What does travel do to the individual?

Last Friday night I went out for dinner with Julian, Wade and Matt and we started discussing travel and what it does or doesn't do to you as a person. This was an interesting topic because none of us have acually done that trip to the other side of the world that so many people do in their late teens or early 20's. We have all been so career focused. And funnily enough, we are all starting to now consider and even plan that much postponed trip.

So the question is: what does travel do to your personality - if anything? And what does it do to the way you perceive your world? Is travel as profound an experience as some would have you believe? Or is it simply something that one must experience in life?

And another thing: is travel relative? That is, to one person the trip of a lifetime could be say from Adelaide to The Gold Coast. Whereas to another, Sydney to Europe or the US would be a minimum distance to achieve that desired level of travel satisfaction.

We all had varying answers, but no-one was particularly passionate about one view or another. It ended up being more of a cyclone of ideas bouncing around the table. I suppose we will have to wait and see...!