Reasons to Travel

Adventures with your kids they never forget

People sometimes ask me when I knew I wanted to be a writer, and the answer has become clear to me since I shifted from screenwriter to novelist. I was twelve years old when my dad and I trekked in the Himalayas, and I missed six weeks of sixth grade that Spring. Instead of assigning me make-up work, Mrs. Chandler handed me a small black journal with blank pages and asked me to keep a travel diary. My homework was to let her read it when I got back. It was the first time I’d ever written something that I knew someone else would read, and I wanted to wow my teacher with my adventures.

I wrote a fifty page short story about that transformative trek in Nepal for a creative writing class in college, and it’s the one piece of writing that has survived the transfer from floppy to disk to thumb to hard drive in the various computers I’ve had in my life. That story, written when I was 20, was full of the moments that stuck from the experiences of a 12-year-old child, traveling with the parent who wasn’t usually the primary care-giver.

 “During the next three days it became a ritual to walk to the main tourist sights in London after dark. Dad said we walked at night to get in shape for the trek, but I knew he didn't like the crowded daytime streets. We were explorers in the ancient city; roaming parks and monuments by lamplight, and braving dark cobblestone streets. We held hands as we walked. I saw London through the eyes of an adventurer and a historian, and Dad saw London through the eyes of his child. Our night walks were the best part of England, because they were the beginning. We introduced ourselves to each other and started the conversation which developed into a real friendship as we trekked through the Himalayas.” – April White, age 20

There were several lasting legacies from that trip, and the realization that it was fun to write for an audience was just a small one with a long reach. The relationship I built with my father on that trip had a huge impact on my teenage years – he went from being a fairly distant authoritarian figure I respected because he made the rules, to the only other person in the world who had experienced what I’d experienced during those six weeks. He understood me and he trusted me, and I never wanted to do anything that would break that trust. I’d always had that kind of relationship with my mom, but developing it with my dad was an unexpected and profound twelfth birthday gift.

I spent that birthday in Kathmandu, wandering around the markets with Dad. I remember going to the tailor, who measured me for custom trousers with ties at the ankles just like the climbers at our hotel wore. We went to the one bookstore in the city which traded in the used books the international travelers had left behind, where I discovered four books by Enid Blyton that I still have on my kids’ shelves. And then we went to the bazaar, where Dad bought a beautiful Gurkha knife with a curved blade.

“I understood what my father was telling me, with the knife and with the trust he had placed in me with the gift of it. It was no longer just a knife, it had become a symbol of the love and mutual respect between father and daughter. I had dreamed of the time when my Dad would consider me a mature and trustworthy person, capable of taking responsibility for something like this knife. It was the greatest gift I had ever been given.

"Happy Birthday, April", he said, handing me the knife, "Please be careful with it."

I had been careful. The knife and all my fingers were still intact, and so was the growing relationship between us.” – April White, age 20

The advice I give to every parent is this: travel with your child one-on-one. If you can go before they become teenagers, even better, but no matter when you go, find a way to have an adventure with each child alone. The experience of travel is the best education there is, and sharing it with someone you love is a gift that keeps giving for the rest of their lives.

Stories about fathers and daughters have always resonated with me, certainly because of my trip around the world with my dad, but also because it’s rare that children ever get to truly get to know their parents until they themselves become adults. I had that chance with my father, and I’ve made a point of traveling alone with each of my kids to pass it along. My mother-in-law heard my stories of my trip around the world, and she took each of her grandchildren on an amazing trip before they were thirteen. Connor got to go to Machu Picchu, and Logan cruised the Galapagos islands with her, and now my children have a remarkable and unique connection with their grandmother because of it.

The legacy of traveling with kids can be so much more meaningful than we imagine at the time. It creates independence, extraordinary memories, a world view that can’t be found in books, and a connectedness to family that lasts a lifetime.

And perhaps it’s not a surprise to find so many parallels between my trip to Nepal with my dad when I was twelve, and my character, Saira’s life-altering journey back in time to find her mother and to ultimately connect with the father she’d never known.