The weather may be crap and the traffic impossible but there is no place like home

There's nowhere quite like Edinburgh, says Susan Dalgety

I arrived home last week after more than three weeks on the road, first in sub-Saharan Africa, then in central Europe. I have met people I will never forget. Young women who are so excited at the prospect of an education that they willingly get up at 2am every weekday morning to prepare for their lessons.

Women at the end of their lives who, because of war, face their final years alone, dependent on the charity of strangers for a roof over their head and food on their (shared) table. I have laughed, cried, despaired with and been energised by the courage and resilience of women and girls, left alone to run society while their men are on the front line. I have seen poverty on a scale unimaginable to those of us lucky enough to be born in the global North. Old women forced to eat feral cats. Children who have only one meal a day. Teenage girls forced to sell sex to older men so their families can eat.

But despite our different challenges, cultural differences and the huge inequity that divides countries and the world, the best bit about travel for me is learning that people are, deep down, the same whether they hail from Malawi, Ukraine or Scotland. Our common humanity binds us together.

As I sank into my John Lewis mattress topper, after feasting on chicken roasted in my air fryer, washed down with a glass of Malbec, I breathed a huge sigh of relief that I was home, back in my city, surrounded by family and friends. The weather may be crap, the traffic impossible, our politicians mediocre and our public services crumbling, but there is nowhere like home. And nowhere quite like Edinburgh. The grey skies of Auld Reekie, the majesty of the New Town, the number 10 bus into Princes Street and good old M&S.

But there is nothing quite like the thrill of landing in a new place either, and discovering all it has to offer. It’s been a while since I felt the sun of Greece on my face or tasted salty feta from a village rather than a discount supermarket. I have never been to Thessaloniki. Where’s that Jet2 brochure?