'Immersion in another way of being ... ' a donkey cart on the Serowe plain. Photograph: Chelsia Tongue

Chelsia Tongue was Guardian Unlimited's grey Netjetter, visiting the world's hot and cold wildernesses from the Arctic to Namibia. Here, she looks back on how her travels transformed her experience of home

Back in London: so many people - all that sound, pace and activity. It seemed as though the White Rabbit had rushed through, pulling his watch out of his waistcoat pocket and infecting everyone with his need to hurry to some imagined late appointment.

Being a Netjetter had for a time granted me the illusion of freedom from this everyday routine, organization and control. The days would dawn with a clear sun in a frameless sky; for three months there was no need for structure to the day, other than that imposed by the terrain and the most basic of living needs. The tempo was that of the wilderness; settling into it gave me the space and time to appreciate life's spectrum of tones and shades: the blue cold of the Arctic sharpening and defining awareness, and the expansive browns and reds of the hot wildernesses blurring boundaries in the heat waves. The sounds of nature were crisp against a background of silence, and I had an awareness of being expanded by the immersion of my senses in sounds, colours and smells that were the exact opposite of industrial life.

I am sitting now at my window, looking out at a thick London fog, feeling its freezing fingers squeezing, and thinking about my chats with Kortman, my Bushman guide - his explanation of the different values of his people: the way they share all things, so that they find the idea of ownership difficult, and how Bushman children are raised as free spirits, sleeping when they like, eating when they can, and therefore have difficulty with imposed rules and schedules when they are sent to school. I am thinking of Christmas, with its surfeit of rich food and drink, remembering how much I enjoyed the simple fare of my wilderness travels, and how, when choice was limited, I was easily satisfied with very little.

For me, that is what travel is about - stripping off the layers of normal life and being immersed in another way of being, stretching the senses and sensibilities so that, on return, normal life is enriched, or as Chesterton remarked: "... the object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land." Being a Netjetter provided such an experience because, among other things, the time span was so generous: this was no two-week dip into the south of France, or Thailand, but a protracted experience of another place, as different from my daily life as I could have imagined.

What would I expect of travelling now? Just flitting into exotic parts of the earth and gawping at its otherness would seem like some form of voyeurism, but is it always possible to engage with other ways of life to any meaningful extent on our travels? Perhaps the extra effort this takes has its own rewards. I am hoping to find out, as my next project is a trip, in February, to Kenya - the cradle of humanity and home to a vast variety of animals, our planetary cohabitees and co-users of scarce resources. Life will be done differently there - and as I add more colours, sounds and faces to my memory bank, what shape will London then take?

• Read Chelsia's Netjetter blog diary in full here