1Deep in the northern highlands, I spent three nights with a hill tribe family that rarely receives foreign visitors.
2Their wooden house stood on tall stilts above a stream, surrounded by rice terraces carved into the steep hillsides.
3Although we shared almost no common language, the family welcomed me with warmth, patience and endless cups of tea.
4Each morning I followed the grandmother to the fields, where she taught me to plant rice seedlings in the mud.
5Her hands moved with a speed and confidence that my clumsy fingers could never hope to imitate.
6In the evenings, the whole village gathered around the fire to sing songs passed down through countless generations.
7The father explained that young people were leaving for the cities, and he feared the old songs would die with them.
8Before I left, the grandmother gave me a woven scarf that she had spent the entire winter making.
9I wear it every year and remember her quiet dignity and the fragile beauty of her vanishing world.
10True travel, I learned that week, is not about seeing places but about being changed by the people in them.