🇬🇧 Travel, trust, change: some strangers who taught me to trust the world

Don’t talk to strangers.

It’s one of the first rules we’re taught as children. It’s one of those phrases spoken to protect us, to keep us safe from the world. Unfortunately, it’s a rule that was taught to me as well or at least, they tried.

The people I’m about to talk about were strangers, and, in a way, they still are.

In the summer of 2024 I was in Central Asia, traveling across the former Soviet republics. I was in Uzbekistan, on a train taking me from Samarkand to Tashkent. My plan was to reach the Uzbek Capital and then cross the border into Kazakhstan, just a few kilometers away. On that train, I met a young man. I can’t remember his name today, but I recall that he lives in Tokyo, where he runs an Uzbek Restaurant.

The restaurant's Instagram handle is:

@samarkand_terrace. 

I asked him how to reach the border with Kazakhstan. I had hoped to cross it in one day, but it was too late. On top of that I was tired, exhausted and extremely hungry.

It was he who suggested I have dinner with some of his friends and stay the night in Tashkent. I accepted without thinking too much. They took me to a Turkish restaurant, where we all had dinner together. I tried to converse, although it wasn’t easy: no one, except for the young man from the train, spoke English. When it came time to pay, everyone insisted that I didn’t pay anything.

You are our guest, they told me.

Not only did they treat me to dinner, but they also helped me find a place to stay for the night and a way to get there. It was really too late to try to reach the border. This is the kind of treatment I received from people who probably don’t even remember my name today.

Yet the story doesn’t end there. The following morning, I reached the border with Kazakhstan. I was supposed to cross it on foot, as I had already done to reach Tajikistan, but this time it was different: there was an immense crowd, scorching heat and a human anthill constantly in motion. I was disoriented; I didn’t know where to go or which counter to approach. The language barrier seemed insurmountable: the international language there is Russian and finding someone who spoke English was far from guaranteed. I was probably the only European among hundreds of people. Yet I didn’t lose my enthusiasm. When you travel, your mood matters a lot; so I did the only thing I thought possible: I asked for help.

I met a young man of Korean origin who spoke a little English. His name was Costantin and he lived in Shymkent, the very city I wanted to reach, almost 100 km from the border. Costantin offered me a ride. Around there, it’s normal to give rides to strangers. I got into the car with him and his friend Yura, who had come specifically to pick us up. Once we arrived in Shymkent, Costantin invited me to his home to freshen up. Then we went out for lunch together, they got me a SIM card, took me to see the Kaskasu Mountains, about 50 km from the city, treated me to dinner and, as if that weren’t enough, they also paid for my overnight train ticket to Almaty, my next destination, which I would reach after a 12 hour journey. 

🇰🇿 Photo taken during the trip to Kaskasu with Costantin and Yura

As a typical European, every act of generosity made me think they wanted something in return; but no. The only thing they wanted was to welcome me into their land. When I tried to refuse, they would reply with simple phrases like:

In Kazakhstan you don’t pay anything.

You are our guest.

We want people to come to Kazakhstan.

They were strangers, and I was a stranger to them; yet they taught me the purest form of values such as hospitality and inclusion.

I could tell many more stories like this.

I remember when, in Zanzibar, I met Alli, a boda-boda rider with whom I had arranged a round trip from Jambiani to Mtende Beach, a small village known for its spectacular bay, nestled between coral rock cliffs and crystal-clear waters.

During the ride, I told him that I had always wanted to learn how to ride a motorbike, but as a teenager my parents had never allowed me to do so.

I thought those words had been lost in the noise of the road, but they weren’t. To my surprise, on the way back, Alli stopped at a secluded spot, where we stayed for over half an hour. He calmly explained to me how his motorbike worked and then even let me ride it. He did it with patience, care and heart with a disarming naturalness, without asking me for even a single extra shilling beyond the price we had agreed for the ride. In Tanzania many people live in poverty, yet it was there that I truly learned the meaning of hospitality and sharing.

🇹🇿 Me with Alli and his motorbike in front of the Kimte Beach Lodge in Jambiani

In Jambiani, I went to dinner twice at the Karibu Restaurant, a local eatery run by a man named Hassan. The best thing about that place is that when you book a table, you are seated at a large table with other strangers. The word of the day there is sharing. That evening, I dined with a French family and a couple of American girls. I remember that I was supposed to leave Zanzibar the next day, but Hassan insisted that I return to his restaurant the following morning as well. At first, I said no, fearing I would miss my flight, although in reality my biggest fear was leaving a place that brought out the best in me. He insisted and I agreed.

The next morning, I walked fifteen minutes to reach the restaurant and found his large family (he had nine children) busy preparing a cake for me. I was genuinely surprised.

🇹🇿 The delicious cake prepared for me by Hassan and his family

Shortly after, Hassan gave me a ride back to the Kimte Beach Lodge on his scooter, where I was staying. The lodge overlooked a paradisiacal beach covered in soft, light-colored sand. The waters of the Indian Ocean lapped at the shore, shifting from aquamarine to turquoise. Around it there were lush palm trees, vibrant nature and a soothing calm enveloped the place.

Just a few days earlier, I had received the email notifying me that I had been assigned my probationary year as a special education teacher. I had finally achieved financial stability. Yet, at the beautiful Kilimanjaro International Airport, just as I was about to leave Tanzania and return to my “traditional” life, I burst into tears so intensely that a police officer stopped to check if I was okay.

Today, about three years after that moment and two years after my journey through Central Asia along the ancient Silk Road, I find myself at Krishna Village, a Hindu eco-farm nestled in nature between the Gold Coast and Byron Bay in New South Wales, in Australia, continuing to pursue this dream: a life filled with travel, love, sharing, inclusion and personal growth.

If, while reading these words, you feel something stirring within you—a desire to set off, to change course, or to live more in alignment with who you truly are—know that it’s no coincidence. For some time now, I’ve been guiding people who feel the same call, helping them transform travel into a tool for awareness and life change into a gentle, concrete, and sustainable process.

If you want, you can write to me privately to book a free call, a space for listening and conversation where we can explore together where you are now and what your next step could be, whether it’s related to travel, identity and conscious change. Sometimes, a single conversation is all it takes to start moving. You’ll find the link to my Instagram profile and my email address at the end of this post.

Looking back on experiences like the ones I’ve shared here, I find myself asking a question:

Should we be more afraid of those we don’t know or of those we think we do?

I choose not to answer. I let my travel and life experiences continue to answer for me. One thing, however, I do want to say: choose carefully the values you pass on to your children, because sometimes it is precisely strangers who teach us the beauty of generosity.

Perhaps, every now and then, it’s worth unlearning habits that build walls between people, to remind ourselves that the world can be far more human than we are constantly told.

Probably, if humanity were truly capable of understanding, deep down, what it means to be rich, generous and inclusive, the risk of genocides occurring just a few steps from the European coasts would be drastically reduced.

On the sidelines of this final reflection, I wish to express my full solidarity with Dr. Francesca Albanese, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, born in the same city as I was and who has long been constantly under attack by powerful forces. Perhaps she is the only person within the institutions who genuinely seeks to build a way of acting similar to the one I dream of myself.

Hi, I’m Leopoldo Lagrimosa. I’m glad you’re here on my blog.


If you want to discover my world as a WanderLife Coach, follow me on Instagram too: leofreetraveler

You can also write to me at leofreetraveler@gmail.com to book a free call, a space for listening and conversation where we can explore together your next step in travel, identity and conscious change.

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