Travelling is a great part of life because of the common experience it engenders amongst people. There's a subtle and unexplainable change that comes over a traveller. It opens horizons, and makes relationships seem more genuine, maybe because they're less tenable and more impermanent. Knowing you won't know a person for long makes a short encounter all the more powerful. I try to treasure particularly the people themselves I meet over the sights. People make the experience before the environment, in many ways.
The people I travelled with I feel I have some kind of long term and lasting experience in common. We all know where we were, at that particular point in our lives, and what it meant.
It's also why I believe travelling when you're not self sufficient limits the experience. Relying on your parents puts a barrier between you, what you want to do and the people you'll meet.