When travel takes you beyond your comfort zone

Flying in an aerial motorbike, performing mountain-top handstands, or "just" taking a solo trip ...

In this week’s podcast episode - more on that below - my guest Di Westaway brought up the topic of going beyond your comfort zone, and referenced a blog post of mine she’d read which mentioned my microlight flight over the Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia. Well, did that take me back! This is me, thumbs up and smiling, behind Gav the pilot in the Birds Eye View microlight near Exmouth.

To this day, I’m not sure that words can adequately express just how far beyond my comfort zone this flight was. It’s almost a decade back, and I was asked to travel to Exmouth and the Ningaloo Reef area at the very last minute as part of a blogging campaign - a group of British bloggers were being brought to Perth to each see a different part of Western Australia, and one literally fell ill just before their flight left London, and, long story short, I was her replacement.

A wonderful opportunity, or a terrifying error?!

This meant I received my itinerary basically on the day I left - and I was of course frantically organising everything required so I could suddenly be away from home for a week, and I didn’t pay it a lot of attention. There was mention of a scenic flight over the Ningaloo Reef, but I didn’t google the company or look any deeper. When the Tourism WA employee coordinating the trip rang me to check some last minute details and we briefly discussed the itinerary, he asked - in hindsight, ominously - “Do you have any phobias?” This should have been a slightly red flag, but I just said “Oh, I’m not a great flyer, but I’m sure the scenic flight will be beautiful!”

I had a blast on a solo self-drive tour around Exmouth and Coral Bay. Until …

I spent the most brilliant three days taking myself around Exmouth and Coral Bay, following their itinerary including a cattle station visit, snorkelling on the reef, and then finally, I pulled up at the hangar ready to take my scenic flight.

I can still remember the onset of intense fear when I realised my scenic flight would take place in a microlight. If you haven’t seen these before - I certainly hadn’t - they are basically a flying motorbike. I don’t even want to ride a motorbike on land, but put a hang glider wing on it and send it up into the sky? - well I wanted to do that even less. I did not want to do this at all! When it comes to being adventurous, I am only keen on being psychologically and socially adventurous, not physically: I had long since decided I would never, ever try out bungee jumping or skydiving or anything vaguely of that ilk.

In the hangar, I waited with another visitor, who was in the region for her school holiday break from teaching in an Aboriginal community school way over near the Northern Territory border. She knew what she was doing here: she had actively saved up for and booked this microlight flight and was so excited.

Me, on the other hand … I was trying to not pass out from anxiety, and racking my brain to see if there was any excuse I could use to avoid this flight. I was brutally aware that the contract I had signed involved payment for this work only if I actually participated in the entire trip. As a single parent with a pretty big mortgage, the payment was quite important! Apart from that, of course, it would be professionally embarrassing to have to say I wouldn’t do it. I just had to find a way to get up there.

Gav, the microlight pilot allocated to me, soon came along to take me up into the skies. He had obviously dealt with nervous flyers before, and had a good strategy of using a mix of safety facts and humour. I’ll always remember him briefing me about our flight and saying, flight attendant style, “The emergency exits are … everywhere!!” Nonetheless, I literally closed my eyes prior to take-off and apart from a couple of quick peeps, I spent at least ten or fifteen minutes barely opening them at all, and basically trying to pretend I was anywhere else but hurtling through the sky, safely strapped onto this microlight of course, but feeling nowhere close to personally safe.

Finally, incredibly, I found I could keep my eyes open. And thank goodness, because the views down to the Ningaloo Reef were incredible, as were the views over the Cape Range National Park. Gav was a miracle worker who even, briefly, got me to spread my arms out and “fly like a bird”. I was relieved when we landed, I’ll confess, but very glad I had managed to have this experience. It was truly like nothing I’d done before - it had absolutely smashed through the boundaries of my comfort zone - and I was so proud. And I had a great story to tell!

Everyone’s comfort zone is different

Back to this week’s podcast episode: I chatted with Di Westaway, an incredibly accomplished Australian woman who’s just a hilarious go-getter as well. What pushing her comfort zone meant to her was taking on incredible challenges - attempting to scale South America’s highest peak, Mount Aconcagua, when she’d never even camped in a tent before; creating world records for the highest handstands; starting a charity hike business, Coastrek, that’s raised over $50 million dollars since its inception in 2009.

As you’ll hear in this episode, Di has taken on physical challenges that clearly (given my aversion to the microlight flight) I would absolutely balk at; and yet when we discussed that everyone’s idea of being adventurous is different, Di said:

There’s probably not many things that scare me more than the thought of traveling solo.

And I think this is such an important point to dwell on. Part of being a thoughtful traveller, I believe, is being thoughtful about how you can grow from a travel experience, or what you can learn; something personal that gives it purpose. This won’t always be the sole reason for a trip but I do like to consider how a trip is pushing the boundaries of my comfort zone. And this boundary will look so very different from person to person; it’s extremely individual. I’m more than happy to travel solo - in fact, I wish I could do it more often - but I am not ever going to take on some of these extreme hiking challenges that Di has managed. It is, however, a delight to hear about them (so click through if you want to listen too!).

So do tell me: how have you stretched the boundaries of your comfort zone over the course of your travels? And do you want to stretch them further - how?