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Attention western travellers: please check your privilege at the boarding gate.

Many of those who are visiting this site are privileged enough to have money to travel. Some also have the privilege of exploring unusual or hard-to-reach places. And when you find yourself in situations like that, sometimes you are exposed to cultures that are quite different than what you’re used to.  That takes some getting used to and certainly no shortage of understanding, patience and curiosity to make it worth everyone’s while.

This article discusses exactly that topic – about how to find a way to blend in and ideally bloom in new environments with new cultures, traditions and ways of living.

If you’re travelling to a different continent, it’s up to *you* to adapt.

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The first time I set foot on the African continent was for a gorilla trek with Canadian travel company G Adventures. The tour started in Uganda’s central city of Kampala, then we headed west to Fort Portal and then south, via a route flanked by Queen Elizabeth National Park’s stretch of savannah on one side and the Congolese border on the other, to the Rwandan capital of Kigali. En route we got to share a meal with a local family in their home, visit a chimpanzee reserve and—the highlight—make our way into the dense and mountainous Bwindi Impenetrable Forest to come face to face with gorillas, incredible animals with whom we share 98.4% of our DNA. This was the bucket-list, trip-of-a-lifetime kind of travel I’d always wanted to do. The experience lived up to all my expectations—and also brought with it some on-the-ground realizations about how to behave—and not behave—as a Western traveller venturing outside of the Western world.

Read more at The Flare