Travel
Travel is looked to as a source of new experience and insight. What one gains from travel depends on many factors such as length of time spent, how one travels, and most especially, on the travellers themselves. A very big factor is knowledge of the language of the area one travels in, how much of it one understands and can make oneself understood. Those who have travelled with some ability in the local language more often than not say it's the only way to go.
The preconception that everyone understands English so why bother to learn the local language simply does not hold water, unless one really prefers to stay well on the beaten tourist track where some degree of basic English may indeed be spoken. If your travel plans will take you off the beaten track, if you plan on staying in someone's home, or on living and working in the culture, or even on being adventurous and travelling to remote areas, language ability will make all the difference in the world.
Benefits of speaking and understanding a language go much deeper than the practical aspects of making oneself understood. That you have taken the time and energy to learn their language shows people in the places you visit your interest in them, and in their minds, puts you in a different category than visitors who don't make such an effort. If you are going to be in the country for any length of time, you'll thank yourself a thousand times for going with even a little language ability under your belt.
Travel can be a period of peak experience that later fades into memories and a collection of aging photographs. But another way of looking at travel is as a process of gathering and planting seeds, seeds that can be watered and nurtured long after the suitcases, backpacks, and passports have been stored away in the closet. In this way the experience is not only continuing, but living and growing, part of one's present and future, rather than fading into the past. In this way, returning from your travels becomes a beginning of something that may continue and grow throughout your whole life.
What seeds are planted depends on which seeds are gathered, and this depends on one's preparation. What is being suggested here is that, as part of preparation, a little knowledge of the language can go a long way.