When I look back at the last two decades of my life on the road - 35,000 kilometres of cycling across deserts, mountains, and remote villages - there’s one thread that ties it all together: curiosity .
It was curiosity that nudged me onto a bicycle after a leg injury, turning rehab into an African expedition. Curiosity that pushed me to keep going when maps ended, when languages failed, when the next village was a question mark instead of a certainty .
Curiosity is not just a traveller’s trait. It’s a compass. And it has guided me through every season of uncertainty, both on the road and off it.
On the Road
Cycling through unfamiliar places, I rarely had the comfort of knowing what lay ahead. A bridge marked on the map might not exist. A storm could roll in without warning. A tyre puncture could leave me stranded in the middle of nowhere. But instead of treating uncertainty as an enemy, I learned to lean into it. To ask: What’s around the next bend? Who might I meet if I stop and ask for help? What can this discomfort teach me?
Curiosity transformed fear into possibility. Vulnerability into connection. It kept me moving, even when the outcome wasn’t clear.
At Work
Professionally, my life is steeped in technology. Automation, AI, digital tools - the very systems reshaping how we live and work . In a world changing at breakneck speed, certainty is a myth. The leaders I admire most aren’t the ones who claim to have all the answers. They’re the ones who ask the best questions.
Curiosity in the workplace is what allows us to adapt, to reimagine, to innovate. It’s the same principle as on the road: when the path ahead is unclear, curiosity keeps us open to discovery rather than paralysed by fear.
In Life
Curiosity doesn’t just belong to expeditions or boardrooms. It belongs to the everyday. It’s in the willingness to listen deeply to someone else’s story. To try something unfamiliar instead of staying comfortable. To pause long enough to notice the detail in front of us - a child’s question, a stranger’s kindness, a sunset too easily overlooked.
In a culture obsessed with efficiency and optimization, curiosity slows us down. It reminds us that not everything worth knowing can be predicted, measured, or tracked. Some of life’s greatest gifts arrive not through calculation, but through wonder.
The Compass We Carry
As I look to the road ahead - in travel, in work, in life - I know I won’t always have a map. None of us do. But what we can carry is a compass. And for me, that compass is curiosity.
It doesn’t eliminate uncertainty. But it transforms it. It shifts the question from “What if I fail?” to “What might I discover?”
The road ahead will always hold unknowns. But as long as I let curiosity lead, I trust I’ll end up exactly where I need to be.
