“This is what it’s all about,” I thought to myself as I stared out the window of our 787-8 Dreamliner. I had never seen anything like it. At first, I thought it was sky. Hazy, pewter sky. Then I spotted a boat and realized we were buzzing the Persian Gulf. Soon, swirly barren islands created a paisley pattern in the water, and clustered buildings rose like a sandcastle city from the sea. Beyond the city, the pale desert stretched to the horizon.

My crankiness over the impending layover in Qatar immediately subsided as we approached the airport. I kept smacking Tony’s arm and pulling him away from his movie to witness the weirdness. “That is surreal,” he said, leaning over me to peer out the window at Doha. It reminded me of our trip to the Grand Canyon on our honeymoon, hushed visits to the underground cistern in Istanbul, hikes on the Great Wall of China, our first time attending a baci ceremony in Laos, or participating in the lavish wedding of our Indian landlord’s daughter in Delhi.

And, again, I thought, “This is what it’s all about.” The uncomfortable hours crammed in tiny airline seats, the jetlag, the expense, the inevitable tummy issues, the mind-boggling layers of planning, the currency conversion confusion, the sleep deprivation, the omnipresent risk of cultural faux pas, the exhaustion. However, the minute we see something for the first time, learn something fascinating, eat something we hadn’t tasted before, or meet someone with a unique story, it’s all worth it.

We chose this lifestyle for many reasons, but living abroad can be tedious. Errands that would be simple back home take longer and involve several steps -and often many missteps. The fascination of your host country can pale in the blinding frustration of daily life. (Yes, there’s an elephant blocking my parking space. That’s wacky and totally worth at least a tweet, but the fact is, I need to park my car, so now what do I do?) Sometimes I worry I’m getting lazy as a traveler. When Bangkok is your go-to city for an easy laid-back long weekend, where do you go from there?

The sight of Doha from the sky probably doesn’t impress people who have traveled in the Middle East, but for Tony and me, it was that moment as a traveler when your heart speeds up and you can’t think of words to describe what you’re feeling so you keep muttering, “Crazy.” Once we landed and discovered our connecting flight to Jordan had been delayed, my euphoria faded.

But it’s nice to get a reminder now and then of what it’s all about.