“The farther I wandered from the familiar streets of home, the closer I came to understanding how beautifully vast and tender the world can be.”

The furthest I’ve ever traveled from my cozy little corner of Spain—where the olive trees sway and the sea smells like salt and memories—was to the misty highlands of northern Vietnam

. I still remember stepping off the overnight train in Lao Cai, the air thick with cool, damp fog and the scent of woodsmoke. My heart was pounding, not from the altitude, but from the sheer thrill of being so far from everything familiar.

I’d grown up in a village near Granada, where the mountains were warm and golden, and the people spoke with a rhythm that felt like home. But here, in the terraced hills of Sapa, the world was painted in emerald greens and deep, echoing silences. The rice paddies clung to the mountainsides like stairways to the sky, carved by generations of H’mong and Dao farmers. I’d never seen anything so breathtakingly fragile and strong at once.

I’d planned the trip for months—saved every extra euro from my job at the local bookstore, studied phrases in Vietnamese (which, honestly, I butchered spectacularly), and packed a single backpack that seemed to grow heavier with every step up the winding trails. But none of that mattered the first morning I woke in a homestay perched on the edge of a cliff. A H’mong grandmother, her face a map of smiles and years, handed me a bowl of steaming corn porridge without saying a word. Her eyes said everything: You’re here. You’re welcome.

That week, I hiked through villages where children with rosy cheeks giggled at my clumsy attempts to say “Xin chào,” and elders offered me tea from clay pots that had probably outlived empires. One afternoon, a young girl named Mai took my hand and led me to her family’s field. She showed me how to plant rice shoots—her small fingers moving with a precision I could only dream of. I fumbled, laughed, and got mud everywhere. She laughed harder. In that moment, miles from Spain, covered in dirt and joy, I didn’t feel like a stranger. I felt connected.

The distance from home wasn’t just measured in kilometers—over 11,000 of them—it was in language, in landscape, in the quiet hum of a world so different from my own. And yet, somehow, I found pieces of home in the warmth of shared meals, in the way people looked after one another, in the universal language of a smile.

When I finally returned to Spain, my skin was sun-kissed, my backpack stained with mountain soil, and my heart impossibly full. I walked into my kitchen, poured myself a glass of tinto de verano, and just sat there, smiling. My mom asked, “Was it worth it?”

I didn’t answer with words. I showed her the photo of Mai and me, squatting in that rice field, both of us grinning like we’d discovered a secret. And in a way, we had: the world is vast, yes, but it’s also small enough for kindness to find you—no matter how far you roam.