For Amanda Cabaday, every step she took while gorilla trekking in Rwanda’s Bwindi Impenetrable National Park felt triumphant.
"Turning the corner and to see a gorilla sitting right there – it was unbelievable," she recalls. "It was just like, bam, the gorilla is right in front of us eating."
Gorilla trekking is a dream experience for many, but for Cabaday — her trip also marked something deeper — she left for Rwanda on the one-year anniversary of her final chemotherapy session.
In early 2025, Cabaday delayed a trip to Patagonia after being diagnosed with breast cancer.
While she was able to attend the trip in October 2025 following the completion of all her treatment, she was looking for an experience that would challenge her after a year of working her body back up — which led her to book a tour to Rwanda.
“I was concerned that it wasn’t going to get any better, and I wasn’t going to be able to do a trip like Rwanda where there was a lot of walking and treks. I was like, ‘You know what? know what last year was like. I feel good. This is what I’m going to do,’” she said.
“I’m also turning 50 in November — it was this combination of things that led me to think, ‘Rwanda is the trip for this time,’” she said.
What’s more, it was also her 10th trip with G Adventures, which was made “perfect” thanks to her CEO (Chief Experience Officer), Elton and the other travellers in her group.
It was a one of a kind experience watching the gorillas, she says, one that she will never forget.
“I could have stayed there all day watching them because it was just so fascinating. We followed two silverbacks and we got to see them both — one we got pretty close to, which was also just insane,” she said.
The life-changing power of travel
Cabaday’s first trip in 2010 with G Adventures came almost by chance. At the time, she was a lawyer, working in family law in Baltimore, MD.
Her roommate at the time was venting about how her mother insisted that her younger brother could only travel to India if his sister went along. Cabaday sensed a fleeting opportunity, and jumped in.
"I said to her, ‘I don't know if I'll ever get a chance to go to India again. So if you're going, I'm going with you,’" she recalls.
That trip was a revelation. While she had traveled to Europe before, India opened her mind to seeing more of the world.
“I loved it and had the most fantastic group of travelers. A lot of us were women. A couple of the girls knew each other, but everyone just kind of came together, and we really just had such a good time,” she said.
“I cried the first time I saw the Taj Mahal because it was so stunning.”
At a final dinner in Goa, she recalls joking with her fellow travellers about what excuse they could come up with just to stay.
"I don't believe I would have been doing the amount of traveling that I have done without doing that India trip in 2010," she says.
"It makes you more curious. It makes you almost hungry to have these different experiences and experience these different cultures."
The trip to India was also a catalyst that eventually led Cabaday to leave her job in law in late 2011.
From January to May 2012, she travelled around Southeast Asia before heading back to Baltimore – and later – making the move to New York to attend social work school in 2015.
Reflections on decades of exploration
Cabaday’s passion for travel and learning more about communities around the world quickly became a staple of her life.
And while she initially travelled with a friend — including on a National Geographic South Africa trip in 2014 — she found herself drawn to destinations that piqued her interest, even if they didn't align with her friends' bucket lists.
"I’ve done 10 trips with G, and they’ve been pretty far-flung, and not necessarily places that my friends would want to go," she said.
Eight out of those 10 trips Cabaday took with G Adventures were taken solo.
"I’m not going to let the fact that I have to do it on my own preclude me from doing it," she says.
"If anyone ever has a question of whether or not they should take the trip, they should take the trip. You’re never going to regret having that experience."
Read more stories like this:
Why this traveller finally embarked on a solo trip in her 50s
How a solo trip to Mexico led to a lifelong friendship
Why I decided to take a ‘gap year’ with G Adventures in my 30s
