Travel Journal Branched · Part One

Of course you keep a journal when you travel.

Okay, maybe I’m leaping to a conclusion about you and your interest in methodically logging adventure into a sheath of paper, but heck even my spouse who only writes business documents every other day of the year pulls out pen and paper back in the hotel room each night.

It’s taken me most of my life to settle into a format that I like, but I have written travel journals for as long as I can remember.

I have gone the old fashioned route, a crisp clean lined notebook full of rambling recollections of the adventure-filled days.

I have dabbled in sketchbook travel journalling, penning a simple bit of art, watercolour or ink drawings surrounded by notes and labels and bite-sized anecdotes.

I once took a novel on long vacation and wrote travel memories in the margins.

To this day I almost always bring along a keyboard and type posts into a personal blog with photos, and yes, I fully count this as a travel journal.

And lately I’ve taken to a form of travel-adapted bullet journalling where I record point form collections of experiences, travel modes, food notes and little hand-drawn maps.

But why do it? Well, I think it’s a key part of the experience: Writing can be many things—therapeutic, expressive, creative, and communicative to name a few—but travel writing can help us process a new place and remember when our brains can’t quite keep up with the adventure.