Rishika Singh

I was 15 years old when I really started traveling. I mean, I had spent my whole life traveling before that--India, Dubai, but this was the first time I was a young adult ready to explore the world. My parents had found tickets to Hawaii for the winter break of my freshman year of high school and after those two weeks, I was hooked. Traveling became an addiction. I spent that time hiking through the rainforest, swimming in tidal pools, and always seeking out the most beautiful places on the island we were on. Each year after Hawaii, I knew that I had to see more of the world. I saw Thailand, the Czech Republic, Germany, the UK, France, Austria, Turkey, Italy, and Greece. It was during this period that I quickly realized the vast cultural diversity that has formed the world. I had seen the fruits of societies who had welcomed their cultural differences and I had become obsessed with fighting cultural assimilation in my own community. Watching people, including myself, sacrifice the beauty and traditions in their own culture in order to conform to the one around them, was something I could no longer tolerate. After experiencing these cultures and learning their history, I began to study my own. I began to realize that the most powerful convictions are derived from learning and accepting one's own history. I studied modern colonization in media and began to "decolonize" my own life, a process entirely initiated from my love of travel. As I continue to explore the rest of the world, I am continually in awe at the incredible history and cultures I encounter and will be a patron of their preservation for generations to come.