate empathy, embrace discomfort, expand perspective, and become more aware global citizens capable of bringing deeper human values into their relationships, communities, work, leadership, and the wider world.

What moved me most about Aurora’s reflections is that they remind us that transformation often happens not in perfection or certainty, but in vulnerability, disorientation, curiosity, humility, connection, and the willingness to keep saying “yes” to the unfamiliar and uncomfortable.

I believe these kinds of experiences matter now more than ever.

Thank you, Aroura, for your honesty, courage, insight, and beautiful contribution. Your story is a reminder of why this work matters so deeply.

Aroura’s Journey into the Unknown …

Boarding my flight to Mongolia in the summer of 2024, I, 18 years old and fully convinced of my adulthood, figured that nothing could go wrong. After graduating from high school, I had a sense that the growth that was so apparent in childhood had somehow come to an end; that going forward, I was truly prepared for anything life threw my way. It took less than an hour after landing in Mongolia to be proved wrong.

​I had committed the rookie mistake of not checking how far the airport was from the city, Ulaanbaatar. As I rode into the city, I watched the clock tick closer, then pass the departure time on my bus ticket that would take me three hours north to where I was staying that night. To make a mistake like this in the first hour of my trip seemed like a bad omen, but upon arriving at the bus station, I had managed to pull my face into a smile and walked in determined to buy a new ticket. Inside the station, I went up to an open ticket counter and said hello to the woman in poorly pronounced Mongolian. I followed up with the name of the city I was heading to and a quick thanks. This was the extent of my Mongolian. Which meant that I didn’t understand what the woman said back to me; it was clear, though, that there was some sort of problem. The woman and I went back and forth a few times, each of us growing more confused with the other. It wasn’t until a man beside me decided to help me that I understood I had been dropped off at the intracity bus station, which, of course, had no buses that could help me. The intercity bus station, which frustratingly had the same name, was a 30-minute walk away.

So I walked.

In a light drizzle, I side-stepped puddles and hopped over man-sized potholes as I navigated through the city streets. The rain felt perfect for my mood, which, instead of being elated at this new city I was exploring, was a stormy mix of regret and frustration. I found myself falling, unable to grasp upon any of the sureties I had taken for granted, my family, my friends, or even my language. There is an art, I think, in learning how to fall, that I began to discover that day, and that I am still discovering today. A way to open my eyes, angle my body, and land safely on unfamiliar ground.

Thankfully, many hours later, with the help of finger-pointing and the patience of the staff working at the now correct bus station, I found myself tucked next to a kind candy-carrying grandmother and on my way north.

After a month of teaching English (a humbling experience), when I took another bus to an even more remote town, I was given another opportunity to fall into an unexpected situation. A bus ride that should have taken 10 hours, took 16, and then ended service an hour before the destination listed on the ticket, leaving me and two other travellers stranded without internet at 4 am. It’s not that I didn’t panic, didn’t wish that the trip had gone smoother, but I was ready to adapt, which in this case meant trying to get the bus driver to call a local taxi. In the end, we sang Mongolian karaoke with our taxi driver as the sun rose. And I can’t remember ever seeing a sunrise like it; there is no other way to describe it besides to say that I did not think to reach for my camera even once. I celebrated my 19th birthday there, deep in the northern Mongolian steppe, surrounded by so many new people and new experiences that it felt like there was a whole new world out there that I had somehow been blind to in my first 18 years.

On the way back to the city, I found myself squished into the back seat of an old Toyota with two of my friends to my right and the driver’s 8-year-old daughter to my left. She, in the way little kids do, went from quite shy to talkative in the span of 5 minutes. Upon discovering my poor Mongolian, she was determined to teach me more. She pointed out the car window at some herd of animals we were passing and gave me the name in Mongolian. I repeated it. She shook her head at my pronunciation and made me repeat it until it was understandable. In return, I attempted to give the English translation, but she was completely uninterested. There is a simplicity to naming, a groundedness that allowed us to play this game for hours without getting bored. She had let me into her world just by saying this is what I see. There is an absence of assumptions that lies between people who do not speak the same language. I knew that her world was filled with things I could not pronounce, so I asked. And that day in the car, I learned more about Mongolia than I had in the prior month. The reason I still find myself thinking back to this admittedly quite uncomfortable car ride is that, between people who speak the same language, it is too easy to assume that the world we are seeing is the same. Sometimes, all it takes is pointing and asking to realize it’s not the same at all.

After savoring my time in Mongolia, though, I decided to leave the country, committed to packing in as much travelling on my gap year before college as possible. So I headed off to Japan with only a couple of months of language learning and absolutely no plan (a fact that did cause a minor issue at immigration). After arriving in Tokyo, I immediately decided to travel north, heading for the colder Tohoku and Hokkaido instead of withering in the capital’s September heat. At first, my stumbling Japanese made me a poor conversationalist with the people I met, but as the weeks passed, I slowly progressed from knowing just a few words to a kindergartener level. Each moment I opened my mouth I was scared I would accidentally say something horribly wrong – which I did many times – but I also discovered that the most embarrassing mistakes are usually the ones you don’t forget. Each moment, like telling a rapt audience that we are forced to smoke marijuana in America, has become a memory, which, now that enough time has passed, I can laugh about.

The kindness that you can receive and give when the boundary of a stranger is crossed is enormous. When I hitchhiked for the first time, I was scared as I had never done it before in America. But I had grown up on a healthy diet of movies, so I knew the first move: making a sign. I walked into a convenience store and bought a pen and notebook, and while checking out, I started chatting with the husband and wife team that ran the store. After learning of my plan, they kindly offered to write my sign in Japanese and wished me luck. I positioned myself near a main street and stuck my thumb out while holding the sign high. But the cars passed me by, over and over again, which was embarrassing to say the least. I have never been good at rejection, at dealing with embarrassment, but I suppose a trial by fire was just what I needed. Finally, someone stopped, and suddenly it was all worth it.

I still have the notebook today, with each of my destinations written in thick red marker.

Hitchhiking is a dual act of trust, a judgment from both sides of whether I want to be in a car with this stranger and whether they want to let me ride with them. Once this first hurdle is passed, I found that conversation comes quite easily. Without the stories of the people that I met in that brief glimpse into their lives, my trip would not have been the same. Conversation, much like travel, doesn’t work if it’s one-sided, so of course, the stories of my life that I shared are now spread across Japan in the memories of the people that I met. And I carry the stories of the trail runner who took me when the bus didn’t come, of the couple that picked me up in a hurry when a bear came to say hi, of the proud dad with a daughter studying in Canada.

My days smoothed into a rhythm of hiking mountains and exploring cities, with plenty of rest days packed with good food in between. But too soon, my 3-month visa came to an end, and I decided to head to South Korea. I began in the south and was slowly making my way north when I decided it was time to head to the capital. So I booked a place for the next night and went to sleep. I woke up to the news that martial law had been both declared and lifted overnight. I was used to the unexpected at this point, though I admit I had some anxiety as I took the train north. I arrived at the hostel late and was preparing to go to bed when I heard the sound of speakers and chants outside. The place I was staying, chosen for its proximity to the train station, also happened to be next to a main road that was currently being used for a massive protest.

I went outside, searched for someone holding an English sign, and started a conversation. The man I talked to told me that they were marching for democracy, and that he had also just marched outside the American Embassy for our democracy months prior. Then he asked me if I was going to march with him. One of the most repeated pieces of advice for travellers is to stay far away from foreign protests, as it is their problem, and to keep yourself safe. But why should empathy stop at borders? If I were wanted simply as another body in support of democracy, then how could I remain a watcher from afar complicit in my silence? So I said yes, knowing that this was a story I would tell my mom only after returning home. Three days later, I also joined tens of thousands of people outside Parliament in a crowd so thick it was impossible to move at points. The train stations near Parliament had been shut down, so I and others had to walk from a further stop. The sidewalk was packed shoulder to shoulder with a huge stream of people all heading towards the same place. When I got closer, I could hear the music being played, and I could see the people swaying side to side with glow sticks shoved into the air. And it was cold. I had bundled up in all the layers I had, but I was still shivering. There have been many moments in my life that I knew I would not remember, that even in the moment I felt slipping from my mind, this was not one of them. I couldn’t help but move my gaze slowly over the crowd, letting my eyes devour every detail. And when I lay in my bed later that night and closed my eyes, I couldn’t stop seeing the protesters. I didn’t sleep much that night, but I didn’t much care.

Then, a week later, I flew home. Seattle, with its fresh winter air and perpetually gloomy cloud cover, had been waiting for me. After almost 6 months abroad, I felt like a traveller in my own home. The smells, shops, and ever-present rain were all made new again. Even family and friends I approached with new eyes. It was that moment that I realized I hadn’t understood what ‘home’ was at all. I had thought it was a place in which you knew every nook and corner, people whose every secret had been told. Home, though, is simply a collection of memories, and if you approach it through the eyes of a traveller, there are always new memories to be made. The feeling of a traveller is a sensation of change, of growth; it is a way of looking at the world with more questions than answers. It is a feeling I had lost about my home by the time I turned 18, when I was sure of my stability and that of my surroundings. It is also my favorite feeling in a beautiful, clumsy world that is still too big to fit inside my imagination.

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Aroura is currently looking for what’s next professionally. She’s leaning into this love of travel, but she’s also clearly open to the unknown.

I hope you enjoyed Aroura’s story. I invite you to share it with young men and women wondering and searching for what’s next and ready to embark on a journey that illuminates what’s out there, but also what’s inside.

Journey on,

Jake

P.S. I’m hosting a whitewater rafting adventure in August for families, parents, and youth, transitioning into new chapters of life. Still 8 of 22 spots left

https://www.explorer-x.com/rogue-2026

Photo credit: Aroura Daniels (on journey)