These days, travel gets a bad rap. Too polluting, too disruptive, too easily accessible. But the urge to travel is universal, with good reason. Done right, a journey really can change everything.

In 2005, I was a newly qualified lawyer in London, staring down the barrel of 40 more years doing the same thing. I knew enough to know I didn’t want that. But no clue what I did want. 

I have Paul Theroux to thank for everything that followed. Stumbling on a copy of his The Great Railway Bazaar in a second-hand bookshop, I felt the self-imposed walls around me dissolving. I had no idea travel of this nature - moving slowly, letting the world come to you, thinking about the how rather than the where - was even possible.

It was - even in the moment - blindingly apparent that I had to do something similar, and fast. And so, within a few short months, I'd quit my job and found myself boarding a train at Oxford Circus, final stop Tokyo. From there began a rapid process of disassembly.

Every border crossing, every delay, each and every day on the road unpicked what I thought I knew about the world and - far from my path already being set - revealed how much of a work-in-progress I remained. With each day, I knew less than the one before and yet somehow I was still moving forward. Even now, I’ve yet to return home. But it’s not my story I want to tell.

Twenty years on, this new platform celebrates the power of travel to change - if not always the world - certainly your world. To celebrate the serendipity and unexpected outcomes that only a transformative journey can deliver.

So, I’m inviting people to share their stories of trips that changed their lives. I hope they prove as inspirational to you as that original story did to me.

They range from a simple commute to world-first expeditions, but all share a simple truth. Not simply that the journey is more important than the destination but that, done right, it should never be clear at the outset what that destination might be. The fun is in the finding out.

- Ric