Meditation in India, volunteering in Peru, post-Covid release in Argentina: the life-changing journeys of 10 Hongkongers

From blowing away the cobwebs in Ladakh, India, to an Indiana Jones rainforest trip to a 900km pilgrimage on foot through Spain, journeys that changed lives

Being held prisoner in tribal Papua New Guinea brought a rethink of priorities, volunteering with disabled children half a world away helped a woman find peace

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Steven Ballantyne in Papua New Guinea, where he was once taken captive - a life-changing experience. Fellow Hong Kong residents recall their own memorable journeys.

Published: 8:15am, 10 Apr 2022

“Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world, you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life – and travel – leaves marks on you.” So said globe-trotting celebrity chef and author Anthony Bourdain.

As an older saying goes, it’s better to travel hopefully than to arrive; the journey is its own reward.

So while “Hong Kong” and “brief getaway” remain mutually exclusive terms, it’s no bad time to look back over some of travel’s golden years, and trips that resonate even now, as 10 Hongkongers recall extraordinary journeys.

Vijay Verghese, publisher, AsianConversations.com

“I travelled across Ladakh and up through the Nubra Valley – patrolled by irascible double-humped Bactrian camels – in the far north of India’s ‘Little Tibet’ in early 1980.

“It was a pretty amazing experience, even for a newspaperman. It was far from any safe city tethers, a place of magic and meditation, wilderness and wilful weather, introspection and inscrutable peaks.

Vijay Verghese on Pyramid Hill in Hong Kong.

“It took me a month to re-acclimatise to the heat and dust of Delhi. But it set the mind free and blew away the cobwebs.

“I wrote an article on the trip called ‘Road to Satori’ that got picked up by a magazine and landed me a job in Bangkok, from where I moved to Hong Kong. A transcendental experience, that.