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One of the biggest misconceptions about travelling must be found in the strong belief that the only thing a traveler wants to reach is the craving for extreme diversity. The 17-years-old-me that was about to leap into the travel adventure of a lifetime wouldn’t have definitely agreed on this point. I spent pretty much my entire childhood picturing breathtaking scenarios animated by unknown creatures, and wondering about how much variously life could be conducted out of the boundaries of my own country. I was eager to find out traditions I’d never heard about, I wanted to discover points of view that weren’t part of my way of thinking, I strived to taste new flavors and perceive smells never experienced before, and I would have liked them to be so pungent to lead me on a concrete mental journey, the only way possible to fully comprehend what I call diversity. Diversity is a huge part of a travel experience, everything about this ancestral activity that is unconsciously called “travelling” runs around the ability to cope with diversity, but reducing the concept of travelling just to the mere research of diversity would be a big mistake. Travelling is, indeed, so much more. Two years ago, I was lucky enough to win a scholarship that brought me to China for an entire month. I was hosted by a local family and for the entire length of my stay I could proudly consider myself an authentic member of a Chinese family. I could report countless stories about my experience there, I would be able to write pages on pages on what a typical Chinese day looked like and how much different it was compared to what I was used to. I would like instead to talk briefly about a meaningful experience that literally signed the beginning of my journey. On the overnight train that lead me and another bunch of students from Beijing to Jiujiang, the city in which I was supposed to stay during my stay in China, we familiarized with a cute old Chinese couple that was coming back home from a quick journey to the capital. Although they weren’t able to speak a single word in English, or in another language that we standard European pupils could try to comprehend, it was just incredible to eventually find out that we could almost entirely understand each other. Two groups of people coming from opposite sides of the globe that had apparently nothing in common to talk about, were able to communicate successfully. Communication, though, requires at least one shared component that can justify the existence of the phenomenon itself. I was blown away by the powerfulness of my deduction when I realized that this invisible yet strong bound was to be found in our own nature: we were all humans. We were all people inflamed by the same energy, able to experience empathy towards one another and eager to be in contact. Our eyes refused to see the differences that divided us, in the name of something that in that single moment was immensely more important. We weren’t obliged to talk to each other, but it was simply a natural and spontaneous consequence of the feeling of humanity that totally dominated that 12 hours train travel. I decided to travel to find diversity, but I early understood that I was there to learn what various people could share underneath their appearance, being that a sincere smile, an innocent glance or even something else. As long as we will be able to find a common surface under extreme diversity, I believe that travelling will continue to inspire more and more people who will, one day, find their own humanity.