By "Rajkumar Padhy"
Travelling is life-changing. It helps us to explore & learn more. It helps us to jump out of our boundaries and take notice of the beautiful world around us. While travelling we get to know of new, beautiful, and different cultures, learn things from them, and implement them in our lives, eventually making us a better person. In this article, we are going to discuss some amazing travel journal ideas which you can implement in your travel journey.
Have you always been one of those people who are
fond of creating memories for a lifetime and is looking for a better way than
creating an Instagram travel account and simply posting pics there?
Do you count yourself as one of those people for
whom the physical form of memories creates a lasting effect than some digital
photos? Are you one of those people who want to write out the feelings while
travelling? If you are, then this article about travel journal ideas is the
thing you need to see. A travel journal is what you need to create. It’s the
thing you had been missing.
But what
exactly is a travel journal?
We can say that a travel journal is like a
physical Instagram. It's a place where you post things just like Instagram, but
only for yourself. It's better in every sense. A travel journal is the Pandora
box of all the beautiful places you had visited & those memories. It's the
list of all the things you have learnt from travelling and also a list of all
the people who you have met in your life while travelling. It's a collection of
all those fond memories.
But why create
a travel journal?
Travel Journal helps us to note down all the
things we want to do on a journey and then the things we did in that journey
and all the things learnt from it. A travel journal can be used to go back in
time and feel the Euphoria of travelling and the related experiences again and
again. Either you can develop your own travel journal ideas or you can follow
this article for some amazing travel journal ideas.
When to start writing a
travel journal?
A travel journal isn't something that you create only after
completion of a trip.
It can be used
to plan one too. Note down the destinations you
want to visit; your bucket list.
Start with the things you want to do there, the places you want to visit and write about the other
things you want to do there. Heard about some famous restaurant at that place,
write it down. Make a to-do list in your travel journal. While on a trip this very travel journal can be used as a travel
"guide" to make sure that we don't forget about the things we
wanted to do.
Writing while travelling
Writing in your journal while travelling is an amazing
experience. You can just describe what you are feeling right at some moment in
your journey in the travel journal. The taste of the amazing
food you ate today or the smell, or you saw something worth mentioning like the
act of a street performer. A travel journal is an update to self, the things
you write in your travel journal will act as a window for memories whenever you
would look at those words and pictures.
While travelling review the to-do lists you
made before starting the journey & and religiously plan to tick all
of them one by one, and don't forget to keep updating them with new things to
do, food to eat or new places to visit which you heard about from the local
people.
Let's take a
look at some travel journal ideas & what you should be adding to your
travel journal.
Write about the expectations & your plan
What is the expectation of your dream
destinations? Write about all the things you have heard about it. Write about
your expectations about the Culture, the food, the people and also some rumour
about that place, you have heard.
Right before you start your journey make sure you are clear
with things like what you are going to do.
What places are you going to visit? What
expectations do you have? Which route are you
going to take? Your budget, etc. It's always a
good idea to write all these things down in your travel journal and keep
updating them from time to time. Tick out the things you have done, circle the
ones you want to try next.
Once the travel destination & tour plan and dates are set, hop on to
the internet and note down the contact details of the services you want to
avail while travelling, be it hotels, restaurants, vehicle rentals etc. While
travelling, you don't want to waste your precious time searching for this
stuff. In your travel journal always have the plan outline of your tour ready
before launching it to your destination. This should include the basic plan,
the list of things I would want to do, the transport map, and the contact
details of all of them. This ensures that the travel experience is seamless and
smooth. A travel journal makes this easier.
Paste
those plane & train tickets
Ever thought what to do on the plane & train tickets of travels of all the places you
had visited? Don't you think those tickets deserve a place better than the box
which you use to store all of them (which usually get covered with dust one day
or the other)? They are a part of your life and instead of just throwing them
into a box or worse into a dustbin;
you can just paste the tickets in your travel journal. You have maps of the
destination you visited & you won't be needing it anymore? Paste those too.
These are your memories.
Write about the people you
met
Travelling is all about exploring new places & meeting
new people and learning from these experiences. You always grow as a person
when you meet someone new and take a look at their life from their perspective.
It always teaches us a thing or two.
Did you meet an amazing person on a trip?
Write about him or her in your journal. Write about how you
met & what quality you like in them and how they are different or similar
to you.
We will always meet someone amazing while travelling, fellow
travellers or some nice local people. You may also learn some travel hacks from
a fellow backpacker.
Draw some sketches into the journal
Saw something
beautiful while travelling?
Sketch it. Draw it.
Just sit at a beautiful spot and draw the beauty in front of
you.
“But I don't
know how to sketch”
Even if you are not an artist you can very well draw some
simple maps, use some arrow marks, describe the route or alley or street you
took from a place to another.
Paste some Currency notes
Cultures or food may or may not differ among different countries but their currencies are bound to differ. At the last leg of the journey, you will have some currency bills in your hand. Why not use the currency notes to make a list of the country you had visited. Use some small denomination.
Instead of writing "USA" as a title, why not use a dollar bill as a title to start
your travel journal. Isn't it an amazing travel journal idea?
The flora is something which adds colours to a place. And far away countries have very different flora than one another. Pick up a colourful leave or a flower, and press it between those pages of the journal.
That dried up leaf or flower would be a passage of memory when you look at it.
Just imagine how beautiful those sakura petals from Japan or those Maple leaves from Canada would look in the journal.
Paste some pictures
"Pictures speak a thousand words"
Not just some regular selfies, paste some photos in your journal which
carry some significant memory with it. A picture of the amazing person you met.
Or some local person from whom you learnt a life lesson. Or of very delicious
food you ate, or of a beautiful sunset at the beach. Anything which connects
with your memories.
Some out of the plan memories
Took part in some rally? Or Participated in a wine tasting competition? Or Came first in dart-throwing at a bar?
Attach some photos & write about these memories in your journal.
These are special memories which you would cherish all your life.
Write about the mistakes too
A journal is meant to improve oneself, and our mistakes are the one that
teaches us the most.
Got duped by a local vendor? Or
Got distracted from the tour plan and wasted your time?
Ate something unhygienic and regretted it later?
Write about it in the journal and pledge to learn from the mistakes and
try to not repeat them.
Writing after the end of the
trip
After the end of the trip is when you would write most in
your journal. Take some time and note down:
● How was this journey for you;
● What did you learn;
● Did anything happen that was different from
your expectations;
● What amazed you;
●
What was the most delicious thing you ate there;
●
The best things you enjoyed there;
●
The worst things you wasted your time on;
●
If you take the tour again, what things would
you want to change;
● What mistakes you made in the journey which could have been avoided
It's very important to reflect on all of these things in the
journal. It helps us in our future endeavours. This is also an amazing way to
grow as a person as you would learn many things from the journey. And don't forget to ask yourself: “Where
next?”
Maintaining a travel journal is quite a dedicated work; It’s easy, but you certainly need a lot of dedication to travelling. And most people often consider it old school to maintain stuff like a travel journal, while the digital format of a travel Journal ( Instagram, Facebook posts) is quite easy to create and share with a lot of people, but it’s the physical format of a travel blog which would add essence in your life and take you down the memory lane whenever you touch it, feel it, smell it.
Travelling is all about learning, that's it, that's the final product of travelling, you always learn when you step out of your comfort zone, and a travel journal is a way to summarise all the things, all the good and bad, all the best and worst. There is never a good or bad travel journal, each journal is according to the interest of the writer. Every person has a different taste in different things
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