Getting back from Morocco was, without a doubt, one of the most brutal travel days I’ve ever had. It started with a ten-hour bus ride in the kind of heat that just grinds you down. No shade, no real breeze, no chance to sleep. I kept shifting in my seat trying to find some position that felt even slightly comfortable, and nothing worked. By the time I got on the flight to Milan, I genuinely thought the worst was behind me. Then came an overnight bus to Florence. I barely slept. My body felt completely wrecked, and at some point my brain just kind of gave up trying to stay positive.
But somewhere in the middle of all that exhaustion, my mind kept drifting back to one specific moment from the trip. Riding a camel through the Sahara at sunset. To be honest, just thinking about it was enough to get me through.
It’s difficult to put into words what that actually felt like. The desert is one of those places that doesn’t look real. Dunes rolling out in every direction, this vast quiet that you almost never experience anywhere else, and then the sky slowly shifting into every shade of orange, pink, and purple as the sun dropped lower. I was sitting on my camel, moving at the most unhurried pace imaginable, and for once I wasn’t thinking about anything else. No phone, no to-do list, no noise in my head. Just that moment. I don’t experience that kind of peace very often, and I didn’t realize how much I needed it until I was right in the middle of it.
That memory drifting back during such a rough travel day actually shifted how I was thinking about everything. I stopped fixating on how cooked I was and started feeling genuinely grateful instead. Like, I just did that. And no amount of sleepless overnight buses can take it away. It sounds simple, but in that moment, it actually helped.
I think that’s one of the bigger things I’ve taken from studying abroad. Travel isn’t always the highlight reel. A lot of it is unglamorous, tiring, and nothing like what you planned. But those harder moments have a way of making the good ones feel even more real. The contrast matters. You remember things differently when you’ve had to push through something to get there.
This experience pushed me to grow in ways I didn’t fully expect going in. When things got hard, I found something to hold onto and kept going. That feels like something worth carrying forward.
